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AOL 5 Gets $8 Billion Class Action Suit
ralian writes "According to Time Daily peeved users have filed an $8 billion class action against AOL-Time Warner because of AOL 5. It's sort of funny to see Time reporting on a lawsuit against their parent company. Check it out here."
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
tobkin-at-half-truth.com
"It's sort of funny to see Time reporting on a lawsuit against their parent company. "
So time should lie? or not carry the story?! It is just like saying It's sort of funny to see MSNBC writing articles on lawsuit against Microsoft... I don't see the humor in it, it is there job...
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
Does anybody else see the legal difference between these two statements?
:) ?
1. I am going to become your default internet connection (I am going to be the default autodial in Dial Up Networking).
2. I am going to become your only Internet connection (I am going to delete the other connections in Dial Up Networking and make it impossible to get them back without removing me).
Number two is what's happening, right? This is textbook misrepresentation, right? This lawsuit will still fail because some law makes this kind of misrepresentation legal, right
Gotta love big corporations that think (and probably actually do) run the world.
Is this post not nifty? Sluggy Freelance. Worshi
AOL can't expect to get away with this just by saying they gave users the option to click "no" when the installer asks whether AOL should be the default browser. The fact is, AOL is aimed at clueless newbies. Clueless newbies, almost without exception, just click away at the default choice without understanding what they're doing. Besides, there's no reason why AOL has to break other ISP setups. This is as bad as MS releasing versions of Windows that break competitors' products. AOL deserves whatever they get.
--
Yes, I work at an ISP and have had users call and complain that AOL deleted their DUN to our service after they installed it. Maybe we should start sending AOL a bill for all the hours we have to spend on the phone recreating the DUN that AOL deleted?
First id like to say who would want to use aol anyway,and... That suite might just make them go bankrupt (right...) stay tuned for *aol 6* -Your village called there idiot is missing. Teufel_Forelle
Lawyers got money
Plaintiffs got 5 free hours. Keeping in mind that new users got 20 free hours...
ManTroll
you gotta take a pill, dude. Of course they should run the story. However, if you don't find humor in the situation, go back to your crabby cave and pout.
From the commentary..
It's sort of funny to see Time reporting on a lawsuit against their parent company.
No more funny than seeing inaccurate commentary on slashdot.
AOL doesn't own TW yet....
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
What do you mean "almost?" It would be unethical, plain and simple. We rely on news sources to be objective (well, we're supposed to be able to rely on them...) and if they allow their affiliations to get in the way of editorial freedom, that's just plain unethical.
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I have to use AOL often (travel, work, if you want to flame, flame my unnamed employer, thank you!) and I have been using 5.0 since it's release.
I have not had any of these problems at all with anything.
Also, through AOL connection, I use Netscape (just select direct internet connection when setting that up), mIRC, F-SSH, various CuteFTP, AIM (can have your casual ID on while the one your boss knows is logged into AOL) etc. All with no problem.
I would like to know exactly what the real problem is and see if I can manage to replicate it on the antique laptop I use for the road.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
This is simply a case of that. Many AOL people are new to computers or consider computers to be nice tools but even what we think is obvious can be lost on them.
I do not mean this to be a rip at AOL users who do vary in technical skills from very limited upto probably some hyper-techie fermilab/university types. There are simply so many AOL users that once a Lawyer gets the idea to sue he multiplies the damages by the total number of users.
I know more than a few programs that aren't even courteous enough to offer the option of not changing what current file associations are to think that this is even an issue.
ACK
A similar article is running on CNN.com. Some interesting highlights:
I seriously doubt that plaintiffs are going to get anything close to what they're asking, even if they win. $1000 seems like a lot of money, even if you include punative damages. More importantly, it sounds as though a reasonable percentage of users had no problems with the install. The $8 billion figure is just a headline grabber. A more interesting question is whether AOL is going to stick with their "they clicked accept, so tough luck" defense, and whether it will fly if they do.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
The story takes the mere filing of a class action suit (something that happens very frequently, to all kinds of companies) and holds it out at a sign of Big Trouble for AOL.
AOL, through unnamed representatives, gets one quote in the whole piece -- and a legalistic sounding one at that.
And, to top the article off, the piece ends with two extended quotes from some managing editor at *Time* who essentialy sez that AOL has screwed up and needs to be more responsible. An editor at Time?! This guy is qualified to comment because he's the reporter's boss? I guess it cuts down on interview expenses when you only need walk down the hall for a few good quotes.
If anything, I think the story reflects Time's fear of being seen as if it is pulling punches. The quotes from Mr. Big Editor guy make me think this is some sort of internal message to the troops that it's ok to jump on AOL.
I read this in the Washington Post on the way to work this morning.. surely someone submitted this.. why is there such a lag time on submissions? I see 351 pending..
And I don't know if this is just due to LinuxWorld.. it seems some new staff came on and have been posting stories, but it still doesn't seem to be enough for some reason..
This isn't meant as a flame, just a concern. I want Slashdot to be the one source I go to to get news, but at this point, that's not really news anymore. Kudos to all of the Slashdot crew for all the work they've put in, but maybe they can bring another person or two on to help out and speed things up a bit?
BilldaCat
"It's better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
Chairman Bill has less power than AOL/Netscape/CNN/Time/Warner/Compuserve/ in the ability to affect our lives. Bill Gates would have his engineers sneak code into windows that would make other software not work. However, the public relations team at Windows are a joke, and Microsoft has been usually zapped for it. Enter AOL/Time Warner. AOL 5.0 and when it comes out 6.0 are going to more firmly entrench their proprietary software on the masses. Before the masses rebel, the "journalists" at CNN/Time can tell us to take the medicine because its good for us. Believe it or not, I think we may all begin to look back in fondness at the days when Bill Gates' follies was the most about which we had to worry.
The articles don't really give much of the technical details. I have never used AOL (thank god), so I don't know what the issue is. What exactly does the AOL installer do to inhibit other internet connections.
If it deletes user owned configuration data without specific warnings, I would say that this meets the definition of virus, or more accurately, a trojan. I don't think "default ISP" means "sole ISP".
Anyone know what laws are on the books regulating malicious computer code?
They point out that AOL did it to reduce competition from other ISP's (such as Prodigy) and the question 'Do you want AOL to be your default ISP?' is the setup part that causes problems.
Teaches people right not read their License Agreement.
This could be very bad precident to be set by courts, with poor documentation being grounds for a Class Action Suit.
--
Gonzo Granzeau
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
I'm not condoning AOL's blatant "you will use ONLY our software on this computer" attitude, though. If they write software that infiltrates a hard drive to the point where there should be an "AOL Inside" sticker on the case and/or destroys another piece of software's functionality, I say the DoJ should maybe investigate their business tactics. But until then, Joe Consumer, use your head before 'upgrading' your software....
"Going to church makes you no more a christian than sleeping in your garage makes you a car." --Loosely paraphrased, Ga
#2 "I am going to become your ONLY internet connection" is what is happening. A freind of mine wanted to switch from AOL 5 to FreeI, and required my help to do so. He was able to dial up to freei, but after the modem connection was established, NO TCP/IP connections would work.
It turns out (according to the network control panel applet) that AOL installed their own "AOL Dial up adapter" network driver and that TCP/IP was bound to this driver. We were unable to connect TCP/IP via another ISP until this AOL crap wa ripped out of the network settings and the TCP/IP bindings were reset to the "Normal" Dial-up adapter driver.
Here's the CNN story.
Pablo Nevares, "the freshmaker".
Pablo Nevares, "the freshmaker".
Anyone stupid enough to install AOL and not expect problems to arise from that installation frighten me. Any machine I get at work that contains AOL gets the immediate c:\>format. Oops, it's not part of the company software image!
_______
I just wish I could c:\format Internet
One evil empire was bad enough. Not that I'm for any sort of governmental control, but it seems they have the only direct power right now to stop corporations from becoming big and evil. What is the greater of the two evils: Big Monopolistic Companies, or the Big Bad Brother Government? (Sigh)
I mean, lots of people use AOL, but hate it. They just don't know of any other way to connect, much like they don't know how to use an OS besides Windows. While we can try to educate people about the internet, it is a daunting task, is it not? These people are at the mercy of AOL ^_^; Who will stand up for their rights?
"You ever have that feeling where you're not sure if you're dreaming or awake?"
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
I was there at the moment this was posted. Yeehah. It's amazing how long the actual lag is between Emmett posting and it actually showing up on the first page. Now where the hell is CmdrTaco? Also, would you belive LinuxOne has a booth here. Stuck in the corner and completely shunned. And one of the BSD devils is wearing a TIGHT red vinyl devil suit. MEEOWWW! That's the news from the show floor.
Want to see something even more humorous than Time-Warner reporting on AOL? Turn off your cookies (so it prompts you if you'll accept them) and then go to the article on the lawsuit and watch how many prompts you get. Its sickingly funny. Almost.
Thank you for the link. One problem. When I installed 5.0 on my win95/Redhat 6.0 (dual boot) Toshiba P120/48MB laptop, it did not do all the crap that the author said it did to his machine.
Everything still works fine, so I am still lost as to why it would not mess up my box, but it messed up his (unless it is a win98 thing).
The first time 5.0 was installed on that box it was an upgrade from 4.0, but later the HDD was replaced and it got a straight 5.0 install, neither tme did it kill anything (even the old Erols ISP dialup that is no longer used).
So, I am doomed to be lost on this one it seems.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
Since I am an Internet Support Technian and a
System Administrator, I deal with this all the
time.
I find that after a user installs AOL 5.0 thier
modem for some reason or another is 'taken' over
buy AOL.
ie: You can't use a normal Dial-up Networking Connetion to your local ISP.
The error is that the modem cannot be found, or
is not turned on, etc.
But on the other hand, the AOL Dialer works
just 'ducky'.
The only solution is to go into the network
properties of Windows and remove the things that
are tied to AOL.
