GLP meltdown: banned after 13,000+ polite posts.

[pteranodon]

I simply found amazing how I got banned from a forum without saying any improprieties.

For those interestested where the GLP "woo-woos" went:

http://s7.invisionfree.com/Starlight...ex.php?act=idx

GLP is over.

:roll:

[twinstead]

Are you Idol?

[Sammy]

Hold on--YOU may bot be banned, only your IP adddress as part of a block cut off en masse. I was cut off suddenly several days ago. I am not even registered, post only infrequent replies on threads like "you don't have to pay income tax," " the Federal Reserve is owned by the Rothchilds and the Queen of England," and "free power has been supreressed by (choose your favorite conspiracy target)."

I just checked yesterday, and my access was restored. The same may happen to you.

[Sammy]

So much for my "restoration."

Just dropped in there after scanning the Babbling forum and found "Access denied..." again.

[Kesh]

I wouldn't be shocked at all if they have a blanket ban against anyone who follows a link from BA to there. I'm sure the new mods consider anyone from here "the enemy."

[pteranodon]

Are you Idol?

Unfortunately yes.

[pteranodon]

Hold on--YOU may bot be banned, only your IP adddress as part of a block cut off en masse. I was cut off suddenly several days ago. I am not even registered, post only infrequent replies on threads like "you don't have to pay income tax," " the Federal Reserve is owned by the Rothchilds and the Queen of England," and "free power has been supreressed by (choose your favorite conspiracy target)."

I just checked yesterday, and my access was restored. The same may happen to you.

I understand. However judging by the complaints from other "expatriates" the IP blockage seemed to be specifically targeted or in short IP ranges.

[Sammy]

Well, Pternadon/Idol, if I stay banned my blood pressure will probably go down a few points, but I will miss the woo woos and some of the truely bizzare stuff posted there.

Your threads/posts were always a source of delight to me. The replies of the "masses" to them were always good for a chuckle, especially the really screwed up types who never responded factually, but ranted about your gender, body, and "personal activities."

I've had the good fortune of visiting Brazil, and loved the scenery, the food, and, most of all, the people. I'm sure you have some bad eggs there, but the folks we met were unbelievably pleasant, friendly, and helpful. If my wife and I unfolded a map for 30 seconds, ten people showed up to see if we needed help!

[Toutatis]

Banishment from GLP is quite a coup! - Sorta like a DD (sans imprisonment or execution) from the French Foreign Legion

Congrats!!!

Actually, Elaine I could take (some of her blogs are kewl - 'little gray men' notwithstanding), - but that Moose dude is in desperate need of a ‘personality transplant’ (not to mention a new hairdo) --- But then the joke's on me should he indeed be Elaine’s ‘sock-puppet’

TTFN
Sarandon

[Jigsaw]

A lot of people who think they're banned at GLP are really just getting caught in the AOL dynamic IP assignment thing. Trinity has gone whole-hog for mass IP blocking, his stated purpose to keep out the few bad actors, at a cost of losing a whole truckload of other people. He officially doesn't care; it was brought up in a GLP thread and he basically just shrugged, "So what".

My "banning" comes and goes--sometimes I can get in, sometimes I get the "Forbidden You do not have permission to access this server" message.

Pteranodon, do you have AOL? If so, then that's what happened.

[Kesh]

Actually, Elaine I could take (some of her blogs are kewl - 'little gray men' notwithstanding), - but that Moose dude is in desperate need of a ‘personality transplant’ (not to mention a new hairdo) --- But then the joke's on me should he indeed be Elaine’s ‘sock-puppet’

TTFN
Sarandon

Moose got banned too, from a couple threads I saw.

[pteranodon]

Well, Pternadon/Idol, if I stay banned my blood pressure will probably go down a few points, but I will miss the woo woos and some of the truely bizzare stuff posted there.

Your threads/posts were always a source of delight to me. The replies of the "masses" to them were always good for a chuckle, especially the really screwed up types who never responded factually, but ranted about your gender, body, and "personal activities."

