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AOL Locks Out AIM Screen Names
dshaw858 writes "According to a story on eWeek, AOL has mistakenly suspended a very large number of AOL Instant Messenger (one of the most widely used IM programs) accounts, by mistake. I don't know about you guys, but this happened to me and a large percentage of friends and coworkers. AOL says that a fix should be ready by Monday."
America Offline
There is no sig
If they'd mistakenly suspended those accounts on purpose, I'd be really worried about it!
fish and pipes
I am taking the dibs on Cowboyneal :)
I knew I should have opened the attachment on that e-mail which AOL was tracking to make sure my account was tracking :(
wtf? u2?
Woah, that was a close one.
Life in Orange County
Bah, who needs AIM? I build my own IM clients out of Lego.
UTF-8: There and Back Again
I can vouch that this was indeed the case. Two of the handful of screenames I use on a regular basis were being punted at stage two of the sign in with an error about the account being suspended.
The box had a little "More Info" button that I clicked on that was supposed to explain why my account had been suspended. Two of them had to do with actual AOL accounts (mine are AIM only), the third had to do with being less than 13 (I can buy beer), and the last was a "you violated the TOS" option.
Dunno what happended, but as of last night, all of my screen namers were back up and running. The disconnections seemed to have no relation to the e-mail address they were registered to or when the last time I used them was.
*shrug*
It seems the computer industry is prone to these accidental 'monopolies'. Sure, there are other instant messaging networks, but almost everyone uses AOL/AIM. Sure, there are other OS's, but almost everyone uses Windows.
Too bad there isn't a more decentralized open standard for instant messaging..
--- We need more Ron Paul!
1) Oh no! This could really hurt AOL's rock-solid reputation as a competent and professional Internet service provider!
..." Oh, the hell with it.
2) I heard they're gonna ship the patch for this problem on ten million CDs!
3) The good news is, almost all AOL users are too dumb to notice they've been locked out!
4) "You've got
you sucsessfully made me log into AIM for the first time in months ti see if I was affected, only to be greeted by annoying friends from a long time ago with LONG TIME NO SEE...
bah
I didn't get blocked out but I notice now that there is a low number of people online considering the time. That really sucks. By Monday means theres going to be a lot of irritated people.
Why would they suspend accounts in the first place? I've never heard of anything like this. I guess the accounts of the IM spammers could be susceptible to suspension. Other than that, what else?
And I was worried I'd lose the name 'bearded Croat'.
Robo-Blogs of the world: UNITE!
Workplace productivity grows by leaps and bounds for a three day stretch.
Don't Crease the Weasel!
I know a lot of people will take this opportunity to laught at AIM users for using a closed protocol. Now lets be honest: how many of you here use AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, or MSN Messenger? I suspect that whichever of these services most of your friends use, you are likely to use.
Here's my whole point. Instead of saying it's the user's fault and proprietary protocols lead to this sort of thing, why don't we use it as an opportunity? With the outage of AIM for a weekend fresh in their minds, talk to your friends. Let them know that you found a "cool, new program" called Jabber (or some other open-protocol service) that wasn't out for the weekend. Get a few to at least try it out.
If at least a few of each of our friends AND WE try a different protocol and chat program, there's a chance that we can finally stop making fun of AIM users. (I know it's fun, but wouldn't using a better protocol be even better?)
Just remember - AOL may have given us a golden opportunity here. Let's take advantage of it rather than complain for the next year.
This happened to me MONTHS ago. I had my AIM account for six or seven years and had at least a couple hundred contacts (personal and professional) in it. I used it for work and personal. I've lost touch with many people because I no longer have that account or their information.
It just happened out of the blue. I called AOL and they said that they couldn't help me unless I was an AOL user. They suggested that I pay to become an AOL user, then call in and get them to fix my AIM account, then cancel my AOL account after a couple months. Of course, why would I want AOL?!
Previously, my employer had provided a free AOL account to me (all employees, even though none of us used it). It happened to be my firstname and last initial, which is the same as my AIM name. Then, my company closed their AOL accounts. And, even though my AIM account was YEARS older than the AOL account in the same name, they shut down *both*... at least, that's the best guess. Since AOL won't offer any help or even an explanation as to why after seven years my account stopped working without me buying an AOL account, I don't know for sure.