But most users won't do this, cause they use AOL
regularly.
So in my regards I think AOL should learn to
treat the consumer with respect and not interfere
with another dial-up adapter.
Just like the rumor that MS NT 4.0 new service
pack causes LOTUS NOTES to crash almost every
time it is used.
Yittrix
I have installed the AOL 5.0 software and the following is what occurs to "take over" your hard drive:
Message box pops up asking if you'd like to 1. Use AOL for EVERYTHING (ie. mailto: http: ftp: news: urls ..etc..) 2. No Changes 3. Further customize these settings.
When option 3 is selected, another box pops up allowing the User to CHOOSE what protocols are assigned to the AOL software. I have been using AOL for a few years now (don't ask why ;) and their software doesn't provide the greatest interface, particularly to ftp:// and news:// .. when in Windows I use WS_FTP-LE for ftp and Netscape or MS Outlook for reading my mail and checking my news. For those of you who haven't used aol's Mail tool, it is VERY restrictive. You must experience it to know how bad it really is.. hey, and they give you a free month to decide -- just install windows .. http://www.aol.com/
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
What are you talking about? The merger has not taken place hence it is still seperate companies.
AOL is definitely being a pain in the ass in this respect. This is classic M$ monopply tactics. Though I dont know if it justifies a 8 billion dollar lawsuit. Then again what the hell sue the hell out of them the message needs to go across that its wrong for large companies to take advantage of their power.
After reading both the Time and CNN online stories, I have one big question.... what news agency is not parented by Time/Warner/AOL/Beelzebub now?
Pioneers get arrows in the back. Settlers get the land. I'm happy letting Linux be the pioneers.
Cat, the other, tastier white meat.
So easy to use, no wonder its number 1!
or not.
Amber Yuan (--ell7)
"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
What people need to understand is the potential implications of a case like this. We had the recent case against Toshiba, settled for a paltry 2 billion dollars. And even then not everyone took part in the settlement. If this case suceeds it is going to shake the entire software industry. The implications that software manufactures can be responsible for what they do to someone's computer would be a fundamental change in thinking for almost every software company. This is really no different than Quicken installing Internet Explorer, or a dozen other such programs. This is just the first time that a lawsuit has gained class action status. In a nutshell, if AOL loses, it is going to force software manufacturers to be responsible for what they have created. Software that is carelessly written, documented, or creates security holes will be an open invitation to sue. Perhaps this country is too sue happy, but what does it take to make software manufactures to stop their lackluster quality control. (I work for a software co by the way). This is not really that different than what other industries have gone through. The result of this may be that software will come with warning labels. Imagine, "Installation of Personal Web Server will leave your system open to security risks at the following ports..." I think a lawsuit of this nature is overdue. There is no other industry where shipping a product with 100's of flaws is considered acceptable.
Referencing back to yesterday's Richard Stallman on UCITA article, stuff like this is one reason we can't let UCITA pass. AOL is pointing to their click-thru agreement and saying, "Hey, the user agreed to be screwed." Right now this sort of license exists in a legal grey area, but should UCITA pass, it will become sanctified in law.
AOL made an arguably defective product. A reasonable person would not have been able to forsee the defect; there were no warnings, &c, to indicate that AOL 5 would disable non-AOL network access. $8 billion is ridiculously excessive, but this is far from a frivolous lawsuit. I'm not the judge, but if I were, I'd start by smirking at plaintiffs' counsel, then I'd let this lawsuit go right on ahead. It might send a signal to companies (such as Microsoft) that you can't put out software that sucks without risking serious, perhaps even business-threatening, consequences. Which is as it should be.
Finding God in a Dog
This might go through, or it might not, but it certainly wouldn't have a chance if the UCITA was passed into law. The UCITA would give AOL the legal right to do whatever the hell they wanted.
Of course, a case like this could knock down the UCITA, but it would have a much harder road ahead then if It didn't exist. Anyway, help try to stop the UCITA from being passed in your state.
Amber Yuan (--ell7)
"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
This is not just a case of some whiny, incompetent AOLers complaining about things they do not understand. AOL 5 does ask for permission before making itself the DEFAUL internet connection, but it then goes ahead to make itself the ONLY internet connection by mucking up the TCP/IP configuration and deleting other DUNs.
I agree that AOL provides a fertile ground for uninformed class-action lawsuits. I simply disagree that this is what we are seeing.
First Toshiba, now AOL. Who do I get to sue if I install a newer version of glibc and the RPM breaks all my apps? Should I be able to sue RedHat because RedHat5 default install had a billion security holes and my box got rooted?
What if KOffice or GNOME Office core dumps and I lose work? (ala alleged Toshiba floppy leading to lost work)
The article on CNN states that they are seeking $1,000 in damages for all 8 million users that have upgraded. However, it also states that only 8% of all AOL users (1.6 million) even have a secondary ISP. I think they are just trying to force a settlement, although if they do seek a victory in court, I think it would be necessary to limit the damages to $1,000 for only those people who do use a secondary ISP _and_ have upgraded to AOL 5.0. Best case scenario, I think they can only realistically sue for upto 1 Billion.
Disney owns ABC, and NBC is owned by General electric. There's also the whole 'newscorp' quagmire as well, and some other companies
Amber Yuan (--ell7)
"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
When you hit "back" from that story, you get a popup window telling you to subscribe to Time! I thought only porno and warez sites did annoying crap like that.
grep -ri 'should work'
The issue is that their is no "manual" or warning of the implications of this. They go far beyond being a default ISP or browser with what they do. It's like pulling up to Amoco, someone ask's "fill 'er up?", you say yes, and discover that they decided to replace the fluid in your transmission. As for the "mindless sheep", should they spend several years learning to be computer gurus like your average slashdot reader?
Installed this upgrade on someone's machine - hey she wanted it. I am not a total moron, my MCSE certification not withstanding, so I knew enough not to accept AOL as the default anything. It still did not help. Funny enough, it also wiped the Netscape browser settings, the DUN for thier ISP, and generally did a fandango on the Registery. I truely pity the average AOL user because they would have no idea how to recover from this mess that the 5.0 upgrade caused. So while I hate class action since usually only the lawyers win, AOL needs to get burned on this one - perhaps next time thier software will play nice.
....I've been using AOL since the late 80's
when they were split into AOL (for macs) and
PC-Link (for pcs). Somehow, I've managed to
dodge every crisis that everyone else's cousin or
friend has had.
I think the only problem that I noticed was when
the connection #'s were busy for about three
weeks when they went to a flat monthly rate.
Anyway, the big problem that I see AOL having is
that they really only serve two types of users
well.
1. The ones who only load AOL and games onto
their pc.
2. The ones who are smart enough to know how they
are setting it up when loading it.
When I put the new version on my pc, nothing got
deleted. If that is happening though, I hope that
AOL gets set straight.
As for all the flames and questions "Why in the
hell do you use AOL?"
For the price, nobody in my area (Portland) can
beat what they offer. May be ditching them soon
though, as my reluctance to shell out more for
cable modems or megabit weakens.
First of all I would like to thank the cluless moderator who gave me a flamebait. You can't express yourself with any emotion or have a non PC opinion around here anymore. IMHO the quality of moderation has declined over the past 3-4 months.
Secondly... I stand behind what I said. Even if I agree that what AOL did was "wrong" (yes I do think it's wrong, misleading, etc) that doesn't make it illegal.
Maybe my RTFM rant was a bit strong, but people tend to think of computers as toasters when they aren't. If I ruin my car because I try to upgrade the engine and I have no clue as to what I'm doing can I then sue Honda because they put a hood release in the car? I'm exagerating here I know, but the whole thing seems so silly.
Why do these people just not use it? They have a choice, use a different service provider. I have seen AOL their *exclusive* content and services are not that great.
From the comments I have seen here it would appear these people have just not set their accounts up corectly. It is human nature just to blame somebody else though. Add a highly litigous society such as in the US and this sort of stuff is just begging to happen.
I have no love for AOL but this is just ridiculous. Just people trying to get something for nothing. I hope the courts laugh it out just like it deserves. Not knowing the US legal system I don't know how likely this is. BTW I have nothing against the US or it's citizens. This is just an observation from abroad.
"Patience is a virtue, afforded those with nothing better to." - I don't remember
"Patience is a virtue, afforded those with nothing better to do." - I don't remember
I'm no lawyer, so I'm curious if there ware any legal experts out there who would say if the claim was valid. My particular wonder was if warning them about adding AOL As their 'default' isp.
Websters defines default as:
<u>Computer Science.</u> A particular value for a variable that is assigned automatically by an operating system and remains in effect unless canceled or overridden by the operator.
From what I know, this 'option' can't be "canceled or overridden" (at least easily), although I have not witnessed it first hand.
Again, I'm just curious as to the base of their claims, and I hope the people win the lawsuit. I'm sure AOL didn't just happen to make it that way. It's good someone stood up to them.
3. I am going to become your only Internet connection and if you click no, your system will be screwed because our programmers were not prepared for this eventuality and assumed you'd say yes.
I had to reinstall windows on a friend's computer because for some strange reason (at least on the machine I tried to install AOL 5.0 on for a friend) AOL 5.0 corrupts the msmouse.vxd file. You can test this easily by trying to install AOL 5.0 on a Windows machine and after it crashes have the machine boot at prompt you before performing each task on bootup.
After this occured the machine would always freeze upon booting unless booted in safe mode. Since I had no idea how to edit the msmouse.vxd file or even how to tell what was wrong (plus my friend was getting hysterical) I reinstalled Windows.
PS: In my opinion AOL deserves this lawsuit. Such an intrusive feature was bound to affect so many interactions and cause so many different problems that it was impossible for there not to be some problems. That said their QEs and QAs could have done a more thorough job of testing the software before releasing it.
It seems to me that the problem is not with AOL's software, it's with the library model in Windows.