I've had the good fortune of visiting Brazil, and loved the scenery, the food, and, most of all, the people. I'm sure you have some bad eggs there, but the folks we met were unbelievably pleasant, friendly, and helpful. If my wife and I unfolded a map for 30 seconds, ten people showed up to see if we needed help!

Glad you had a good experience here in my country.

[pteranodon]

Actually, Elaine I could take (some of her blogs are kewl - 'little gray men' notwithstanding), - but that Moose dude is in desperate need of a ‘personality transplant’ (not to mention a new hairdo) --- But then the joke's on me should he indeed be Elaine’s ‘sock-puppet’

As a matter of fact Elaine seems to have no power over GLP board and Moose has been banned as well. :roll:

[pteranodon]

A lot of people who think they're banned at GLP are really just getting caught in the AOL dynamic IP assignment thing. Trinity has gone whole-hog for mass IP blocking, his stated purpose to keep out the few bad actors, at a cost of losing a whole truckload of other people. He officially doesn't care; it was brought up in a GLP thread and he basically just shrugged, "So what".

My "banning" comes and goes--sometimes I can get in, sometimes I get the "Forbidden You do not have permission to access this server" message.

Pteranodon, do you have AOL? If so, then that's what happened.

No, my .gov.br IP is banned. I still can read GLP if I use the university lab or at home.

[Sammy]

I'm back in again! Been banned twice and restored twice. I have tested the the theory that they've closed off folks who go to GLP from the BABB and (so far) see no difference.

[SarahMc]

Yes, he's been blocking complete C class blocks of IP addresses. He went so far once as to block the entire 172.xxx.xxx.xxx block (part of which is a majority of AOL, as Jigsaw said). He's also blocked segments of Roadrunner, Cox, Earthlink and numerous proxies.

Pretty funny all in all. Certainly no great loss to me, although the woo-woo humour there was pretty funny at times - especially from a few people who have been banned from here.

[tngolfplayer]

I avoided the mass banning, not being at work when it happened. I was able to get in and find out where everybody went before he started deleting all threads related to it.

[Jigsaw]

I'm back in again! Been banned twice and restored twice. I have tested the the theory that they've closed off folks who go to GLP from the BABB and (so far) see no difference.

You're not "banned" as such, Sammy.

And it's got nothing to do with whether you go or come from the BABB, he's not that interested to track individual posters' surfing habits.

Like Sarah said, he's trying to keep out about a half-dozen specific people by blocking their IP numbers, and the way he's going about it means that a lot of other people, whose ISP assigns them a different IP number every outing (like AOL) are simply getting caught in the mass blocking. If he blocks every IP number that begins with 172, and every so often, thanks to AOL, your IP number begins with 172, then that time you will find yourself unable to get into GLP. And the next time, when your IP number changes to something that does not begin with 172, you'll be able to get in.

[Toutatis]

Pterandon Wrote

As a matter of fact Elaine seems to have no power over GLP board and Moose has been banned as well.

Indeed... Interestingly, while 'Trinity" is openly hostile as regards 'Moose' (e.g. outlining his rationale, such that it is, for banning him, etc.) - He ('Trinity') tends, give Elaine a ‘wide berth’ notwithstanding strong provocation from same...

FWIW it is my guess that Elaine found herself in a financial/tort 'bind' (subsequent to her 'server troubles') with the current state of affairs representing the ‘settlement’…

Much as it pains to admit it, I feel rather badly for Elaine - It was my observation that she made a genuine effort to educate her 'constituency' - a veritable Doña Quixote, as it were - Still a noble, even if hopelessly lost, cause is deserving of respect... I’m serious!, her ‘blogs’ and, not uncommonly, OPs offered clarion testimony to her intelligent, involved and yes pleasantly ‘hard-boiled’ quality of character! – Her principal theme, as I saw it, being ‘grow up and think for yourselves’ – a lesson beneficial to many of us -- but most especially the bulk of GLPer!!!

...and if you thought those posts were batty before - you've gotta have a look *now*!!!

Will I'd better 'cool it' with the OT content - after all this is *NOT* GLP - Thank goodness!!!

