So why am I being victimised, because I use aol ?

[Dezyboy]

So why am I being victimised, because I use aol ?

Aol = annonymous ....... your joking ..... right ?

 

[minendo]

What is your exact problem? All AOL IPs were banned from the forums because of problems the AnandTech moderators had with spamming/neffing. From what I've read AOL would not help out with the situation so they decided to ban the entire AOL IP range. No great loss there though.

 

[Dezyboy]

I hope the "no real loss there" was not aimed at me.

The problem is, I use aol unlimited and have to use a pay per minute if I want to use these forums. Just seems a little silly especialy as i can sign up to any old isp with any bogus details I like, then sign up for the forums but, I cant use a legitemate account, that I have to supply a credit card for in order to join.
This sounds a bit odd to me.

I just spent ages getting pengy working so that I could use my aol account with linux and I dont want to have to change isp's.

 

[Lord Evermore]

The point is that if you sign up with another ISP, and come here and screw around, the moderators can contact that ISP and get your account shut down or at least a warning issued. AOL won't do that, so they don't let people log in from AOL. The ease with which someone can create an account with AOL and connect and reconnect with different IPs means there was a period where a lot of abuse was happening, and AOL wouldn't do anything about it. At least with other ISPs, if they're contacted, you may need to make a big effort to continue abusing, since you've got to go sign up with another ISP.

Unfortunately, the good are punished with the bad sometimes.

As for the no great loss comment, the fact is that most people on AOL are not tech-savvy and therefore less likely to be using these forums, so it's not as much of an issue to block AOL as it might be to block another ISP completely. But then, there's no reason to block other ISPs.

 

[olds]

Originally posted by: Dezyboy
...that I have to supply a credit card for in order to join.
This sounds a bit odd to me.
I just spent ages getting pengy working so that I could use my aol account with linux and I dont want to have to change isp's.

You don't need a credit card to join here if that's what you are saying. Unless you do change ISP's you won't be posting here from AOL.

 

[Dezyboy]

I see that the problem is not with Anandtech and is with aol, so I have written to aol complaining about them not doing anything about rouge members on forums when the forum management makes a complaint to them, and complained bitterly about what can, and has resulted from this.


I'm probably going over old ground and for no point, but ..

aol 8.0 (still beta testing in the UK) has very good ping times with ISDN better than aol6 (not going to talk about aol7 )
for £2 more a month I get the only UK isp that i know of that does not cut you off after 2 hours
they dont ban you for over use on an unlimited package !!

So to me it has nothing to do with being tech savvy and more to do with a good deal.
You can also say most people on any isp are not tech savvy.


This is the point where people normally say "yeah but it takes over your pc and messes with your settings" even though it takes about 2 minutes to put everything back to normal.


What I'm trying to say is that I can understand that it's aol's fault, but I fail to see why aol members seem to be being labled as "thick !?"

 

[Dezyboy]

Originally posted by: oldsmoboat

Originally posted by: Dezyboy
...that I have to supply a credit card for in order to join.
This sounds a bit odd to me.
I just spent ages getting pengy working so that I could use my aol account with linux and I dont want to have to change isp's.

You don't need a credit card to join here if that's what you are saying. Unless you do change ISP's you won't be posting here from AOL.

Sorry I didn't know that, you cant join without paying over in the UK

There are ways round posting from aol, but I wont go into that, or do it as it requires breaking the law.

 

[olds]

Also, I don't believe "victimised" is the word your are looking for. It's more like "ostracized".

 

[Dezyboy]

Originally posted by: oldsmoboat
Also, I don't believe "victimised" is the word your are looking for. It's more like "ostracized".

ROTFLMAO

now that was so sharp, you may have cut yourself

 

[Lord Evermore]

What laws does it break to access the site from someplace else while logged onto AOL? I could easily use a remote desktop program to access the site from another machine on another ISP, and there'd be nothing wrong with that. There are probably ways to do it illegally, but why bother just to chat on a forum?

AOL in the UK may take a credit card to sign up. AOL in the US did until recently. Oldsmoboat meant that the forums doesn't require a credit card to join.

Good job complaining to AOL, though I doubt you'll get much of a response. It's rare to see someone act logically like that.

AOL doesn't "take over" the PC as much as it installs garbage that isn't needed, primarily networking components. If you remove them, they just get reinstalled the next time you run AOL. AOL7 had the audacity to make Internet Explorer's title bar read "Internet Explorer brought to you by AOL" or whatever the string is for branding IE, not within AOL itself, but when IE was run separately. Easily fixed, but possibly also restored the next time you used AOL, I didn't use it very many times before I wiped the system.

AOL 8.0 actually looks very nice now, I installed it a few days ago to play with my account. Normally I don't use it since I access it through another ISP and only for email (and I'm getting rid of it this month). But I still think that AOL has a higher percentage of non-techy people than other ISPs, simply due to the "easy to use" aspect. You don't have to DO anything with AOL. No configuring of any email addresses and passwords, no setting up phone numbers other than a click on the screen. Other ISPs provide similar tools now with new accounts, but still not as easy, and certainly not as pretty. AOL also just has a larger number of non-techy people due to sheer volume of users. Most people who dislike AOLers are willing to lose those technical people just to avoid the gimps.