Dude, spell it right. It's "Protocol".
The protocol is not the problem. Actually, there is no problem. This is a company hosting a free service on THEIR servers. In other words, it is none of your business whether they decide to contribute to the community and give up code or not. They definitely aren't setting a standard with their antiquated IM service compared to other alternatives. Would you really want the code? Just download jabber and be quiet until you get a grasp on reality.
I mod you down as a fanboy.
.conf somewhere and a kill -HUP promptly turns into a kill -9, I'll say that open source is flakey and untested.
Download an open source Jabber server, set it up. Create a ton of accounts. Then, turn it over to a team of staff members to run.
One day, when they accidentally delete some accounts, or lock some out, our make a typo in a
And I'd be equally stupid for saying so...
This isn't an issue of "closed protocol"/"closed source" and more of an issue of "poor management". This can happen just as easily (and arguably easier, in fact) with open source products.
bash-3.00$ uname -a
SunOS panda 5.10 Generic sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-2
It's always been, as far as I can remember :
... man I had a zillion.
... Standards and Practices !
ASSHOLES ON LINE
Maybe you kids have another name but those floppys
PenGun
Do What Now ???
Please for the love of God look into Gaim. Far less bloated, no ads, and it just plain works.
AIM users might be forced into interacting with real people for a whole weekend...
No, wait. There's still TV.
Some people would look at your post and ask you "Weren't you a little tough of the Beaver there Ward" but to be honest, you got right to the heart of the matter and put things in perspective.
$h!t happends regardless of whether it's open source $h!t or not.
This is why you should use an open IM network like Jabber.
Amoungst other things, it's well designed enough not to require everyone to use a central server - run your own server if you want and you're then responsible for any screwups on it.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
No one I know has had a problem with losing their AIM SN nor has anyone I know had such a problem. Could it be they were testing something to delete inactive accounts and all of a sudden someone hit GO by mistake?
You forgot: I'm using Gaim and I didn't notice anything at all.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
AIM, just like AOL's browser, has just been getting worse and worse with each new version. Although I don't use AOL I've seen the latest version they have, it's awful. With every new version they add more bloat, and more ads.
I recently got my circle of friends to change from using AIM to Skype, it even has IM functions for the few people who don't have a mic.
I still have Gaim installed, but I rarely use it now.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
This isn't an issue of "closed protocol"/"closed source" and more of an issue of "poor management". This can happen just as easily (and arguably easier, in fact) with open source products.
No, I think you'll find this is a protocol flaw - downing a Jabber server only affects connectivity to/from the small number of people using that server. There are many other servers in the network (you can set your own up) which are completely unaffected.
This problem stems from the fact that AIM relies on a single cluster of servers run by a single bunch of fsckwits^W^W^Wcompany - when they screw up they have the opportunity to take out the whole service in one mistake.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
AIM users are like giant squid (but with fewer arms). You hear about them, occassionally a giant tentacle washes up on shore, but nobody's ever actually seen one.
Seriously though who the hell uses AIM? Nobody has ever asked me for my MSN address. For two years now, since ICQ died, it's always been MSN this MSN that. If AIM has even 10% of the MSN userbase, surely someone would have asked me for my AIM info by now? Am I missing something here?
Use Jabber.
With Psi client for example.
-- We are Microsoft. Linux is irrelevant. Openness is futile. Prepare to be assimilated. --
This isn't really a surprise. The AIM network has occasional (regional) outages. I occasionally see "Hey, is anyone else having trouble with AIM?" chats on IRC.
They also blacklist IP addresses for absolutely no reason. Typo in a list? Error in a program? Who knows - they escalate the issue and several weeks later, you might have an answer.
Either AOL is horribly understaffed, or they're really running things into the ground faster than expected.
(Yes, I worked there. I saw cool stuff, I saw clueless behavior.. )
At AOL, we are required to have at least forty meetings, prior to actually fixing any problems, this issue will actually be taken care on the 22nd monday of 2005.
AOL Instant Messenger (one of the most widely used IM programs)
...in the US. And whoever said slashdot isn't US-centred?