Best regards
Dan Sarandon

PS: FOR THE RECORD I am not acquainted with Ms. Belisha nor ‘connected’ with GLP in any way (beyond my recient registration with their forum) --- Yeah! I know! But it’s as I’ve stated previously – I’m a bored man!!!

<<< Edit to correct w/w error >>>

[Kaptain K]

FWIW - Somebody has assumed Anon-E-Moose's identity and it is not pretty! :roll:

[Kesh]

... god help me, I've been posting there for a couple days. I finally made an account. (Couldn't pass up the Maltese Falcon avatar.)

On the plus side, I think I actually debunked a conspiracy thread on there.

... and before I could post this, debunked another. That one was easier. 8)

[pteranodon]

FWIW it is my guess that Elaine found herself in a financial/tort 'bind' (subsequent to her 'server troubles') with the current state of affairs representing the ‘settlement’…

BTW, I have always wondered why Elaine needed as much as US$500,00 to maintain the service. :-k

[molesworth]

BTW, I have always wondered why Elaine needed as much as US$500,00 to maintain the service. :-k

I couldn't understand that either.

Since I'd become a bit of a regular I sent Elaine some money to get GLP back on the air after she lost her previous hoster, and I pointed her at a few reasonably priced options. She seemed determined however to go with either expensive hosting or with a private server solution (which would have cost even more).

It looks like she's now had to hand over control to "Trinity" who seems to be one of the people behind lop.com, and who's now using GLP to host or deliver spyware.

I still visit occasionally, but I have good anti-spyware tools. I suspect GLP may be in serious decline, and might be gone within the year.

[The Bad Astronomer]

Hosting is not terribly expensive (and certainly less than $500/month). Elaine also refused to go with inexpensive commercial BB software, even after repeated hacks, trolls, and spam brought GLP to its knees multiple times. phpBB is well-kept, relatively safe, and free. I'm baffled by the majority of things that happened at GLP.

[Kesh]

The odd thing is, the mods there seem to be doing a good job of keeping the duplicate posts & spam posts pruned. Though the mass-bannings are a bit extreme...

[Lycus]

Undead, formerly one of GLP's resident debunkers, posted a message he sent to Elaine containing a summary of how it initially went down. Apparently, he was the one who posted the first anti-spyware posts that started it all:

HERE

[Kesh]

Looks like I spoke too soon. The boards are getting spammed by a script kiddie. Looks like they might have to turn off Anonymous posting if they want to save the boards. Or at least get a real board program.

[pteranodon]

BTW, I have always wondered why Elaine needed as much as US$500,00 to maintain the service. :-k

I couldn't understand that either.

Since I'd become a bit of a regular I sent Elaine some money to get GLP back on the air after she lost her previous hoster, and I pointed her at a few reasonably priced options. She seemed determined however to go with either expensive hosting or with a private server solution (which would have cost even more).

It looks like she's now had to hand over control to "Trinity" who seems to be one of the people behind lop.com, and who's now using GLP to host or deliver spyware.

I still visit occasionally, but I have good anti-spyware tools. I suspect GLP may be in serious decline, and might be gone within the year.

Me too, as a heavy user I had the moral obligation to contribute something.

I think Elaine needed such expensive services because she did not optimized bandwidth such as excessive image traffic. She included metatags in the HTML as to avoid local image caching, thus all images were downloaded again for each reload. I estimate that 65%-70% of the bytes coming back and forth were relative to GIFs and JPEGs rather than thread texts.

As for the spyware, I also agree with you. Since then my Windows system behaves strangely, thus I started to access GLP from my Linux/Mozilla box.

[pteranodon]

FWIW - Somebody has assumed Anon-E-Moose's identity and it is not pretty! :roll:

Is there a place where we can file a complain against personal pictures abuse? :roll:

Elaine could have at least deleted personal portraits before leaving.

[pteranodon]

Hosting is not terribly expensive (and certainly less than $500/month). Elaine also refused to go with inexpensive commercial BB software, even after repeated hacks, trolls, and spam brought GLP to its knees multiple times. phpBB is well-kept, relatively safe, and free. I'm baffled by the majority of things that happened at GLP.

Elaine reivented the wheel.