That's dirty

Author	All Replies
Vamp 5c077 Premium join:2003-01-28 MD kudos:1	That's dirty It would be nice to redirect to a page that indicates a DNS lookup issue (that type of thing could be useful in knowing if the site is down or if it's a DNS issue)... But ads? that's just a dirty thing to do to paying customers.
	to forum · permalink · 2006-08-31 10:19:17 ·

T1 Rocky join:2002-11-15 Dallas, TX	Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't Network Solutions pull the same stunt in about 2003 and got HAMMERED by the internet community. I think this is a devastated company in an obliviated industry trying to find another way to generate money. The telcos and cable companies are not going to let them survive selling bandwidth so they have to find other avenues to make money. But kudos to earthlink for still being in business. Think about it. How many ISP's can you name now outside of AOL and earthlink? In the yahoo directory for ISPs in 1998 for Dallas there were 450 ISP's. Today theres less than 10.
	to forum · permalink · 2006-08-31 10:39:05 ·
Vamp 5c077 Premium join:2003-01-28 MD kudos:1	said by T1 Rocky: In the yahoo directory for ISPs in 1998 for Dallas there were 450 ISP's. Today theres less than 10. Simply because back then anyone could run their own ISP, since you didn't need any type of infrastructure with dialup, just a company that allows resellers.. Now dialup is no longer a profitable business for small companies. That's why there is no longer 100s.
	to forum · permalink · 2006-08-31 12:04:33 ·
DrTCP Yours truly Premium,ExMod 1999-04 join:1999-11-09 Round Rock, TX	reply to Vamp said by Vamp: It would be nice to redirect to a page that indicates a DNS lookup issue (that type of thing could be useful in knowing if the site is down or if it's a DNS issue)... But ads? that's just a dirty thing to do to paying customers. Even if there was no ads this sort of behavior breaks a number of applications. Anti-spam filtering for non-existing domains is one, if you have some Windows DNS search path (which tries different domain suffixes in the search path) it does not work. If you are VPN'ing to the work the internal domains may become unaccessible. There are a whole lot of issues about it.
	to forum · permalink · 2006-08-31 12:45:47 ·
byte_me7 join:2006-08-31	reply to T1 Rocky I agree that ads are stinky things, and really taking over -- like those thrice-cursed in-window pop-up mimics that cover a vital part of the page.... Even Google's relatively unobtrusive little ads are bothersome. ISP-wise...I don't have a clue how many are out there, but it seems like ISPs and TV-cable-SPs and landline-SPs and cel-SPs and you-name-it-SPs are all playing one big game of Blob and it's customers that are paying the price. You can hardly tell who's giving you what, nowadays. How many can I NAME? Well...as you said, outside AOL (which has dial-up and broadband) and Earthlink... Yahoo!, which T1 Rocky actually mentioned ("In the yahoo directory...") SBC/DSL, which may or may not be Yahoo... Comcast ATT/Cingular there's a few more that some very computer-savvy friends of mine use, but I don't know the names. The list is pitiful. I can hardly use up all the fingers on my mouse hand! Any situation where the provider of a service, especially a service with an attached fee, frobs/tinkers/tweaks with the service in order to use that service in a way not to the benifit of the consumer is really not in the best interests of the consumer...and while it might take more time to protest, if nobody protests then things can only get worse. -- ~If a technology is distinguishable from magic, does that mean it's insufficiently advanced? o.0;
	to forum · permalink · 2006-08-31 22:45:38 ·
T1 Rocky join:2002-11-15 Dallas, TX	Yahoo!, which T1 Rocky actually mentioned ("In the yahoo directory...") SBC/DSL, which may or may not be Yahoo... Comcast ATT/Cingular Not to be a dork but to further illustrate the point that there is no competition, you named 2 companies. SBC, yahoo dsl, AT&T and Cingular are all the same company - AT&T. Regarding that anyone could be an ISP in the 90s, that's totally true and many companies were mismanaged. But I think those were the minority. DSL was the death of the ISP industry. The telecom act of 1996 was created so that the government could give everyone "dumb pipes" and then you could connect your ISP to the dumb pipe (like in South Korea where they are now at 80% broadband to every residence.) The US government awarded implementing the dumb pipes to the telcos (and billions of dollars) and by 2000, the telcos had decided that they wanted the bandwidth market as well. Their lobbying dollars kept Washington looking the other way. And now America is the #11 most wired country in the world and there are no more ISPs. If you want to take it a step further, The telcos have now decided that they want control of the wireless market (check out the latest news article on the front page of dslreports.com) and the content on the internet (net neutrality.) None of this is good for the consumer.
	to forum · permalink · 2006-09-01 11:24:26 ·

Earthlink Confirms DNS Redirects > That's dirty