Slashdot Mirror
AOL Blocks Links from LiveJournal
Martin continues:
"We've tried to contact AOL three different ways, all without success. We've also told our users to contact their tech support. At one point, an AOL
staffer pointed
out that FTP access still worked (which is probably because FTP has no
"Referrer" concept), and so, as an interim fix, we're rewriting all HTTP URLs
to use FTP on the AOL properties where that works instead. This means that
users can again host their images on the AOL webspace they're paying for, but
more importantly, it means they can simply link to their webpage.
We wouldn't be so upset if they were simply blocking images. Bandwidth use
is a valid concern, after all, and we even provide step-by-step
instructions for people to configure their webservers to prevent image
"theft". However, because they're blocking all access, including regular
links, this looks like it's either a mistake, or something more insidious (the
conspiracy theorists have pointed out that AOL has just launched their own
competing weblog product, also based on "journals").
Although CI Host
sued AOL recently for being blocked, we really don't want to do that. We
still suspect that this was all just a mistake, and hopefully, by making this
public, we'll manage to get their attention, since all our previous attempts
have failed."
Enable referrer logging
It's optional, so browsers don't need to send it. Mozilla/Firebird/etc (and Opera) can be easily modified to not send one, and the Google Toolbar could probably support blocking them, too (since IE isn't being updated). AOL is a big enough presence that this could have a significant impact on peoples' browsing.
Hopefully this is a temporary block giving them enough time to increase their bandwidth to the correct systems. And right now they are blocking everything so they can come up with a game plan.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
All I can say is begin the complaint process with AOL. Get a someone who'll file the proper paperwork and maybe file a lawsuit to get things put back the way they're supposed to be unless it's a genuine mistake on AOL.
:)
Also put up a message on your support lines with Steve Case's phone # to call him for support
Anything that discourages "blogging" can't be all bad.
Actually, you may want to investigate whether or not AOL has gone live with their blog offering ( article here). If so, it may be viewed as an intentional act.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
Could you get around this using tinyurl? I'm not sure if it changes the HTTP_REFERRER or not.
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
whats new about this?
cheapasses using $7 web hosting, offlinking all their images to their (web host) that doesn't charge for bandwidth. Great idea, until you start pushing hundreds of gigs per month.
Some people take for granted that bandwidth is not free and unlimited, and alot of isp's have gone to stupidly low bandwidth or link clicking per day/month (geocities, earthlink,bellsouth.net). Count yourself lucky if your isp lets you skate 100 gigs a month of bandwidth a month, it won't last long..
do you think it might be because they're launching a blogger service of their own and want people to switch...hm?
[evil]i helped build the tripod.com blog service, and man we never thought of anything this insidious. i'll have to tell my friends who still work there. they could send 'em to a sign-up page. [/evil]
This is a really level-headed, well played move on LJ's part - primarily because they're following the universal principle of assuming stupidity before malice. ;)
The Free desktop that Just Works
Following the second link in the text, I ended up at this image.
Yet another reason not to like AOL users. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go wash out my eyes with nitric acid.
In the future, all spacecraft will be made of cheese.
I'll second that. visit my livejournal at...
This will kill of refferal header field of http requests usage.
thanx AOL for ruining the internet!
now everyone that can deep-link using other fields will merely have their browsers offer none, or spoofed.
Then aol will counter with validated anti-deep link and then no one will care about aol anymore.
i stopped caring in 1991 about aol.
Any else noticed that members.aol.com is sending an invalid content-type header?
I've seen iso8859 and text/iso8859-html, neither of which Firebird likes...
TODO: Something witty here...
It wouldn't help people with embedded links to images at AOL, but at least it could get people to AOL without any additional clicking.
Well not the whole AOL network, but the former mozilla division blocked links from slashdot (and still does), (Example). Any sites that cause major bandwidth use should be blocked, I'm sure some frequest slashdotters get the infamous Pink page of death.
Don't use an ISP that is "broken". AOL has little to recommend it.
I use Adelphia PowerLink at home. On the road, I have a dial up account with a local ISP with dial up numbers in the cities I frequently have to visit.
