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I'll admit that they have improved, though from a very low base.

Your point being ?

That at that time AOL didn't block use of third party product and/or services.

So what you are saying is, Kim is wrong ?

At the time I was using AOL, yes.

I can assure you I made many attempts to install a third party newsreader in the past and failed. It was only recently that AOL began publishing instructions as to how Outlook Express could be configured to read mail addressed to an AOL account. Previous to that I was able to read and reply to mail addresed to my Freeserve account but not to read or post messages to Usenet. And while I was able to use IE to 'browse' the net, usually as a result of clicking on a link, not all sites were displayed correctly. Also since this facility could be used to display unsolicited p*rn and pop-up messages on my console, I was in the habit of disabling it.

(kim)

My own experience is from several years ago, and it may well have been a different version of the AOL software. That may explain the apparent contradiction.

Each patch was only only released after a hole their security was publicised by a hacker group even though MS already knew about it and many others. Put another way MS only released the patches once it became easy for big clients to sue them for negligence. Prior to that they didn't give a damn. If MS really cared about the security of its software it would reveal the source code they are using as has now been demanded by the EU.

(kim)

Interestingly, the p2p community feature of the new MS spyware app (that they bought from Giant) is coming under scrutiny from certain quarters of the net population. When your firewall starts registering intrusion attempts on port 2571, you'll know that someone has found something.