Musings from Brian J. Noggle

AOL Is Funny

AOL is a funny animal. Hey, I'll admit I first got onto the Internet using AOL and that I still use AOL (I'm a Web application tester, gentle reader, so I use more browsers and operatings systems on any given day than you'll probably use in a year). But come on, some of their things are just funny.

Let's start with this scenario. You know how AOL always warns you that no one from AOL will ever ask for your credit card information, your password, and so on? Well, if your credit card information changes (such as a new expiration date), what does AOL do?

Of course! It throws up a prompt for you to enter credit card information:

AOL Billing

Why, oh why, would AOL expect its users to type their information into a prompt like this? Because they're AOL customers, that's why!

Back in the dial-up days of the mid nineteen nineties, AOL had trouble getting enough lines at its access numbers to accommodate the surging demand. Some people were leaving their computers connected when they weren't at the computer, tying up those precious lines. So AOL deployed the Idle Message, a message that popped up for every user fifty minutes after the user logged in; if the user didn't click OK to indicate they were still using the computer, AOL booted them. Many times, it kicked me off in the middle of a download. Handy.

Apparently, AOL's gotten more sophisticated and has set the message to determine when the user is not doing something. I assume such because it's called the Idle Message. I've never seen it, but I have seen this:

AOL Idle Message Off

That's right, since I have apparently turned off the Idle Message in my AOL for Broadband connection, AOL still pops up a message box to indicate I have been idle. The titlebar? Idle Message Off.

I think that AOL is trying to use paradoxes and irony to cause a rift in the space-time continuum so it can reach through to an alternate universe where its merger with Time-Warner was a good idea. It's only a working theory, though, and I might be wrong.

- posted by Brian J. @ 10:39 AM