For those who love AOl as much as I (hope that is not considered flaming)

"WASHINGTON -- The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Time Warner Inc. (formerly known as AOL Time Warner) with materially overstating online advertising revenue and the number of its Internet subscribers, and with aiding and abetting three other securities frauds. The Commission also charged that the company violated a Commission cease-and-desist order issued against America Online, Inc. on May 15, 2000. In a separate administrative proceeding, the Commission charged Time Warner CFO Wayne H. Pace, Controller James W. Barge, and Deputy Controller Pascal Desroches with causing violations of the reporting provisions of the federal securities laws. "

http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?site=lightreading&doc_id=70682

I can't for the life of me understand anyone's love affair with AOL! I watched a friend practically rip her hair out of her head about five-six years ago, before AOL put in it's long overdue expansion to handle the flood of new subscribers it snared by the mass junk mail sending of their CDs.

Their browser is overly bloated, their email service hasnt even caught up to last century standards, and in my opinion, their knack for simplifying the internet experience actually makes browsing harder for an experienced browser. Not to pass up the price of this "service", I'd like to mention that Cable service is roughly $5 (US) more each month for a high speed connection.

To each his own!

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Unfortunately there are a lot of users who live in rural areas and cannot get high speed cable access. It is a vast market that has not been tapped. Satellite is an available alternative but it is expensive. And I have read that in some areas AOL is the only ISP available for dial-up folks.

AOL has an interesting approach to business, I will grant them that. It seems like they discontinued their southeast US broadband service leaving their customers to either find an alternative or revert to dialup. Then they decided to sink a bunch of money into developing the Netscape browser. Their latest TV commercial (that I have seen) touts the advantage to using AOL on top of your current broad band service.

I am glad that I don't own any stock in them.

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MS MVP Security 2006-2008

And the gullible user will shell out money to both AOL and the broad band provider thinking they are getting a real deal.

And that is the one of the main purposes of this forum (my opinion), to help protect and educate the users who nare unaware!!!!!