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		i'm truly becoming afraid of the clout that america online has gained in the world. it controls the internet (or likes to think it does at least), quite a bit of the news/magazine world, and quite a chunk of the music world too. and worst of all, it's highly regarded too. but here i focus on the internet side of aol-ness because that's where i believe much of its 'credibility' comes from. as an idealistic young man i always believed that people wouldn't be stupid enough to pay a premium price for america online. back in the olden times of the internet world, america online was okay because it was basically the big, pretty consistent, somewhat pricey internet provider. back then there was basically nothing on the internet but the content that isps provided, so aol was a decent bet for stuff i guess (personally, from my usage of aol, i didn't even know that you how to get to the real world wide web). but that was back then, now i can't think of why anyone would what to pay their pretty heft premium for a decrepit email system, a proprietary connection system, bucket loads of spam, and plentiful bannings from places cause people that use aol don't have the greatest of reputations. but as it turns out plenty of people use it and plenty happy with it (i guess that shows how much what i care about is cared about by the rest of the world). i guess the dominance of america online as a isp can be accepted that for some strange reason or the other: the average american thinks highly of aol's friendly "you've got mail" (just having to write that pains me) message, and is willing to pay for it (but then who else could appreciate those gap/old navy commercials). and even i am sometimes tempted by its incessant flood of floppies and cds into trying out their service, but quickly enough i realized the depravity of it all, and shudder in disgust. it is quite the crafty company. with its string of acquisitions, aol seems to have an uncanny sense for buying up stuff that was actually useful and adding it to its unholy army user-friendliness (like winamp, netscape, and icq, didn't they all seem a lot more credible when they were independant?). so now with aol's plan for being everywhere and in every home, all the time (microsoft only wanted to be on computers, aol seems to have the loftier goal of brain washing america). though in some ways world domination is an admirable endeavor, i really don't like aol that, so that's that. so try not to be tempted into getting sucked into this hole of a company (some reasonable software notwithstanding).