Corporatism != Free Market
...that people bend over backwards to accomodate companies with draconian policies like AOL? If I were running an ISP, the loss of a few customers because they suddenly discovered they could no longer send e-mail to AOL customers through no fault of my own would most likely be offset by new customers who understand that the earth does not revolve around AOL. So they're blocking incoming HTTP traffic based on referrer? Are there not more pressing problems to attend to rather than trying to please the AOL gods?
I'm not saying AOL is in the right. I'm simply saying that AOL (and companies like them) should be made to lie in the bed they make for themselves. Only when AOL customers start to be inconvenienced by AOL's own policies (rather than third parties patching together "workarounds" in a misguided attempt to protect the integrity of AOL) will they realize what AOL is up to...
"And now we have a request from an AOL user that suddenly they stopped getting LJ emails. They say AOL did just add some new spam filters, so that may relate.
It almost makes you think that they don't like us..."
AOLers are only getting sanitized Internet to the company's liking... Those who are not happy should switch.
have you been defaced today?
Anytime there's an article that whines about deep linking, a few dozen people post replies saying that the company could use the referer header to block all such requests. Now that a company is actually doing it, it's suddenly a bad idea. Which is it -- good technical solution or bad censorship?
I should also point out that some sites automatically block slashdot.org referers as a matter of self protection.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Many times in a large organization changes are made where the impact across the enterprise isn't realized either through poor planning or lack of full testing. Sometimes you just miss something.
... try cooperation and information sharing rather than decalring war.
I do like their approach of hitting up the Slashdot crowd looking for more information and passing on what they have.
More companies should do like you said
Unfortunately, this trick really only works with MSIE. But it's better than nothing.The above should all be on one line. Check for extra white space where the line feed got placed by Slashdot's bug (thanks alot).
It should be strip_referrer.js with no space. Why does Slashdot do that??
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
...on usage of the customer webspace? Does it have to be a full site, or can it be a storage place for images/files linked to from another site? Consumers are paying for the AOL service, and getting AOL webspace as part of the deal - are there limitations on its utilization?
"The Tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of Patriots and Tyrants." --Thomas Jefferson
Who has ever labored under the assumption that the AOL was the internet? That they were really ever really connect to the internet completely or complaintly? If you are and do you need medical treatment.
As you can see I don't care about my karma.
Make your web links to AOL actually point to another domain whose sole purpose in life is to then redirect to the appropriate AOL link. Create a new domain periodically to keep them on their toes. It's also probably possible to craft a middleman referrer page like this that avoids even sending a referer header (or perhaps sends a faked one).
So, what I think the submitter is trying to say, is that AOL is blocking all HTTP accesses with livejournal.com as the referrer. At least, I think that's what he means. I could be way off base here, considering the ambiguous language!
...
maybe its for the better. protecting the world of the likes of aolers. let them have their lil gay [as in happy] dumb internet of their own. i hope after this turn of events the 2 not-so-brain-dead aolers will finally change their provider.
Stop Computers/Cars Analogies on S
I, for one, like the referer heading. It is useful to see where traffic is coming from and it really stinks that AOL is going to encourage people to mess with it, remove it, or spoof it. This will be the ONLY result of AOL's action. They may get a short break from livejournal links but people will work around it. The internet is about linking after all. If AOL want's to invent their own thing with their own rules they should make their own little private net like they used to have and they can remain one tight, happy, cloistered little clique. Of course if the referer header becomes useless maybe it would be a good opportunity to fix one of the most influential spelling errors in recent time and start using the refeRRer header instead.
Pretty soon AOL will have blocked all of it's lusers from the entire web.
We may need an anonymizer for everyone on the net.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
That should AOL continue to block deep-linking (which they have the right to do so assuming that there is no contradictory clause in a user's contract) they should at least redirect users to a page explaining what is actually going on rather than leaving them to complain to LJ support.
to use sledgehammer tactics when it comes to something they don't like..
Stupid, stupid, stupid..
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
Webwasher (personal use available for free) can be easily configured to block referrer information.
vi /etc/mail/access
aol.com 571 Due to AOL's poor standing as a net.citizen, mail to this host denied.
If anyone who has an AOL Account and wants to contact me, there is always a postage stamp or the phone.
You could also go with:
aol.com ERROR AOL has config error, call AOL support for fix.
> Why does Slashdot do that??