 

[Dezyboy]

Originally posted by: Lord Evermore just to avoid thegimps .

:Q
Enough said !

I see where your coming from, maybe it's different in the US. Either way this thread is dying

 

[acidvoodoo]

i'd suggest getting blueyonder dial up. It's 12 pounds a month, will be a sh!tload faster then aol, and doen't install all there crap, and there is none of this 2 hour cut off time you talk of. Before i got blueyonder broadband, i used their dial up service and aon many occasions left it running overnight and it didn't disconnect


www.blueyonder.co.uk


oh it's 12 pound a month and no phone costs

 

[Dezyboy]

Thanks for the headsup acidvoodoo, I will wander over and have a look.


[EDIT] Grrrrr I'm not in the telwest area, anyway I live in the sticks so broadband is not an option ! [/EDIT]

 

[IamG]

I think these guys are way too strict (or just taking the lazy approach) on banning domains/email services, etc.

I'm a legit Hotmail user for years and they would not let me join for that. I ended up giving them my bosses email.

 

[Aves]

Originally posted by: IamG
I think these guys are way too strict (or just taking the lazy approach) on banning domains/email services, etc.

I'm a legit Hotmail user for years and they would not let me join for that. I ended up giving them my bosses email.

It's not laziness, AOL left no choice it seems.

As far as Hotmail goes, it makes sense that they don't except Hotmail, Yahoo, etc. It makes it way to easy for trolls, spammers, etc.

One other thing, AT assigns a random password that is emailed to you when you join so did you read your bosses email to get it?

 

[IamG]

aves2k

Please stop making accusations for things you know nothing about!

Normally I'd just say none of your biz, but no, I did ask for pasword. Hacking the bosses passwords will get ya the boot.

 

[Aves]

Originally posted by: IamG
aves2k

Please stop making accusations for things you know nothing about!

Normally I'd just say none of your biz, but no, I did ask for pasword. Hacking the bosses passwords will get ya the boot.

Questions are not accusations.

 

[iwearnosox]

Paid subscribers should be allowed from any domain they choose, imho. It's not like they're anonymous anymore.

JMHO.

 

[olds]

Originally posted by: iwearnosox
Paid subscribers should be allowed from any domain they choose, imho. It's not like they're anonymous anymore.

JMHO.

That makes sense. I wonder how hard it would be to separate the IPs as far as anonymous and subscriber?

 

[minendo]

Originally posted by: iwearnosox
Paid subscribers should be allowed from any domain they choose, imho. It's not like they're anonymous anymore.

JMHO.

This would be nice, but the problem would arise that if the paid subscriber had to use a banned ISP. Say for instance a subscriber was using AOL, but since all AOL IPs are banned he/she cannot post. The user would have to contact the mods in some way to have the specific IP unbanned so that he may gain access. Was that happens a few times certain AOL IPs will remain unbanned and allow for other AOL members to join AT. Personally, I think it would be a hassle, but I am not sure exactly how the banned IPs are set up here at AT.

 

[Lord Evermore]

They ban entire blocks, like 55.55.0.0 through 55.55.255.255. It'd be quite difficult, if not impossible, to come up with a way to allow someone to use the forums from a banned IP, since I assume you can't even get to the login screen if you're on a banned service. If they modify it (or if it already does it) so that you can at least log in from a banned ISP, and just get denied if you're not a subscriber, then it may not be difficult to suspend the ban on your specific IP until you log out, or just "bypass" the banning filters somehow.

Having them manually unban an IP is not feasible, since AOL assigns IPs dynamically, and they're not going to commit resources to unbanning a user every time he wants to log in.

And of course, how many subscribers actually need to do this, or how many extra subscribers would it result in? Will it reach a "return on investment" point for the time to make it work?

 

[Harvey]

I don't know if AOL has the same program in the U.K., but here, they have a Bring Your Own ISP deal where, if you have your own ISP, you can have an AOL account for around $10 (U.S.) per month. If you got another unlimited ISP, you could take the time to get your setup right and, once you learn what a POS AOL is, it would give you time to notify your friends about your change of address while you made a gradual transfer.

Good luck.

 

[iwearnosox]

unbanning should be easy- subscribers use "subscriber.anandtech.com." You can remove all IP filters, since it's password protected for members anyhow.

 

[minendo]

Originally posted by: iwearnosox
unbanning should be easy- subscribers use "subscriber.anandtech.com." Allow all IPs to address that machine block, since it's password filtered for members anyhow.

Don't think it works that way, but Zuni/mods correct me if I am wrong. Forums and Subscriber are both tied into the same database.

 

[iwearnosox]

What's the database got to do with the price of tea in China?

It shouldn't be hard to do. If subscriber="yes" then don't check IP block. Could be done at the router, machine or DB level.