Thanks for browsing at -1
Please vistit my blog: www.framtiden.nu
OK... you totally missed my point, so I'll use your argument to make my point again.
Build a Jabber server, connect it to a jabber network. Say there are 1M users, 100,000 of which are on your machine.
B0rk your machine.
100,000 people are now unable to connect.
Is this Jabbers fault? No... it's your fault for b0rking your server.
That said, I'm happy to blame AOL for being idiots... but blaming the OSCAR protocol just because it's closed is idiotic.
bash-3.00$ uname -a
SunOS panda 5.10 Generic sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-2
Almost everyone I know (I am a college student) uses AIM exclusively. If AIM were to suddenly disappear, many people would be lost. At the rate AOL is going, how long can AIM be sustained? It costs them money to pay for the servers and update the software. Are there any good alternatives that have some sort of guarantee of staying power?
It's pretty popular in Canada, too.
Of course, most of the real old-schoolers still use ICQ because we've been using it since it was first released and just never changed... slowly but surely I've been converting over to AIM since most people I know are moving to AIM, and AIM these days will talk to ICQ users anyways (assuming they have the ICQ that supports AIM, so who knows if ICQ support is actually in AIM or if AIM support is in ICQ.. never bothered to check).
That said, what's the most popular outside North America? I'd figure MSN, yeah?
bash-3.00$ uname -a
SunOS panda 5.10 Generic sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-2
I'm posting anonymously, maybe for a good reason.
I've been locked out of my account at my.netscape.com.
OK, maybe I'm the last person on the internet to use it as my primary portal, but...
Also, when going to the password reset it has been saying "The service is temporarily unavailble".
That's for the last 3 days now...
Anon
100,000 people are now unable to connect.
Is this Jabbers fault? No... it's your fault for b0rking your server.
I would be inclined to say it's your fault for hosting so many people on the same server with no "high availability" fail over system in place.
However, if 100,000 people is 100% of your network then that's really bad (this is the case of AOL) but if that 100,000 people on the same server is 1% of your network then it's not quite such an issue.
That said, I'm happy to blame AOL for being idiots... but blaming the OSCAR protocol just because it's closed is idiotic.
The fault of the protocol is that it doesn't allow multiple servers to be run by multiple providers - if it did then the scope for the fsck up would be a lot more limited. You will _always_ get screwups, part of protocol design is to limit the impact of said screwups. the AIM protocol (along with the MSN protocol, etc) were all designed by monopolies who wanted to be in charge of their own servers. The Jabber protocol was designed to be open and allow anyone to run their own server if they so choose.
Other Bad Things about the monopolistic approach to protocol design are:
1. If AOL wanted to discontinue the service they can just pull the plug on the servers and all their users are screwed (similarly they could sudenly decide to charge for the service)
2. If AOL want to completely change the protocol in an incompatable way then they can and that causes much hassle for the users.
The multiple independent server approach guarantees that you can continue using the service, even if you end up having to move to a new server, whcih I see as a Good Thing for the end user.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
Yea, in europe MSN has become insanely popular and has literally killed ICQ in just under two years. AFAIK Asia is still on hooked on ICQ but are also switching to MSN. Except for the chinese who have their own nifty program, I think it's called QQQ.
Thanks for browsing at -1
Please vistit my blog: www.framtiden.nu
"shit"
Say it with me. It's not hard, and no one will die.
How does one pronounce $h!t?
"Hey guys, i'll be back in a minute. I've got to take an h-bang-t dollars."
NO NO NO NO. If jabber WAS the defacto standard, and AOL was running a jabber server, the SAME THING could have happened.
LOTS of people use AOL, and many of them would have jabberaccounts with aim.com. If the same idiot sysadmin worked there, and deleted all these account, the same thing would have happened.
Email is "open," and I'd guess you could sum up >20% of active internet users with hotmail, gmail, and aol.com.
THE PROTOCOL, AND ITS OPEN OR CLOSEDNESS, DOES NOT ENTER INTO IT.
Note: I use jabber, and run my own server. Everyone in my family is jabber-only, because we got them onto it (including my >80 year old grandmother, so it meets the "parents" test by a mile and a half). I wish everyone was jabber-only.
