Seriously, though thank you for SquirellMail. It along with TWIG, and Iloha mail have been open source staples for my clients for a long time.
In many cases these mail clients were the first direct exposure (hands on) that those users had to open source software. I have many users insist upon using SquirrellMail as their sole email application.
I saw the new interface when my cousin, who works for yahoo was visiting. He was borrowing a computer, and I looked up and saw what I thought was Outlook Express. I went over to tell him the virtues of Firefox, when I realized what I saw was really an impressive browser based mail client.
This was back in early August, he said employees had been using it for a while, but it was hush-hush. He seemed pretty sheepish about it, and made me promise not to post on Slashdot, apparently yahoo wanted it under wraps for as long as possible.
He did give me the dog and pony show, and I must say that it really is a pretty slick application. Though I did not get to really test it, just watched him walk through it.
I own a small hosting company,and wanted to see what web-based mail clients were out there that I could use for my customers. Squirelmail and TWIG looked pretty ugly in comparison. Incidently I found an open source mail client that has a lot of similar functions: Round Cube I haveinstalled that and it is almost as impressive.
Anyway, it is amzing how far web applications have come in such a short period.
I was thinking more along the lines of powering a small compressor from the engine (thus robbing it of a bit of power), and then using the compressed air to power the vortex cooler.
I realize that the simple forward motion, (especially at slow speeds) would not be enough to cool the vehicle in any capacity. But it does seem like powering a compressor and essentially storing up the air to be used for cooling could be useful at least in terms of reducing the use of expensive and harmful gases.
There are already commercial "vortex tubes" available. they are apparently used often in manufacturing and other industrial applications. Here are a couple of links:
DISCLAIMER: These are COMMERCIAL links, I have no affiliation with these companies. AIRTX EXAIR - This one has a nice animated illustration of how these things work.
One of my questions is why have not these been adapted for use in automobile A/C - despite the fact that they are inefficient, it seems, the clean nature, and the fact that they would need little maintenane. Virtually every car I have ever owned has needed AC. Even if it only worked when moving, it would be useful. But it seems like they could be used to also cool the engine itself too so less toxic chemicals like anti-freeze would be needed.
We all know this is bad for the Chinese; however, this does effect us in several indirect ways.
First it makes us more tolerant to abuses here in the USA (sorry non-USA folks out there). For example as the Patriot act erodes our freedom, we can be more tolerent because we see other governments abusing their constiuency even more. So we let the abuses slide since we can always say "at least its not as bad a China).
Second it sets a precedent for the lobbyists to follow. Our telcom industry will say to the congress, "look mwe are lossing $$$$ because of this, and when we loss $$$ your constituents lose jobs." Then they say look at how effectively CHina handled the problem...
Third, the (this might be a stretch, but hear me out), it erodes our belief in one of our most sacred beliefs - Freedom of SPeech - which - really means the freedom to communicate, Communication, be it to the masses via a newspaper, or to your best friend via IM is fundamental to society. Any restriction is wrong. What is going to stop them from blocking email (I know they won't because they like the money SPAM generates), or IM.
Here is a more direct example. I don't know anyone in CHina, but I regularly get calls via Skype from customers in South America, Europe and Austrialia. If those countries take a similar hardline approach, I will likely lose customers.
Anyway, this sucks for the Chinese, and will have an impact on teh rest of us in some fashion.
I tried MIDPSSH, a few months ago. I have not tried it lately thoguh MIDPSSH in a while. I was having problems with it locking up if I used remote input. And found that the $100 bucks for Idorroko was well worth it, because it was getting to frustrating having to restart from scratch after MIDP locked up my phone.
Chording is a pain in the ass with small devices in my opinion. Maybe for IM with type ahead it would be ok, like the teens use. But if you are trying to use vi over an SSH session on a phone, chording would suck, and probably would not be possible.
Remember with remote terminal applications key presses have context on 2 sepeSo you need some way to easily get key combinations from the local device to the remote device. So end up having to press about 10 keys to do a "CNTL-C"....
