With ATT you have similarities in the promises and reality. ATT wireless service has received so much fame and reputation to maintain high standards.
AT&T, one the largest Internet services providers (ISPs) in the country, put a temporary block on its internet customers over the weekend to an underground Web site due to a denial-of-service attack. The block is gone but the fuss kicked up among bloggers remains.
Over the weekend, Christopher "moot" Poole, the owner of the site 4chan.org, noticed that AT&T users were blocked from accessing a portion of his site. Specifically, AT&T blocked the server on img.4chan.org, the dedicated server for the site's Random board, also known as /b/. The Random board alone gets around one-third of all of 4chan's traffic, so it has its own server.
But even though AT&T said it blocked the server because it detected a denial-of-service attack, the board's rabid user base smelled censorship at work.
Poole, a fan of Japanese anime, started 4chan about six years ago, copying a similiar Japanese animine board called 2chan. Since its founding in 2003, 4chan quickly gained popularity, with its various message boards enabling people to post and trade pictures and chat anonymously: unlike other message boards, 4chan requires no login account.
Over the years, 4chan became an Internet meme factory, creating gags that have taken over the Internet and even spilled over into real life. They range from the 0 RLY owl to LOLcats to singer Tay Zonday's "Chocolate Rain" to Rickrolling.
In their most well-known prank, 4chan users stuffed the ballot box in Time magazine's voting for the most influential person in America -- with Poole winning by a landslide as a result and leaving Time's editors red-faced.
But in addition to its lighter, mischievous side, 4chan also has its dark side. Users in some boards will post child pornograpy simply to see how long it takes board moderators to kill the thread.
The site also became the center of attention when a hacker broker into and posted the contents of the e-mail account belonging to Alaska Gov. Sarah palin, the a vice-presidential candidate. The son of a Tennessee politician has since been indicted in the hack.