If it said "very large number", it surely is a small percentage of the total overal AIM userbase. I'm still connected. However, seems amusing that AOL did that.
As for it being one of the most widely used, that's probably true. But to all those who think the AIM protocol or whatnot is junk, one could say the same about any other protocols. Instead, one should be asking yourself as to what another person would say had a bunch of friends were on Yahoo! or Messenger? To me, I've a bunch of people on AIM. And sure enough, there are people who has a bunch of people on Yahoo! as well. You use whatever IM protocol your contacts use. And if you need to use multiple protocols because someone is on a different IM network, it's easy to solve that problem as there's gaim, Jabber, Trillian, and IM2 available.
I do not see why people are picking points on this. We just use whatever IM network we end up using. We deal with it and perhaps like it. So everyone, let's all run along now and go about on our usual routines.
~ Old Warriors Society
there isn't much of an argument, but I'm glad to see the negative press on aol. They really do suck and this is just icing on the cake for all those noobs that think it is awesome or something.
The fault of the protocol is that it doesn't allow multiple servers to be run by multiple providers - if it did then the scope for the fsck up would be a lot more limited. You will _always_ get screwups, part of protocol design is to limit the impact of said screwups. the AIM protocol (along with the MSN protocol, etc) were all designed by monopolies who wanted to be in charge of their own servers. The Jabber protocol was designed to be open and allow anyone to run their own server if they so choose.
In either this thread or the other,I've already condeded that yes, on paper, the Jabber protocol is a better design. You don't need to convince me.
That said, you talk like, as I said, AOL has all of AIM running on a P133 in the basement somewhere... AIM is clearly running on a huge cluster of redunant machines, probably spread out geographically. Yes. it's a closed protocol run by a private company, but it's very reliable and seems to be very well designed in this regard. The fact that some accounts have been locked has nothing to do with the protocol design though, and this is what keeps baffling me about your comments... you're arguing that Jabber is better for reason because it has a better protocol... and fair enough.
But, once again, this has nothing to do with the protocol... you're whole argument is tantamount to saying that Oracle RAC is garbage because it's possible for a DBA to incorrectly set your login password to the database. It's foolish to blame the architecture when it's clearly an administration problem that, as I i've saying, could have happened to anyone.
Advocacy is cool dude, but blind advocacy that isn't even related to the point at thand is just, well, baffling.
bash-3.00$ uname -a
SunOS panda 5.10 Generic sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-2
Email is "open," and I'd guess you could sum up >20% of active internet users with hotmail, gmail, and aol.com
Yes, but this allows for users to weigh the risks because they have a choice:
1. Your email is not very critical to you so you entrust it to a free service like Hotmail
2. Your email is critical so you entrust it to a pay-service which may have a proper SLA
3. You feel that you can run an email server better than the chimps at hotmail or your ISP so you run your own.
The AIM protocol does _not_ give you the choice which is why it's bad - if you entrust all your email to a freebee service like Hotmail then you probably have no reason to complain when they accidentally blow away your account, but with AIM you are _required_ to entrust your account to a bunch of chimps and you can't even change which bunch of chimps you entrust it to if they show incompetence.
ITS OPEN OR CLOSEDNESS, DOES NOT ENTER INTO IT.
You'll note that I never mentioned anything about it's open or closedness in this thread.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
OSCAR like IRC is a protocol designed for CLOSED SYSTEMS
there is no such thing as a "jabber network" jabber servers are autonomous units that communicate with each other on an as needed baisis like mailservers do
jabber is very like email in its basic design if you wan't to use jabber in your company you run a jabber server like you run a mailserver now
this means your users can communicate with each other even if your link to the outside world goes down and you are not depending on some outside company to communicate with others
using aim or yahoo or msn messenger for your company im perposes is about as silly as using hotmail accounts instead of a company email system.
UPDATE users SET suspended = 1; Oops, we forgot the where part!
It certainly is happening for more than a week.Check out this thread.
fifteen jugglers, five believers
This age verification flaw was already in the limelight sometime back.
fifteen jugglers, five believers
How bad is their suspension system that they have to devise a fix for it that takes them the whole weekend (granted, they probably won't be working on it over the weekend)?
