Rueben-
I won't touch the "AOL'ers are stupid" stuff, but I will make comment on
your statement that "AOL is just an ISP like any other". I beleive this to
be very much false. AOL does not act like a traditional ISP where they are a
simple gateway to the internet, without filtering and/or controlling the
flow of data from your machine to the internet. My primary complaint with
AOL (aside from their horrible misleading interface) is the fact that at any
time during your connection to the internet (assuming you are dialing into
aol, and not using a broadband or other type of tcp/ip connection) your
computer's IP address can and will change completely. This makes for state
management on the internet very complicated as AOL users will frequently
lose their shopping carts or other state information, through no fault of
the developer.
Another rather annoying problem with AOL is their lack of support for
standard internet technologies and protocols. For example: Instead of
allowing your browser (within AOL) to make a request to a site and receive
the data back as EVERY OTHER USER ON THE PLANET, AOL proxies the request and
makes it from their servers, transferring the data back down to you. Why?
Well, it makes great USER TREND DATA! They'll sell that data off to other
vendors for extra profit. I.E you are paying AOL for their services, and
they are using you to collect information about your browsing habits. By
proxying web requests, they're able to build very specific trends by
indexing the contents of the pages you are receiving, etc. etc.
Big brother is watching. ;-)
-----Original Message-----
From: Reuben King [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Tuesday, April 11, 2000 5:46 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Is 4.5.1 Solid
WBB,
Your trashing of AOL rather bothers me. AOL is just an ISP like any
other and if your application breaks when someone from AOL attempts to
use it, then I would suggest the problem lies flatly on your end for
your failure to support even the most basic of cross-browser
compatibilities.
Furthermore, your insinuation that AOL'ers are all stupid, silly,
ignorant, and what-not is way off base. AOL has its share of newbies,
but lots of professionals use it too.
AOL has millions of users. This is quite a large target customer base.
I suggest you show them a bit more respect.
Specific notes on your post follow:
In <036c01bfa3f1$e3fcbae0$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, WBB ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) in a
fit of unbridled passion, wrote:
[snip]
>
> OR
>
> AOL fixed the problem as we were installing 4.51 ;)
CFMAIL is an SMTP interface for CF on the server side. How does it have
anything to do whatsoever with AOL?
> > accommodates the problems on AOL's end. Do you honestly want Allaire to
> get
> > accounts with every major ISP so they can check to see if the ISP's
stupid
> > procedures mess up the sites? I used to work at a hosting company and
the
>
> Of course not...but I would think that they would test it on the LARGEST
> modem community in the world...duh!
Why? CF is a server-extension and has nothing to do with browsers or
ISP's.
> > focus was on video hosting. Every time we had a broadcast, we would get
> > inundated with tech support calls from AOL users asking us why our site
> was
> > broken. You can't imagine how many times I had to explain to people
> exactly
> > why they needed to get a real ISP. AOL uses cached proxy servers and it
is
> > bad bad bad.
>
> I also do tech support and know just how lame AOL users can be and have
used
> that same explaination as you did ;), however, that doesn't cover the fact
> that submit buttons or graphics buttons or verity searches wouldn't work
> using an AOL account until we upgraded to 4.51 (they worked fine with 1.5,
> 2.0, 2.5, 3.0, 3.1, 4.0 and 4.1) from 4.5
Sounds to me like a problem with your developer's skillset or lack
thereof.
> > The really funny calls were the AOL users who said "What do you mean you
> > don't do tech support for AOL? You're the Internet, right?"
> >
>
> I understand...we have several hundred customers that use our lines to
> connect to their AOL accounts and it's tough to explain to them why their
> AOL mail doesn't work ;)
AOL works fine over TCP/IP.
--
Reuben King <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Senior Web Consultant
Stonebridge Technologies <http://www.sbti.com/>
Phone: (512) 502-3332
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