More trouble coming for Winamp?

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I was checking the website of Ryan Geiss. Ryan is the creator of such awesome Winamp plugins like Geiss, Monkey, Drempels, Smoke and more. While checking his personal notes, he posted on 7/28/2003...

AOL has told me that thursday is my deadline to find a new position within the company, or get laid off. I'm still exploring what's available, but in either case, it means that my work with Winamp plug-ins will be either severly impacted, or will cease. It is a sad day for visualizations. But it's been a great two years working on them. =) I will post here when I figure out what the heck I'm doing.

Also in the works... a kick-ass version of MilkDrop (1.04) should be coming soon (hopefully by thursday, just in case!). And it's gonna rock your sock off, man...

View: Ryan's What's New Page

News source: DotProject.org

Please note that this Beta Release expires 30 days after product was installed.

System Requirements

--Pentium level CPU
--IE 5.01 SP2
--Windows 98, 98SE
--Windows ME
--Windows 2000 Professional, SP1 and up
--Windows XP Home and Professional Edition, SP1

And from Norton AntiVirus 2004 Public Beta's Download page:

If you have Norton Internet Security or Norton Personal Firewall installed on your computer, you will not be able to install this Norton AntiVirus beta version. Please uninstall any versions of Norton Internet Security and Norton Personal Firewall before installing the Norton AntiVirus 2004 beta build. The final version of Norton AntiVirus 2004 will not have this requirement.

(2 replies) #1 sodapop on 31 Jul 2003 - 10:15

As I suspected, Winamp and Netscape are dying off slowly but surely...too bad imho.

#1.1 Jugalator on 31 Jul 2003 - 12:05

I never cared about Netscape since they stalled their development with Netscape 4.x, and switched to bloating Mozilla. Netscape sux0rz, the Mozilla Foundation r0x0rz

#1.2 whistlerxp on 31 Jul 2003 - 12:29

Winamp is sooooooo popular, they can't kill it off

#2 SMeK on 31 Jul 2003 - 10:17

grrr

/me shakes hand at aol

milkdrop is the most amazing plug-in ever!!!!!

#3 BeLGaRaTh on 31 Jul 2003 - 10:26

What the hell are AOL playing at Ryan Geiss has to be one of the best, if not the best visual plugin makers around. Typical AOL, dont know a good thing when they see it. Is AOL short for A-hOLes?

#4 Demogorgon on 31 Jul 2003 - 10:33

aol is a plague, and needs to be destroyed.

(1 reply) #5 bluebsh on 31 Jul 2003 - 11:19

they all should just quit aol and form a new company, getting financed shouldn't be to hard when they already proved they can do a good job at getting good software out.

#5.1 Garry on 01 Aug 2003 - 02:20

Well it's not that simple. These guys have clauses in their contracts saying things like they may not work on a PC Media Player for two years if they resign from Nullsoft. Also, which company in today's market would fund these guys? It's all well and good saying it "shouldn't be too hard." but why would anyone do it? Especially after the mess this company has made of Winamp3. It's a fiasco.

(1 reply) #6 Vidar on 31 Jul 2003 - 11:19

Isn't AOL (not nullsoft) working on its own version of an iTunes (music player + purchase music)? I remember beta testing the thing (which sucked ass) long time ago. Just seems another flex of AOL's muscle against nullsoft.. First WASTE, now Geiss...

#6.1 Jugalator on 31 Jul 2003 - 12:09

Yep. It's sad...

Not only WASTE and Geiss, but possibly Justin Frankel too, creator of Winamp:
http://www.neowin.net/comments.php?id=11511&category=main

#7 Cryton on 31 Jul 2003 - 11:59

My opinion. I don't use visualization plugins, so *shrugs* it's a shame when people get laid off or forced to move in their job (It's happened to me twice so far).. but WinAmp the audio player should live on, right? Let 3rd party ppl write visualization plugins then.

(4 replies) #8 Prelude76 on 31 Jul 2003 - 12:33

Christ! and all along i thought it was people making plug-ins for free on their spare time. i never knew some guy made a CAREER out of making visualization plugins for obsolete players.

damn, whats he gonna tell his grandkids now.

"kids, i used to make some lines swrirl around the screen in hypnotic patterns." "COOL!" ugh! cant believe they didnt fire him 2 years ago.

#8.1 Neobond on 31 Jul 2003 - 13:05

well luckily you don't decide these things

#8.2 nookadum on 31 Jul 2003 - 14:21

QUOTE (#8.0)

i never knew some guy made a CAREER out of making visualization plugins for obsolete players.

People make big bucks making pr0n, so why shouldn't they make money of their visualization plugins?

#8.3 JaggedFlame on 31 Jul 2003 - 16:06

QUOTE

damn, whats he gonna tell his grandkids now. "kids, i used to make some lines swrirl around the screen in hypnotic patterns." "COOL!" ugh! cant believe they didnt fire him 2 years ago.

Coders tell their grandkids, "Kids, I used to spend eight hours a day pressing buttons on a piece of plastic." Big deal.