Don't they use transactions, or logs, or even an undo feature?
This shows once more the many drawbacks of proprietary IM protocols and servers.
Let's not even mention that they probably log all messages that has ever been sent through them, just like Google logs all search queries.
Jabber doesn't have these problems and it's an open standard with free software available.
You can setup your own servers. It can talk to other jabber servers. You can use SSL/TLS encryption to talk to your server and you can use OpenPGP end-to-end encryption if you want no cleartext available at the servers. There are tons of clients available for all imaginable platforms, from mobile phones to Windows.
Go Jabber!
Hey man, whats up! Long time no see! Whatchou been up to?
But, once again, this has nothing to do with the protocol...
I agree that this incident was an administrative cock-up, but I'm saying that the design is flawed by the fact that the user's are not given the chance to choose their AIM service provider (or indeed run their own server) - if the user decides that AOL are not competent enough to run the server they have no choice but to switch to a different IM network (which is often not easy given that everyone you speak to is probably only on a single network)
http://blog.nexusuk.org
I don't know about you, but I friggen HATE IM programs, especially AIM or Yahoo Messenger!
The only reason I use AIM is to chat w/ my girlfriend, and the only reason I use yahoo messenger is so that all the minions at work can easily msg while I run their frail company from my living room.
If it were up to me, they'd all be horded down in a botnet on my lan and targeting random sites for DDoS attacks, but I like my job, so... =/
the only permanence in existence, is the impermanence of existence.
I've never met a single AIM user, and I'm from Canada.
You know, you got modded as flamebait, and I'll probably get modded down for saying this, but I have to agree. What is with everyone and just blindly using a network controlled by a company you hate? I, at least, have morals. I wouldn't use AIM any more than I'd buy a bunch of Microsoft products. I use Debian GNU/Linux and Jabber. Ok, I'm an extremist. But don't you think that using AIM is just a *little* bit hypocritical? I guess I'll just accept my modding down from the grumpy AIM users who won't accept the truth about AIM's owners.
More news from the Redundantly Redundant Department?
While this is all amusing and laughable, the only people I know that use AIM are students and Senior Citizens. Good gawd, we are going to be overrun with pot-smoking sex-minded punks and old fogeys running amok in the streets.
Yeesh, what is it with you and fanboys ?
You are correct though, in that it is a management problem. If I understand things correctly, the model intended for Jabber is one where ISP's and other organizations set up their own Jabber servers. Just like email. These servers would likely be much more managable because the sysadmin(s) would have more information on hand than some monkey at GlobalMegaCorp. I'm sure AOL couldn't care less about dropping <1% of their AIM accounts. Let ISP's and others run their own Jabber servers. In the case of an ISP then the jabber account would at least be tied to their modem/ADSL/email account. Mistakenly deleting an account would be very unlikely. In some cases (e.g a small org or company) the sysadmin will know most of the users.
I feel completely the same way.
Have you tried BitlBee? It lets you access the lesser networks from IRC. In my experience, it has been rock solid.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
For all people here who have suggested using Jabber or even other clients like Gaim or CenterICQ: it won't help.
As long as you don't get your contacts to switch (which is unlikely, since they won't get their contacts to switch), you will still need an AIM account to IM with them. And guess what? That account can be suspended by AOL! Of course, the same is true not only for AIM, but for every other network out there.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
No, the old-schoolers use IRC.
the real old schoolers telnet into each other's machines and use a chat daemon.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
If it breaks, you can fix it yourself.
Since no body else mentioned this. Jabber is a distributed IM. It is distributed the excactly same way as (modern) E-Mail systems. So you got your ISP or Jabber provider to give you an jabber account, and that talks to al other Jabber providers.
Then only a small number of people can get hit by provider failure at a time.
The real old schoolers just change the motd to leave a message for the next guy who uses the machine.
Now I know why I can't log in :-)
And I was getting worried
My sister called me a couple days ago telling me that she cannot log into her netscape.net e-mail account. I wasn't sure if if she was hacked, but now it's all adding up. First there is the "Massive Layoffs at AOL" and then I read several forums last night about the same issue. It almost makes me wonder if some disgruntled employee decided to take out some customers on the way out. (Note that this is purely speculation.) As if AOL weren't already having enough problems....
