[NTLUG:Discuss] Evil Comcast pop

[Chris Cox]

Sure am glad I use an alias forwarder for my email.... Comcast
has certainly done a number to me.  I use Mozilla under Windows
(for my wife) and under Linux (at home and the office) as our
email MUA.

Well about 2 months ago I lost the ability to get email remotely
via SSL pop (spop).  The frobber just spins away under Mozilla.
Interestingly, my mailfilter program continued to work through
an stunnel connection though.

Now, even local mail fails on subsequent look ups and just clicking
on a folder after I've checked mail once (the first check succeeds
to an extent) the hourglass/frobber starts doing its thing.  I have
to fully shutdown Mozilla and bring it back up in order to do another
check.

My emails to Comcast were handled in typical Comcast manner:

1. It's the customer's fault.

2. It's Linux's fault (even though the problem happens under Windows
    too!)

3. Mozilla isn't supported.

4. We only support Outlook Express.

So I decided to lookup every employee's comcast address I could
find and copy them as well on may emails... low and behold
(and I think it was only out of irritation) they seem to actually
have some sort of humanoid now sending me emails (though they
still sound like I'm conversing with Eliza).  Anyway, they say
the appreciate the input... I tried to give them as much debugging
info as I could (showing where they are not RFC compliant with
their POP).

Kmail seems to work, but screws up on the stamp for leaving
the mail on the server (again, I think this caused by improper
behavior on the POP server).

DSL isn't available in my area and according to SBC, probably
won't be anytime soon until they can figure out how to make
money off of it.

I wrote Comcast and let them know that I won't need their
email for much longer... and I suggested that they offer
their users an opt-out for those not wanting to spread
viruses with Microsoft Outlook.  It's no wonder people are
moving away from cable to DSL.  (btw, I have confirmed
that Outlook works... for what that's worth)

I really like my Comcast cable... but not if DSL is
available.

Anyone else having problems with Comcast lately since
they moved to the Maillenium POP server??