Britney Spear's Speculum: Tell everyone you know who is over 45: AOL is free. Cancel your account and you will still have access to email.

I've told my boss this. Repeatedly. He thinks that he has to pay for AOL because, well, what if something goes wrong with his e-mail? If he pays, he gets support. And they have anti-virus programs - which makes it the 3rd AV on his PC (yet he still gets viruses). Did I mention he accesses AOL via broadband?

There is no reasoning with some people.

/otoh, I still use my original AOL e-mail for family

CDs? I still have a couple of AOL 2.5" floppy disks kicking around.... good times.

I worked for a magazine as a designer for a short while and the owner was still using his AOL account to receive emails. Between that and still using Adobe CS2 software (this past summer) I didn't last long at that place. They were so far behind the times it was sickening. No idea how they stayed in business....

Duck_of_Doom: /otoh, I still use my original AOL e-mail for family

Same here.

Bathia_Mapes: jaylectricity: So? Not everybody in the country has access to high speed internet.

Exactly. There are people in rural areas where dial-up is the only option available if they want to get online. Sometimes AOL is the only dial-up option available too since Comcast, Verizon, Charter, etc. don't offer it.

There almost always is (or at least was) a small local provider. The local provider may no longer exist, if everyone kept AOL alive. But they used to be.

jaylectricity: Bathia_Mapes: jaylectricity: So? Not everybody in the country has access to high speed internet.

Exactly. There are people in rural areas where dial-up is the only option available if they want to get online. Sometimes AOL is the only dial-up option available too since Comcast, Verizon, Charter, etc. don't offer it.

And there's nothing wrong with that. Do I look down on people in Arkansas for not being ready for a snow storm? They maybe had one snow plow because they don't get snow much. So no...I appreciate living in a place where 5 huge dump trucks with huge snowplows drive down the 4-lane highway side by side (and one in the back to scoop the last little bit off the shoulder) and I realize that some of our taxes go there.

To be fair, I was there for the ice/snow you are probably talking about in Arkansas (There were two major ones, and I figure you are talking about the latest). During that time, there was a gridlock of traffic in my area (the rich, cool part that got hit the hardest) that's pretty inter-country and international, so there's plenty of people that know how to deal with snow/ice, myself included. It was a freak storm on par, easily, with the shiat that shuts down any ice-loving state in the union. I saw brand new electrical lines (the same as anywhere) set fire to poles and trees because of the weight of the ice broke the trees and lines. It was a cacophony of decades-old limbs falling under the weight of that shiat, and no one dared go into a wooded area. One car I saw got bent in half down through the floor from a falling limb that was mostly weighted with ice. Freaky weather for anywhere--especially here.

I say all that to say that we as a nation just aren't prepared to deal with modern economy. We truly need to expand our infrastructure in terms of internet access. Phone companies argue that we can't use landlines for that, but we clearly can because most people have a cell phone as opposed to a landline. I do not know a family or individual that has a landline--all got cell phones, and I'm in that backwoods hog-farkin' state.

It comes down to politicians demanding pork for their bills. Without that, they will do as they've always done and boycott the democratic process so nothing gets done until we give them their pork.

I propose we give them their pork. OWS and the tea party want to biatch but aren't willing to take up arms or do any real action to push forward the idea that government should rule the people, so we should instead just give the politicians what they want so we get what we need.

^^ should be ruled*

Had an entire drawer filled with these for a while; I used them as disposable coasters.

Back in the day when AOL had floppy disks, did you know that you could request as many free floppies as you wanted through AOL? If you ordered more than a certain amount (I think it was 20) they'd have them overnighted to your house. It was perfect when you needed extra storage!

jaylectricity: Nels: To be fair, I was there for the ice/snow you are probably talking about in Arkansas (There were two major ones, and I figure you are talking about the latest).

The one in January. earlier this year. First weekend of the NFL playoffs.

Didn't notice shiat this year. A few years back, we had two huge ones that shut down all the shiat. Maybe it didn't hit the Northwest.

MrEricSir: Had an entire drawer filled with these for a while; I used them as disposable coasters.