I.e., the fact that central libraries exist that can be overwritten silently by installing applications, which almost always install their own versions of libraries. AOL 5 isn't the only software with this problem, although it may be the most extensive. AOL wants to use their own TCP/IP drivers? No problem! Just don't erase the existing ones, please. Windows isn't designed to accommodate that.
* And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."
I'm sorry, AOL knows its target audience is computer illiterate. The answer to "what exactly does saying 'ok' here" is probably undocumented, or, if it is, the docs are either online (after it's too late) or sure as hell not in the "Getting started" skinny version of the manual. If there was TFM to begin with.
In most other professional environments this practice has some dirty name or other, like "churning" or "slamming" or "psychology by the pill"; most are illegal, and the rest will get you a trip before the professional ethics board. What AOL did is not technically illegal, but it's highly unethical, and cost a lot of people a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. I think those people deserve to be richly rewarded for their trouble.... but (gods willing) a jury will be allowed to decide that question. In case anyone forgot, under British common law (which American common law is based on), the jury is allowed to judge the law as well as the facts. The AOL jury-to-be has the power to MAKE their conduct illegal-by-case-law. I hope they do.
Oh, and as for AOheLl and Slime Vermin being already merged.... according to the indications being given out, it's tantamount to a done deal. It might be interesting, however, if for some reason this case in itself held things up...
If nothing else, these so-called "clueless morons" are making a public spectacle of just how BAD yonder so-called ISP really is... and the more we have of that, IMHO the better. I think the plaintiffs should be given a medal for having the cojones to even attempt such a thing.
I know. Down with AOL'ers, down with my karma. But the previous poster noted it better than I... your chickens WILL come home to roost.
I hope this gets through as a precedent.
The unauthorized modification of settings REALLY needs to stop. Too many popular programs out there do crap to the computer without asking. Many of these things they do because they -know- that the average user doesn't have any clue how to undo them.
For instance Real. Especially them.
They put icons on the desktop, in the start menu, everything without asking. It at least asks about file associations, but when you click "customize" it just shows you EVERY media file type, with a check mark next to each. It doesn't offer any help as to what already was associated, or the like.
Real Jukebox turns on CD-audio autoplay every time you run it. I didn't notice this until I recently switched CD drives and decided to use TweakUI to disable AutoPlay crap instead of turning it off at the hardware level. Every time its run Real Jukebox turns on the audio auto play. No where can I turn it off, never did it ask anything.
And these are actually pretty mild examples.
I wish there were some laws, or at least MORALS which software companies followed, and resulted in user choice for every modification(within reason) to the user's computer.
FWIW I've seen the same issues as the author of that Winmag article on several customer's machines. In addition, I've run into some really odd mouse problems on two of them. The symptoms were similar to what you would expect of an IRQ conflict but were much more random (ie. I couldn't force the problems to happen like I could with a conflict). It turns out that, among other things, AOL5 replaces mouse.vxd.
Their operating system lets the software do it. If they don't want that happening, they should be talking to Microsoft, not suing AOL.
I'd like to see Navigator for Linux try to takeover lynx or kfm on my machine.
I take issue with the fact that AOL is even called an "Internet Service Provider". First AOL is an on-line community that "allows" access to the Internet. Second Service? What a joke!
Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most.
I have not tried this, but the prodigy guy said, it deleted the settings for prodigy.. thats just messed up. default means, u click on netscape and netscape automatically tries to connect using aol. but if you have an internet connection already set up, then netscape loads and you keep browsing.. according to these guys, you can't do that. what if i have DUN setup to dial a number into my intranet ? if AOL deletes that as well, then thats just wrong.. plain and simple wrong. I said default, because I use aol most of the time, and I don't want to click on connect to aol first and do my stuff, but when i want to connect to my intranet, and I try to find the icon for it and it's missing.. I'll be damn pissed.
the bigger any company gets, the more it acts like Microsoft.
I would think that "by breaking this seal, you agree to this license and agree to not hold aol responsible for any damages".
lets see, a windows installation program act maliciously towards other competing installed programs, STOP THE PRESSES!!!
seriously, it truly is too bad that the most vulnerable of web users are preyed on in this manner. but then again, they should be used to it, they are running windows afterall.
In addition to monetary damages, the suit wants to force AOL to clearly document what it means by "default internet connection" and explicitly warn people that all other DUN will disappear.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Up at my website (err, here) is a mirror of some software written for Linux (err, Unix) to allow you to tunnel IP packets through the service. Yes, it's real. You may run into some trouble with using pthreads. I am actively working on the code. Does anyone know the issues with pthreads and glibc 2.1 (it compiles fine; it segfaults after running for about a minute; I've traced this to one specific function call)? By the way, it's written in C++ (yuck for me; one virtual function made it not work at all for a while).
Just because AOL is generally considered a "newbie's" "ISP" doesn't mean that all of its users are newbies. It also does not mean that none of them use Unix. I am not a newbie, I use Linux, and I happen to use AOL as an ISP for other reasons.
The great thing about this software is it is not at all intrusive on your system. Just one client program, maybe a shell script (haven't figured that much out yet), and a network interface. Maybe you might have to change your default route. Big deal. It doesn't mess with apmd. It'll leave cron alone. You can keep your dial-up settings for Quake. Very nice.
Kenneth
hey I'd suggest dropping the tagline, it makes YOU look like the idiot.
"There" should be used as in "He is over there."
"They're" should be used as in "They're going to the mall."
And lastly, the possesive form is "Their" as in "--Your village called their idiot is missing."
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
I spent a couple of hours at my neighbor's on New Year's Eve. She had been advised that she needed to upgrade from AOL 4.0 to AOL 5.0 for Y2K. She did, but the upgrade killed her printer driver. She contacted AOL customer service but was simply told to contact the computer vendor. She did just that. She had been sold one of those extended warranties so Best Buy asked her to send the printer to one of their service contractors to be oiled or something.
I recommended that she apply the restore CD.
Marko
There is no way that Microsoft would have broken these ports by design though, so we are talking about two different things. AOL 5 breaks other ISPs if you install it as the default - by design.
postmoderncore - art and creation are a higher purpose
AOL can't expect to get away with this just by saying they gave users the option to click "no" when the installer asks whether AOL should be the default browser. The fact is, AOL is aimed at clueless newbies. Clueless newbies, almost without exception, just click away at the default choice without understanding what they're doing. Besides, there's no reason why AOL has to break other ISP setups. This is as bad as MS releasing versions of Windows that break competitors' products. AOL deserves whatever they get.
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
www.npsis.com
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
My family was an AOL subscriber for a long long time until I whined to get a real ISP. Finally, we got AT&T WorldNet service. Why? Because it allowed us to get AOL service for only $8 a month more than the regular service.
We just thought that was an awesome deal. However, last year, my brother went to private school. And for the longest time, the school couldn't get their network straightened out, so my brother dialed into AOL to get on the Internet.
Little did we know that the $8 a month is ONLY if you sign on to WorldNet FIRST, and then log on to AOL. Otherwise, they charge an exhorbitant connection charge. The resultant phone bill was over $100 for the phone charges ALONE.
I realize this is a matter of policy, HOWEVER, I couldn't find anything about this in the initial policy agreement... that pissed me off. I'd sign up for this any day.
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
I swear I heard the dude from Simpsons (Nelson?) scream "Ha-ha!" when I read that...
A Windows DUN connection setup has been called a "connectoid" since way back in 1996. In fact I recall my first encounter with that term in April 1996 when I used to work tech support for Flashnet.
--Everet--
I mean, think of how much better life might be for all of us if AOHell had taken a different line and tried to make things easy to understand, rather than simple. Easy To Understand being different, explaining what everything does, rather than Simple saying "Just click here and enter your credit card number, then click on things you like!". It is criminal how stupid they've made, oh, say, 8-10 million human beings.
We won't debate on wether or not using AOL makes you stupid or anything. That's not my point. If they'd bothered to make things educational rather than simple... (sigh)
The article didn't say anything about how the $8 billion figure was arrived at, although I didn't expect that. Does anyone have any guesses, or better yet, hard facts? And what is AOL's current installed base? We could certainly figure out how much this works out to per user from that. As for the real merits of the suit, I have no idea. I'm not a lawyer and the only thing I understand about class action lawsuits is that they are only ever aimed at targets with deep pockets.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
Mankind has always dreamed of destroying the sun.
When they don't report it, we won't know. Cynical? I will happen sooner or later. This crap is thown in to maintain the illusion of unbiased reporting. Did anybody notice all the Linux articles that came out during the MS trial?.. Where are they now? Gone. MSNBC and MS got the milage they wanted. The trial is over.. and so is the reporting
...but then I read your last paragraph.
It looked like you were arguing that AOL (and the rest of the industry) has no responsibility for the quality of their software, even when it is flawed to the point of damaging their victim^Wcustomers' systems, since they have EULAs that disclaim all such responsibility.
It's true that the agreements have these disclaimers, but I, along with probably most people here, would argue that this does not excuse them, which also seems to be the main point of the class-action. I would protest that they should be held responsible, regardless of what "contracts" they print on the box, and that their attempts to get out of it should not be considered valid. Of course, the question of the validity of shrink-wrap and click-through contracts would come up again as well.
Anyway, you may have been just a bit too subtle: it took me a while to realize that you (at least seem to) share this opinion of the practice. If I understand it right, you're saying that you want the suit to fail so that the issue will be blown up, leading to a real reform, and not swept under the rug with a quick settlement. But, wouldn't a win in court be good for that purpose? If it's not a settlement, but a real court decision awarding damages for what they have done, wouldn't it establish a precedent effectively invalidating the shrink-wrap and click-through disclaimers?
David Gould
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
Wah! Wah! Baby didn't get his default-two.
Yes, but did Honda suggest for you to upgrade your new engine so you could get all the latest and greatest benefits of Engine 5.0?
did AOL?
