On Tue, 26 Sep 1995 10:01:43 CST, Katherine Villyard wrote: >I'm sure AOL is reluctant to do anything to this guy since he's a paying >customer. Fortunately, AOL has several million customers--one more or less has negligible impact on the bottom line. I know many Internet users regard AOL subscribers as less than pond scum, but that attitude is seriously misplaced (once upon a time we were ALL beginners, and many AOL accounts are owned by Internet users who graduated from their .edu accounts, changed employers and whatnot--they ARE US!). AOL management has been EXTREMELY cooperative and responsible about problem users. Those of us who managed lists in the old days (1986 :-) love and appreciate David O'Donnell and his overworked staff. We remember having to deal with postmasters who were busy system programmers "volunteered" for the job by their boss who responed to inquiries with "what's a list?" or "What's an RFC" or "Oh yes, we know our mail software doesn't conform to Internet specifications and we're working with our vendor to correct it--we'll have it taken care of in six months or so...maybe" and even sometimes "tough ****" (when they answered at all). How long has it been since awaking to discover over 1,000 undelivered mail messages from some host (usually in the UK over a holiday) mailing back to the list and cycling through loop after loop? It would have been much worse, but in those days the host-to-host speed was only 9.6 kbps. My how things have changed. Today's hassles are comparatively trivial. /s Murphy A. Sewall <[log in to unmask]> (860) 486-2489 voice Professor of Marketing (860) 456-7725 fax http://mktg.sba.uconn.edu/MKT/Faculty/Sewall.html