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Umm, qmail is very open source. qmail has never been anything but open source. It may not be "free software" but it is most definately open sourced.

For what its worth, you asked about "within one year of being released due to the discovery of bugs by users"

The beta and gamma versions obviously don't count (WoW had a beta period as well). "Since release" would obviously be versions 1.0 to 1.03 (present) in the case of qmail.

According to LWQ, "Version 1.0, the first general release, was announced on February, 20, 1997. The current version, 1.03, was released on June, 15, 1998"

That said, it did have updates, but I can't say that any of them were because of bugs discovered by users.

See also the qmail challenge for information about the lack of security related bugs found in qmail (ever).

Link to the quote page: http://web.infoave.net/~kbcowart/contest_quotes.ht ml

User: ARE YOU PROGRAMED FOR CYBER?
Iniaes: I am programmed to spell it with 2 m's.

tehehe

(they're in frames...)

Hahaha - sure they did ...

http://web.infoave.net/~kbcowart/

Want an idea of how secure qmail is? Take a look at the The qmail Security Challenge.

On the other hand, perhaps you have been misled about the apropriatness of Robert Bork's comentary on human rights.

He also wrote this article, defending the "right" of a business owner to practice racial discrimination.

Yup. Indeed, angel 1st class Gabriel announced Christ would be born. Lucifer of course was angel #1 until his fall from grace for leading a rebellion against you-know-who (Revelation? Isaiah?). There is some argument as to when the casting-down occurred; it may have been before creation of heaven and earth.

I'm (obviously) not a Christian but respect the Bible and serious scholars of it. But these clowns who hurl Bible verse around like rocks and get it wrong to advance their political causes are contemptible fools or liars. The citation of Bible verse in the arguments of fundamentalists to back creationism and other claims should be met with great skepticism. Even an agnostic can beat them on their own ground -- but never convince them (for example, creationists confronted with the fossil record either expound creative explanations or simply shrug and say the devil did it.

On the Web there must be a secular guide to the Bible designed not to ridicule its inconsistencies but to counter the claims of selective readers. I'm an attorney and fascinated by the difficulty of interpreting texts, and their sophistic abuse.

Gee, this has some connection to /. -- which I suspect has a very high concentration of atheists. Hmm. It is worth being aware of the frequent religious and mythological themes in literature and film, from the Chronicles of Narnia to "The Matrix."

Anyone notice how the author spends the bulk of the article talking about a mail setup using the prorpietary qmail MTA (which has a look-but-don't-touch license that's in many ways more restrictive than Microsoft's Shared Source) and then goes ahead and praises it as being Open Source in the last paragraph?

It's funny the LinuxJournal editors didn't pick up on this (the article has already been published in print). I mean, there's nothing wrong with using proprietary software where it's the best option, but calling it Open Source is a bit unfair to both the original author of the software (Dan Bernstein), and the developers of actual Open Source MTAs like postfix, exim and sendmail.

Firstly, photo.net's search engine returns a few results:

1. The search results

2. This article is a good pick from the above search.

This site is supposed to have a very good article about meteor photography, but I haven't found the link yet. In any case it has a reasonable amount of information on meteors in general and how to best observe them. You'll find this information on this link.

Of course, if any body else has other links to similar information I'd love to see them. I haven't gone out myself to take these types of shots before, so any help I can get is good.

Finally, for a bit of inspiration - here is a photo (although not of a meteor shower, just star trails) that is just amazing.

Here's some facts about how to do if you want to look at this meteor shower. For those who really wants to read alot about this, here's an extensive guide to meteor showers and their observation. They are best wieved in the late evening. The peak for the meteor shower is calculated to be today (2001-10-09) but remember that the date of maximum is approximate, viewing is possible +/- 2 days of it. The radiant at maximum will be at 262 degrees, ie. RA 17h 28.2m, Dec +54, which is about 2 degrees north of the star beta Draconis, called Restaban, on the shortest side of the head of Draco. (Need a glossary or a star chart?) Anyway these are slow meteors, at about 20 km/sec, so they will be very distinctive - and much easier to catch on photographs!

If you don't wanna go out to look for the showers, you can always tune in to NASA's forward scatter meteor radar system at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville. On a typical day, when there's no intense meteor shower, radar listeners will hear about one ping per minute or so. Rates could become substantially higher during a meteor shower.

