so AOL is now being watched for funky book-keeping

[DoPeY5007]

I read that news on my pager, I laughed :bigmouth:

[whitak24]

hahaha!

it would be so awesome if aol went down in flames :D

now why doesn't someone do an investigation into the accounting practices of the RIAA and MPAA?

[DoPeY5007]

Originally posted by whitak24
it would be so awesome if aol went down in flames :D
it would be funny, but where will all those AOLers go :shrug:





:hehehmm:

[whitak24]

Originally posted by DoPeY5007
it would be funny, but where will all those AOLers go :shrug:





:hehehmm:
maybe they'd be forced to find a real isp :hihi:

but another more disturbing thought.....maybe they'd end up on msn, making m$'s monopoly even stronger :eek:

[sho.gun]

they'd all start shivering and soon blow up because they'll think the whole internet is gone and its the end of the world.

[JPR]

Well if they go down in flames so long to my cable modem since its through AOL/Time Warner. :eek:

[joe52985]

we want to keep aol up

think of it this way, the more aol users there are
the more bandwidth us cable people get to keep
aol goes down, they may migrate to cable!!!

[NuTs62]

Originally posted by JPR
Well if they go down in flames so long to my cable modem since its through AOL/Time Warner. :eek:

shh, don't say that in public! you're just settin yourself up for ... eh, u'll see.. :)



and whitak, i was thinkin the same thing.. investigate RIAA and the MPAA! :D

[DoPeY5007]

Originally posted by joe52985
we want to keep aol up

think of it this way, the more aol users there are
the more bandwidth us cable people get to keep
aol goes down, they may migrate to cable!!! that is why ya got to get DSL :hehehmm:

[ZrEo0]

Originally posted by DoPeY5007
that is why ya got to get DSL :hehehmm:

screw DSL and cable! GO T1!!!!:D

[g222leav]

i used to work for best buy, those MSN pumping fairies...i know they're just eating this up...more profits for those monguls too!:angry:

[NuTs62]

Originally posted by ZrEo0


screw DSL and cable! GO T1!!!!:D

:disa: T1? OC3!!! can you say fiberoptics?

[brain]

Originally posted by NuTs62


:disa: T1? OC3!!! can you say fiberoptics?

What would you do w/ an OC3 connection? Download porn 1000 times faster?

[ZrEo0]

Originally posted by brain


What would you do w/ an OC3 connection? Download porn 1000 times faster?
its only as fast as the uploader, so people will download the porn from him 100 faster

[NuTs62]

Originally posted by brain


What would you do w/ an OC3 connection? Download porn 1000 times faster?



Start > Run > command
deltree f:\pr0n
format f: /q /u





porn? what porn?

[johnnymk]

Shares of AOL Time Warner fell 15 percent yesterday, to $9.64, as a gloomy outlook for online advertising sales and concerns about accounting prompted half a dozen Wall Street brokerage firms to downgrade its stock.

As shares of AOL fell from a high of $32.68 in January, analysts continued to recommend them, saying they had become a bargain. But many abandoned their support yesterday after the company disclosed a preliminary inquiry by the Securities and Exchange Commission into its accounting and said advertising sales in its America Online division were weaker than expected.

"The call today was psychologically driven, rather than quantitative," said Richard Greenfield, an analyst at Goldman, Sachs, which removed the stock from its recommended list and rated it as market perform.

"It was based on the belief there were too many issues that had piled up about the AOL division including its growth strategy, its current lack of management and the S.E.C. probe," Mr. Greenfield said. Only three months ago, Mr. Greenfield calculated that AOL Time Warner's shares were worth $27, based on the sum of the value of each of its various divisions.

Some analysts also looked at new information provided by the company Wednesday and saw even more ominous signs for its future online advertising sales.

AOL's shares were also downgraded by Merrill Lynch, Jefferies & Company, Deutsche Bank, Lazard and Salomon Brothers, which also removed the stock from its firm-wide recommended list.

Jessica Reif Cohen, an analyst at Merrill, who had upgraded AOL's shares to a near-term buy on May 15, reversed herself and rated the shares neutral yesterday. She said she had reduced her revenue and earnings estimates for the company because AOL's second-quarter results, released Wednesday, showed lower-than-expected advertising sales and subscriber growth at the America Online division. "Typically stocks don't go up when numbers are coming down," she said.