And whoever said slashdot isn't US-centred?
Er, I don't know, who did? Slashdot has been highly US-centric and not afraid to show it ever since I started reading the site.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
I've missed you 12884. I can call you that, right Mr. 652342554563??
Since last three days, my Netscape Email account is also not working, asking me to change username/password. When you click to change your password, it gives error. My brother received the same error.
And whoever said slashdot isn't US-centred?
You misspelled "centered".
I belong to the ______ generation.
Several universities utilize AIM for holding on-line office hours. In some cases it is professor preference, but in others there is a specified/required tool. Students who are not savvy computer users look for ease of use and AOL has the greater share of that market. If a student disappears from chat sessions that is one thing, but when this professor disappeared one week before finals it was not a happy time. Luckily us old Unix geeks wear a belt and suspenders and the odds of Yahoo and *Egads* MSN Messenger going down at the same time are minimal.
--- Location Unknown
i also have been locked out of my.netscape email too.
this will not happen again - I am closing my account. as soon as it comes back. what a joke - how can they have an outage like this for so long - if I did this in my job I would fix it but then I would be looking for new job because I would be fired
BCUZ U DIDNT FRWRD TEH TRAKER MESSAGE 2 ALL UR CONTACTS, THEY SHUT OFF UR ACCOUNT!!!
:P
heh, sure thing
I've never been able to get this resolved by talking to AOL, so I figured I'd ask to see if anybody here knows.
Is it possible to use an AOL account on AIM after that plan that account was on is canceled?
I've been using the same AIM account for like 8 years, so everybody knows me on it, but it was created before AIM even existed, and when I was still living at home. My parents nonetheless still have AOL, but are about ready to get rid of it. Do I need a new screenname?
Insightful: 76, Off-Topic: 379, Flamebait: 24, Funny: 152, Interesting: 201, Underrated: 55, Troll: 9, Total: 896
There IS one of these, its called IRC...
Jabber is an open option, but there isnt any linking between available servers, so it doesnt meet the 'decentralized' component..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
real old schoolers don't need a chat daemon, they just hack the root account and send messages by using cat > tty
what's this telnet thing? I thought we just made programs that threw socket connections at each other.
no YOU misspelled "centered"
Perhaps this is related to the recent layoffs at AOL?
Speak truth to power.
no, I mod YOU down as a fanboy
Hmmm, maybe if they didn't layoff people we wouldn't have this problem :P
Well AOL Time Warner, that's 2 strikes. One more and you're out.
wow.. AOL fires 700+ employees.. accounts for AIM are suddenly disabled.. what a qo-inki-dink.
Obama = Socialism.
In my experience its client has always been unwieldy and chock-full of spammers. AIM's feature set is easily accessible and powerful. Using ICQ always made me feel more like I was sending text messages on my cell phone than "instant" messages, for some reason. And is there some way to get around the spam?
+++ATH0
"I use AIM/MSN/Yahoo (thank god for CenterICQ and Trillian) because a lot of people I know refuse to come on IRC, because "that's for hax0rs, you know...". So I need to have an account with every shitty IM network."
Who the hell actually SAYS this who knows WHAT IRC is? No one who actually knows anything about it is actually going to believe it's "only for hax0rs."
+++ATH0
and not much in terms of labor expended for them to at least provide support via email or give him some kind of form letter describing what was going on.
This is how a company builds goodwill with its customers and potential customers, which is something AOL needs a lot of now that it's started laying off hundreds of employees a month.
+++ATH0
Scott Lockwood, Old Ike, GNAA... gross CmdrTaco stories... well?
If you are on the same 'network' the servers are linked..
.. You have to be logged into the same server.. While there are public servers, they are all isolated islands, at least from my expirence..
That's what the "R" stands for.. 'relay'....
Never experienced a 'split' have you? That is when linked servers disconnect... Makes a mess of things..
I do agree that across 'networks' they rent normally linked.. but the distributed structure is there.. All that is needed is to create, then dedicate, an IRC network for direct point to point communication that everyone points their new 'messenger' to..
