Re: [SLUG] Answer + Disappointment

[Rick Moen <rick@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

begin DaZZa quotation:

> Only those who have cheap junk modems, or who don't know how to set them
> up properly.

Well, look, folks, I hate to have to spell it out for you guys, but...

Have you ever looked, raw, at a binary file, e.g. cat'ed it to screen by
accident?  That sort of stuff is, of course, what comes whizzing past
your modem every time you, for example, transfer a binary file over a
telephone line.  You will note that you can find just about any pattern 
you please of characters in there, if you scroll far enough -- rather
like looking for patterns in clouds, except with less healthy exposure
to the outdoors.

So -- and I figure _some_ of you must surely see where I'm going with
this -- a surprisingly large portion of the time, you can find odd
little strings like "+++ath".  Now, ask yourself, if modems were to hang
up the line every time they happened to run across such a string by
chance, would even the dimmest customers keep them for more than about a
week before throwing them in the rubbish?  I think not.  Even junky,
cheap winmodems aren't _that_ pathetic.

So, if you think modems all over the Internet are getting slammed off
the line every one of the quite frequent times they encounter "+++" and
"ath" sequences, you really need to think again.

But certainly you shouldn't take my word for it.  By all means, have a
blast trying to find and test modems that _are_ that pathetic.

But, in any event:  YHBT.  YHL.  HAND.

-- 
Cheers,                                     SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM!         
Rick Moen                                   SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM!    
rick@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx              (_Nobody_ expects the Spammish Repetition!)