pnh102
Reptiles Are Cuddly And Pretty
Premium
join:2002-05-02
Mount Airy, MD
 ·Comcast
| reply to Jim Gurd
Re: $25 for dialup???
said by Jim Gurd  :They're slitting their own throats with this move. Which isn't an entirely bad thing for the rest of us 
But seriously... you would think that when they were rolling in the dough (esp. when they spent $1 billion on advertising one year) that someone would have thought to have invested that money into building their own broadband network.
That kind of cash could have paid for a lot of rural broadband internet connections... AOL would have had a lock on that market just as the cable and telegraph companies were starting to get in on the broadband racket.
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Rove / Rumsfeld 2008! |
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unigamer
join:2005-06-01
Henderson, NV
|  This could be a bad thing for the Internet at large.
On the one hand, I can see why it'd be good for these people, to cut the "umbilical cord..."
...but on the other hand...
Just try to imagine the possibility of millions more potential broadband zombie PCs on the Net.
I'm willing to bet that at least in the beginning, that the chances of these people knowing what they're doing is zip. It'll be heaven for script kiddies and crackers.
"Welcome to my new 1337 P4 spam spewer! 10,000,000X! That'll be $50 (US) for ten zillion emails, Mr. Spammer."
"I'll pay you for $5,000 worth..." |
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guitarzan
Premium
join:2004-05-04
Skytop, PA
 ·epix
| That maybe true at first Unigamer,Ultimately I hope this has the desired effect of people taking responsibility for security of their PC and not leave it up to/or having a false sense of security that AOL offers.Those AOL users do not need to be very techie or geeky to properly secure their own PC,
Nor do they need A+ certs.However If one is really interested in properly securing a PC.Then one need look no further than DSL REPORTS.The wealth of knowledge and experience on this site, is not only all encompassing, It's in terms first time PC users can put to good use.
IMO there is no other site like this on the web and there is no close second.If one does not want to end up with an pwned and zombied PC, those AOL users should come here and learn to take baby steps, before they can walk away with meaningful knowledge of PC security.
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Bass....the glue of rhythm and harmony...the heartbeat of the band.! Shaking the earth with deep,sonorous vibrations.The dark ominous thunder of an approching storm. |
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unigamer
join:2005-06-01
Henderson, NV
| This is very true... It seems like a lot of the security packages around nowadays do half the job for you. Heck, some are free.
It can't hurt to have a router between the Net and your PC though - at first, I'd recommend this even for people that have only one PC (it's somewhat [although not perfectly] fail-safe; I've seen software firewalls get turned off for many, and sometimes seemingly random, causes. This'll keep someone from becoming part of the 30sec-10min statistic).
However, I've noticed that with some people, teaching them about port forwarding is like pulling teeth - if I had a quarter for every time a friend, family member, acquainance, etc. wanted/needed computer help, I'd be sailing on some yacht somewhere... 
A footnote: I learned pretty much all I knew before I ever learned about this site... but, if they came here, it could save them all the spidering around I had to do... |
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