Re: goodbye

[Stephen Satchell <satch@fluent-access.com>]

At 09:02 PM 4/7/01 -0700, Joseph Carter wrote:
>Not always an option.  There are many places in the world in which your
>ISP is a monopoly.  And even in your simplistic view of the world, there
>are many places in the United States where you are held captibe by not
>having more than one local ISP.  That's even more true of broadband
>connections.  Monopoly service is the rule there, not the exception.

Concur.  One reason I started up my own sendmail for outgoing mail was 
because Pacific Bell Internet (in its various brand names) refused to close 
up open relays, even when their large clients ran spam relay servers.  When 
ORBS caused my mail to be blocked to the Linux Kernel list because of this, 
I complained to "technical support".  Their response was for me to sue ORBS 
for causing my mails to be blocked!  When asked when PBI was going to close 
up the mail relay from their customers' open servers, they said "never."

I had broadband access with them.  Fortunately PBI was clueless enough that 
I could run my own outgoing mail server and get connectivity back.  It took 
nine months before I could move off of them.

Other contributors may not be as fortunate -- I've heard about ISPs that 
block all SMTP traffic not involving their mail servers.  When they are the 
only ISP in town, that makes for a bad situation.

I also expect nothing to come from this off-topic discussion, so this will 
most likely be the last you hear from me on this subject.

Satch