The whole point is a fairly clueless reader following the directions should be able to install AOL. Would AOL be so popular if you needed to take your computer somewhere to install or upgrade AOL? I somehow doubt that AOL gave warnings that only certified technicians should install their product. Even if they did, the technician would not have been able to foresee AOL destroying the other ISPs.
Fianlly, a large monolithic computer related corporation is being sued for producing and distributing a defective and/or sub-standard product. If this case is found in the favor of the plaintiffs, it will set the precedent that software makers are responsible for thier products when thier products do not perform correctly. If this case does set a precedent, irresponsible programming and features that take into account the fact that a large majority of the users out there really don't know what they are doing will be forced to become a thng of the past, and I think we can all think of two companies that have used these practices for years.
You say you want a revolution....
AOL has had so much of a track record of problems that they're overdue for this one. However, this sounds more like something Microsoft would do than them. Maybe the two Steve's (Steve Ballmer, Microsoft, and Steve Case, AOL) got together and discussed it? Nah...
I dun't understand.. I upgraded from 4.0 to 5.0 with no problem... I use TCP/IP to connect at my work.. its never over written a bloody thing... maybe we should ban morons from using computers.. I'll be the first :)
// AOL made an arguably defective product
Um, no, AOL's product did exactly what they intended it to. It's not defective. Offensive, maybe, defective, no. Unless you count bugs, of course, but that's not what we're talking about. I use AOL 5.0 (using it right now). It's not set as my "default" internet connection (I don't give that kind of permission to anyone's software). Works great, for what it is.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
The lawyers claim to be suing on behalf of 8 million users and for a thousand bucks each. Actually I'm pretty sure the lawyers who innitated this thing are hoping to get $1000.00 per hour they spend hassling AOl users into going along with this suit. This should be relatively easy because AOl has been built by offering EASY internet access for those who dont know much about computers. And, since these tend to be the same people who are quick to blame the sofware for their mistakes, then im sure they are very sue- happy right about now. I guess I could maybe see the point of the suite if I knew i wasn't all going to go to the same lawyers would just as easily turn around and file a similare suit against various Linux organazations (and companies) on behalf of all the kids who have screwed up their computers trying to install Linux just so they could be cool. "Mr. Tux, could you please raise you're right wing."
:o) (yea, like that's gonna happen)
The inherent flaw with this seems to be (as usual) in the Wetware. Aol simply asked a Y/N question that the average Aol user just isn't knowledgable enough to answere. I have actaully heard many people say things to the effect of "i don't use the internet, I have AOL." Now how are these people to even comprehend what "deafault dial up" means.
Of course, maybe we could find out what Aol 5.0 was "really" up to if it was opened source.
"I mean, All you can definately say about a fellow who thinks he's a poached egg, is; He's in the minority." James Burke
The default answer with the thick black line, and the dotted line (so that either space or enter works) is "NO".
Twitchy mousers or Idiot people can't read - so by their own mistake, they just made aol the default dial-up and mail/news reader (you know for mailto: and news: urls).
You wanna know how easy it is to fix (in most situiations)? You open your control panel - you click internet oprtions - you click connections - you click on the person you want to be default - you click "set as default" - you click ok.
Ta-Effing-Da.
Aol's installers have never deleting anything, ever. they don't even remove old copies of the aol software.
And you shouldn't fear big corporations running the world ... you should fear the extra-national organizations like the WTO. THey're the ones who really rule the world. ;-)
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
It seems that the software works exactly as designed. And the design, as described, involves
replacing existing TCP/IP services with AOL's, which effectively turn your PC into an AOL appliance. And that is the point.
The purpose of the functionality in question is to prevent and/or discourage new and current AOL users from using ISP-based (or other online service) communication. If the U.S. Gov't wasn't pandering to "contributors", there would be an anti-trust investigation (and suit) already in progress.
AOL IS NOT AN ISP. Everyone needs to print this out and attach it to your bathroom mirror, and on every telephone pole from here to the Moon. AOL is an online service provider (OSP), i.e. subscription-based media company, with an Internet gateway.
The distribution of an exclusion client shows the revenue model to be built around eyeball capture as much as (if not more than) subscription and/or usage fees. Basically, every minute an AOL user spends online with an ISP or other OSP is a minute not spent on AOL.
If AOL can say "We have exclusive access to all of our subscribers' bandwidth," they can increase their ad revenue by (a) increasing ads shown per time period, and (b) increasing price per ad.
To be honest, given that trouble already my sympathy is more with AOL and the programmers involved; hope none of them will lose their job. Gee, its just some bloody piece of software after all!!
Microsoft revelations? Microsoft's rather
It's an evil piece of software, and caused just about as many phone calls as software modems (cough...HSP micromodem...cough)
Anyone know what they're referring to? What revelations? I had the flu for 2 days, did I miss something?
http://advogato.com/article/30.html
Oh no! Looks like AOL is going to be reduced to a 349 billion dollar conglomo, well, at least it's a start.
---
What exactly are the commercial possiblilities of Ovine Aviation?
I haven't read every single post under this article yet, but I hope that someone has pointed out that there is not yet an entity called AOL Time Warner. The merger has been proposed, and is probably nearly a year from happening. Until then, you can't sue that organization and AOL is not Time's parent.
Here on
Allow me to explain some of the advantages of Slashdottish:
(0) Spelling is optional. Never again will we be victimized by Draconian English teachers and satanic spell checkers. Spell any word any way you want to. If your alternative spellings confuse someone, well, they need to learn how to read.
(1) Efficiency. Bloated English needs 3 words for 'their': 'there', 'they're', and 'their'. Slashdottish requires only 'their'. Same word is used for all 3 totally different meanings. Same thing with 'your'. If that confuses you, tough shit.
(2) Grammar is optional. Like spelling, this is a freedom of choice issue. Order words in whatever order suits your taste, or just pipe your comments through a perl script that selects a random order. Again, if this confuses somebody, the reader is at fault.
(3) Beautiful, wonderful, glorious acronyms:
(3.1) IANAL == I Am Not A Literate person.
(3.2) AFAIK == After Failing Anglish, I Kannot spel.
(3.3) AFAICT == After Failing Analytical thought, I Cannot Think.
(3.4) IMHO == My Opinion is Hugely Important. (Remember, word order is optional. :-)
(Note: We shamelessly stole many of these acronyms from places like abUSENET.)
(To those of you for whom English is not your native language, I offer this consolation: You use it better than many of my fellow Americans, most of whom are native English speakers.)
This isn't a flame, I just want to make a couple points:
*Minor quibble - by "America" you of course mean "The United States of America," which is in North America. AOl has very little market share in Uruguay.
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
OK, so maybe I don't use AOL, but I know plenty of people who do... how do they take part in this lawsuit?
AOL has clearly stated it's goal is to be the one portal to the internet, this kind of software actually does make it hard install the software for a competing ISP, there is basis in fact, and whether it was by design or thru negligence, this would be monopoly needs to be slapped on the hand until it starts to play nice. </run on sentence>
Pinche Gonzales
- slappin the taste back into ya mouth since 1975.
It's not just AOL that specializes in brain-dead installers. About a year ago I had to deal with one "real" ISP's Mac installer that installed old networking software (MacTCP and friends) when much newer stuff (Open Transport) was in place. Not to mention an old version of Netscape, etc. I'm not sure what would have happened if I hadn't cleaned it up.
But wait, there's more! Early USB SuperDisk Drives came with installers that would "update" the Mac OS ROM File to an appropriate version. Unfortunately, it didn't check the version of the existing file. Several minor OS updates later, the "update" (now a downgrade) causes the machine to go to an unresponsive gray screen during the boot process.
But AOL's Bastard Installer From Hell has a little something else: it disrupts rival means of Internet access, causing people to cry "monopoly" and start a huge class-action lawsuit against them. This should be interesting...
To wit:
Anyone remember what happened last time there was a class-action suit against any company?
For some reason, few ever seem to catch on to this.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
I think it's about time AOL got what was coming to it. Don't get me wrong... it's a good ISP for newbies, but AOL's recent actions have been a bit too Micro$oft-ish if you ask me. It's nice to see people standing up for themselves and showing big-shot companies they won't tolerate this kind of $*@#. :-)
Poor, hapless Windoze cattle. Screwed by M$. Screwed by AOL. Screwed no matter which way they turn.
Whilst I just keep merrily running along on my Unix and Linux boxes. Hooked to the 'net via my plain old boring regional ISP. No M$ nonsense. No AOL nonsense. No semi-regularly-scheduled inexplicable crashes. Nobody "mysteriously" taking over parts of my system. No recurrent virus infections.
Just computing. The way it was meant to be.
Poor Windoze lusers :-(.
"Moderators": Do your duty!
RELATED SITES: AOL
Note: Pages will open in a new browser window
External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.
-----
No Zen is good zen
Yes, it's such a shame that MSNBC never reports on Linux® anymore. Just today, February 2, I almost clicked on a link at MSNBC called The Linux Gospel According to Linus, but now that you've told me that all the Linux® articles are gone, I figure that it must be about the Commodore 64 or OS/2 or something. Thanks for the warning, pal!
Down with The Man!
Linux® is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
What heck are you people going to do if Aol decides to make itself a version that works on linux. Please note the number of systems now that have linux as a OEM.
Slashdot reporting bugs in Win2k yet ignoring a serious security flaw in Corel Linux?
The Time article includes a link to a CNN article on the same subject.
This article appears (to me at least) to carry an editorial slant in AOL's favor, and includes some things that look like blatant marketing plugs. (All emphasis in the quotes is mine.)
At the end, it criticises Microsoft, AOL's enemy, then sums up by saying that this whole thing is bad - not because it will mess up people's computers - but because it could cause a backlash against AOL. This sure looks to me like it's written from AOL's perspective.
This isn't as egregious as some things they could have written - it doesn't state actual lies, only selects and arranges the facts it does present - but to me it still displays a worrying editorial bias. Looks like CNN may be going the way of MSNBC as a reliable news source.