The Blackberry CAN have a phone conversation and remain connected via SSH. In fact it can have multiple network app open. in one case I had someone on IM with the terminal open while talking on the phone.
The blackberry really is a great communication device. You can leave the terminal app open all day, so if you are just "monitoring" a server via top or something, you don't have to keep logging in.
With th treo,the network apyou turn the deviceoff. The blackberry really doe not turn "off" it is more like a regularI have left the terminal application connect for 8+ hours, and bttery life was barely dented. YOu cannot do that with the TREO.
My dad and brother have the Treo 650, my other brother has a 600 so I am pretty familiar with those devices also (and having this discussion:). The Treo's truely are great devices. And if your are a careful person who takes good care of things, and like multi-media, it can do everything the blackberry can do and more.
But they are simply NOT better than the blackberry for remote administration tasks (though they are absolutely are better if you judge by theoverall cabilities of the device)
If you tend to be a bit rougher on your devices, and need to have it with you everywhere, need to be able to reliably nd easily get online, and you need to get emails and IMs I think the BB will serve you better.
If you are like my brothers and dd and mainly want to listen to music, and watch movies and occassionally get some email(with fancy ring tones), the Treo has all the bells and whistles (literally) that you will need.
I use a TMobile 7230 - they are pretty inexpensive now. Combine with Idokorro Mobile SSH is extremely handy. Much more so than any of the TREO, Ipq etc I have used for remote admin. What sets the BlackBerry apart is the keyboard and special character handling. I have found it simply much easier to enter text into the BB. It really seems as though the Blackberry devices were designed as remote admin tools.
Prior to the BB I used an Ipaq 4550 (the one with a keyboard) with bluetooth and a seperate phone. This worked ok, and was convenient, but it seems that WinCe was designed solely for GUI use. There is no concept of an "escape" key, which limits terminal applications.
To be fail the Treo I used was the old BW model when they first came out with the keyboard. It was actually not too bad, but sill nothing compared to the BB. Compared to the newer Treo's the 7230 lacks the multimedia features, and linux syncronization. I cannot believe there is not more Linux software for this neat little machine, but I fully expect it to come eventually).
The killer features for me are the keyboard, durability (I have dropped in 3-4 feet onto concrete without damage - I dare you to try that with a $500 Treo), battery life (I go 2+ days with out charging. In short i have found this device to be great, I definately see how they earned the nickname crackberry.
I own a small hosting company. I have setup my business so that all accounts (except shell accounts) are stored and authenticated against MYSQL databases.
For that reason I chose Cyrus as the actual local mail system. It supports IMAP / POP3 can be scaled pretty easily. And despite reports that it is hard to configure, I have found that it really is not too bad if you keep things simple.
Currently I host about 3000 domains, and roughly 5000 email accounts, though most are nothing more than SPAM traps.
If you do go this route, the key is a reliable and robust MYSQL server(s).
The main advantage of MYSQL based virtual acounts is web-based management is trivial. ADD / UPDATE / DELETE can be done simply by updating a record.
The draw backs I have found are: a database/DB Server is an additional point of failure. Replication has been a bit tricky at times. Do not run DSPAM in the same database as your user / hosting accounts.
I have been out of school for a while, but I sure wish I had my BB 7230 back in the day. It makes entering appointments/dates easy, handles email (which is still a stable with college profs and instructors) extremely well. Does IM nicelt through third party software like Verichat, can do SSH, so connecting to your CS account is easy, and has a respectible memo pad feature.
Really I liek the intuitive typing / symbol layout. It is easy to access lesser used keys. Much easier than when using a palm,or an Ipaq (I have both of those, and have not hardly touched them since I got the blackberry).
The only cons - no multimedia (other than image attactments in emails), the screen on the 7230 is dim, (but works extremely well outside in the brightest light, so walking to class and checking email would be very feasible). Also no wifi, so the web is a bit slow via GPRS.
The networking with the IPAQ is better, but the browsers on IPAQ suck, minimo shows some promise. And email and chat with IPAQ over wifi really do not seem any faster.