Without whitespace once in a while, line wrapping does not work. Therefore Slashdot forces a whitespace every N characters. One can argue if this is a good thing to do, or not. But it certainly is not a bug.
A lot of websites let you bounce to other sites. Here are some demonstations
Debian link to aol.com
Yahoo link to aol.com
Google link to aol.com
Goatse link (yes, its true, goatse is useful!) to aol.com
Hopefully, unless AOL wants to block the internet off, people will get around, and we can always set up p2p based redirection system (ala freenet). To get trough.
..that insist on using this lame service from hell ...
"It's not the internet - It's AOL"
Here's another reason why thats too true.
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
When AOL needed help setting up their blogging software, who did they talk to? People like Dave Winer and other members of the net community.
So shouldn't there be some sort of Karma here where we, the blogging community, ostracize a bad player. They do it to spammers all the time, why not to the big guys. They'll eventually realize that it's not profitable to do so, and conform.
We could choose to disallow AOL urls into weblogs. We could prevent anybody with an AOL account having an RSS feed to a Blogger or LiveJournal. We could ban them from our conferences. Sounds like we're being assholes or "closed" by doing so, but I think it's important for people to check the bully to in the long-term enable the most openess possible.
Philosophistry
Then just redirect AOL refererrers from your site to a page about their blocking of LiveJournal, or a 404 not found *on aol.com*
AOL sucks. Boycott them.
--Slashdot: News for Turds. Stuff that Splatters.
several free sites do this incluing geocities crap..
just another sign AOL is going down for the count
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Have Goatse.cx block the links from Slashdot/.
My more centrist side says...
My cynical side says...
Hey look! It's Triangle Man!
Unfortunately, killing the referer header breaks alot of sites which are blocking image pointing. We (KeenSpace) just put in header checking. We do it so that if a request for an image isn't from a webpage we host (eazy stuff to do), it's 404'ed.
We cut our bandwith by 50% that way.
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
...welcome our new AOL overlords.
I'm getting a ritual circumcision as required by AOL CEO Levin as we speakKKKKALRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.
This is only partly related to the topic at hand, but it is something that I've been wanting to see for a long time so I figured I'd post it in case anyone is either a) inspired to implement it or b) knows where I can find it already implementated.
Lots of "privacy software" will strip out the referrer field on outgoing http requests. But, for websites that relie (rely? which is it...) on the referrer field to prevent "bandwidth theft" and whatnot, this complete deforestation of referrer is unpleasent for the user.
I'd like to see a proxy, or whatever, that instead of stripping the referrer takes a look at the requested URL and uses a derivative of that for the referrer. I'm not sure if just duping the entire requested URL or striping some or all of the path component off the end would be best. Maybe an option to go either way.
(1) Break your user's websites.
(2) ???
(3) Profit!
AOL invented blanket blocking. I'm blocked from their SMTP server, and I've heard several different justifications for it.
I suspect that they are like SCO, in that no one with any self respect or knowledge will work for them. The first time I complained about being blocked, they replied that no one there knew how to allow a server on a "dynamic" subnet. (Dynamic my shiny metal ass.) Later, I heard that no one knew how to allow one ip address while blocking the rest of the subnet. As a result, I'm being accused of the half a billion pieces of spam my ISP's other customers send to AOL.
Let's hope that broadband finally kills those bastards off. I hope their stock falls so much in value that they start using outstanding shares as toilet paper. (I'd pay to use it as toilet paper, but they want a lot more than it's worth...)
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
I just blocked all AOL users from accessing my website. I am considering blocking incoming mail from AOL users, but I have to talk it over with my users first. If AOL will block internet hosts willy-nilly (they blocked me because I'm on a dynamic connection), then I might as well block them too.
Images hosted on Netscape and on FTP servers are now being blocked as well.
This block seems more intermittent, but it makes you wonder, since Netscape is owned by AOHELL...
Stupidity like this won't affect me at all. I use the Proxomitron, and I have the referrer field set to \u (which I think is the default setting). \u inserts the current URL into the referrer field. So, for example, if I hit a link on www.slashdot.org/foo.htm to www.aol.com/foo.htm, the Proxomitron will send www.aol.com/foo.htm and not www.slashdot.org/foo.htm to the server. This is especially helpful for sites that return 404's to requests with blank referrers (since the server always thinks the request is coming from its domain when in reality it may not be.)
