One file per Mailbox-folder, allowing multiple folders per user. Should those files reside in one central location or in users Homedirs?
Depends on how the user accesses their mail. If they read their mail only on the local machine, it should be in their home dir. If the server allows multiple forms of access (like local + IMAP), central storage makes sense. There's a lot of other issues here, like backup methods.
Compression: Should messages be broken into pieces and the MIME-attachments stored separately (thus searching of the text parts would still be possible without decompressing the whole file)?
No. Separating a single mail into its component parts is just asking for trouble (not to mention that it massively increases your locking problems).
File format: gdbm, Sleepycat db? Something new?
Personally, I like Maildir, since it lets me use standard tools like grep to find particular mails. I admit that a more efficient method is probably required these days.
Should the security model allow users to directly access their files, grep them, copy them around?
Yes, of course. It's their mail - let them do what they want with it. The mail app must be able to deal with that.
Shared folders, virtual domains?
Shared folders would be nice - IMAP can do that now, although it's overengineered and not necessarily fully implemented in any particular IMAP server. Virtual domains I've never had any use for myself...
Unicode support in folder names?
Why not?
Imap message-IDs, flags, useragent specific state-information?
As you say, IMAP does that already...
File-locking (NFS)?
More the fault of NFS than the mail software (and I believe NFS4 handles locking better).
Don't worry, it might happen yet - that site lists only one participant, but the Japanese party promotion site already lists over 150 people as confirmed attendees...
Ah, I see... you're no doubt one of these people that are in japan on a fat expense account, living in an apartment in Akasaka or Roppongi, and think that they know everything about Japan.
And as for your last comment about me being on a 'quick spin through slashdot', better check the user ID first, latecomer...
What if it were this way round: "I went to Silicon Valley and looked at Fry's. It was reasonable, but not cheap enough to cover the cost of the flight from Tokyo. On top of that, all the PCs were running ENGLISH Windows!"
I'd just like to send a big 'fuck you' to the moderator with the microsecond attention span who seems to have decided that my post was a direct copy of the Akihabara article, rather than a commentary on it.
OK, since there seems to be next to no posts regarding the Akihabara page, here I go... (sorry to be harsh, but I spend a lot of time there, so it sort of gets my goat to see someone come along, go around a few shops, write up a single-page report, and get that posted to/.).
The Akihabara district of Tokyo is world-famous as a shopping district specializing in electrical and electronic equipment. I had the chance to visit the Akihabara while on an Elderhostel tour of Japan in April, 2002. (The name is pronounced ah-kee-ha-ba-rah, with no stress on any syllable. It is not, as English speakers want to say, aki-HAbara or akiha-BAra. The syllables just roll out all at the same level.)
Not really. Spoken Japanese does not use stress as a marker, but rather pitch. 'Akihabara' declines in pitch towards the end of the word.
Akihabara is a station on the Japan Railways line and on the Tokyo subway. The railway station is a bit more convenient. This is what you see as you start down from the station platform.
A bit more convenient, if you happen to be using a JR line - if you're on a subway line, the subway exit is the way to go.
There are lots of people on the street (but that's true everywhere in Tokyo). This was Sunday morning at 11AM.
Akihabara's main street is closed to traffic on most Sundays.
The district is roughly 6 city blocks square. Some of the streets are wide, as above, and some are narrow and have that "oriental bazaar" feel to them.
It's quite considerably larger than that - certainly, most of the larger stores are toward the station, but if you head down the road in the direction of the Suehirocho station, there's many smaller shops in the back streets.
This place also sold a variety of CPU and memory chips. Here is the price list. Multiply Yen by 0.008 to get dollars (as of 4/02). Thus the 2.4Ghz P4 was selling for about $575. These prices, as with most prices in the Akihabara, did not strike me as wonderful bargains. Good prices, but not good enough to cover the airfare to Tokyo!
Gee, I'm so sorry... strange as it may seem, shops in Akihabara don't take your plane fare into account when setting their prices.
Notice the number of clerks. Like every Japanese retail store, there are many, many clerks, all eager to be helpful. Japanese retail stores are grossly overstaffed by American standards.
...which could easily be rewritten to say, "American stores are grossly understaffed by Japanese standards." How often have I seen people complaining that they can't find a clerk in a US Fry's?
The prices for Apple stuff seemed to be about the same as US prices.
That's because Apple engages in price-fixing in Japan (they were actually convicted of it once, but it's obvious that it still goes on).