First, all I know about AOL 5.0's nasty habits is what I've read on the Internet. But let's assume that due to either incompetant or malicious coding, it's software is causing connection problems with other ISPs, who have to devote time & money to fixing it.
/. There are better fora to discuss this on. I have no real opinon about AOL either way. But if AOL pissed me off enough I wanted justice, an IDP is the solution I'd pursue -- not a lawsuit.
Okay, instead of siccing some hungry lawyers on them, why not call for an Internet Death Penalty?
This lawsuit will probably end up with a few lawyers making several million dollars, a number of AOL customers receiving a credit of at most $500 towards more AOL time, & continued problems with AOL software & their clueless management. An IDP would force them clean up their act & behave ethically -- & at the least the rest of the Internet would not have to deal with AOL.
Of course, if I was serious about this, I wouldn't be posting this on
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
A package arrived today with my new NIC. Inside, buried under a new incarnation of foam peanuts I have never seen before, was my NIC and a AOL 5.0 CD. (I sure hope that wasn't added onto the weight of my package when they calculated shipping and handling charges!).
At first I thought, toss that crap. But then I happened to glance at the bottle of soda next to my keyboard. "Hey, thats gonna leave a mark." Wouldn't want that to happen to my $5 garage sale folding table. Shoot no. So now I have a new coaster.
The only remaining question is should the shiny side be up or down? I think it depends on whether I want to keep cold liquids cold or hot liquids hot. The light reflected by the shiny side would help keep the hot liquids hot.
This business seems to me to be the intersection of different industry segments' propaganda, all "coming true."
First, Micro$oft pretends that Windows is easy to use and own, despite its tinkertoy nature and inherent problems and instabilities.
Then, AOL in particular and other services go along with well-funded campaigns based on the notion that using the internet is as easy as putting in a CD and clicking a button. Of course, AOL especially has given up any pretense of encouraging its members to learn what they're doing on line, to participate in online communities as responsible people, to understand anything about their environment, etc. So it's not very far from this to the current situation, which is based in part on Windows' not-so-easy-to-use characteristics. People are tempted to just say yes and get the install over with, and apparently, woe to s/he who does so.
Now, imagine you're Ms/Mr Big Exec at MSN, Plodigy, whatever, and you've just given out tons of $400 rebates to sign up lots of people people buying computers... and they 'try' AOL 5.0 and now can't access your service, but are committed to paying for it. Sort of the 'just plug it in and click' chickens coming home to roost.
-Dave
Well, there needs to be. I hope this sets a precedent: software makers need to be held accountable in the same way airplane manufacturers and auto makers are held accountable. The software industry should not be immune to responsibility simply because the quality of the products it releases is invariably poor.
Let's put some responsibility into this horrible industry, for once.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
You've got... certified mail.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
How can these money hungry lawyers and people sue?? The user is INCONVENIENCED by the software, and on rare occasion has to reinstall, usually the result of an bug in 98 or an untechnical user. If this goes through we all should sue every software company for every single inconvenience their program creates. Not to mention the amount of time and effort that will then be put into software slowing our rapid industry growth. Win98 crashes and screws up its own dial-up networking without any influence from AOL, just cause AOL probably exploits a flaw in 98 doesnt give people the right to sue. What the hell are they actually doing, making me take 5 mins to remove their adapter?? If people want to make money they should earn it, not clog up our legal system with these pointless suits that WILL drag on for years. A boycott would work alot better than a suit. Boycott AOL well all be better off that way. /Sean
Imagine the poor programmer who coded this. He probably had about 50 manager types bitching at him that users kept accidentally hooking up to their old isp instead of AOL and was told to code something to disable the other connections. He then probably said "ya know.. that aint gunna make too many people happy" and they said "just f*skin' do it already!".. now who do you think will be the scape goat? Definitely not the CEO!
How we know is more important than what we know.
...of AOL getting the shaft stuck straight up their a** say,
"I!"
Note, I'm not making any comments on the experience of those who chose to make it the default. Plus, I don't regularly jump to the defense of AOL. I just think one person having problems with msmouse.vxd is not the strongest evidence of malicious practice on AOL's part.
I will post my mods sans my password :-) up on my website here when I get around to it. (Up to an hour after comment post). Meanwhile, you can still get the original ball right here.
Ken
Agent Steve: "As you can see, we've had our eye on you for some time now, Mr. Anderson. It seems that you've been using two ISPs. On one ISP, you're Thomas A. Anderson, newbie and AOL user. You use AIM, read our Time-Warner content, and buy from our advertisers."
"On the other ISP, where you go by the handle Neo and have consumer freedom and decent ping times. One of these software installations has a future, and one of them does not."
"My colleagues believe that I am wasting my time with you but I believe that you wish to do the right thing. We're willing to wipe your registry clean, give you a fresh start and all that we're asking in return is $21.95 a month."
Neo: "Yeah. Wow, that sound like a really good deal. But I think I got a better one. How about I give you the finger... and you give me my DUN back."
Agent Smith: "Um, Mr. Anderson. You disappoint me."
Neo: "You can't scare me with this monopoly crap. I know my rights. I want my ISP back."
Agent Smith: "Tell me, Mr. Anderson, what good is an ISP if you have no Dial-Up Adapter? You're going to subscribe to us, Mr. Anderson whether you want to or not."
Neo: !!!
AOL 4.0 also added the "AOL Network Adapter" and I still managed to get it to work alongside a DUN connection to a seperate ISP. So what exactly is it that AOL 5.0 is doing that's so drastically different from 4.0 to cause these horrid problems? For those who are unfortunate enough to have AOL, try this. Remove the Adapter from your network settings. Next time you start AOL it will say it's "updating system settings."
It probably is the same bug which affects mozilla. glibc 2.1 has pthread issues (in the dynamic loader). Get a newer glibc (I recommend 2.1.2).
See the mozilla release notes (linked to from the main page at mozilla.org) for more details.
Not to mention that there needs to be a semicolon, or perhaps a period, between "called" and "their".
I asked if there was a legal difference between the statements. Sorta like the difference between "we have the cheapest gas in town" and "we have the only gas in town".
This is meant to hurt the competition, and will only hurt AOL's reputation. Yet people will stay with them. I don't get it. Do you?
Is this post not nifty? Sluggy Freelance. Worshi
This is not a windows problem. This is AOL deliberately doing something to get exactly the result that they want. Sure, better structure and protection in the Windows OS could have prevented this Trojan horse, but just remember that it IS a trojan horse.
>"Moderators": do your duty!
:)
They did.
Okay, so you have installed AOL 5 and said YES, right? I have not touched it, nor will I touch AOL (using my 50 free hours would have cost me a whopping CAN$540 a couple years ago thanks to the small per minute surcharge to Canadian users).
It's been pretty thoroughly documented that you are wrong. According to other people, saying yes "removes" DUN in favor of AOL, which is scary, and in a lot of cases, stupid. The nice thing about Win95 was that it removed the need for a crummy custom dialer.
Now, I could be wrong. I for one will only be using any AOL 5 CDs I get as coasters. I recommend everybody else do the same.
Is this post not nifty? Sluggy Freelance. Worshi
This problem may cause people who use multiple ISP's to stop using the other ISP because they can connect to AOL and not to the other ISP, AOL's help line says that its the other ISP's fault and the other ISP lose their irate customer. Lots of customers will change ISP's when they get poor service/connection, I know that I have several times. Besides the other ISP's being unfairly disadvantaged there is the issue of dailing banks to transfer an EFT, a large company can spend a VERY large amount of money to get things working when they can't pay their employees, there was a case here in Australia a month or two ago when the State Bank EFT transfer system when down for a day (on payday), I work supporting a payroll program and the phones where flat out all day with people trying to figure out what was wrong with our program when it was in fact the state banks problem (I know I suffered a great deal of abuse from Irate, computer illiterate payroll clerks). If AOL 5.0 kills your DUN settings and you don't find out until payday (which is bad enough without EFT problems) it could delay pays until the next day (if you miss the cutoff time for the EFT) this is a very bad thing, employees have lost there houses/cars/etc due to getting a late pay, AOL stuffing up DUN is NOT an inconveniance.
You are not me, therefore you are not important
What are the penalties for writing a program whose intent is to perform malicious acts on other people's computers?
Ignore Alien Orders
Starting with everyone's favorite os. Linux. If a boxed redhat install fucks with your partition table and wipe windows, they pay.
I'm haven't yet decided if I'm joking.
Ryan
On another off-topic: ever wonder why slashdot defaults to "flat" mode of late? Couldn't be to increase the hit count, could it?
http://www.internetnews.com/isp-news/article/0,108 7,8_216641,00.html
DAMN!
http://www.badassmofo.com/images/nat4.jpg
She's NAKED but she still ain't petrified!
Go to BADASSMOFO.COM FOR EVEN MORE PICTURES FROM "THE SUN" of UK.
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Then one day the number of calls coming into our center exploded. We usually had hold times between 10-20 seconds. When I arrived at work the hold time was around 30 minutes with 100's of people waiting in line. What caused this? How did this happen?
AOL 5.0 -- It took a while for us to realize what was going on. We had partnered with AOL and offered a $10 discount to people who used our bandwidth to connect to their network. Millions of dollars were spent on flyers and TV spots promoting this concept. In essence, we were spending enough money to make our lives a living hell.
Customers who had been using our service with AOL 4.0 often called in simply to tell us how happy they were to be able to connect so quickly with no busy signals. These same customers were bombarded with the constant upgrade reminders the minute 5.0 went live. Many of them upgraded, and in doing so they disconnected everything. The flyers kept coming, the promotion was ongoing, and AOL in a stroke of genius made each computer it's personal slave, shutting down the TCP/IP stack and slamming the connection through the cable modem. None of the tech support agents knew what was going on, and for a few days we handled a call volume hundreds of times higherthan usual having to resort to "We don't know" as our answer. Nothing linked the problems to AOL 5. People became mean, bitter, and angry when they called. Work was never the same. I could trace the quality of my work direct to the moment AOL 5 was released. I left my job and found another.