Reprise the theme song and roll the credits!
But remember, that the browser your complaining about was written by AOL corporation. Using Mozilla? Mozillabird? Galeon? Epiphany? Lindows internet suite? K-meleon? Then you are supporting AOL. the mozilla foundation is nothing but a puppet for AOL to abuse you with.
Better use Konqueror, the truely opensource browser, as used By Apple Computers in their award winning Safari(r) browser.
Am I the only one here that remembers AOL from back in the day? I'm talking 1994 here. Had it for a month, then they cancelled my account behind my back with no prior warning because i downloaded too much stuff. Back then, all they had was email. Now AOL is getting all restrictive again. This doesn't surprize me too much, but it'd be nice if they would keep the 'net a friendly place. I guess the current neophytes have prevented such action.
If you have paid for the space, and they put a block on, sue them..
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
I believe sites that have been slashdotted in the past have done this same thing to prevent their server from getting flooded. I think it's AOL's right to do this, they don't want livejournal linking to them. The polite thing to do would be to say why in the error page though, not just give a 404.
On a technical note, you can set up a page with a META Refresh which will clear the referrer (a HTTP server transfer will keep the original referrer intact though)
How about that msn.com? ;)
30% off web hosting. Coupon code "SLASHDOT".
I've had the same trouble with livejournal. First I tried changing all the images that were being linked to to bright pink happy faces. That cut down on a few people. Finally I just removed all the images being linked to by livejournal.
Isn't an ISP a private company? I mean, don't they have the right to choose not to add all services?
E.g. in this case, its pretty specific, but as a private business, can't they choose to omit a certain part of the web -- leaving the users to choose to go elsewhere should they want that part?
If so, then I'm convinced that AOL is out to stamp out non AOLer blogs. Jerkfaces.
PLease help.
Will code a sig generator for food
I guess I don't have to worry about moderating ever again...
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
Problem: AOL is blocking clickthrus from your site. The browser sends the "referer" along with the request and that is being used to block.
Solution 1: Create a server-side script that sends the requests to AOL in proxy. In other words, your server acts as a browser and simply forwards the info through to your end users. You may have to do some creative link rewriting, but in all pretty easy.
Solution 2: Figure out what your IP address is for the site and stick a simple redirect script there. Then, if a user make a link to AOL, send the user to that link and stick the URL in the querystring. Have that script redirect. This will make the referer look to be the IP, and not the domain.
Just some techical options and I'm sure there are more. If your site is PHP or ASP, let me know and I'll whip up a script.
Hey, soon AOL will be blocking every site because it links to their services! It'll be great...
Kamran A
if Slashdot were one entity with one opinion but it's not - Slashdot is a wide variety of differing viewpoints from individuals
Funniest. Post. Ever.
Mods on crack.
If AOL is having a problem with people chewing up a huge amount of bandwidth using AOL as an imageserver for LiveServer, blocking all file types would be necessary unless AOL wants to screw with the content. The reason? IE doesn't care what you call an image - it can be "hotpr0n.html" and IE is "smart" enough to figure out it's a jpeg and display it. Plus, the pr0nmongers could always make AOL hosted iframes for their images, so even if AOL could spare the computing power to analyse every document it serves (to see if it's really an image) it wouldn't help. I've dealt with pr0nmongers before - they're very clever monkeys. And if it's wares or mp3s, that's even worse - you can fix the pr0nmongers with a simple apache mod to add a space to the beginning of every non-jpeg/gif/pdf/etc document so that mislabeled images will not display in a standard browser, but people hosting/collecting mp3s and wares will adapt. Anyone familiar with the "Iria" user-agent? If not, you don't know what AOL is dealing with...
Super point, BTW
The http://tjek.nu/ shortener gives an option to use javascript redirection (document.location.replace / document.location.href) to redirect ;)
In that case the referer will be tjek.nu (haven't checked but I'm fairly certain) 8-)
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
First we saw the post regarding AOL completely filtering certain domains as spammers. Whether all the individuals of those domains spam or not. I found myself on the receiving end of that when AOL users bid on my ebay auction. My email was not getting through to a few of those bidders. Now they completely block access to a web site. Is this AOL going back to their closed selves? i.e. No access beyond the realm of AOL itself? That is the way they started. They may as well end themselves that way.
but so what? its fucking aol after all. Does anyone really care if that huge child porn and overwhelming
pop up add peddler blocks anything? Its not like you need anything useful from that worthless domain.