Many stores sold games. This one is advertising the Nintendo for about $200. There were also Sega and Sony game stores. I don't know what the game is that is featured in the window display. The box was all Japanese except for the line "The voices of a distant star."
It's called 'Hoshi no Koe' ('The Voice of the Stars' is close enough).
When I looked closely at these PDAs I found the screen display was all in Japanese.
OH MY GOD!!! You're KIDDING!!!! Japanese PDAs in Japan... who would have thought it?!?
Most of the larger stores devoted much floor space to items of interest to local people, especially appliances: washing machines, microwaves, rice cookers and the like. And some absolutely gorgeous, 16:9-format TVs, which, or course, would be useless in the US.
Obviously, these stores should immediately devote a minimum of 70% of their floor space to items that are of interest to Americans.
There were lots of laptops to be seen, but alas, almost all had Japanese keyboards and the Japanese version of Windows. The prices for most laptops seemed to be pretty close to US prices for comparable models. The only bargains were on closeouts (clearly marked in English, "last one").
...I don't need to hammer the point any more, do I? (BTW, the reason you didn't find any 'bargains' was because you were looking in the wrong place - if you want a cheap laptop, the best way to find one is either online or check some of the smaller shops for weekend specials).
The only place you find English keyboards is in the big stores, in what are advertised as "Duty Free" departments. "Duty Free" is a misnomer -- all the goods were made in Japan, so there is no question of avoiding an import duty.
The 'Duty Free' in this case refers to the lack of the 5% consumption tax on items (which he does mention later on, although he doesn't link the two facts).
All in all, about what I'd expect from a tourist on a quick spin through the larger shops...
It's my understanding that Redhat considers all their numbered non-beta releases to be stable and production ready.
Yeah, right... as someone who's used (for various purposes and on various architectures) RH4.2, 5.0, 5.1, 5.2, 6.0, 6.2, 7.0 and 7.2, I think I can say that an RHx.0 release is generally just a kind of "let's throw it out there and hope that we can put out the bugfixes fast enough to avoid anyone noticing that large parts of it don't work", an RHx.1 release is "this *should* fix all the problems with x.0", and an RHx.2 release is "OK, we're done, onto the next major release, guys".
You're probably talking about some network server in this case. The bottleneck is more likely to be the network than the disks.
With Gigabit Ethernet? Hardly.
Err... DMA anyone?:-)
Hate to tell you, but DMA doesn't do you much good if the interface just sits there doing nothing while waiting for operations to complete... SCSI with proper command tagging anyone?
With SCSI, if you attach 15 decides on a single bus and have 100 users doing random access on them, how many MB/s does each disk get? Guess I'd rather go with IDE disks in buses by themselves;-)
Since the disks are many times slower than the interface, multiple devices on a single interface won't slow the individual devices down that much (although if you're putting 15 15Krpm disks on a single SCSI channel, obviously you'd be better off spreading them over multiple channels). Once you're doing that sort of thing, the main problem starts to be your PCI bus. Good luck at finding a 64bit/66MHz IDE card...
h, and if you really care that much about offloading the CPU and being able to connect dozens of disks to a machine, you can find boxes into which you can place lots of fast&cheap IDE disks that interfaces with the computer with a SCSI interface. Cool, eh?
Well done, you've just managed to refute your own arguments.
When I was teaching, I'd find that the carpet would start to crawl - literally moving backwards and forwards - and then I'd wake up and realize that my students had been watching me sleep for the last ten seconds.
Slashdot Mirror
One file per Mailbox-folder, allowing multiple folders per user. Should those files reside in one central location or in users Homedirs?
Depends on how the user accesses their mail. If they read their mail only on the local machine, it should be in their home dir. If the server allows multiple forms of access (like local + IMAP), central storage makes sense. There's a lot of other issues here, like backup methods.
Compression: Should messages be broken into pieces and the MIME-attachments stored separately (thus searching of the text parts would still be possible without decompressing the whole file)?
No. Separating a single mail into its component parts is just asking for trouble (not to mention that it massively increases your locking problems).
File format: gdbm, Sleepycat db? Something new?
Personally, I like Maildir, since it lets me use standard tools like grep to find particular mails. I admit that a more efficient method is probably required these days.
Should the security model allow users to directly access their files, grep them, copy them around?
Yes, of course. It's their mail - let them do what they want with it. The mail app must be able to deal with that.