Keep in mind this is just one ISP. One wonders how much time and productivity AOL cost it's competitors in the tech support area alone. Add to the fact that changes to the TCP/IP stack beyond the ability of normal users were needed to return things to normal, and what AOL did was just wrong. They hurt their customers, they hurt their competitors, and by our example, they even hurt their strategic partners.
Perhaps the greatest irony of all is now that people know about it, they hurt their image. If these are the kind of decisions we can look forward to from AOL Time Warner then the quality of entertainment and business in this Country is now lower than ever.
America On-Line - So manipulative, no wonder it's #1!
=-Josh www.inetz.com
this is what a dude at time magazine had to say: "This maneuver is really aggressive on the part of AOL," says TIME senior editor Philip Elmer-DeWitt. "These guys hold a larger share of the market than all the other ISPs combined, and they have to behave responsibly." :)
I hope he doesnt value his job, because he just lost it
-nullified ICQ: 14611037 linux mandrake 6 and occasionally windows 98se
I am almost positive you can overwrite running binaries and loaded libraries in Linux, just the older file is not removed from the system until it is released from memory.
I have upgraded my netscape while using an older version at the same time, and got the new version upon restarting.
Isn't this correct?
well well, did AOL really make a crappy product? or are there just THAT many people out there who don't know how to use a computer and end up screwing things up immensely. This is just a case of luser users venting their own frustrations/ignorance towards HIGH-TECHNOLOGY and a company that everyone loves to hate. Everyone is jumping on the bandwagon, finding another CONGLOMERATE to hate, just like Microsoft. All these Newbie Lusers say they hate Microsoft just because they THINK the OS makes their PC's crash. They don't even have a valid reason as to why they hate Microsoft, they do it just to fit in. They don't have a real reason why they hate M$. Their hate is misguided by their inexperience in selecting the proper PC to run the M$ OS. Not that I like Microsoft, I think they are trying to do TOO MUCH with their Win2G product, like QoS, VPN, Server Balancing, DNS/DHCP Management, Proxy server in one product. I can just see some paper MCSE attempting to use all of those services on ONE box! But thats besides the point... AOL has been adding their OWN Dial-UP adapter since god knows when... Are there ANY AOL users read Slashdot?
There are some superficial differences. VB is Excel/Word macro language munged into an ugly general-purpose language. Similarly, perl is a powerful text processing language munged into a general purpose programming language.
VB has insanely platform-dependent things built into the core language, such as the Printer object and the registry access functions (DeleteSettings, GetAllSettings, GetSetting, SaveSetting). In parallell, perl has a host of unix-specific functions for System V process communication and management, and working with files such at /etc/passwd, /etc/hosts, and /etc/groups.
VB belies it's heritage as an Excel macro system by having built-in functions for financial calculations. While I don't doubt that these are useful in many cases, I do not feel that they belong in the core language. Similarly, perl demonstrates it's heritage as Practiccal Extrraction and Reporting Language by providing extensive built-in support for regular expressions. Again, this is useful functionality that does NOT belong in the core of the language.
VB has many, many functions. Very few VB programmers know the entire VB language. Again, this sounds a lot like perl.
Many (but not all) VB programmers ONLY know VB. Of these VB-programmers-without-perspective, many believe that VB is the one true greatest language ever. Similarly, many (but not all) perl programmers know ONLY perl, but are very rabid in their worship of perl.
Many (but not all) VB programmers do not know how to program well. It is rare for two VB programmers to solve the same problem in the same way. As I mentioned above, most do not know the entire language. Combine these two facts and you discover that, even for seasoned programmers, VB programs are hideous to maintain. Again, the parallells to perl are blindingly obvious.
I like clean, simple design. A simple core, combined with a an extensive, powerful suite of available tools, is the most pleasing environment for me to work in. That is the real reason I tend not to use VB or perl (even though I have experience with both).
I am also disturbed by the worshipful communities surrounding both of these languages. Both of these communities are mostly composed of people who have no experience of anything else and, based solely on their ignorance, believe that their language of choice is the best language ever. This is the kind of person I mean by "perl weenies" or "VB weenies". I stipulate that there could be (and probably are) "python weenies", "lisp wenies", "C weenies", "Smalltalk weenies", etcetera. Perl and VB seems to be the tqo current focal points for such "weenies" today.
portman
Dear Tech Support: Recently I upgraded from Boyfriend 5.0 to Husband 1.0 and noticed that the new program began making unexpected changes to the accounting software, severely limiting access to wardrobe, flower and jewelry applications that operated flawlessly under Boyfriend 5.0. No mention of this phenomenon was included in the product brochure. In addition, Husband 1.0 uninstalls many other valuable programs such as DinnerDancing 7.5, CruiseShip 2.3, and OperaNight 6.1 and installs new, undesirable programs such as PokerNight 1.3, SaturdayFootball 5.0, Golf 2.4 and ClutterEverywhere 4.5. Conversation 8.0 no longer runs, and invariably crashes the system. Under no circumstances will it run DiaperChanging 14.1or HouseCleaning 2.6. I've tried running Nagging 5.3 to fix Husband 1.0, but this all purpose utility is of only limited effectiveness. Can you help, please!! Sincerely, XXX Dear XXX: This is a very common problem women complain about, but it is mostly due to a primary misconception. Many people upgrade from Boyfriend 5.0 to Husband 1.0 with no idea that Boyfriend 5.0 is merely an ENTERTAINMENT package. However, Husband 1.0 is an OPERATING SYSTEM and was designed by its creator to run as few applications as possible. Further, you cannot purge Husband 1.0 and return to Boyfriend 5.0, because Husband 1.0 is not designed to do this. Hidden operating files within your system would cause Boyfriend 5.0 to emulate Husband 1.0, so nothing is gained. It is impossible to uninstall, delete, or purge the program files from the system, once installed. Any new program files can only be installed once per year, as Husband 1.0 has severely limited memory. Error messages are common, and a normal part of Husband 1.0. In desperation to play some of their "old time" favorite applications, or to get new applications to work, some women have tried to install Boyfriend 6.0, or Husband 2.0. However, these women end up with more problems than encountered with Husband 1.0. Look in your manual under "Warnings: Divorce/Child Support." You will notice that this program runs very poorly, and comes bundled with HeartBreak 1.3. I recommend you keep Husband 1.0, and just learn the quirks of this strange and illogical system. Having Husband 1.0 installed myself, I might also suggest you read the entire section regarding General Partnership Faults [GPFs]. This is a wonderful feature of Husband 1.0, secretly installed by the parent company as an integral part of the operating system. Husband 1.0 must assume ALL responsibility for ALL faults and problems, regardless of root cause. To activate this great feature enter the command "C:\ I THOUGHT YOU LOVED ME". Sometimes Tears 6.2 must be run simultaneously while entering the command. Husband 1.0 should then run the applications Apologize 12.3 and Flowers/Chocolates 7.8. TECH TIP! Avoid excessive use of this feature. Overuse can create additional and more serious GPFs, and ultimately YOU may have to give a C:\ I APOLOGIZE command before the system will return to normal operations. Overuse can also cause Husband 1.0 to default to GrumpySilence 2.5, or worse yet, to Beer 6.0. Beer 6.0 is a very bad program that causes Husband 1.0 to create FatBelly files and SnoringLoudly wave files that are very hard to delete. Save yourself some trouble by following this tech tip! Just remember! The system will run smoothly, and take the blame for all GPFs, but because of this fine feature it can only intermittently run all the applications Boyfriend 5.0 ran. Husband 1.0 is a great program, but it does have limited memory and cannot learn new applications quickly. Consider buying additional software to improve performance. I personally recommend HotFood 3.0, Lingerie 5.3 and Patience 10.1.> Used in conjunction, these utilities can really help keep Husband 1.0 running smoothly. After several years of use, Husband 1.0 will become familiar and you will find many valuable embedded features such as FixBrokenThings 2.1, Snuggling 4.2 and BestFriend 7.6. A final word of caution! Do NOT, under any circumstances, install MotherInLaw 1.0. This is not a supported application, and will cause selective shutdown of the operating system. Husband 1.0 will run only Fishing 9.4 and Hunting 5.2 until MotherInLaw 1.0 is uninstalled. I hope these notes have helped. Thank you for choosing to install Husband 1.0 and we here at Tech Support wish you the best of luck in coming years. We trust you will learn to fully enjoy this product!
Christopher McCrory "The guy that keeps the servers running" chrismcc@gmail.com http://www.pricegrabber.com
portman sucks
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The paranoid answer is that AOL is tracking mouse movements.
What are other answers?
"I thought I could organize freedom. How Scandinavian of me."
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 Someone mentioned earlier today (sorry, don't feel like digging it up) that Jon Katz' articles always seem to show up a few days after a /. story that gets more than 400 responses. This one is getting close, could there be a new Feature headed our way? We can only hope...
Feature: ISPs And the Digital Revolution
By JonKatz
"Jon, call on line four, it's the President," my assistant says. This is my 12th call in as many minutes. It started with the Boston Globe, Wired, then CNN. Next thing I knew, NASA and the Pentagon were asking for advise. I decided to give up trying to install a spell checker on my computer and got in "story mode", a state of mind which perpares me for the storm of writing brilliance that will follow. Sometimes its difficult to forget how brilliant I am and concentrate on the story at hand, but I'm the best and its what I do.
Just recently, AOL, the largest ISP in the world, was brought up on charges that the latest version of it's software may have a malicious intent.
Let me try to overdramatize this for a minute (it's part of my genius, which was once described as 'terrifiyingly unique' by a web site that I am too important to remember): America Online is engaged in a myriad web of suspense and intrique in an attempt to infiltrate, that's right, infiltrate (I kinda like that word) the hard drive of the helpless user, who is preyed upon by a large corporation that seeks to dominate him and track his every move with their infiltrative software.