Back in the day when AOL had floppy disks, did you know that you could request as many free floppies as you wanted through AOL? If you ordered more than a certain amount (I think it was 20) they'd have them overnighted to your house. It was perfect when you needed extra storage!

I covered some of my bedroom walls with AOL CD's. If I'd known about the floppy thing I'd have tiled at least one more.

jaylectricity: Nels: jaylectricity: Nels: To be fair, I was there for the ice/snow you are probably talking about in Arkansas (There were two major ones, and I figure you are talking about the latest).

The one in January. earlier this year. First weekend of the NFL playoffs.

Didn't notice shiat this year. A few years back, we had two huge ones that shut down all the shiat. Maybe it didn't hit the Northwest.

It was pretty hard to miss. People were abandoning their cars on I-30 because they ran out of gas or they were hungry. Kept us from going to Dallas that day, we had to go up towards Oklahoma instead.

Maybe I'm backwoods as fark then. I knew there was snow/ice and I drove on it (I remember going on a beer run), but it didn't stop me from going anywhere. Wasn't anywhere as bad as the last ice storm, I told myself. I also had to deliver pizzas in the shiat weather back then too, so I might be jaded. Just my health on the line if I fark it up though, so I can understand why people with families wouldn't want to mess around with it.

CrispFlows: My mom: But I don't want to stop using AOL! I like it!

Alas. My Mom's the same way. I tried to ferret out what she liked about it. All I could figure out was -

1) she doesn't have to go to google to do a search, she can type the search into a box. For some reason, putting the google toolbar on there wasn't as good.

2) When AOL connects, there's a cheering sound and an animated gif plays with people waving and balloons going up. For some reason, she thinks this is "user friendly".

3) She steadfastly refuses to use Outlook. It HAS to be a web based email browser. I cannot figure that one out.

I've seen the "I can't figure it out" thing with Outlook with a LOT of older folks. Even ones who should know better. My late friend CSM Maddox, who was a savant with mechanical things and was real talented with jumping out of perfectly good airplanes, could NOT use Outlook, and insisted on this lame piece of dreck called "Incredimail", which featured an animated dog that carried animated mail from an animated mailbox and opened it in front of him. That made it "easy". What it seemed to make easy was infestation by viruses, sort of like Bonzi Buddy used to. But he had some oddball mental block against Outlook. Bravos, can't explain things to 'em.

erewhon: CrispFlows: My mom: But I don't want to stop using AOL! I like it!

Alas. My Mom's the same way. I tried to ferret out what she liked about it. All I could figure out was -

1) she doesn't have to go to google to do a search, she can type the search into a box. For some reason, putting the google toolbar on there wasn't as good.

2) When AOL connects, there's a cheering sound and an animated gif plays with people waving and balloons going up. For some reason, she thinks this is "user friendly".

3) She steadfastly refuses to use Outlook. It HAS to be a web based email browser. I cannot figure that one out.

I've seen the "I can't figure it out" thing with Outlook with a LOT of older folks. Even ones who should know better. My late friend CSM Maddox, who was a savant with mechanical things and was real talented with jumping out of perfectly good airplanes, could NOT use Outlook, and insisted on this lame piece of dreck called "Incredimail", which featured an animated dog that carried animated mail from an animated mailbox and opened it in front of him. That made it "easy". What it seemed to make easy was infestation by viruses, sort of like Bonzi Buddy used to. But he had some oddball mental block against Outlook. Bravos, can't explain things to 'em.

I've given up on trying to explain to mom why she's still getting AOL for "free" when she connects to aol.com even though she canceled her account over a year ago.

And the rest of the first world looks at america and scratches its head in wonderment.

Best line of the article: "EEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRNDguzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzdungahdungahdungahhhhhhh"

I Am The Egg Matt Drudge Smears Upon His Body: I've given up on trying to explain to mom why she's still getting AOL for "free" when she connects to aol.com even though she canceled her account over a year ago.

I swear to Thor you could make a fortune with a rotary dial cell phone and a remote that looks like an old analog TV front panel, big and chunky, with a rotary dial that clunks when you switch channels, and a rotary volume control that turns the TV off when you turn the volume all the way down to the 'click'.