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
...called Proxomitron. Free. The thing's a miracle. Only available on win32, though. :(
I think most of the people who understand what a referrer header is have left AOL long ago.
i hope that livejournal dies and never comes back ..
so i am spared links to inane musings by idiots
i have slashdot for that
In the context of: you can do anything with your machines/site you want to, AOL has the right to block whomever they want.
In the context of: "They're a seriously dominant player, they just started into the blogging business and now they're messing with links from a large blogging site", this smacks of anti-competetive business practices and just begs for a lawsuit and/or DOJ investigation.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
Don't just block them, redirect the AOL users to a page that explains the action. AOL is generally so slow and unreliable that users would have no idea that you are blocking access unless you tell them.
I believe what is needed is a new type of http request header that distinguishes whether the request was the result of an embedded referral (IMG, APPLET, IFRAME, whatever) and the kind of referrer that helps the web grow, links. This would allow people to prevent embedded content from being pulled from external sites and continue to allow people to link.
check http://firehose.net/
(not a link for a reason...)
All you have to do is target the link into a new window () and the referrer header doesn't get passed. Still a pain, but this could be a temporary solution.
From the bottom of my non trolling heart!
The 404 error code means "object not found." If the object is found, but the server doesn't want to send it, THAT IS A FUCKING 403 FORBIDDEN. Fuck.
I don't have a problem with <obligatoryDerisiveness> AOhelL </obligatoryDerisiveness> preventing people from leeching images from their site, but there's a simple way to get around their prevention of direct links to their site: redirect using a META tag, which strips the referer header and makes it look like a direct request.
..... in the header of myPage2.html, include this meta tag:
For example:
If you want to link from livejournal.com/myPage1.html to members.aol.com/~myOtherPage.html, then make the link go to livejournal.com/myPage2.html
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=http://members.aol.com/~myOtherPage.html">
It works accross all browsers and appears to AOL as if somebody just typed that URL directly into the address bar of their browser.
Use a "free" redirection service:
http://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.aol.com
"Michael" is an aol user who has been inconvenienced by aol policy and is hoping to get the Slashdot community up-in-arms to help him. No Dice! Blackhole this troublemaker!
I prefer ignorant geniuses, so I read K5 instead!
While AOL offers a package that gives "complete internet access", they forget to mention that if you post files online (and you are still online, thus, you should have COMPLETE access, which in my mind goes both ways. After all, FTP will connect back to you), they only go half way.
Come on. False advertising! They give you a proxied connection to the Internet. You don't have a public IP that somebody can call your BF1942 server from. Full access means you have a public IP address, people can go bi-directional.
Why call it complete when it's nothing more than proxied?!?
I once had to visit an AOL office up in the San Mateo hills in the Bay Area. They gave us an address, which we followed. It led to one office building that had an AOL logo as part of a common office space. But, we couldn't find the suite. So, we went to the "information desk", and asked the guy. "They are across the street at Suite XXXX". Come on! So we go across the street. Their offices look loked you were joining the Borg. Leather chairs that were 6" off the ground, all Halogen track lighting. Very secretive. Just plain wierd.
AOL is probably just afraid that Jamie Zawinski will blog something about them when he used to work there and link to something on their servers!
I'll probably get some negative karma for this one but...
Why don't those live journal users learn some simple HTML and get some free space. Yahoo's (geocities) service is somewhat decent. It's not like HTML is hard to learn. Geeze. I learned it in an hour.
Hell, places like Yahoo even have a page builder for you *shudders*, though I really don't like them. If you build your own place for a journal, it's more customizable. Live Journal users aren't really going to need to post anything else besides some images and htm(l) files, which is about all you can do with yahoo's free service. So what, they'd have to spend some extra time writing in the code, but what they can do with the code will beat what they can do with livejournal.
OK, everyone knows AOL is not the best ISP, but how about someone offering up a list of ISP's that allow you to connect with a local phone call from about anywhere in the US (sorry non-US people), and allow you to have multiple email ID's. Oh yes, and supports high speed modems. I'm sure they're out there. Suggestions guys ?
