Slashdot RSS ban

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Slashdot is banning my RSS aggregator and displays the ban through RSS:

slashdotban.gif

My aggregator (NetNewsWire) is tuned to update feeds every hour (they say the limit is 30mn), only when the laptop is on off course, which leads to probably a dozen requests to their server a day. And NNW is nice enough to ask if the content has been modified since its last passage, before downloading the whole thing (a whopping 5KB of data, ranked close to a DoS attack for /. servers).

Given the past bans that I've seen even with a regular browser, I guess that they still have not got that some ISPs are using proxys to cache content, making all their customers appear behind the same IP address. Considering the tone and duration (much more than 72 hours) of their RSS ban though, it sounds to me that they do not like aggregators too much, and that they will be deft to any complaint.

Not that big of an issue, there are plenty of interesting and more user-friendly news sources out there.