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1995 Fools: Love Letter from Case
From tfinley@en.com Sun Apr 2 15:59:36 EDT 1995 Article: 6717 of alt.online-service.america-online Path: bigblue.oit.unc.edu!concert!news-server.ncren.net!news.duke.edu!news.mathworks.com!uunet!news.erinet.com!en.com!not-for-mail From: tfinley@en.com (Tom Finley) Newsgroups: alt.aol-sucks,alt.online-service.america-online Subject: Love Letter from Case Date: 30 Mar 1995 17:01:17 -0500 Organization: The Q Continuum Lines: 77 Message-ID: <3lf9nd$ogj@en.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: en.com X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Xref: bigblue.oit.unc.edu alt.aol-sucks:11246 alt.online-service.america-online:6717 Look at this one: -- A LETTER FROM STEVE CASE, PRESIDENT OF AOL March 28, 1995 Dear Members, For many months now I have been plagued by the problem of adding Telnet access to AOL. Our programmers have been working for months on it, and we've come up with many different options that you the user will decide and vote upon which to implement. As you know, we advertise ourselves as the most "clickable" online service. We were plagued on how to keep that reputation with our telnet access. We've come up with several very exciting options, but there has been some discussion that America Online doesn't deliver exactly what our customers want, so we will ask you to vote on them The first option would be very easy to implement, and we would keep our reputation as the most clickable online service. We would have a window in which the text from the telnet session is being displayed -- however, instead of just typing it in, like you would normally, you will have a graphical keyboard, so that you click on the keys and you can type that way -- of course, we will have the option to activate the normal keyboard if you so wish. The second option is more complicated, but I believe that you as the user would like it even more. There will be many connect options -- when you connect, our supercomputers will find out what type of system (computer type) that we are connecting to, and follow appropriatly. You will be asked to type in your name and password for the system, and then, when you're logged in, it will read the output appropriatly. If it sees it's a UNIX system, it will have a scrollable list of buttons that will input different commands such as `time,' etc. Certain commands, such as gopher, Usenet, mail, and FTP will not be availible since they're availible on AOL and, as such, it would be a waste of time to implement them. WWW browsers such as Lynx will not be implemented for different reasons. Unfortunetly, due to certain limitations, we will not be able to view what has come to be known as VT-100 terminal types or ANSI -- this means that when connecting to a Unix system you may see characters like ^K or /305 sprinkled around, and the entire screen will pretty much look rather like gibberish. This problem will affect both of the above options. There is very good news about this however -- our Telnet client, or connector, will automatically block out certain words with ****s. Our TOS staff has selected them so that you never have to worry about your child seeing them. Parents can block out more words with keyword "PARENTAL CONTROL." Speaking of TOS, there has been some circulation of the TOS word list, for things that you will be TOSsed for. If you see anyone offering this list anywere, report them in keyword TOS. If you have this list, delete it. We've been getting fairly bad publicity on what is contained and there have been several articles on hypocricy in newspapers. Please note that TOS allows guides to censor whatever they want, so such claims are invalid. Some users have complained about the inability to delete messages, saying that it's a risk in security to their mail, and there has been some discussion that we are reading your mail. Let me assure you that we are working on it as fast as possible, and that the FBI will be done with their inspections soon so user activity may return to normal. That's all for now -- I'll update you again on April 1. Regards, Steve Case Transmitted: 95-03-29 -- Tom Finley, tfinley@en.com "Friends don't let friends join AOL." "AOL is better than Prodigy; syphilis is better than AIDS."
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