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Politech is the oldest Internet resource devoted to politics and technology. Launched in 1994 by Declan McCullagh, the mailing list has chronicled the growing intersection of culture, technology, politics, and law. Since 2000, so has the Politech web site.
--- Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 09:42:24 -0500 To: politech@politechbot.com From: "B.K. DeLong" <bkdelong@pobox.com> Subject: AOL officially blocking Trillian users Hey Declan - I'm not sure if anyone on Politech is a big fan of IM software but a while ago I found this great software called Trillian (http://www.trillian.cc) that would let me be logged into my ICQ and AOL IM account with the same interface at the same time. Not only that, but they had a SecureIM feature that would encrypt the traffic between users. And for the hell of it, (since I had a Yahoo account from all the yahoogroups I'm subscribed to and a MS Passport account for...well, god knows what) I added YahooIM and MS Messenger. You can even be logged onto IRC using it as well. Now it's a free program - they only ask for donations. When AOL "fixed" their gaming bug a while back, (http://www.aim.com/resolved.adp) it would not allow Trillian users to log into AOL. Trillian fixed the problem with an update and patch. Well, this morning AOL did it again. But this time, we got a blatant message before being disconnected: "[09:22] AOL Instant Messenger: You have been disconnected from the AOL Instant Message Service (SM) for accessing the AOL network using unauthorized software. You can download a FREE, fully featured, and authorized client, here http://www.aol.com/aim/download2.html ." Which is bullshit. AOLIM Doesn't have nearly the AOLIM features that Trillian has and I'm PISSED that AOL wants me to use a more insecure product over an innovative one that provided more of a degree of security, logging etc. This sooo smacks of anti-competitive practices. Am I right? Who's working on a anti-trust case against AOL? Sign me up, dammit. -- B.K. DeLong bkdelong@pobox.com 617.877.3271 http://www.brain-stream.com Play. http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org Potter. http://www.attrition.org Security. http://www.artemisiabotanicals.com Herb. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------