If you read the story with a little more care, you'll understand that this is about "bandwidth theft", which is kind of a confusing term. In plain language, AOL doesn't want its users making their site a free image repository. They've just gone about it in a clumsy way that locks out web surfers that they do want.
I'm with you, man! I've never seen a LiveJournal that wasn't just a bunch of egocentric attention whoring. And if I could find the person who coined the word "blog," I'd carve it into their forehead with a hunting knife.
Just head over to here and get the extension. There is even a "Ref=URL" checkbox to make your browser always use the current URL as the referer string so unless websites start blocking themselves, no problem. The good news is that it was just updated to be Firebird compatible as well.
Actually, hehe, I don't really know much about .htaccess files. If you could give me a few lines to put in my .htaccess file that would use mod_rewrite (or something) to send them to, say, aol.html, then that would be great. I would create a page explaining the actions of AOL.
My, undereducated guess is that AOL's done this because they have their own homogenated, cuticized, totally non-open-slammed-shut, AOL blogs. Yes, folks! According to their information:
"Everyone has a story to tell; what's yours? Create an AOL Journal about your summer vacation, being pregnant or trying to find a new job. AOL makes it easy, fast and fun!"
"Get Started Today
Create a Journal
Build your own blog
with our cool tools. "
It's all right there. I didn't have the heart to actually check out the blogs.
What do we need with an open-source, customizable system like LJ's, complete with lively, growing user communities? Who needs software that might foster an actual original thought? Interacting with strangers is so...icky! We can pay lots of money instead to record our sanitized inmost feelings on the AOL version.
They're probably staying awake nights figuring out how to block links from independent systems like Moveable Type. Could Slashdot be far behind?
Anne
DUCT TAPE: The Election Supervisors' Secret Weapon
Actually, Opera (7.20 B7 Linux) is blocked opening with Shift-click, Shift-Ctrl-click, and just regular click.
Incidentally, the link should be to Opera Software.
michael
The online journal shoud sue... because that harbor the same as defecation of their web presence.
A state can issue censorship based on it's state law (not that i aggre, but it's life)... A company has no such rights... specially in the US... (IMHO)...
It should provide a nice list of ISPs, if AOL doesn't block you from it ;)
all major browsers will have a function that enables the user to build a list of sites and a fake refer for each of them?
Who plays dirty should be fought in the same way.
Have fun.
From: http://www.livejournal.com/community/lj_biz/195987 .html
Subject: AOL blocking LiveJournal.com, try two
From: Evan Martin
To: postmaster@aol.com
Organization: Danga Interactive
Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2003 16:23:40 -0700
Hello,
I mailed you yesterday about a problem we're having interoperating with AOL member pages. (I have included that text below.)
Since we haven't heard back from you, we've instituted a temporary workaround. However, this is not a technically correct solution, nor will it work in all cases.
In technical terms: we rewrite URLs to AOL member pages to use FTP instead of HTTP so there is no Referer header sent.
Because we haven't heard back from you, I can only hope that this problem was accidentally caused by some automated system process, and eventually you will be able to fix it. If there is anything more we can do to help speed that process, please let us know.
-- Evan from LiveJournal.com
Please mod parent up. Whoever modded this "troll" is either malicious or a total idiot.
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
Im sure you can find out how to edit .htaccess using Google, but one of the fun bits of script driven websites is doing stuff like this:
.htaccess or write a little thing that does things to users depending on where they come from.
<?php
if (eregi("aol",$HTTP_USER_AGENT)) {
header("Location: http://www.slappyjack.com/screwAOL/index.htm");
exit;
}
php?>
The same type of code also is used to add curse filled messages to WebTV users because, quite frankly, they deserve it.
The benefit of this is I could tell my non-computer savvy family that used AOL is that they could simply use a downloaded version of Netscape or Mozilla or whatever and they could get through.
You can also roughly figgure out the IP blocks AOL uses and block those via
(If someone takes the time to find them out, i'd love to know what they are)
AOL. Let them choke themselves to death and take the unwilling to learn with them. I hate them all.
s'wut i sed.
...don't.