When a victim of this Orwellian machine attempts to install the new AOL software they are presented with what is called a 'Dialog Box'. These 'Dialog Boxes' are often a facade, hiding the oppressive regime's ifiltrating software behind it, ready to subvert the customers wishes and infiltrate the hard drive with irreversible effects. By placing subliminal messages on the packaging and inside the install progress bar, AOL has used mind control tactics to convince the customer to respond to said 'Dialog Box' by clicking on the 'Yes' button.
Should we allow these 'Dialog Boxes' to continue to appear in our software? What will happen if any software vendor is permitted to infiltrate hard drives at will? Can capitalizm survive in a world filled with giant corporations like AOL, which will stop at nothing to subvert and suppress the hopes and dreams of every man, woman, and child alive?
Tomorrow, I will look deeper into the issues at hand, and present you with even more rhetorical questions, as soon as I get off the phone with the Pope, who just called and is on hold right now...
My other
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Where is part one?
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If software vendors suddenly have to be responsible for the quality of their software and provide real (read monetarily backed liability) warranties, do you think they will just "accept" the burden of responsibility themselves? Hell no. They'll start lobbying states to start licensing "software engineers" just like other engineering disciplines are licensed. Then they'll only start hiring licensed SWEs. If some product blows up, blame can fall squarely on the SWE or team of SWEs who wrote the code. They're fired, their licenses yanked, they face the lawsuits. Big deal. Hire new ones tomorrow. The company gets away with the crime by passing the buck.
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BOLDTEST
Post part one, this is fucking hilarious...
Shit! You mean people will actually have to be responsible for what they do? Wekk, fuck me with a rusty 10 ton wrought iron spiked pile driver and no lubricant!
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GODDAMIT
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GODDAMIT
GIVE ME PORTMAN
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GODDAMIT
GIVE ME PORTMAN!!!
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GODDAMIT
GIVE ME PORTMAN!!!
TEST
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GODDAMIT
GIVE ME PORTMAN!!!!!
TEST
Physicians and dynamiters are licensed. Hunters and drivers are licensed. Engineers (the way we're talking about it) are no more licensed than anyone else, they are hired because of their education and training, the same way programmers are.
These comments and opinions are mine and mine alone, although they shouldn't be.
testing 123
testing 1234
...but so are all news sources.
I just finished a section of a class, about tv news shows. The gist of it was "TV News shows are all about selling ads; if they could get away with it, they wouldn't give any news, just play commercials." Now, why do they actually share information? To keep their respectability above a point. No respectability == no viewers... No viewers == no ads.
A project in this section was to watch a commercial TV news show, and a non-commercial one. I dug the tv out of the box, and plugged it in, and went to CNN... First off, they showed a drought in texas. Then they spent 4 minutes on Michael Jordan buying part of that sports team (whatever it was), and then a bunch of stuff on the election (I guess politicians buy a lot of tv time in the year before presidential elections)... They played four minutes of the guy that owns time-Warner, and him going on about the aol merger, and some sports team guy who made some type of slur... Note that this was the same day as the seton hill University fire. Also note that was given about 30 seconds (right before a commercial for life insurance, then an ad for Seton Hill Universities internet classes... Go figure...).
Comparing it with the McNeil news hour (non-commercial news show), it was atrocious. However, it wasn't all that great either...
All in all, I'm glad I get my info from the internet... I get a wider variety of information and don't get as much crap that I don't care about (who gives a flying fuck who owns the Washington Wizards?).
A good book to read, if you wanna read something to what I hope you already realize about how news shows work, try _How To Watch TV News_ by Neil Postman and Steve Powers...
(too lazy to do it in html)
Hasta luego
/Exantrius
+
umm... hire new ones tomarow? are you aware of the huge tech shortage right now? I'm 19, barly sqeeked thrugh highschool(2.18gpa), and makeing 38k as a unix programmer. A guy I work with, another programmer, makes pretty close to what I do, and spends most of his time websurfing. there quite simply are not enough programmers out there, even if you count the visual basic morons.
+ if( lets_log )
ELF
#include
Case in point: The suit against Toshiba. The lawyers got 1.2Bil USD, I /should/ be getting a $450 check in the mail. If not im going to file a class-action suit agenst the lawyers for not paing me :) Its still kinda fucked up that these guys got $1.2Bil over a defective laptop that they maybe paid $1700 for NEW.
I have to return some videotapes...
Still, imagine if major corporations decide to join in. AOL really could get into serious trouble then. Thoughts?
I assert ownership of all trademarks and copyrights on this page.
AOL is cool! How about you?
They install the AOL Adapter so that you can use Netscape or IE while connected to AOL (instead of the bastardized IE AOL Browser). If aol was going to be your ONLY internet connection, you need that AOL adapter.
The Mac version has something like this as well, but it is simple to change it. Just change "AOL Enhanced" to "PPP" in the TCP/IP control panel. AOL 5 Mac doesn't have any problem like this. At least, not the beta.
btw, Dartmouth Sucks Balls
I can't do your work because my 14 yo messed up my pc with an aol upgrade! That crazy kid! You understand, don't you? Don't you...Boss, why do you look so angry?
I have AOL 5, and although I don't use it, that lawsuit is ridiculous!! It prompts you when you install it as to whether or not you want AOL to be the default ISP or not. And what it does is actually a very nice feature for AOL users. Previously, when you clicked on an email link on the internet, it would open up netscape messenger, or outlook, or whatever your email client is. Now, thanks to this, it actually makes a new mail message within AOL! Cool!
Currently AOL client is a big pile of bloat using some proporitery format that even AOL doesn't like. A wild bet: AOL bought Netscape and keeps Mozilla so it can have a nice platform to built their next client on, free from Microsoft grip, standart based and cross platform for those web pads that are popping left and right (remember "AOL Everywhere"? Just wait untill Mozilla hits release and you will hear AOL announce a new AOL 6.0 completly rewritten based on Mozilla & its XUL/XPCOM interfaces. ;-)
Considering that AOL are the biggest ISP in the world, this is going to topple that balance of power in the browser wars.
God, I like my field of work... never a dull moment
Gilad.
And the official response that we're supposed to give on the phone?
For the last several months it's been that we don't know the exact cause of the problem, but that we know it's not our fault. (My paraphrasing, the official response statements that they expect us to read are much more vague)
I feel dirty, but hey, it's a job.
Here it is.. don't wait the 50% off code may not last long. Great for box sets.. the 50% deal is up to purchases of $60 so you get 30 off instantly.. check it out. http://dvdshack1.vstoredvds.com/ Codes: Coupon code: 28820SPQR (use once per customer, up to a $30 total discount) - 50% off
Personally I hope AOL gets screwed on this deal. If I encounter a question asking if a program should be the "default" program and I answer "yes" I expect that program to be the first one to handle a given situation. I do not however expect that application to disable all other programs that "could" handle it. Nor do I expect it to mess with my system settings beyond changing the registry to make itself the program that by default handles certain filetypes and functions.
And I consider myself computer literate. What chance does your average user have in understanding what the ramifications of answering "yes" are? Even if they did read the "About AOL 5.0" documents and the Installation guide, or God forbid the license agreement.
Ideally AOL would add a section to the dialogue box stating that by choosing "yes" all other internet connections will be disabled and AOL will take over all functions and connections related to the internet. Of course they won't do that because they don't want you to know that.
Once again I hope they get burned and bad.
rofl! really! ha ha ha!
clever!
Guess what? Most internet sites work the same way. Why do you think Slashdot has an ad-banner at the top of the screen? Andover didn't buy them to be nice guys; they bought them because it was profitable, and in their interests.
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
that most SWEs do not choose to release buggy
code. Most realize the code is buggy and
shouldn't be released, but upper management
promised the product on a certain date and,
damnit, they will release it, buggy or not!
I believe that if the SWEs controlled when software
would get released, we wouldn't have MS software
that is so unstable and so closed off. So when
you say hold the SWE responsible, I say is putting
the blame on the wrong person. The blame usually
belongs on the Upper managers. As always, however,
there are exceptions to this.
Nothing exists exept atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion.
blah blah blah....
This was ontopic and FUNNY AS HELL.
Not to mention true.
But thank you, Nerds, for going against the average Slashdotter's karma-whoring ways to post this. You really brightened my day.
onyxruby wrote:
Imagine, "Installation of Personal Web Server will leave your system open to security risks at the following ports..."
This would actually be a Good Thing, IMO. It would improve security across the board because, suddenly, people would be AWARE of the security holes they're leaving open to malicious users, and could take steps to correct them.
Nahhh, that makes too much sense. It'd never work.
Rafe
V^^^^V
Rafe
Opinions expressed by the author may not actually exist in the wild.
From what I was reading, they engineered at least part of this "bug" at orders from AOL. The software and the programmers don't need to be liscensed. The companies that release lemons that major should be fined and made to pay for the damages. This costed people major money. ISPs lost out big, because it would mess up people's connection. It is a software producers (In this case AOL's) responsibility to notify people of potential stability problems. when a new experimental Linux kernal is released for example, they do state that it is potentially unstable. Mabye software companies need to start doing the same or getting it right. I do believe that the software messing up the other software was deliberate and it was ordered by AOL corp. MS tried to do something similar with the win 3.1 beta and nearly got away with it too. They deliberately engineered software "Bugs" into Win 3.1 beta to have the FUD factor to their advantage. Caldera put a fast stop to them getting away with it. They settled with MS out of court from what I heard.
Don't call my crazy, that's what they called me back in the home!
Is there a better, nationwide (ie, local call almost anywhere in the US) ISP than AOL?
My parents, both in their mid-60s, live in a Greyhound bus converted into an RV, and don't have a fixed home. They stay for 3-4 months at a time at an RV park and travel a lot in between. Dad's really been wanting a computer, so I set him up with an older laptop with AOL 4.x.
