From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Feb 12 15:44:41 1999 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id PAA23743 for freebsd-questions-outgoing; Fri, 12 Feb 1999 15:44:41 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from out0.mx.skynet.be (out0.mx.skynet.be [195.238.2.35]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id PAA23734 for ; Fri, 12 Feb 1999 15:44:37 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from brad@mail.his.com) Received: from [194.78.31.228] ([194.78.31.228]) by out0.mx.skynet.be (8.9.1/jovi-relay-2.0b1) with SMTP id AAA03183; Sat, 13 Feb 1999 00:44:18 +0100 (MET) In-Reply-To: <027601be56c6$014eb000$236319ac@w142844.carlson.com> X-Mailer: CTM PowerMail 2.4b2 x-sender: brad@mail.his.com Date: Fri, 12 Feb 1999 23:34:58 +0100 To: "Thomas T. Veldhouse" , jerryr@ComCAT.COM, TFK2000@aol.com CC: FreeBSD-Questions From: Brad Knowles Subject: Re: Blocked Message-Id: <19990212233458.021733@relay.skynet.be> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by hub.freebsd.org id PAA23737 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Fri, Feb 12, 1999, Thomas T. Veldhouse wrote: >I find that hard to believe. I would think they would get sued if that was >the case. Besides, it would be a horrible nightmare for AOL to try to >maintain a list of ISP's and then set up such a filter. If they are doing >something so malicious, I would be really surprised. What is the evidence >of such an accusation. > >I would be careful saying such things in public about a big company like >AOL. Having worked there, I think I can safely speak my mind. Suffice it to say that many of their tech support staff are totally bloody clueless, a fact I know quite well because my fiancée has kept her AOL account, and when there have been problems I've tried to convince the dufuses on the other end that I *do* actually know something about what I'm talking about, and I might as well be talking to a brick wall. I am quite familiar with the squid-based web caching system they used to have, but now that they're using Inktomi Traffic Server, I'm not exactly sure how they do things. I *do* know that they used to keep a list of sites that they would not cache, usually as a strong discouragement for AOL customers to go visit that site (and because of the size of the AOL cache, this usually gave the maintainers of that site *strong* encouragement to stop doing whatever it was that AOL didn't like, because otherwise they got *buried* with too many non-cached web requests from them. I'm sure they've got something similar with Inktomi, and probably also have a system-wide list of flat-out banned sites. I also know that they have NetNanny (or some other blocking software) that is installed by default, although I believe that you can turn it off. However, if you're having problems accessing a particular web site, I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that it's simply a matter of AOL's system being screwed up yet once again, and since they rotate which cache server you're attached to every five minutes, just wait a little while and try again. >PS I am no fan of AOL. Most of the technical people (and especially the system administrators) who work there are pretty cool. I've got several friends who continue to work there. I just had a real problem with the management and the way that they did certain business deals, and I never could abide a company that has six thousand employees, of which five thousand are just there to answer the telephone when a user has a problem. -- Brad Knowles If you wouldn't take out a one-page ad in the Wall Street Journal to say something, then don't say it by email. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message