Good lord, man. They are not the people to reference in your defense! We had a website with them for about 6 months. Then our bandwidth usage started going up (which we were willing paying through the nose for while we looked for a new site host). But it turns out they *automatically* turn off your site at 50gb, even if you've been paying for overages all along with no problems. (It's an electronic book site, so it's all PDFs which explains the bandwidth issue.)
In any case, after we finally managed to leave, they regularly switched our domain pointers back to CI Host servers every time they did a bulk update of their records with NetSol. After numerous letters to them requesting they fix their problems for *several years*, we finally had to threaten a lawsuit before they stopped. Maybe I'm an exception, but my experience with them does *not* suggest mentioning CI Host is going to get positive press...
Really, I can't say I'm surprised that AOL would want to block image inline image traffic from blog sites, as that shit eats your bandwidth like nobody's business.
I "run" a (dormant) photo website on a commercial hosting service. I pay about twenty bucks a month for the diskspace and capped bandwidth - a reasonable amount, I think, which allows me to serve my users without garish adbanner detritus.
The ordinary site traffic is reasonably stable and keeps well below my bandwidth cap, but parasitic inline traffic comes on top of that, drawing close to redline.
I'm very seriously considering blocking livejournal and any other blog site I can think of, as their users frequently inline my images, eating a little of my bandwidth each time one of their blog pages are loaded. I have some car photos which about fifty retarded pimply teens have inlined on their pages for apparently decorative purposes.
I'm much too busy to go out and chase down every offender, but at the same time I've been reluctant to activate a simple block rule to get rid of the inline traffic once and for all. I guess I should follow AOL's example, eh?
I regret to say that in the past month I did get an AOL account (moved to a new area and it was the quickest way to get online). And when I suddenly stopped being able to click through from my livejournal page to my AOL-hosted home page, I immediately (thursday night) began seeking other area ISPs. If it were not a Saturday I would already have been switched over. AOL already lost my business on this one, regardless of whether they remedy it.
Would an effective workaround at this point be for LiveJournal users to use a URL link shortening service like makeashorterlink or tinyurl? That way, the third party visitor links to the shortening service, and the browser is then redirected on to the AOL address. It seems like this could be an effective way to manipulate the referer field usefully.
Alternatively, link via a proxy service like Anonymizer, but in practice I'm not sure this would be as easy.
Where there's a will to get around roadblocks, there's usually a way to do it. If Anonymizer can allow 'net users in China & Iran to reach out to the rest of the world, I'm sure a way can be found around puny little AOL/TW.
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Are they TRYING to because the smallest most insignificant ISP? They've already lost millions of users (after lying about how many they really had.)
This action will not save them any money and will simply cause every person who reads this story (and those at livejournal) dislike the company even more.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_U.S._Election_c
AOL's terms of use may well have some condition that could be interepreted to mean, no external linking of images, but
1) that isn't what is happening here. They are blocking all incoming links, not just pictures
2) so what. If they get enough calls, it creates a financial incentive to be more fair to their users. Each call probably costs them at least $5 bucks.
AOL has already launched their own blogging service, so your tinfoil hat theory isn't as wacko as it sounds.
Pound! Bang! Bin! Bash! is this a shell script or a Batman comic?
Does AOHell block these guys?
This sig no verb.
I guess no one with any self respect or knowledge will admit they work for them.
If you know who's responsible, please email me their home address. (I'll have to respond through instant messenger...)
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
"The problem is that for the average AOL user, who to put it bluntly is probably both too stupid to figure this out on their own and too lazy ..."
I call this arguing from the idiot. It's an interesting stance, because it leads to actions and conclusions based on the behaviour of idiots. I don't know about anyone else, but I attempt to *suppress* this term in my own decision making processes. One of the first signs of age and wisdom is the realization that idiots are a fixed point in the analysis.
As a good case in point, there's nothing anyone can do to prevent "the average slashdotter" from making posts like this. The best you can do concerning idiots is lean back with your pipe and waggle your hairy knuckles. There is no such thing as an average tropical disease, there is no such thing as an average idiot.
What's your beef with My Documents? (I'm a Plan 9 fanatic, not Windows, btw.)
There are reasons why democracy does not work nearly as well as capitalism.