Is it a static IP address that is from a "consumer" provider, i.e. did you pay extra for a static comcast address?
I believe that in those cases the reverse lookup of the IP address would either not resolve or would resovle to a generic name on your ISPs block, as opposed to resolving to your mail servers actual hostname (the host name identified in the messages headers. My understanding is that this is typically done as part of the HELO check).
In my experience having an IP address reverse resolve is one of the most critical components, especially when dealing with AOL. I have not had as much trouble with yahoo/hotmail.
I bet if there were a technology workers union, this sort of thing would not happen nearly as often.
I personally loathe unions as outdated overly powerful groups, that promote lazy workers and wasted money. However, I think this illustrates perfectly how the big companies will stick it to the little guy given the chance.
I still believe most unions are bad in their current state, but it is obvious to me now that they represent a critical part in the checks and balances that make up our work force.
-MS2k
Heres a GSM to VOIP gateway
on
A Private GSM Cell?
·
· Score: 4, Informative
How many of those staff will have to be retrained every couple years with the planned obsolense of MS software?
Training is a weak argument. It is likely already incorporated in their budget. Most endusers familiar with Office will do just fine with OO.
I know from my time working for a large University that there was training for every iteration of Windows, Office, and all the specialty apps. If you ask me the training was a complete racket, but we (as IT staff) were required to go through the training.
As for legacy apps, yes there will be a need to ween people off them. There will likely be hold outs, but the sooner the process starts the sooner the true savings can be realized.
What savings? My point is we have know idea what budget is in place, simply one line item - $15K per year for software. Would using free software cost the institution MORE than $15K per year? I doubt it.
Dumb ass moderators.... Yes you may spend more, but the $15,000 figure quoted is only for software licensing. We don't know what the budget for special projects and staff currently is set at.
Migrating may cost some money upfront but the software would be free, and will continu to be free. Chances are there is a budget for major projects, upgrades etc.
Also it is wel know that Linux/Unix systems are much cheaper per server/per machine to administer. One study I believe quoted aprox 1 admin to 30 machines for Windows while 1 admin for 200+ Unix/Linux srvers. Obviously, there are a myriad of factors to consider.
Anyway, the point is this original comment most certainly is not insightful, it is misleading at best and malicious flaim bait IMHO at worst.
I agree. I have been getting very basic MSI boards for lowend servers, and workstations.
They have everything on them, but I just disable everything I am not going to use in the bios, so those components do not interfere. The boards are usually about $50 on NewEgg.com
The other advantage to having all the stuff on board, is the airflow in the case . Things run cooler (not to mention no other heat causing cards. But obviously if you have a nice video board it will run circles around anything that you'll find built in.
As an owner of a small business that does consulting and other computer related work, I will say that the flexibility is great, but usually only for a few hours at a time.
For example I have a lot of time to spend with the kids after school. I can go on field trips, etc. What I as a business owner do not have time and flexibity for is extended vacations. Maybe a week if I am lucky, and even then I am constantly checking in with clients.
If you are going to run a small business your clients will expect you to be there for them when they need you. If you are not, then they will find somebody who will be.
If you really want extended freedom. The only thing I have can think of is the temp jobs offered on "rent-a-coder" or other hired-gun web sites. There you are just bidding for a variety of simple jobs. In that case you get specs and a deadline usually when your done, that is it. there is no long term realionshoip with the client (in fact that sort of thing is frowned upon). So vacationing in that scenerio is easy.
Obviously, if you choose the route of working for another company you will ahve a different set of issues to deal with. Its been a while since I was in that boat, and others here seam to have it covered. So I will wish you luck with your decision.
I agree wholeheartly. Another line of reasoning to support these views is exactly what does performance enhancing mean? Where is the line drawn? Would performance enhancing substances be legal if there where not side effects? I think they already are.
