AOL is a playing funny, right?

[Archon_Wing]

What if your lyrics are from a song on the warner brothers lable? Does that mean that AOL/time-warner can sue you for illegally publishing their lyrics, and then sue you for giving them permision to use something they already own?
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*Looks at what the music industry has done...*
:ph34r:

[Malakar]

ICQ has been off my stuff since 1999.  It was intrusive then.

Mind explaining?

[Archon_Wing]

Better news... AIM rewords policy to make it less scarier, and also it does not apply to regular conversations.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1775743,00.asp

[jahcs]

Then the text of that agreement needs to be more specific on the areas where the clause does not apply to the service. In court what is documented counts, not a statement of "What we meant was..."

[LochnarITB]

I know this thread is in regard to AIM but I needed to vent and thought of it.

AOL is the biggest piece of browser-wants-to-be-an-operating-system garbage ever placed on a computer.

Phew, I feel better. I got a plea from the father unit asking me to take a look at the message they are getting on their computer. Even though I was sure I knew what happened, I went and took a look at it. Even though I told them over and over again to not allow anything, especially AOL and its updates, to be installed without me checking it out, they did. AOL proceeded to update itself by adding virus and spyware scanning (others already in place), dialup enhancers (connected through cable) and miscellaneous other garbage. There were at least 4-5 AOL background processes running when only one is needed. It took me two hours to clean out what had been done with a single click. :wacko:

[Doc]

Throw away the training wheels and get a real ISP. That's all I can say for AOL users. You can get DSL now cheaper than what AOL charges a month for dial-up.

As for the viruses, malware, spyware, and all that bad stuff, all I will say is, don't use Windows. :P

[jahcs]

I agree, AOL is the Edsel of the computer world. Sure it will get you where you're going but, damn, couldn't you make a better choice? Most people hate it and a very few love it.

Installing AOL is the quickest way to cause conflicts with your hardware and all of your previously installed software. And it is very tenacious when trying to remove it. AOL is the number one drawback to buying a computer with preinstalled software bundles.

[Doc]

Now look here youngin. Edsel was ahead of it's time with concepts that had not fully matured and turned out badly in the long run. The ideas were lightyears ahead of the technology. At least the Edsel was innovation and forward thinking, a big bold step during a time when improvements meant adding more chrome or bigger tailfins. People remember that fall, but that fall meant something... Somebody had the courage to defy the current ideals of normal and challenge the way people thought. Bad outcome yes, but at least somebody made a monumental effort to make some sort of progress. Cars just now today are finally getting some of the concepts that cars like Edsel and Tucker attempted to cash in on a half a century ago.

AOL is none of that, and is not a fair comparison. AOL is more like... A Corvair or a Pinto mayhap. Or a Le Car.

**Shakes finger menacingly and raises eyebrow**

[LochnarITB]

AOL is more like... A Corvair or a Pinto mayhap.
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AOL is more like... Microsoft Windows. Both are bloated, ill-mannered, overcomplicated garbage well marketed to the computer illiterate masses. The real sad thing, in this case, is that I've tried to ease them off this vile crack. I've gone to their computer and set up icons for specific sites using a real browser. I've showed them how to use a real browser and search engines to find what they want. The most they've gotten out of it is to be able to type the Google address into the AOL address bar. They still seem to equate AOL and the internet. It seems to me that it is like a security blanket to see the AOL interface. It certainly isn't the content of AOL as they rarely, if ever, use it. I also get the feeling that they just don't want to be bothered to change their email address. :blink:

[edit] Oops, not a good thing to put comments within the quoted text. :blush:

[DeeBye]

AOL is more like... Microsoft Windows.  Both are bloated, ill-mannered, overcomplicated garbage well marketed to the computer illiterate masses.
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I used to hate Microsoft operating systems in the pre-XP days. I always made it monthly ritual to completely format and re-install the OS just to get my computer to run decently without randomly locking up when I launched an application. I can sorta understand the hate for Windows, but I really think that XP made everything better.

My present installation of XP Home is over 2 years old, and it runs just as well now as it did 2 years ago. I can count the number of hard lockups on one hand, and every one of them were due to dodgy 3rd party applications. I've upgraded hardware numerous times and attached a multitude of various USB devices, and the only thing that ever gave XP a fit was a Lexmark X75 all-in-one printer/scanner (which still worked flawlessly even though XP thought it was two separate devices and insisted on telling me so every time I booted - the fault lies with Lexmark in this case for lousy drivers).

I agree that Windows is bloated. There's a lot of stuff there I'll never use and I have no way of removing. I don't know about the "ill-mannered" and "overcomplicated" part though. Windows XP behaves just swimmingly for me, and is a breeze to operate compared to previous Windows products.

Comparing AOL to Windows just seems wrong to me. Microsoft is heading in the right direction, while AOL always seems to make each "product upgrade" more and more frustrating.

Also, where I work we have the "Free AOL" stands that are packed with trial AOL CDs. I make it a point to throw a few of them out every day. One of these days I'm going to replace the AOL CDs with a batch of Ubuntu Linux CDs :shuriken:

[jahcs]

Edsel has some nice features, so does AOL, but it's ugly, real ugly, just like AOL is ugly, mucking up settings and software.

The corvair, other than being prone to rollovers :o had some nice features too. The Tucker was definitely ahead of it's time.

[Archon_Wing]

I know this thread is in regard to AIM but I needed to vent and thought of it.

AOL is the biggest piece of browser-wants-to-be-an-operating-system garbage ever placed on a computer.

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Compared to most people venting about AOL, that's rather mild. In fact, it's somewhat flattering towards AOL I must say. ;)

[Occhidiangela]

Mind explaining?
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Not at all.

I did not care for how it acted on the Athalon 300Mhz IBM PC I had it on. I was on dial up. It was a memory sink. It was intrusive. It was, to my way of using computers, completely zero value added.

I generally find chat, outside of gaming, to be an undesireable way to communicate. I keep deinstalling AIM from my PC when my daugher once again installs it.

Email is fine. This sort of setting is fine.

Occhi