Jabber servers do not link as far as I know ( but I could have missed something )..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Ah shit, give me a break, I was just trying to be polite :)
Then again, I was referring to the AOL outage and in that case, it might well be spelled $hit. I bet the person who is responsible is in deep she-it. And you just know a few of the AOL brass is at a bar getting shit-faced trying to forget about what happened.
I better knock this off before I get into shit with the moderators.
OH SHIT! For some strange reason, I just remembered that I forgot to watch South Park this week!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Mistakenly by mistake.. Uhlm.. that's pretty strange..
" AOL has mistakenly suspended a very large number of AOL Instant Messenger (one of the most widely used IM programs) accounts, by mistake. "
Yes, I didn't say that YOU did. What the hell..
I have been locked out of the MyNetscape system for about a week. (I've been using this free portal for more than 5 years.) And attempts to send bug reports because (duh!) it seems you need to be logged in to send a report.
Up in arms because AOL accidentally, partially broke a FREE service they provide? You get what you pay for. If IM through AOL is that important to your daily life, pay $14.95 or whatever the latest gauge rate is for BYOISP. Otherwise, you have no room to complain. It's a free network and I'm sure their TOS say at any time they reserve the right to discontinue it. Whether they are PR friendly or not about it doesn't matter either... it's free.
I did state as a disclaimer that I didn't go thru the protocol docs and admitted that I *could* be wrong..
Giving you the benefit of the doubt, I have yet to find 2 public servers that talk to each other..... Even jabber.org and jabber.org.uk required me to register.. would think at least those 2 would be linked if it was possible, so it was logical to assume that it wasn't.
However i will check into it..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
gee let me take less than a second to think about it here....IT'S FREE! not to mention also the most widely use and popular one.
am i hypocritical on this issue? i dont think so. i dont like aol(the paid service) but i do like aim for chatting to my family friends and so i use it.
small news flash for ya too. our whole world/lifes are controlled by companies that prolly most of us hate. if you dont like it go live in a tribe because its the only way to avoid that mess......
I thout we wer bff!
It happened to me, as well. I resorted to sending AOL my problem through their bug report to find out what I did wrong to get suspended. Tsk. Tsk.
AOL fires a bunch of employees, and later in the week a "glitch" causes a bunch of screen names to stop working.
:)
Upset former employee's parting shot maybe... or me being paranoid. (more likely)
I agree that this incident was an administrative cock-up, but I'm saying that the design is flawed by the fact that the user's are not given the chance to choose their AIM service provider (or indeed run their own server)
AOL obviously doesn't release their server software, but the client software allows you to connect to any server/port you like. So, you can choose your own provider, and since part of the AIM protocol is open (Oscar? I think?), you could do your own server.
I run AIM version 1.6 on Windows for Workgroups 3.11 and don't get no stinkin' ads, you insensitive clod!
He must have some of those new cloak enabled Legos on his clock.
Yahoo also did this a while back, I had an existing account (kallahar) but at some point it stopped working. No errors, no warnings, just "invalid username". I couldn't even recreate it or add a new number at the end.
Turns out they ban any username with the word "allah" in it, which my name coincidentally has.
AOL obviously doesn't release their server software, but the client software allows you to connect to any server/port you like. So, you can choose your own provider, and since part of the AIM protocol is open (Oscar? I think?), you could do your own server.
But then you are cut off from the rest of the network, whereas a decentralised protocol such as Jabber allows everyone to run their own servers whilest remaining part of the network.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
Does this mean that my 1045 free hours of AOL will not work anymore
Isn't this the same thing with IRC: if a server becomes disconnected, the users logged onto that server still can communicate among each other, just not with the other users of the network. Of course, things may get messy when the networks comes up again, and it turns out that during the partition there have been duplicate usernames, channel names, etc...
I use Jabber, you insensitive clod!
Open Standard, Decentralized, XML-Based Protocol. Could it be what you're looking for?
http://www.jabber.org/
NO
irc networks are CLOSED SYSTEMS (usually) running on OPEN SOFTWARE
you ever tried joining your own server to a serious (10K+ user) irc network? its NOT going to happen unless you are a major isp.