Shared folders, virtual domains?
Shared folders would be nice - IMAP can do that now, although it's overengineered and not necessarily fully implemented in any particular IMAP server. Virtual domains I've never had any use for myself...
Unicode support in folder names?
Why not?
Imap message-IDs, flags, useragent specific state-information?
As you say, IMAP does that already...
File-locking (NFS)?
More the fault of NFS than the mail software (and I believe NFS4 handles locking better).
Don't worry, it might happen yet - that site lists only one participant, but the Japanese party promotion site already lists over 150 people as confirmed attendees...
*Groan*...yet more McVoy...
Quite enough of his views have been dumped in my mailbox from l-k every day for the last week. The man's a walking flamewar.
Apparently, she may appear in some crowd scenes, but all her lines were reshot with the actress they got in as her replacement (forget the name...)
It would be if you were using a language where the concept of mora makes sense. Hint: It doesn't for English.
&# 12540;
Obviously, you're a strange attractor! *Rimshot*
...while making a face at the flavor.
Does anyone really consider Stallman a muture adult?
Yes. Certainly more mature than you, anyway.
Well, at least I didn't get modded down as a troll...
...and a big FUCK OFF to you too, sweetheart.
Ah, you're one of the ones who rolled over for Taco when he introduced UIDs, aren't you?
;)
SOME of us stuck to our guns a bit longer
And it would have been a valid and useful (if obvious) warning to Japanese tourists in the US.
I think you missed out the 'retard' between Japanese and tourist there...
Ah, I see... you're no doubt one of these people that are in japan on a fat expense account, living in an apartment in Akasaka or Roppongi, and think that they know everything about Japan.
And as for your last comment about me being on a 'quick spin through slashdot', better check the user ID first, latecomer...
My apologies. People must have been saying that they "can't find a *useful* clerk in a US Fry's".
What if it were this way round: "I went to Silicon Valley and looked at Fry's. It was reasonable, but not cheap enough to cover the cost of the flight from Tokyo. On top of that, all the PCs were running ENGLISH Windows!"
I'm sure you'd be jumping all over him.
I'd just like to send a big 'fuck you' to the moderator with the microsecond attention span who seems to have decided that my post was a direct copy of the Akihabara article, rather than a commentary on it.
OK, since there seems to be next to no posts regarding the Akihabara page, here I go... (sorry to be harsh, but I spend a lot of time there, so it sort of gets my goat to see someone come along, go around a few shops, write up a single-page report, and get that posted to /.).
The Akihabara district of Tokyo is world-famous as a shopping district specializing in electrical and electronic equipment. I had the chance to visit the Akihabara while on an Elderhostel tour of Japan in April, 2002. (The name is pronounced ah-kee-ha-ba-rah, with no stress on any syllable. It is not, as English speakers want to say, aki-HAbara or akiha-BAra. The syllables just roll out all at the same level.)
Not really. Spoken Japanese does not use stress as a marker, but rather pitch. 'Akihabara' declines in pitch towards the end of the word.
Akihabara is a station on the Japan Railways line and on the Tokyo subway. The railway station is a bit more convenient. This is what you see as you start down from the station platform.
A bit more convenient, if you happen to be using a JR line - if you're on a subway line, the subway exit is the way to go.
There are lots of people on the street (but that's true everywhere in Tokyo). This was Sunday morning at 11AM.
Akihabara's main street is closed to traffic on most Sundays.
The district is roughly 6 city blocks square. Some of the streets are wide, as above, and some are narrow and have that "oriental bazaar" feel to them.
It's quite considerably larger than that - certainly, most of the larger stores are toward the station, but if you head down the road in the direction of the Suehirocho station, there's many smaller shops in the back streets.
This place also sold a variety of CPU and memory chips. Here is the price list. Multiply Yen by 0.008 to get dollars (as of 4/02). Thus the 2.4Ghz P4 was selling for about $575. These prices, as with most prices in the Akihabara, did not strike me as wonderful bargains. Good prices, but not good enough to cover the airfare to Tokyo!
Gee, I'm so sorry... strange as it may seem, shops in Akihabara don't take your plane fare into account when setting their prices.
Notice the number of clerks. Like every Japanese retail store, there are many, many clerks, all eager to be helpful. Japanese retail stores are grossly overstaffed by American standards.