Ms. Cohen also said the S.E.C. inquiry would depress the stock until it was completed. "With an S.E.C. investigation that we don't know how long it will be or what the outcome will be, it is better for investors to wait on the sideline," she said.

The inquiry was prompted by two Washington Post articles that detailed a series of transactions in 2000, while the merger between America Online and Time Warner was pending, in which AOL used what could be seen as aggressive accounting tactics and misleading disclosures to mask declines in its online advertising revenue. AOL said its accounting firm, Ernst & Young, had looked again at those transactions in response to the articles and said the accounting was proper.

Regardless of whether it accounted for them properly in the past, AOL made some new disclosures yesterday that showed its online ad business might be far worse than previously understood. Until the end of 2000, America Online would boast each quarter about its advertising backlog, or the value of signed contracts to advertise in the future.

AOL had made a specialty of signing multiyear, multimillion-dollar advertising deals, especially with dot-com start-ups hoping to go public. In October 2000, AOL said its backlog was $3 billion. It had not disclosed that number since, despite repeated calls by investors.

On Wednesday, AOL, trying to take a new tone of openness with investors, said its backlog now stood at $1.04 billion. The company also said that $220 million of the $412 million it reported for advertising and commerce revenue at the AOL service last quarter came from that backlog.

In addition, AOL also said that it had $50 million in advertising from other AOL Time Warner divisions in the quarter and $70 million in sales of merchandise, mainly electronics sold in pop-up advertisements.

Tom Wolzien, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, calculated that AOL had sold only $72 million worth of new ads in the quarter, a number that was "far worse than they previously disclosed."

Moreover, AOL said it had sold only $40 million worth of long-term contracts that it added to the backlog.

"If you draw $220 million out of the bank and only put $40 million in, it's not a sustainable business," Mr. Wolzien said. As a result, he said, he slashed his estimate for AOL's online ad sales next year from $2 billion to $1 billion.

The change reduced his estimate of the company's profits by 8 cents a share next year, to 60 cents from 68 cents. Using a method that tries to calculate the value of the company's future cash flow, Mr. Wolzien said AOL's shares are now worth $13 rather than more than $25, as he calculated this spring.

Why would reducing revenue by $1 billion in a company expected to post revenue of $43 billion next year slash its value nearly in half? Because, said Mr. Wolzien, online advertising has such a high margin and was seen to be the engine of growth.

The rest of AOL Time Warner's businesses are generally in good shape but they are growing much more slowly than AOL's online division was thought to be growing. (AOL's online group is now actually shrinking in sales and profits.)

In a conference call to discuss the second-quarter results with analysts yesterday, Richard D. Parsons, the chief executive of AOL Time Warner, said the company considered its stock significantly undervalued at its current price, but added that no matter how good the investment the company could not afford to buy back any of its own shares right now.

He also sent an e-mail message to employees yesterday, people at the company said, trying to reassure employees and promising to fix the problems at America Online quickly.

And indeed, not all analysts saw the disclosures Wednesday as a cause to back off the stock. Christopher Dixon at UBS Warburg reiterated his strong buy on the stock yesterday.

"This is a company that has a strong balance sheet, a portfolio of businesses that are No. 1 or No. 2 in their fields and high levels of free cash flow," Mr. Dixon said. "No company can fire on all eight cylinders at once. Here they are firing on seven of eight."

As for the accounting questions, Mr. Dixon said that there were no surprises.

"We knew since the early days of AOL that these folks were going to be aggressive in booking revenue," he said. "But any company as large and complicated as AOL has accounting skeletons in its closet."

[DoPeY5007]

:hmm: AOL is just fishy

[Sir_Froggy]

Originally posted by whitak24

maybe they'd be forced to find a real isp :hihi:




hahahhahahahahahahaha :laugh:

[NuTs62]

hmm.. i'm wondering if they're gonna just continue pointing fingers at each and every corporation out there.. eh.. then that'd be the end of corporate america.. everyone will get out of the stock market, lose jobs, etc..

[ribitch]

i knew something like this eventually would happen.

mpaa and riaa are great places to start, but lets seew some M$ action!!!