Some recently updated graph of Giacobinids 2001 from observations shows unfortunately that they seem to be rather weak this year, just about 5-6 per hour :(. But thats not so surprising because the strength of the Draconid meteor shower has varied considerably over the years, reaching 'storm' level in 1933 and 1946 when thousands were seen and the sky looked like it was really falling! In Belgium in 1933, observers counted about 78 meteors per minute. Because of its variable nature - it's like playing on lottery when going out to observe this shower. Although chances of seeing any activity from this shower in a given year are minimal, one of these years you could be pleasantly surprised!

But there will be more meteor showers this month, for example the Orionids (October 21-22) which are predicted to be stronger than the Draconids (atleast compared with the observational data for the Draconids recently reported :). The Orionids are debris from Halley's Comet. Also the Leonids are coming now in November (18th) again, and this time it seems to be a big meteor shower. Actually, predictions by the world's top meteor experts expects it to be the most dramatic meteor shower in 35 years.

Here's some facts about how to do if you want to look at this meteor shower. For those who really wants to read alot about this, here's an extensive guide to meteor showers and their observation. They are best wieved in the late evening. The peak for the meteor shower is calculated to be today (2001-10-09) but remember that the date of maximum is approximate, viewing is possible +/- 2 days of it. The radiant at maximum will be at 262 degrees, ie. RA 17h 28.2m, Dec +54, which is about 2 degrees north of the star beta Draconis, called Restaban, on the shortest side of the head of Draco. (Need a glossary or a star chart?) Anyway these are slow meteors, at about 20 km/sec, so they will be very distinctive - and much easier to catch on photographs!

If you don't wanna go out to look for the showers, you can always tune in to NASA's forward scatter meteor radar system at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville. On a typical day, when there's no intense meteor shower, radar listeners will hear about one ping per minute or so. Rates could become substantially higher during a meteor shower.

Some recently updated graph of Giacobinids 2001 from observations shows unfortunately that they seem to be rather weak this year, just about 5-6 per hour :(. But thats not so surprising because the strength of the Draconid meteor shower has varied considerably over the years, reaching 'storm' level in 1933 and 1946 when thousands were seen and the sky looked like it was really falling! In Belgium in 1933, observers counted about 78 meteors per minute. Because of its variable nature - it's like playing on lottery when going out to observe this shower. Although chances of seeing any activity from this shower in a given year are minimal, one of these years you could be pleasantly surprised!

But there will be more meteor showers this month, for example the Orionids (October 21-22) which are predicted to be stronger than the Draconids (atleast compared with the observational data for the Draconids recently reported :). The Orionids are debris from Halley's Comet. Also the Leonids are coming now in November (18th) again, and this time it seems to be a big meteor shower. Actually, predictions by the world's top meteor experts expects it to be the most dramatic meteor shower in 35 years.

Here's some facts about how to do if you want to look at this meteor shower. For those who really wants to read alot about this, here's an extensive guide to meteor showers and their observation. They are best wieved in the late evening. The peak for the meteor shower is calculated to be today (2001-10-09) but remember that the date of maximum is approximate, viewing is possible +/- 2 days of it. The radiant at maximum will be at 262 degrees, ie. RA 17h 28.2m, Dec +54, which is about 2 degrees north of the star beta Draconis, called Restaban, on the shortest side of the head of Draco. (Need a glossary or a star chart?) Anyway these are slow meteors, at about 20 km/sec, so they will be very distinctive - and much easier to catch on photographs!

If you don't wanna go out to look for the showers, you can always tune in to NASA's forward scatter meteor radar system at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville. On a typical day, when there's no intense meteor shower, radar listeners will hear about one ping per minute or so. Rates could become substantially higher during a meteor shower.

Some recently updated graph of Giacobinids 2001 from observations shows unfortunately that they seem to be rather weak this year, just about 5-6 per hour :(. But thats not so surprising because the strength of the Draconid meteor shower has varied considerably over the years, reaching 'storm' level in 1933 and 1946 when thousands were seen and the sky looked like it was really falling! In Belgium in 1933, observers counted about 78 meteors per minute. Because of its variable nature - it's like playing on lottery when going out to observe this shower. Although chances of seeing any activity from this shower in a given year are minimal, one of these years you could be pleasantly surprised!