Also a CD player that had a tone arm that you could stack CDs on like an old BSR autochanger.

Bathia_Mapes: jaylectricity: So? Not everybody in the country has access to high speed internet.

Exactly. There are people in rural areas where dial-up is the only option available if they want to get online. Sometimes AOL is the only dial-up option available too since Comcast, Verizon, Charter, etc. don't offer it.

Wow, only one choice? How.... pink.

AOL loves when you cancel. (new window)

My folks too have been using AOL for ages, long after they chucked dial up for DSL, and we're paying like $20 for it. Usual complaints...their ancient PC was slow because of all the AOL overhead. But my dad wanted to keep paying because they got tech support and free antivirus software. I got sick of all the tech support I was doing, and bought them a new computer, set them all up, and even cancelled the AOL pay service, since all they needed was their AOL email address.

And life was good, until a few months later, Dad tells me their email all of a sudden quit working. They called AOL and after some three-hour on-hold your-call-is-important-to-us BS, eventually "the guy on the phone erased our profiles and recreated them and now it works." And he also talked them into some $7/mo tech support service.

And now last month, Mom mentions that occasionally AOL won't send one of her emails. And she called them "and they said they needed $70 to fix the problem." no idea what that's about, but I assume it's the yearly cost of some other add-on tech support function. She elected to just live with the problem.

Fark you AOL. Fark you.

I'm so glad I get my pron through broadband now. Do you know how frustrating it is to fap to a forehead for 30 seconds?

You know what I'm saying.....

You have to load more than one window so you can switch to the loaded one while you wait for that forehead to turn into something more stimulating...

//awkward, but true.

I penetrate my broadband whereever I can.

Edwardo17: CDs? I still have a couple of AOL 3.5" floppy disks kicking around.... good times.

/FTFY
/Back in my day, we had 1.44mb and we liked it!

Good to know AOL is still there, in case I ever decide to leave CompuServe.

I pay more for dialup than most of you probably pay for broadband and that just makes me so so stabby. Happy! I meant happy! It's so great!

...I hate dialup.

jaylectricity: So? Not everybody in the country has access to high speed internet.

Really? You have to live way way way out there to not have access to broadband here, hell even places like the Shetland Islands appear to be well served by affordable broadband. Frankly I wouldn't be surprised if I could get broadband on the Falkland Islands (just checked, yes, C&W 1Mb/s).

Now considering I keep hearing about all this money that was thrown at US carriers to expand their networks in to more rural areas it leaves one of two possibilities:

1. They stole the money.
2. They didn't get the money and people on here are making shiat up.

So everyone in the States should have access to at least 256Kb/s as a reasonable minimum by now or have access to it shortly. Alternatively your carriers are about to get hammered for misappropriating public funds.

ChrisDe: Good to know AOL is still there, in case I ever decide to leave CompuServe.

I like logging in via NetZero and sending out some messages to my friendster buddies using my Earthlink email address.

I don't get how anyone likes AOL anymore. They did some really nasty tricks back in the day to keep their customers. I used to work graveyard for Earthlink tech support, and there'd be a ton of people who switched from AOL that couldn't get their new dialup to work.

We had to explain to them that AOL software was never fully uninstalled, that it took over Windows dialer program and effectively changed your registry so that nothing would work except for AOL. People would have to be on hold for who knows how long to talk to an AOL rep so they could go through the step by step procedure to completely remove their heinous software package.

They obviously fixed this down the road, but I don't know how they figured that was a good idea even back in 2000.

Dealt with an engineer once who had an AOL email address as his professional e-mail.

He had his AOL email set up on his blackberry also. Sigh.

FastJeff: I pay more for dialup than most of you probably pay for broadband and that just makes me so so stabby. Happy! I meant happy! It's so great!

...I hate dialup.

Just how expensive can dial up still be?

