>>> SWHarden.com » My thoughts on AIM

4:36:59 pm on 1/7/09

My thoughts on AIM
Posted by Scott August 17th, 2006 | 5,253 words |

Yeah, let it be known here and now: I have an Aol Instant Messenger screen name RTS. I use it to talk with
people, however, in my time with IM, I’ve come to the conclusion it’s the
dumbest thing ever!

AOL and Netscape had a baby and named it AIM. It’s been through countless revisions and upgrades and version
changes, and it never seems to get any better. Someone needs to find the maintainer
of this application and tell him to pull his head out of his butt and look
at the program he wrote!

First of all, you’d have to be an absolute moron to not be able to figure out how to logon for the first
time. Nevertheless, upon a fresh install, AIM always says things like "this
is where you enter your screen name, do you know what you’re doing? do you
want my help?" If you’re a person who has to use the step-by-step instructions,
you wouldn’t have been knowledgeable enough to download the program in the
first place! Your IQ would have to be so low that your hunt&peck typing
would take weeks to enter www.aim.com in your keyboard - if you didn’t drool
all over it first!

So, once you’ve entered your name/password and clicked sign on, you’re good to
go… or are you? Oh crap, you forgot to uncheck "save password"
at the previous screen didn’t you. You IDIOT! Now anyone can walk up to your
computer and sign on as you, or better yet - use a simple registry hack to
see your password in plain text! If you forgot to uncheck the "save password"
box, you’re an idiot. However, you’re not just an idiot - you didn’t uncheck
the "auto-signon" box! You’re now a complete moron. Every time someone
starts the computer, it automatically connects to the internet and logs on
to AIM with your name and password without the user doing / knowing a single
thing. And chances are, you have no idea what you did until a few weeks
later, when you keep getting kicked of IM and eventually get a call from a
friend "why does this program start every time I turn on my computer?
Congratulations! You’re a complete idiot, and the writers of AIM are complete
idiots, and this whole program is surrounded in idiocy, and we haven’t even
successfully logged-in yet!

     I need to find the person who wrote the current design of this ap and put him
to sleep. This is horrible! First of all, let’s take a look here,
shall we? I normally run aim at about the size of the image shown to the right.
Here you can see it has TONS of incredibly useless features! Starting at the
top, you see it says "RTS’ Buddy List". Why the heck do they want
to say it up there? First of all, no one EVER runs the buddy list wide enough
that it’s even VISBLE! It’s always cut off somewhere in the middle of the
phrase!

     Moving down, take a look at this banner ad.
It’s friggin’ huge! Talk about infringing on your desktop! To make matters
worse, some retard at netscape made it animated. Now, thanks to today’s lovely
banner ads, these usually contain large amounts of flashing, blinking, or
other seizure-triggering annoyances. You know, a year ago, AIM’s banner was
1/2 the size, why did it get so big? Why is there a banner there in the first
place? Does it pay off? Do people click the banner? Let me ask you. Have you
ever clicked that banner on purpose? Of course not! The only time
they get clicks is by accident! That explains why it’s RIGHT above the online
buddies section (the most clicked area). It also explains why id doubled in
size. Twice as big means twice as many accidental hits! On the top of almost
every banner ad is a nice little reminder that you’re using AIM. "AOL
Instant Messenger™" is always written up there. Why? No clue. It’s
annoying and takes up even more space. The whole add-on-my-buddylist thing
is simply stupid. Will it go away any time soon? I don’t think so.

     RTS’s Buddy List is displayed under the banner
ad. Why? No clue o.o What’s that thing to the right there right below that
ad? Does anyone know what that picture is supposed to mean? Does anyone
ever use this button? Does anyone have a freaking clue what it does?!

     Ok, let’s take a look at the REAL part of the
program - the buddy list. Here, it’s 63 pixels high. The whole program is
over 450 pixels high. About 13% of my buddy list is EVER used. This program
is HUGE!

     Below the buddy list is the quick-tool bar.
IM, Chat, Write, Info, and Setup. Does anybody ever use any of
these buttons?! The only time I EVER clicked one of those buttons was when
I clicked the SETUP button while trying to resize the window by clicking on
its border and went a little too far left. Let’s take a look at these buttons
and figure out why they’re never used. IM - well, just double click a buddy
to IM ‘em. Useless. Chat? Right-click your buddy(s) and select chat. Write?
Excuse me, does ANYONE ever use the ‘write’ button? At first glance
I see the icon as an envelope looking like soiled toilet paper and the pencil
looking like a stick of poo. Moving on, the info button? I just right-click
the buddy and select ‘get user info’. Useless, yet again. Setup. Humm, that’s
interesting. The My AIM menu is a lot better than that setup button because
it lets you configure more stuff! 5 buttons, all useless.

