Pfsszxt wrote:
For some unknown reason, my Thunderbird won't allow respponses
or new posts. I get messages like "post is more than 1 hour old"
or "messae is too long --none of which is true?

"Dude, you're posting on AIOE" :-)

First, make sure your system clock is accurate. It cannot be
off by more than one hour or so. Paolo has adjusted this setting
over the years, but it occasionally blocks people from posting.
The rule exists for an ancient situation, where newsreaders sorted
by date, so if you had a post labeled "year = 2046", that post
would always be at the top of the list where the user is forced
to look at it. To prevent spammers from using that trick, posting-date
is strictly enforced. You're not allowed to "post into the future".

Make sure your DST rule is working, and your clock is synced.
Daylight savings rules can be applied manually (TZEdit) on older
OSes, or they come in as "optional updates" on a newer OS.

*******

Line length is strictly enforced. The limit might be 135 characters
per line.

If a post comes from a Google Grouper, the line length on those
frequently exceeds the AIOE limit. If you "quote" some text from
a Google Grouper, then punch that Post button, the post is rejected
because of the too-long lines in the "quoted" portion of the message.

Your news client can have a line wrap setting. Set it lower than the
AIOE limit, so that lines will be auto-wrapped to the (correct) length.

In addition, your client supports format=flowed. The article
here seems to suggest it doesn't matter (as auto-wrapping to
the correct length is still happening anyway).

http://seamonkey.ilias.ca/mailnewsfaq/FormatFlowed

*******

If you post *exactly* the same message body twice, the second
invocation will be rejected. Again, you must be on your toes
when the first rejection happens. As you will (at least) need
to modify the Body Text in a slight way, so the computed checksum
of the message will be different than the first (rejected) post.
You would think a rejected post would not be recorded in the
hash table of the server, but for some dumb reason, it is.

AIOE has lots and lots of rules, including rules for "ratio
of quoted text to new text". You cannot quote a thousand
line post, then add "Me too" or "+1" at the end of the message,
as it will be rejected for "too much quoted text". This rule
was added to prevent certain bumpkins from doing "cascades"
in the kook group.

Have fun (as it were, for some values of "AIOE fun") :-)

"If it's not a challenge, it's not AIOE"

Yes, I use AIOE as my backup server, and I don't have a
bit of trouble with it. I got blocked a couple of times,
for a day at a time, until I "learned the rules". It's
plenty annoying at first, until you get used to it. It's
like fighting against a robot.

Paul