

The World's Most Dangerous Geek  - muriithi
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/5938320/the_worlds_most_dangerous_geek

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hobbs
Blech, I hate this style of journalism. I gave up reading while slogging
through the guy's entire personal history. I never even got to the meat of the
article. (I suppose the style works for bio-centric publications like Rolling
Stone, though.)

Could anyone post a synopsis of why the guy is supposedly dangerous?

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lvecsey
AOL paid him $100 million for winamp, and he refused to sell out to the point
of placing a desktop icon for aol during the install. Version 3.0 became
bloated, and so v2.9 was released as a more stream lined version. Some other
projects like gnutella were announced but AOL as a corporation dragged their
feet and he released the packages on his own, which caused them no end of
pain.

~~~
hobbs
Hmm... gnutella was dangerous, I suppose, but certainly not "most dangerous".
Sounds like it must have just been a PR puff piece to promote his latest
software. (Not that Rolling Stone would ever become the tool of a press
agent.)

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rglovejoy
I think that the guys who were able to hack into cardiac pacemakers would be a
_lot_ more dangerous:

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/03/13/scipace113.xml)

~~~
cstejerean
yeah, but when I posted that link it only got one vote.

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hernan7
Frankel's latest project: the Reaper multitrack recording software.
www.cockos.com

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borga
2004?

~~~
LukeKrogh
I too am curious why this was posted being that it's 4 years old.

"The Most Dangerous Geek in the World" ?!?! Where did they get that from? Free
spirited? Sure. But how is he dangerous in the slightest?

While I admire his free spirited nature I don't admire his hypocracy. If AOL
was that much of an idea crusher/non-innovator why didn't he leave and launch
his ideas? Instead he chooses a manner that is disrespectful and possibly
illegal.

~~~
lunk
I couldn't disagree more.

He worked for a company that was / is clearly floundering. He told them
clearly that they needed to change things. And they ignored him. They labelled
him a troublemaker.

He tried to help the company, and they declined that help. He tried to push
the company, and they ignored that as well. The way I see it, this is the
demise of AOL in a nutshell.

4 years old or not, this is a good story.