     Whoa, 4 more buttons. let’s check it out. Read,
Today, Away, and Prefs. Uhh, why are these buttons here? Oh yeah, I forgot.
AOL looks good every time they make a new version of AIM. The only thing people
can think to add to AIM is more buttons on the layout so it looks different
in screenshots. Restarted. And big. And useless. ‘Read’. Come on, who uses
mail in their IM client? Seriously. ‘Today’. Why don’t they rename it to "a
bunch of ads to rub in your face that we get paid for every time you click
‘em". Prefs. Now, isn’t this redundant? What differences are there between
the Setup button and the Prefs button below it. One of them contains the other!
It’s redundant.

     Now, on to my most cherished AIM feature. The
stock ticker. The only people who use IM are children, teenagers, or young
adults. I fail to see how AOL/Netscape expects people to enter in their entire
financial portfolio into IM. Even if they were to, the IM client is so narrow
you can’t see more than one word in it in the first place! By complete luck
you’d look down just in time to see a stock you’re interested in and its price.
However it’s useless, since you can barely fit the business name and the current
rate in the margin at the same time. This feature is completely useless, and
if anyone’s serious about wanting to see stock information, do they really
want to trust their business or financial decisions to a stock ticker on the
bottom of a kiddie chat program? You’ve got to be kidding me. I want to find
the person who thought of that one.

Everyone knows the AIM client layout SUCKS! So why not spruce it up with some completely brainless themes
graciously provided by AOL? These themes are so incredibly good that you’re
expected to pay a dollar every two weeks to keep it! You’ve got to be kidding
me! This has got to be the dumbest thing I have ever seen. But
wait, look at the *’ed section "Free for AOL members" WOW! I’m going
to go out and pay $26.95 a month for AOHell and I get to put a completely
homosexual theme on my already sucky im client for free! What an
incredible deal! Those AOL members are just too cool for me. Every time I
get a phone call from an AOL member, I’m completely in awe of their coolness!
I’m green with envy by the time I hang up the phone after tediously explaining
how to open an email attachment to the person.

So what if you’re not a cool aol member. You’re an IM member! You get something
every time you sign on that no one else gets! You’re entitled to the incredibly
informative and useful "AIM Today" dialogue! You get the latest
breaking news (like how many african tree frogs are left in brazil’s rainforests)
and incredibly useful tips (like top 10 most delicious foods made completely
from sparsely) not to mention the latest gossip and juicy information from
hollywood (telletubbies are performing live now touring across america!).
Sure, 98% of the AIM Today dialogue is paid advertisements, but at least you
have that 2% of non-ad space called the title bar, that contains the minimize
and X button. Too bad the fullscreen button is blurred out! I wanted to make
this full screen! Wow! Look! It tells you the weather! That’s so cool. It’s
92º outside and partially cloudy. /looks out window/ It’s 86 degrees
and perfectly clear outside. I think this somehow ties in with Netscape’s
pseudo-random number generator to make ‘em look smart. AIM Today, another
completely useless section of the AOL Instant Messenger. Now, to dive into
the everyday use of AIM…

Something you’re all familiar with is AIM Warnings. Now this has to be one
of the STUPIDEST ideas EVER. I want to find the person who thought up this
brilliant idea and stick his tongue in a wall socket an laugh as I turn on
the light switch. The air in his head would expand forming a hot air balloon.
Ok, let’s examine the AIM warning system, shall we?
I’ve provided you with an informative chart (right). This explains exactly
how the AIM warning system works. First of all, A for some reason has a desire
to add to the current warning level of B. For this illustration, A is yourself
while B is your opponent. If A warns be, B’s warning level is increased by
x%. There is an (estimated) 3.2 second delay between the time it takes B to
get the warning to the time B warns A back. A is now warned by x%. A warned
(w) B x%, B warned A x%. Here is the work I did to figure out how this works:

W[Bx^{(x/100)%]*W[Ax}(x/100)%]
W[Bb] > W[Ba] | W[Ab] = W[Aa]

W(Bx) = W(Ax)

warning difference = (Bx/Ax)*0

total outcome = useless

I spent much time formulating the original equation which I used to figure out the ultimate universal purpose of the AIM warning system,
at which point I concluded that warnings are completely useless since if you
warn someone (for whatever reason), you’re instantly warned back for the same
amount. It would, in fact, be just as productive to (in the next version of
aim) include a "warn self" button.

I’m sure everyone knows what that cute little icon is (left). It’s the AIM Online
icon. Want to know the cool thing about it? It runs without you doing a gosh
darn thing! That’s right folks, just login to your computer and BOOM! It’s
there, leeching system resources and claiming valuable task bar space. Since
it changes often, XP’s tray icon hider doesn’t let it get hidden. This little
icon is the cute little home AIM runs to when you click its X button. That’s
right! When you X out of AIM, it goes down here and stays online. Then, at
the most inconvenient moment, (usually while your mom is using the computer)
random spammers who’ve gotten your IM name send you an adult invitation to
some girl’s webcam website. The one "you requested". This little
icon is interesting, because it’s so small - no one really notices it when
it needs to be closed, and no one sees it when they can’t figure out why they
can’t sign themselves online.

