h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

From what I hear, Nighthoover would dissaprove!

I shall not try it then!

I'm supprised they still get anymore bussiness. They have a very bad reputation

*** DON'T TRY IT!!! ***



AOL for Windows "Trial" disks go off and say they're "optimizing" (sic) your system. What they do is replace key system DLL and VXD files with their own versions, all without asking you, which make AOL look tolerably fast (as with any other "web accellerator", just manipulating the cache, packet size etc. to their advantage) but slow anyone else's service to a crawl. Once you've used an AOL trial, it's not just that the competition *seem* much slower - they are! And just uninstalling the trial will still leave the competing services running as slow as treacle on a cold day, *even if you reinstall them after the trial has been removed*.

When they say "it won't cost you a penny", they don't include the time involved backing up all your personal data, reformatting your drive and reinstalling Windows, which is the only reasonably reliable way of getting rid of it!

Those magazine cover discs' sole purpose is to get you to sign on the dotted line for a recurring subscription charge on your credit card. That's all they're interested in. They don't want to make your children safer, or your surfing experience faster and more enjoyable - these are just words they use to part you from your money. Don't do it!

all very true!

although I thought that most people had got wind of what AOL try and pull

I only* have broadband in order to rapidly and easily spread the word of the prophet nighthoover, all hail, yea, mrrly we hail yea, a thousand times yea we hail, mrrly so, Lettuce spry mrrly to ou prophet nighthoover lettuce soon hear of our prophets second coming for our prophet truely sucks n i g h t h o o v e r

Surely what AOL are doing is illegal? And, what does 'sic' mean?

F102865?thread=296644

B

[sic] is an editorial note added to say that the previous text has been accurately reproduced even though it is known to be incorrect. Usually this means a typo but in this case it may have been intended to draw attention to the lie element in AOL's statement.

Either that or 2legs was drunk and threw up on the manuscript.

B

Well it was Peet who said it and he has been ill...

Eewww...

oh, my lettuce spry Mrrly so n i g h t h o o v e r

In the case of my posting, the (sic) was drawing attention to AOL's use of an American spelling in UK marketing materials - I spotted that on a web page with the price in pounds sterling, indicating it was aimed at a UK audience. But they were lying as well.

I did wonder which bit you were objecting to. I noticed the spelling but I didn't know you were quoting from something specifically for the UK market. I do know someone high up in AOL. I'm probably not allowed to tell him what I think of the company though - more than I have already anyway being relatively tactless. I did inadvertantly give him some computer tips which allowed AOL to make a market move which other companies hadn't spotted yet and got him promoted. Oops! Sorry to all AOL victims (as users should hereafter be known).

Do Freeserve to anything like this? That's what I've got at home.

I'm not sure exactly how much they do to destroy your system as I've never been stupid enough to install it but they do do something similar. If you use the installation disk it overwrites some of your settings so that browser/email and all automatically goes through Freeserve first and is covered with their adverts. The alterations also mean you get their bugs and lose any internet upgrade patches you may have installed more recently than when they created their disk. My mother's computer has never been the same since. But then she also had trouble getting NTL to work. I did fine with that but never used the disk of course - just the right registration and IP numbers from it. Basically these companies make a living out of being as piggish as possible and deliberately try _not_ to co-operate with other software on the occasions when they are not just being too stupid to interact properly.

I hereby sanctify the use of leathal force against SEF, in the name of Nighthoover!

"leathal" force Is that the new name for the legions of nighthoover?

I note that was "sanctify", as opposed to "sanction"... So you're setting leathal (sic) force apart for scared use, huh? Sounds good ta' me!