I figured that AOL would always be a local phone call (huge benefit), and it geared towards people who don't know what they're doing (also important).
I'm more worried about dad clicking "OK" to some cheeseball offer from AOL than screwing their laptop up -- all they want to use it for is AOL for email and various card games.
I wouldn't ever advise anyone to use AOL if they are based on one location or can afford an ISP with 800 service. I fix enough company-issued laptops they get AOL on them to know that their software is either malicious towards other network services or they have a don't care attitude.
I wonder how long it will be before Time-Warner-AOL cable subscribers are required to use Time-Warner-AOL provided cable boxes with built-in AOL clients...
Of course you think it's funny that Time put up the story... you have no concept of journalistic integrity, and I seriously doubt that Slashdot would ever OBJECTIVELY report on a lawsuit against itself OR Andover, or any of Andover's subsidiaries...
I thought it was a good thing that Time wrote this topic up and is unafraid to present such things in an objective way. The article presented Time's usuall neutral stance. The thing that got to me was how hard I found it to tell the damn server to stop trying to cookie me. I had to stop the page loading to get the damn thing to stop. As for AOL, I have never liked their setup or their majority share of the ISP market. True, their were one of the first providers, but they seized a hold of the market and have never let go. I am glad that when I received the 500 free hours of AOL 5.0 CD I held it over the fire in my fireplace and warped it beyond use. My roommate appreciated the artistry of it and has it still in his room. BTW, AOL, if you see this, email me and I will tell you where to send another CD. I am interested in developing this new CD art-form.
Ciao.
nahtanoj
If AOL 5.0 does indeed do what the filers say then AOL should probably pay damages, though not the sum asked for - it should be cost price not more.
At the same time AOL is guilty of something a lot of software developers are also guilty of : not providing enough information to the customers. I believe that there should be a small section explaining what the software installs and what gets changed. This is partly to put the customer at ease and secondly it would actually help alot of people understand where a problem could be comming from. This applies more to software that is available in binary only form, than open-source software where everyone gets to know what software x is doing - there is always more support from a devloper community than any help desk!
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Now I know of two people.
All this hype about AOL breaking other ISP's. I know, I know...when one software breaks another it means big trouble. But has anyone stopped to think about what this really means? If the plaintiff's win the suit, then what the EULA stands for goes in to the toilet. I have installed AOL, and the EULA (like most others) has statements about AS IS, and no liability. So if you accept, you live with the consequences. I have installed software before that caused Explorer.exe to IPF every time I ran it. The company did fix this with a patch, and life was beautiful again.
It is the responsibility of the consumer to realize that if things don't work, that the best course is to contact the company that made the software that broke things. Chances are there is a fix, or enough requests will urge them to make one. Sometimes companies don't play nice, and things are harder, but legal action should be a last resort, not a first.
And something else I don't get. $1000 in damages? That is preposterous. Let's be honest here, if you have an ISP that charges $21.95 per month, and then you install AOL 5.0 just for laughs, and things break, wouldn't you fixit immediately? Suppose you didn't. AOL 5.0 has not been around for a year yet, and even if you could not get to your ISP for a year, the cost would only be ~$263. I think thatwith the merger ISP's and others want a piece of AOL. Get them in the news...make them look bad, because let's face the facts, AOL is not going to be hurting to pay $8 billion.
I don't think that what AOL is doing with 5.0 is right, but I disagree more with the actions of the class action suit filers. I hope they are laughed out of court with EULA stamped on their forehead so they can see why they didn't win!
Thank you...play through.
"I used to be an agnostic, but now I'm not so sure..."
hi !
this is possible to see a screenshot of this ??
You missed the last sentence I wrote (one of the last) that "this is something I hope you already know"... I figured most /.'ers were smart enough to figure out that I meant "this was stuff I knew, and should be common sense, so I hope that you already know it".
It is a writing class; The teacher uses this section to introduce somewhat easily the quarter. And the gist of the book was "it's a marketing enterprise", followed by "this is why they do this, that is why they do that, etc.
And no shit, sherlock, webpages have ads. Yes, they can often get in the way, but no, they don't take up 30 seconds of your life, even IF you click on it.
/ex
Do you have nothing better to moderate?
Where is my mind?
Check out Project Upper/Mute, an all-around awesome compiler fra
It's amazing what AOL thinks they can get away with by having people agree to a EULA. If David Smith had included a EULA with the Melissa virus, would he be a free man today?
Hijacking DUN and TCP/IP control from your computer is not a feature that people want or expect from thier AOL 5.0.
Just as you don't expect your MP3 player to scan your hard drive for files and secretly report them to a corporation. If Kevin Mitnick can be arrested for stealing information from a computer, why not the executives at RealNetworks? The only difference in thier activities is that Real Networks tricks you into agreeing to a EULA before they hack/crack your computer.
And don't take users to task for not reading thier EULA's. Those things are written in lawyer language, and the industry has done it's damndest to promote them as innocuous, industry standard paperwork that you have to deal with before you use any software. And they are using them to protect increasingly egregious, borderline criminal behaviour.
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
IMHO, AOL deserve to be hit with large punitive damages to discourage this sort of stunt again. The users don't deserve compensation though, because you shouldn't install software on a box you care about...
You've GOT to be kidding! "You shouldn't install software on a box you care about..." It would appear that you have lots and lots of spare cash to throw around, so that you can have only one application per box. SOme of us are not quite so lucky (?) but rather have families who are not quite as technical as we ourselves are. Rather, we have chosen to make some compromises for various reasons.
But "not install software..."? Come ON! that's just LUDICROUS! *sigh* It's MY computer, and no fscking software author should be breaking my stuff without asking me, first. "Do you want me to be your only^Wdefault thought provider (Y/y)"
It is by caffiene alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the beans of java that thoughts acquire speed, hands acquire
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00/01/21/16522 24&cid=343
If you look at this issue with the proper perspective, it all makes perfect sense, and it should be a surprise to nobody.
1. AOL is out to make money.
They are not here to make your internet experience more enjoyable, not to enhance your life, not to provide you with great software, and certainly not to provide you with stellar support.
2. AOL is out to crush their competition.
Anything that they can do to restrict your choice (governed by law that is... well.. maybe a few things that aren't..) they are going to do, including making it difficult to change access providers, uninstall their software, or use another bit of a competitor's software while theirs is installed.
3. AOL has the econonomy of scale working for them.
With an installed customer base (something around 20 million was what I heard somewhere) AOL can afford to make deals with software companies, hardware companies, and also settle the occasional law suit for a few billon.
When you look at it this way, it makes sense that they would code this stuff into their 'free' software (and they have been for years, it has just grown up a little). Besides, if they do get caught, they just settle, and go back to billing their customers for two exrta months after cancellation to make up the difference. It also makes sense that they would spend as little as possible on technical support so you get frustrated and don't call anymore, but you can't uninstall the software and you are gonna get billed anyway...... wait... or is that Microsoft?
I work as a Tech Support rep for an internet service provider that services all of the new england area. If you happen to work Tech Support the weeks after AOL v5 came out, you know it was hell.
We have a large customer base who uses us to piggy back into AOL. When those users upgraded to 5.0 it totally FUCKED their connections with us. It was damned near impossiable to get rid of it short of removing AOL 5 totally out of the system (regediting the crap out, too) removing and reinstalling the entire Windows Communications package, and praying to god they had an older version of AOL handy.
Which is total bullshit because the tech's basicly had to take time out from normal customer problems to fix AOL's fuck ups.
I think ISP industries should get into this and jump on the lawsuit.
This sure seems familiar - check out this posting on another msg board (used with permission)
;-)
I used AOL back in Sept. for about 2 weeks, and then cancelled it. Without me knowing it, AOL was removing the monthly fee from my checking account, royally screwing my account up, costing me $138 in fees for 3 months (this is just the bank fees for overdraws.) I finally got it straightened out in December, and they said that they would cancel my membership and reimburse be $56.80, which I received Jan. the 15h. Then, just last week, they took ANOTHER month's payment, overdrawing my account yet again! I called them and had a fit, and now, they said that since they just reimbursed the one time, I have to go through a bunch of paper work crap to get this last month's back, but that they can't do anything about the bank fees THEY cause me to have to pay. I did my part by calling them and cancelling way back in Sept, and then AGAIN in December, and then AGAIN last week. I want to know if anyone else has had this problem with them and what I should do about it, because now, I have to wait until next month to see if they actually cancelled my account, and if they take anymore money next month. Any help would be greatly appreciated (although this has nothing to do with skins, it has to do with my internet access to obtain skins).
update no 251....
Just a little update to let all you good people out there know just how far this has gone. I tried calling AOL's 'customer service' to find out why all this was happening and what I have to do to get reimbursed for all the pain, suffering and mental trauma that they have put me through. I was told by the representatives (more than one call) that I had to *write* their payment processing center, with copies of all my bank statements, and *maybe* they would *consider* giving me *some* of the money they took from me without my permission. Well now, I thought to myself, I didn't have to *write* to them to *maybe* start up my AOL account for *some* kind of access now did I? Hmm... okaaaaaaaaay... When I then asked to speak with the 'customer service' supervisor, I was told repeatedly that they were not available, and would not be available. Hmmm.... My fiancee works in a call center like that (and so did I for a while) and we both seem to remember that our supervisors were always on the prowl, tapping their watches and peering intently at us as if that meant something. Then when I asked for phone number for the payment center, they crisply replied that there was not one. Hmmm.... you mean to tell me that when these people go to work there that they are going through a time warp to the land before telephones? Or are you saying that AOL, 'The world's premiere communications network' cannot figure out how to put a phone at someone's desk? Curiouser and Curiouser.... It sure seems that Rick, from my bank, is going to be more than helpful in pressing charges on them. I wonder if they can find a supervisor for the bank's attorneys to talk to and a phone number for them to call?