From: kludge@panix.com   
      
   Lawrence D'Oliveiro   wrote:   
   >AOL was the biggest ISP in the US back in dialup days, but somehow   
   >never made a successful transition to broadband service like everyone   
   >else. Another peculiarity was that, unlike ISPs everywhere else in the   
   >world who offered their dialup service via standard protocols like   
   >SLIP (early days) or PPP (the most common later), AOL always stuck to   
   >its own proprietary protocol.   
      
   AOL wasn't really an ISP, they were a proprietary messaging service which   
   at some point got an Internet gateway.  The vast majority of AOL services   
   were not reachable from the internet and could not reach the internet.   
      
   AOL did own for a while an actual ISP, and I can't remember what it was   
   called, but it did offer normal PPP service.   
      
   But the normal AOL service was no more the internet than was Compuserve   
   or Prodigy.   
      
   >The company was also infamous for loosing vast numbers of its sign-up   
   >CDs on the world via magazines, free mailouts and so on, in an effort   
   >to drum up business. There were endless jokes about what to do with   
   >this deluge of unwanted AOL CDs.   
      
   Yes.  In addition, there was a piece of software called AOHell which   
   would generate fake credit card numbers that AOL would accept for new   
   accounts.  These accounts would last a couple of months usually, but   
   sometimes longer.  When Time Warner bought AOL, more than half of the   
   accounts on the service were fake.   
   --scott   
   --   
   "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)