-- David D. Friedman
If you have a weird sense of humor (like me!) you could try renaming said car photos and uploading a picture of a big, hairy cock with the words "I EAT BANDWIDTH FOR BREAKFAST!" triumphantly displayed underneath it, to the original filename. Instant beatdown!
Dont ask me, im just the bass player!
No need to block; just make all image requests from blog sites become pictures of the goatse guy.
Thanks for the explanation; there are a lot of anti-AOL idiots here on Slashdot; probably the same anti-AOL idiots who polluted Usenet.
My beef (is well done) is that Microsoft is trying to force me to store all my data IN ONE DIRECTORY. By trying to get all programs to use that as well. "My Pictures" "My sounds" "my films" my this and that. This is totally stupid. I have more than one harddisk, more than one partition, and don't like to be force to place stuff in certain places. Recently I lost my C partition (which was small), a lot of programs on other paritions ran straight away when Windows was back (because i usually select programs that do not store information in the registry or the windows directory or "my documents") but some programs alas, had been nuked back to the stone age because of this.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I'm using Mozilla RIGHT NOW on AOL reading/responding to slashdot.
I see no blocking.
AOL leadership is just trying everything it can think of; they're pretty clueless; I find it best to ignore them. oh time to "quit" again and get more free months of service...
And this is different from /home how? Users are encouraged to save their personal files to their /home directory on *nix, but can select other locations as they like and are permitted. On Windows, I keep my graphics in one directory, music in another, and my downloads in a third, and these are all separate from My Documents. Nobody's being forced to use My Documents any more than they're being forced to use /home (subject to permission restrictions), and there's not even an attempt to force things. Hell, Microsoft's own Office apps even allow the default save location to be changed right from the Options dialog.
My Documents has improved things significantly for most users, since they're not as likely to drop everything into the system root or scatter them in twenty-seven different app-specific directories. The folder can be also directed to other locations with little effort for those that really want to do this.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Yes, users have the right to not send a Referer: header. By the same token, the owner of a HTTP server has the right to refuse service to anyone not providing a Referer header. Just like there's no law against not wearing shoes, but restaurants are within their rights to deny service to anyone who's not wearing a pair.
99% of all browsers support the Referer header, and it has become part of the standard expected headers. If you disable it in your browser, you can't reasonably expect to not cut yourself off from a large chunk of the web.
And this is different from /home how?
/home (subject to permission restrictions), and there's not even an attempt to force things. Hell, Microsoft's own Office apps even allow the default save location to be changed right from the Options dialog.
When one mentions My Documents people always say its like "/home" so that's why i say its the root of all evil.
Nobody's being forced to use My Documents any more than they're being forced to use
Sure its not "force" as much as it is "intimidate". By now most programs always move their file requesters to the My Documents drawer, you can change it but you have to every single time (and may installs and updates keep creating the folders even if you delete them) - but some programs insist on saving their stuff there without the possibility to remove it (or in windows/applications data - like Mozilla Firebird, one reason not to use it)
My Documents has improved things significantly for most users, since they're not as likely to drop everything into the system root or scatter them in twenty-seven different app-specific directories.
So you admit that now that people have been used to do it your way, things are much better? Well, i disagree.
The folder can be also directed to other locations with little effort for those that really want to do this.
Then its just a root somewhere else.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
How many partitions do you have? I have 4, but I have no problem sorting them out so I only need one for documents (programs go on the other three).
Of course, if you had a real problem---a real need to put documents on multiple hard drives---on Linux you could always mount your other partitions on subdirectories of ~.
There are reasons why democracy does not work nearly as well as capitalism.
-- David D. Friedman
Its a fact.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I know its just feeding the trolls... but i'll bite:
I know of several people who have or work on opensource projects that have parents/grandparents/siblings that use AOL....
We want: Those who worry about deep-linking to their sites to use referer blocking or a similar method.
We don't want: A full block implemented by an ISP preventing linking to individual users' personal webspace (i.e. they aren't AOL pages, it's blocking personal user pages too). Account lockups after bandwidth overuse etc etc are still acceptable, not allowing users to link from their own journals isn't
Please see comment marked in bold for the difference.
If popular sites started blocking their servers in the referer? How about if they were blocked by slashdot, etc?
Methinks they would be looking for some way to cry "lawsuit" within a fortnight.