But wait a minute, how do spammers get your IM name? Well, lots of them use simple
broad range searching algorithms to IM random peoples’ names. However, if
you’re not on any spam lists, AOL has bundled in a front-end to a service
that’ll store all your personal information and put it in a database spammers
can use to send you annoying and/or adult advertisements! Want to know how
to get your hands on this incredible offer? It’s easier than you think! Open
up the Directory Info section of your member profile! You can fill out all
the information you want to about yourself. Here pictured (right) is someone
who hasn’t filled out her directory info. Shame on you! On another note, I
don’t know why AOL puts this in here. It’s never filled-out by anyone!
However, lots of psychos, pedophiles, and other genres of sickos can use the
convenient searching capabilities to find children, teens, or adults with
criteria that match their search strings! How awesome! Thank you aol!

Ahh, smiles. Everyone loves smiles. Smiles are so cool to put in little IM conversations.
Smiles are awesome ways to put quick and subtle emotion in an IM box without
having to spend time putting it in words. I’d like to give a word of thanks
to whoever thought of this truly groundbreaking idea. is not obsolete!
We can use 32×32px yellow smiles that don’t anti alias and don’t fit well
in normal lines of text causing the line to separate 1/2 a line extra from
the one on top of it! And if that weren’t enough, look at the plethora of
smiles AOL has provided us! and and are used. I don’t think anyone
ever uses any others… in fact, I don’t even know what half of the others
are. One of them has an X over his mouth? Uhh, did someone mess up that picture
or something? What exactly is that supposed to mean. It looks like his mouth
has been stitched up - something I’d like to do to the creator of that icon.
However, I have to say it’s not quite as bad as the ’sassy girl looking icon’.
What the heck is that?! who uses it? what does it mean? is it good? bad? mean
I love you? mean stay away? What the heck is this icon anyway? It seems that
it’s been added just to stir up conflict among it’s users since everyone takes
it’s meaning differently. However this isn’t that bad when compared to my
final face for comparison. May I ask you, what in the world is that
icon of a guy with a freaking footprint on his mouth?!? Yeah, ok,
I’m about to put MY footprint on the guy’s face who thought of that
one.

By the way, has anyone ever noticed, anyone ever used, or anyone ever seen, or
even does anyone anywhere know what the little "sent im greeting"
button does? I think I clicked it once by accident. It was like a postcard
thing. Like an e-card, but through IM. To tell someone "have a good day",
you can click this button, pay a fee, fill out a form, wait for it to process,
and have the message IMed to someone. I don’t know about you, but you’d have
to be a total idiot to not be able to figure out that you can just doubble-click
their screen name and IM them "have a good day" instead. And guess
what, that’s cheaper too!

Now, onto my personal favorite of the incredibly useless features in the newer
versions of the AOL Instant Messenger. The "insert ip address" feature.
That’s right ladies and germs! You can open up any IM window, right-click,
move your cursor over Insert, and select IP Address and Your current
IP address is swiftly written in the IM box, ready to be sent away to spammers,
hackers, stalkers, or anybody you want! It’s incredibly useful when you’re
on a Local Area Network (LAN)! When you insert your IP address, it doesn’t
insert your internet ip address! It inserts your lan’s assigned IP
address. It has no clue how to find your real internet IP address. This feature
was so clever! I’m glad someone finally thought enough to put this feature
in the instant messenger. Now, any time I want to find out what my IP is,
I don’t have to open a shell and type "ipconfig", I can just open
im, enter my name and password, doubble-click on an unsuspecting stranger’s
screen name, right-click, select insert, ip address, and hit enter! I now
my ip address, and so does the total stranger I just sent it to! Wow, I’m
glad! I’m going to start using this feature a lot more, because I’m a total
moron!

Now, to briefly explain how to communicate on AIM. Conversations can be brutal, that’s why you always have to pay attention and answer carefully
to each received message. AIM conversations are intellectually stimulating
and can contain great thought and planning. Take a typical IM conversation:

me: hey
you: hey

me: what’s up?

you: nm

me: cool

you: what’s up?

me: not much

you: cool

(ignore conversation for 2 or 3 hours)

you: g2g, bye

I hope you’ve enjoyed my little review of the AOL Instant messenger! I had fun writing it because I was incredibly bored. And There are hundreds
of other stupidities in this program that I didn’t have time to touch on,
so send in your own! (with a screenshot if possible) and I’ll add it to my
list. Feel free to IM me at the screen name RTS!

—notes—

Yes, that’s my real buddy list, and I only have 7 people on it. If you and I talk a lot, and wonder "why doesn’t he ever IM me?",
that’s why.

So the AIM messenger sucks? What can I do about it?
GAIM - mainly for linux, but they
have a windows version!

KOPETE - linux only, but pretty