Associated TCP Towers tales

This is my answer to sites like AOL and its pollution of the Internet. We force them to connect to the net via SimonNet. It'll make sure that any pollution is kept to a minimum.

The offending site has their own internal network, which they can use whatever technology to run. However, their packets have to take the following route to the outside world

	The Internal network, connected to...
	A 300 baud modem, which outputs to...
	A slow 9 pin dot matrix printer with 2 pins that randomly stick and a ribbon that has been used to print out "War and Peace" fourteen times....
	The paper is then sent via the US postal service to...
	A small shed in the middle of the Yorkshire moors where..
	An asmatic, agrophobic sheep dog takes them one at a time to..
	The outer reaches of Canada (some packets will be lost here due to drowning sheep dogs)....
	Where a room full of monkeys read the printed paper and type them onto lightweight paper using typewriters (some data corruption may occur due to the possible addition of random sonnets of Shakespeare)...
	Which are then transported via RFC-1149 compatible carriers to....
	A back office in New York where the typewritten packets are digitised with a scanner with green gunk spread over the screen and brain dead OCR software. This is then...
	Sent via StringNet (ie, two cans an a knotted piece of string) to...
	An overloaded Netblazer LS....
	Where it finally reaches the rest of the Internet.

AOL and others

Okay, so perhaps I'm being a little unfair to AOL here. Its just that they seem to be one of the most luser infested place on the Internet at the moment. Whilst every ISP has lusers, AOL appear to have an excess. This maybe due to AOL really being an online service which also offers access to the Internet. An online service is really one that provides lots of information to their customers. Such services will often charge for the time a customer stays online. They may also charge more for access to certain areas. Such companies have their own point-and-drool interfaces that keep the lusers happy.

The interface with builtin drool cup really brings the lusers onto the service. Such information providers have their place. The problem happens when they connect to the Internet and their lusers spam Usenet, chase warez/porn and all of the other pastimes that these lusers enjoy.

AOL is the worst of all of the online service providers. I really pity the frontline support at AOL. I sometimes wonder about what the staff working there did in a past life to warrent such a fate.