/browses Fark, nay the whole internet, my first year on free aol

Oh, well hey... at least they paid for it. From Wikipedia:

'In 2000, AOL was served with an $8 billion lawsuit alleging that its AOL 5.0 software caused significant difficulties for users attempting to use third-party Internet service providers. The lawsuit sought damages of up to $1000 for each user that had downloaded the software cited at the time of the lawsuit. AOL later agreed to a settlement of $15 million, without admission of wrongdoing.'

Krusty_the_Barbarian: aearra: And the rest of the first world looks at america and scratches its head in wonderment.

That's because they are trying to imagine what it would be like to go down several miles worth of road and see two houses the entire way.

The reason there is no broadband in these areas is it is a losing proposition. Take the area my farm is in, they would have to lay 4.5 miles of cable/phone line to reach 6 houses with broadband, 6 houses, not communities. And four of those would more than likely complain of the price and not suscribe anyway. The line there presenty was laid in the 40's/50's and is incapable of ADSL traffic.

When discussions of broadband penetration are brought up, that's the one point that often gets ignored, we have ridiculous amounts of land with few people living on it.

Let me add on this with a size comparison of Britain vs the US (with Australia in there too, ignore that)



While the US has about 6 times the number of people as in Britain (310 million vs 65 million, ish), the landsize difference is larger. Lets ignore Alaska and islands because fark those guys.
US: 3,119,885 sq mi
Britain: 94,060 sq mi
A difference of, 33 times.

For more comparison, the EU as a whole has 1,669,808 sq mi and over 500 million people, or put simpler, half the space and over 1.6x the people.

It's the same reason there's no comprehensive rail service over the whole country.

TiiiMMMaHHH: I'm so glad I get my pron through broadband now. Do you know how frustrating it is to fap to a forehead for 30 seconds?

You know what I'm saying.....

You have to load more than one window so you can switch to the loaded one while you wait for that forehead to turn into something more stimulating...

//awkward, but true.
When I ran a WWiV board back in the day I had a lot of my picture files rotated 180 degrees as a joke for just that reason.

/the better parts loaded first

BreezyWheeze: ChrisDe: Good to know AOL is still there, in case I ever decide to leave CompuServe.

I like logging in via NetZero and sending out some messages to my friendster buddies using my Earthlink email address.

I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound how awesome my ICQ friends list is.

utsagrad123: Up until recently I was working for a company that used to be a big dial-up provider in San Antonio back in the day. They eventually ended up making the switch to web design instead of connectivity, but as of the time I left, we still had a few hundred dial-up subscribers. I think only about 10 people actually still used the service, but the rest never cancelled so it was easy, recurring money. We found that a lot of customers were afraid to lose their email addresses they've had for so long and that's why many of them kept paying.

/cool story bro

STIC? Remember using then in my BBS days

My wife used DSL (at only 300kbps) until we got married two months ago. I don't know why people pay ~$30 for such a poor service when they live in the city. Dialup is great in remote cases.

sarah_t_s: Really?

There are a farkload of rural areas in North America (or even just the US) that only have satellite. Not even dial-up.

The telecoms have, of course, receive far more excess profits in one year than would be needed to lay fiber, well, everywhere there's people.

sunami:
It's the same reason there's no comprehensive rail service over the whole country.

There's no excuse for having bandwidth caps, throttled connections and Comcast only in major Metropolitan areas.

50Mbit down by 10Mbit up connections with no caps should be easily doable on the cheap in most major cities in North America, and such services really shouldn't cost more than $55 a month.

But they don't frequently happen (if at all) because greeeeeeeed.

sunami: Let me add on this with a size comparison of Britain vs the US (with Australia in there too, ignore that)

Actually, let's not explore Australia, since that's a good comparison of its own.

Your image shows that Australia is comparable in size to the continental US, but it is even much more sparsely populated than the US. Only about 22 million people, less than one-tenth that of the US.

I wonder how Australia stacks up against the USA in broadband penetration?

Doc Daneeka: I wonder how Australia stacks up against the USA in broadband penetration?

America's slow but mostly uncensored broadband is far more preferable than Australia's "that 34 year old said she's 17, therefor this entire network of sites is inaccessible!" internet.