#8.4 Proneax on 01 Aug 2003 - 00:55

Obsolete Player? Winamp is one of if not the best music player. Period. When you make better visualizations than him, then you can mock him out. But don't come here and troll about how his job was meaningless blah blah. I'd like to see you say that to his face. It's not like he's some schmoe from the street that clicks and drags lines and buttons on a screen. Creating these visualizations involves some complex mathematics and hours and hours tweaking the algorithms both for speed and for visual quality. Then you have to be someone who can design these high quality algorithms AND be artistic with them.

Plus, it's not like everyone's job in the world is exciting. How would you like to live in a developing nation? You could tell your grandchildren that you carried 80 lb crates on your head for 10 miles every day in 90 degree heat (and no, I'm not just making this up) for your life and were lucky if you made enough money to feed yourself and your family. You need to take more consideration before you attempt to degrade someone's career.

You can over-simplify any task until it seems trivial. "yeah, I sat around all day and made marking on paper. Later they said that a thousand monkeys with a thousand typewriters would replicate my markings." I'll let you figure out who I'm referring to in this oversimplification.

#9 net-cruizer on 31 Jul 2003 - 15:14

Well if I owned AOL, I wouldn't be paying someone good money to sit around workin on something as useless as visualizations, that's for sure.

(1 reply) #10 bangbang023 on 31 Jul 2003 - 15:18

nullsoft going over to the AOL side was the worst move ever

#10.1 Garry on 01 Aug 2003 - 02:22

And if they hadn't let AOL buy them? They wouldn't exist now! The money from AOL's purchase of Nullsoft was the only way they could get out of the massive legal problems they had at the time.

#11 netstarman on 31 Jul 2003 - 15:29

They need to be going a different way on ther AOL setup , maybe hopefully get there new 9.0 working with broadband. Give Geiss a good job he's a great developer .

#12 LoboVerde on 31 Jul 2003 - 15:29

Well I'm sure WinAmp will continue on. It has too large of a user base to just drop it.

#13 BroChaos on 31 Jul 2003 - 15:31

man, i remember the first time i used geiss like 5 years ago, i think i stared at my monitor for hours nonstop

#14 Gary_Player on 31 Jul 2003 - 20:23

...God I hate AOL...

(1 reply) #15 CDragon on 31 Jul 2003 - 20:55

It seems like whatever AOL touches, always go bad...

I wish Nullsoft hadn't been bought by them

#15.1 Garry on 01 Aug 2003 - 02:23

See post 10.1 .. it's a very lucky thing Nullsoft WERE bought by AOL otherwise Winamp just wouldn't exist now.

(2 replies) #16 antsy on 31 Jul 2003 - 22:25

Good Luck Null soft
Good Luck Netscape
Whats to be be ruined next?

#16.1 net-cruizer on 01 Aug 2003 - 01:15

You forgot to mention Spinner. AOL bought that and basicly ruined it too.
Well I guess the music quantity and quality is still great and hasn't gotten worse, but since AOL bought Spinner, they pretty much ruined the player itself.

Oh, and they ruined ICQ too. Geeze, I almost forgot about that and I used it for many many years, till AOL ruined it too much.

They sure do have a tendancy to buy all the best stuff, then chew it up and then spit it out, lol.

#16.2 mealbundy on 01 Aug 2003 - 03:47

in that case, i hope AOL buys MS.

#17 Zombie9920 on 01 Aug 2003 - 06:50

#16.2

I don't see that happening. Why? Because MS has alot more $$$ than AOL will ever see.

It is simple, the more $$$ you have the more power you have. This news doesn't bother me because I ditched Winamp for WMP 9 a long time ago. Mainly because I feel that WMP 9 is superior by far. Everything just sounds better in WMP 9. I listened to an MP3 in Winamp 2.x the other day and I couldn't believe how crappy it sounded. No TruBass enhancements, no WoW effects, no Plus! speaker enhancements...it just sounded so plain.

R.I.P. Winamp. You used to be the best media player but you have now been surpassed by a media player that is lightyears ahead of you.

About visualizations. I really like the baterry randominaztion visual of WMP 9. It comes with the player without the need to download an individual visualization plugin. WMP 9 also has a nifty little taskbar player(for XP) without the need to download a un-supported by the media player's developer plugin.

#18 nic on 01 Aug 2003 - 07:32

I don't like wmp 9.. it takes half a second to a second longer to load then winamp, and is just an eyesore. It doesn't let me custimize the fade options, and I don't get cool visualizations like milkdrop.

There are no plugins that let me remote control it with my wireless gamepad. Getting a playlist together takes way too many clicks.

Nah..I love winamp. Even if it does gets dated and isn't worked on for awhile. It does everything I need, and I don't think that will change for awhile

(1 reply) #19 yodj1 on 01 Aug 2003 - 07:45

Wow effects and Trubass are utter garbage, I dont know what youre talking about, Winamp is by far better =/

#19.1 Zombie9920 on 02 Aug 2003 - 19:47

Maybe you have a crappy set of speakers. I know that the TruBass and WoW effects sound great on my 6.1 Inspire setup. They sound really good when I connect my comp to my Bose 5.1 home theater system.

#20 naruchan on 01 Aug 2003 - 12:07

There are free DSP plugins out there for Winamp that can make music sound much better than WMP9 ever could... just imho

#21 Courage on 01 Aug 2003 - 12:14

MilkDrop 1.04 is out !!!

Get it from HERE

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