But there will be more meteor showers this month, for example the Orionids (October 21-22) which are predicted to be stronger than the Draconids (atleast compared with the observational data for the Draconids recently reported :). The Orionids are debris from Halley's Comet. Also the Leonids are coming now in November (18th) again, and this time it seems to be a big meteor shower. Actually, predictions by the world's top meteor experts expects it to be the most dramatic meteor shower in 35 years.

NAMN (the North American Meteor Network) or the IMO (International Meteor Organisation, which is actually amateur - same as NAMN) are good starting points, or try the Google Directory or DMOZ Open Directory meteor sections for much more background reading. I strongly, strongly recommend doing some research before November, getting a bit of practice in, then do what I've done - book some time off work! :-)

--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"

Qmail only supports maildir, and claims that mbox is slow and dangerous! Who is right? Why?

Qmail can use mbox, though mbox is definitely slow. Why? It's a flat file of untokenized data, wtf do you expect?

You can already do this yourself if your ISP uses qmail and allows you to edit your own .qmail files. (Pay attention to Section 4.1.5 on extension addresses)

Note that the ZHR is a /theoretical/ maximum that would be seen by an observer if the radiant (the line of comet's orbit, ie the place in the sky where the meteors appear to radiate away from) were directly overhead. Actual observed rates are always lower.

Hints and tips for observing :

• No smoking ! It ruins night vision.
• Get as far away from light pollution as possible.
• The radiant rises at about midnight local time in the northern hemisphere, in the east (of course ;) )
• Use a deckchair or lawn chair to prevent a permanent crick in the neck.
• wrap up WARMLY -- good skies == clear skies == very cold !
• Hot drinks (counter-intuitively) do NOT warm you up if you're outdoors.
• If your location is clouded in, set an alarm clock for 60-90 mins and check again. If they storm, and you miss them, you'll kick yourself !

Finally, don't be too disappointed if you "only" get a ZHR of a few hundred. Last year's observations allowed significantly better understanding of the separate streams of debris coming off the parent comet. Predictions are for a relatively quiet year next year, but much higher ZHRs in 2001 and 2002.

Clear skies, all !

North American Meteor Network
Meteorobs mailing list -- NB /VERY/ high traffic at the moment !
--

Ever try to do mail via BITNET or UUCP with qmail?

Weird. I'd bet noone mentioning BITNET *knows* anything about it :) If I knew it, I would try it with qmail yes! I've run uucp over ssh with qmail, I've used FidoNET with qmail. No problem. My only problem with sendmail was that you can *fix* it to do something you want it, but you'll never understand it completely. On the other hand, if you take a few hours, and read all (included) qmail docs, and you know Unix, you can do *anything*, and you understood qmail totally.

If I let myself summoned with qmail bashing, let me share a few resources on it:

• www.qmail.org
• Life with qmail
• Dan J. Bernstein's site (funny, it's down, slashdotted?)

BTW, let me mention, Dan (the author of qmail) is the Math Professor on University of Illinois at Chicago, who sued the government to not restrict him distributing his crypto source at his web page (for his students!).

• Qmail's maildir format means that you the machine wouldn't bog down as soon as the users started getting large mailboxes - each mail is stored individually, and the pop daemon doesn't have to read through huge files to find out how many messages are there
• The fact that users' maildirs are stored in their home directory also means you can spread them across filesystems easily.
• the configuration and management of qmail scales a lot easier than sendmail's - much more sensible config files / config file names, seperate config files for different things
• global aliases are stored as seperate files (although you can use a hack to use the /etc/aliases format if you like) so managing aliases is easier
• Qmail is more secure ( http://web.infoave.net/~dsill/qmail-challenge.html ll/qm ail-challenge.html)

I say FreeBSD because I know that it's reputation of stability and fast networking are true from experience, but I guess Linux or another open source operating system (OS OS, heh) would do the job fine. I've seen a system at a commercial ISP running with about 15K users on FreeBSD & Qmail, which is why I'm recommending it. They switched from sendmail when it started becoming too slow because of massive mailboxes; every time a user with a 50Mb mailbox logged on the mail server would chug until it had gone through the whole file. If someone gets sent one 50Mb attachment, that means that the pop3d gone through 50Mb of data to say "1 New Message" - it's not an issue with the maildir format.

I guess you could achieve the same effect with a clustering solution, but I think that's probably unnecessary.

You might also want to check out postfix.

URLS:

• http://www.qmail.org/ - Qmail
• http://www.postfix.org/ - Postfix (by Wietse Venema)
• http://www.freebsd.org/