If you had reverse engineered server code for it you could run your own OSCAR server but you could never connect it to the real OSCAR network so it would be of no use for you to communicate outside your buisness
to all intents and perposes the same applies to irc sure you can run a server but you have little chance of ever linking it with an outside network of any real size
jabber servers do not form any form of permanent network and there are no trust relationships between servers. Id's are of the nick@server form and servers talk as needed to reach those ids just like email.
ANYONE can deploy a jabber server on the public internet and people on that server can communicate with people on ANY (baring firewall and routing issues) other jabber server on the public internet.
you don't need permission to run a mailserver and you can email anyone with it
you don't need permission to run a jabber sever and you can chat to any other jabber user with it
you don't need permission to run an irc server BUT you are almost certain to be stuck in your own little world
see the crucial difference?
It's bad enough they are claiming it's a mistake, but what really irritates me to NO end is the fact that there is NO way to find out the reason for it unless someone you know has found the article about it. Is it so difficult for them to send a mass mailing to everyone who has a registered nick explaining the problem ? Or even responding to e-mails sent to aimsupport@aol.com telling us why? And have you ever noticed there is no e-mail address listed on AIM's website? Makes you wonder if they really even care :\ I'm glad someone posted about this issue so I know I've done nothing wrong and will hopefully have the use of my nick soon.
Strange this happens right after a ton of AOL employees get laid off...
Because there are some people worth talking to that use AIM.
This post written under Gentoo-linux with an SCO IP license.
Perhaps because that is an illogical feature? Who is on my buddly list should be completely up to me to decide. If you don't want to talk to me you can block me.
This post written under Gentoo-linux with an SCO IP license.
but what about Kopete? Doesn't any other Linux user use this program, other than myself?
Sign up for an AOL account, free month. Call tech support, get them to fix your AIM account (which it already is, because you can use AIM with an AOL screen name.) Cancel the account. Voila, your AIM account is still there. I canceled an old AOL account and my screen name still worked on AIM just fine.
Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'.
If you use AOL products, you are simply st00pid. Like man... for real. What a waste of time.
But really, if you MEAN shit, then how is spelling it any different politeness wise?
:)
It's like I've never understood people who say "fark" instead of fuck, etc. They THINK fuck, and MEAN fuck, so doesn't that automatically give the word "fark" in that useage the exact same connotation as fuck, and thus is no longer "nicer"?
Food for thought
[paste from first google result for "aolserver"]
... Site Search. ...
AOLserver
What is AOLserver. AOLserver is America Online's Open-Source web server.
Latest News. AOLserver 4.0.8 released. dossy - Tue, 07 Sep 2004 17:51:27 GMT
http://www.aolserver.com/
BTW, AOL.COM runs on Solaris 8/AOLserver 3.something. From what I've heard, AOLserver is supposed to be reasonably secure and robust.
Anyway, my point is that sometimes they DO release stuff, and it's not out of the realm of possibility that they'll eventually opensource AIM as well, especially since it's long since "not just for AOLers anymore".
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I run both aim and msn. My first client was ICQ, but I was turned off by ICQ numbers being hard to remember. MSN uses email addresses which is a great idea. MSN also supports Japanese and other languages which is my primary reason for using it.
Aim on the otherhand, has great filetransfer capabilities for the not-so-computer aware friends of mine. I can put them in a buddy group and they can access all my files to download whenever they want. Getfile/direct connect are the best parts of AIM (Gaim just doesnt cut it). That being said, the only real reason keeping me with AIM is the fact that I'm at a university and EVERYONE has aim.
Actually! $h!t - Pronunciation Key (Dollars aytch bang tee) Nerd Slang
v. $h!t, also pwn (pown)
To defecate usually while trying to circumvent a swear filter.
If I throw a stick, will you go away?
Dumbutt... if it's an error with the protocol and you change something, then it's no longer the "standard" protocol. That's why so many people loathe the idea of open source standards/software, too many weanies can make arbitrary changes.
What's scary is that I used to do exactly that only a year or two ago... I'd make a user account on my PC, email my friend the details, then talk to each other through "talk".
:)
Crazy stuff
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