For example, "sports drinks" like gatorade can help an athlete, and give them an edge. Sucking down a bottle of oxygen can improve endurance. Maybe sports should ban O2? All sports should go completely natural. Athletes can only eat farm fresh organically grown food, uniforms must be handwoven of natural fibers. Heck maybe the breathability of cotton is an advantage. Perhaps the greeks got it right: nude olimpics. Those fancy suits track athletes wear must make them faster.
Today's athletes arguably have better diets and "legal" training supplements available to them, as well as superior equipment as compared to their counter parts from earlier eras. Our society values continuous improvement, and limiting drugs is simply an artificial measure, that seems to go against the true values of our society.
Eventaully there will be two versions of every sport. It is pretty easy to guess which version woulf be popular and attract the fans.
Slashdot Mirror
Ilohamail does see http://blog.ilohamail.org/
It is a really fast implementation of webmail, works well on my large accounts.
-MS2K
Some babies have faces only a mother could love :)
Seriously, though thank you for SquirellMail. It along with TWIG, and Iloha mail have been open source staples for my clients for a long time.
In many cases these mail clients were the first direct exposure (hands on) that those users had to open source software. I have many users insist upon using SquirrellMail as their sole email application.
Thanks again,
Brandon
Whoops, I did mean Thunderbird....
I saw the new interface when my cousin, who works for yahoo was visiting. He was borrowing a computer, and I looked up and saw what I thought was Outlook Express. I went over to tell him the virtues of Firefox, when I realized what I saw was really an impressive browser based mail client.
This was back in early August, he said employees had been using it for a while, but it was hush-hush. He seemed pretty sheepish about it, and made me promise not to post on Slashdot, apparently yahoo wanted it under wraps for as long as possible.
He did give me the dog and pony show, and I must say that it really is a pretty slick application. Though I did not get to really test it, just watched him walk through it.
I own a small hosting company,and wanted to see what web-based mail clients were out there that I could use for my customers. Squirelmail and TWIG looked pretty ugly in comparison. Incidently I found an open source mail client that has a lot of similar functions: Round Cube I haveinstalled that and it is almost as impressive.
Anyway, it is amzing how far web applications have come in such a short period.
-MS2k
I was thinking more along the lines of powering a small compressor from the engine (thus robbing it of a bit of power), and then using the compressed air to power the vortex cooler.
I realize that the simple forward motion, (especially at slow speeds) would not be enough to cool the vehicle in any capacity. But it does seem like powering a compressor and essentially storing up the air to be used for cooling could be useful at least in terms of reducing the use of expensive and harmful gases.
-MS2k
There are already commercial "vortex tubes" available. they are apparently used often in manufacturing and other industrial applications. Here are a couple of links:
DISCLAIMER: These are COMMERCIAL links, I have no affiliation with these companies.
AIRTX
EXAIR - This one has a nice animated illustration of how these things work.
One of my questions is why have not these been adapted for use in automobile A/C - despite the fact that they are inefficient, it seems, the clean nature, and the fact that they would need little maintenane. Virtually every car I have ever owned has needed AC. Even if it only worked when moving, it would be useful. But it seems like they could be used to also cool the engine itself too so less toxic chemicals like anti-freeze would be needed.
-MS2k
We all know this is bad for the Chinese; however, this does effect us in several indirect ways.
First it makes us more tolerant to abuses here in the USA (sorry non-USA folks out there). For example as the Patriot act erodes our freedom, we can be more tolerent because we see other governments abusing their constiuency even more. So we let the abuses slide since we can always say "at least its not as bad a China).
Second it sets a precedent for the lobbyists to follow. Our telcom industry will say to the congress, "look mwe are lossing $$$$ because of this, and when we loss $$$ your constituents lose jobs." Then they say look at how effectively CHina handled the problem...
Third, the (this might be a stretch, but hear me out), it erodes our belief in one of our most sacred beliefs - Freedom of SPeech - which - really means the freedom to communicate, Communication, be it to the masses via a newspaper, or to your best friend via IM is fundamental to society. Any restriction is wrong. What is going to stop them from blocking email (I know they won't because they like the money SPAM generates), or IM.
