America Offline

Does anyone here use (perforce) AOL Mail? Have you noticed that if you click on any of the news snippets which their advertisers pay to have put up on the homepage (in particular, Huffington Post), your whole computer slowly grinds to a halt?

If so, do you think there is any connection between that and the constant adverts from AOL offering free computer check-ups which will speed your silly old machine up and stop you from tearing your hair out like the photographic models which advertise it? I wonder what AOL wants so badly from inside your computers, after you have signed an agreement giving them unlimited access to them? Could it be advertising?

Of course, this sort of practice would be illegal were it not for the fact that nothing works until you have lied about reading the terms and conditions and clicked the 'agree' button.

The world of the internet is the only place I can think of where everything comes down to black and white, and the only environment - unlike most wars - where people really can be divided into goodies and baddies.

At the moment, I have a strong feeling that the goodies really do outnumber the baddies in this world, but corporate psychopaths are very clever, so you have to watch out for them without becoming as paranoid as they are.

Criminals - as always - make our lives so difficult, and the ordinary rules of law seldom apply to the internet. Nobody wants a controlled and legislated internet, but it's bound to happen, thanks to the criminals. The trouble is that it might end up with the criminals doing all the controlling and legislating - nice people are not as clever as them.

Oh well, thanks to AOL, Huffington Post have lost me as an advertising target.