On 21 Nov 99, at 19:28, David B. Smith wrote:
> I noticed you saying to All:
>
> CVR> I find it fascinating to watch people tell other folks how easy it is
> CVR> to do their job right, myself. I wonder how many people on this list
> CVR> could begin to architect AOL's system, much less build one that
> CVR> didn't implode in the first three minutes.
[...]
> As for AOL's system, well, I think you've both got points. On the one
> hand, a system the size of AOL is a whole 'nother phenomenon entirely.
> It can't be done just-the-same-but-bigger, because the shear volume
> makes it not just-the-same.
>
> On the other hand, the offer for which they accepted money was "Internet
> email" et-al, and the acceptance was of those services as they had been
> done. And the rest of the providers on the net -didn't- overcommit
> their resources as AOL did.
This isn't quite correct. That's one of the reasons why 'spam' has
caused so much trouble for ISPs: not because it is so hard for users to
filter spam out of their mailboxes [although AOL folk with truly-crippled
mail clients might disagree.:o), but for the rest, you can eliminate
almost all of the stuff with modest filtering in Eudora, Peagsus,
Communicator, etc] but because that volume of email *crashed* servers
[and they'd talk about considering spam a "denial of service attack"]
when the fact is just that they *NEVER* configured their system to give
their users what they claimed and had always been counting on the fact
that users didn't get giant amounts of mail. [same as with things like
'melissa' and such: they *crashed* mail servers all around the net not
because they exploited some malicious flaw in mail server, but because
the mail servers couldn't handle every user getting a few hundred
messages all at the same time... that could well have been legitimate
mail, and the only difference is that the sysops wouldn't have had anyone
to blame]..
/Bernie\
--
Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers
mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA
--> Too many people, too few sheep <--
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