...which could easily be rewritten to say, "American stores are grossly understaffed by Japanese standards." How often have I seen people complaining that they can't find a clerk in a US Fry's?
The prices for Apple stuff seemed to be about the same as US prices.
That's because Apple engages in price-fixing in Japan (they were actually convicted of it once, but it's obvious that it still goes on).
Many stores sold games. This one is advertising the Nintendo for about $200. There were also Sega and Sony game stores. I don't know what the game is that is featured in the window display. The box was all Japanese except for the line "The voices of a distant star."
It's called 'Hoshi no Koe' ('The Voice of the Stars' is close enough).
When I looked closely at these PDAs I found the screen display was all in Japanese.
OH MY GOD!!! You're KIDDING!!!! Japanese PDAs in Japan... who would have thought it?!?
Most of the larger stores devoted much floor space to items of interest to local people, especially appliances: washing machines, microwaves, rice cookers and the like. And some absolutely gorgeous, 16:9-format TVs, which, or course, would be useless in the US.
Obviously, these stores should immediately devote a minimum of 70% of their floor space to items that are of interest to Americans.
There were lots of laptops to be seen, but alas, almost all had Japanese keyboards and the Japanese version of Windows. The prices for most laptops seemed to be pretty close to US prices for comparable models. The only bargains were on closeouts (clearly marked in English, "last one").
...I don't need to hammer the point any more, do I? (BTW, the reason you didn't find any 'bargains' was because you were looking in the wrong place - if you want a cheap laptop, the best way to find one is either online or check some of the smaller shops for weekend specials).
The only place you find English keyboards is in the big stores, in what are advertised as "Duty Free" departments. "Duty Free" is a misnomer -- all the goods were made in Japan, so there is no question of avoiding an import duty.
The 'Duty Free' in this case refers to the lack of the 5% consumption tax on items (which he does mention later on, although he doesn't link the two facts).
All in all, about what I'd expect from a tourist on a quick spin through the larger shops...
It's my understanding that Redhat considers all their numbered non-beta releases to be stable and production ready.
Yeah, right... as someone who's used (for various purposes and on various architectures) RH4.2, 5.0, 5.1, 5.2, 6.0, 6.2, 7.0 and 7.2, I think I can say that an RHx.0 release is generally just a kind of "let's throw it out there and hope that we can put out the bugfixes fast enough to avoid anyone noticing that large parts of it don't work", an RHx.1 release is "this *should* fix all the problems with x.0", and an RHx.2 release is "OK, we're done, onto the next major release, guys".
Argh, I hate these know-it-alls...
:-)
;-)
You're probably talking about some network server in this case. The bottleneck is more likely to be the network than the disks.
With Gigabit Ethernet? Hardly.
Err... DMA anyone?
Hate to tell you, but DMA doesn't do you much good if the interface just sits there doing nothing while waiting for operations to complete... SCSI with proper command tagging anyone?
With SCSI, if you attach 15 decides on a single bus and have 100 users doing random access on them, how many MB/s does each disk get? Guess I'd rather go with IDE disks in buses by themselves
Since the disks are many times slower than the interface, multiple devices on a single interface won't slow the individual devices down that much (although if you're putting 15 15Krpm disks on a single SCSI channel, obviously you'd be better off spreading them over multiple channels). Once you're doing that sort of thing, the main problem starts to be your PCI bus. Good luck at finding a 64bit/66MHz IDE card...
h, and if you really care that much about offloading the CPU and being able to connect dozens of disks to a machine, you can find boxes into which you can place lots of fast&cheap IDE disks that interfaces with the computer with a SCSI interface. Cool, eh?
Well done, you've just managed to refute your own arguments.
Ditto. We've got a UUnet T1 too, and when I had to switch racks, they noticed the downtime and were on the phone to me within five minutes.
So, you're telling me that breaking the speed limit is a mortal sin?
Oh, shit...
I think that should really be:
Grades, sleep, social life. Choose 1.
That's some crazy shit...
When I was teaching, I'd find that the carpet would start to crawl - literally moving backwards and forwards - and then I'd wake up and realize that my students had been watching me sleep for the last ten seconds.
What version of Mozilla are you using??
All recent versions let you disable Javascript's new window creation, raising/lowering windows, etc.
Regarding your point #3, I find an IE crash makes all my windows disappear...
Well, actually it's one of the standard words for 'radio receiver', but I guess we can overlook that in the interests of PR for a Linux company...
Get mplayer.