Here is a more direct example. I don't know anyone in CHina, but I regularly get calls via Skype from customers in South America, Europe and Austrialia. If those countries take a similar hardline approach, I will likely lose customers.
Anyway, this sucks for the Chinese, and will have an impact on teh rest of us in some fashion.
-MS2k
Thanks,
I am sure the price drop had somethign to do with the open source version catching up. Another benifit for OSS.
I will have to give a recent version of MIDPSSH another look.
-MS2k
You can get verichat for the blackberry i use it frequently.
I tried MIDPSSH, a few months ago. I have not tried it lately thoguh MIDPSSH in a while. I was having problems with it locking up if I used remote input. And found that the $100 bucks for Idorroko was well worth it, because it was getting to frustrating having to restart from scratch after MIDP locked up my phone.
BD IDEA for REMOTE ADMIN.
Chording is a pain in the ass with small devices in my opinion. Maybe for IM with type ahead it would be ok, like the teens use. But if you are trying to use vi over an SSH session on a phone, chording would suck, and probably would not be possible.
Remember with remote terminal applications key presses have context on 2 sepeSo you need some way to easily get key combinations from the local device to the remote device. So end up having to press about 10 keys to do a "CNTL-C"....
The Blackberry CAN have a phone conversation and remain connected via SSH. In fact it can have multiple network app open. in one case I had someone on IM with the terminal open while talking on the phone.
:). The Treo's truely are great devices. And if your are a careful person who takes good care of things, and like multi-media, it can do everything the blackberry can do and more.
The blackberry really is a great communication device. You can leave the terminal app open all day, so if you are just "monitoring" a server via top or something, you don't have to keep logging in.
With th treo,the network apyou turn the deviceoff. The blackberry really doe not turn "off" it is more like a regularI have left the terminal application connect for 8+ hours, and bttery life was barely dented. YOu cannot do that with the TREO.
My dad and brother have the Treo 650, my other brother has a 600 so I am pretty familiar with those devices also (and having this discussion
But they are simply NOT better than the blackberry for remote administration tasks (though they are absolutely are better if you judge by theoverall cabilities of the device)
If you tend to be a bit rougher on your devices, and need to have it with you everywhere, need to be able to reliably nd easily get online, and you need to get emails and IMs I think the BB will serve you better.
If you are like my brothers and dd and mainly want to listen to music, and watch movies and occassionally get some email(with fancy ring tones), the Treo has all the bells and whistles (literally) that you will need.
NO Question - Blackberry
I use a TMobile 7230 - they are pretty inexpensive now. Combine with Idokorro Mobile SSH is extremely handy. Much more so than any of the TREO, Ipq etc I have used for remote admin. What sets the BlackBerry apart is the keyboard and special character handling. I have found it simply much easier to enter text into the BB. It really seems as though the Blackberry devices were designed as remote admin tools.
Prior to the BB I used an Ipaq 4550 (the one with a keyboard) with bluetooth and a seperate phone. This worked ok, and was convenient, but it seems that WinCe was designed solely for GUI use. There is no concept of an "escape" key, which limits terminal applications.
To be fail the Treo I used was the old BW model when they first came out with the keyboard. It was actually not too bad, but sill nothing compared to the BB. Compared to the newer Treo's the 7230 lacks the multimedia features, and linux syncronization. I cannot believe there is not more Linux software for this neat little machine, but I fully expect it to come eventually).
The killer features for me are the keyboard, durability (I have dropped in 3-4 feet onto concrete without damage - I dare you to try that with a $500 Treo), battery life (I go 2+ days with out charging. In short i have found this device to be great, I definately see how they earned the nickname crackberry.
-MS2k
A monster to them, a cult hero to the slashdot minions...
That is an interesting train of thought.
-Ms2k
I own a small hosting company. I have setup my business so that all accounts (except shell accounts) are stored and authenticated against MYSQL databases.
For that reason I chose Cyrus as the actual local mail system. It supports IMAP / POP3 can be scaled pretty easily. And despite reports that it is hard to configure, I have found that it really is not too bad if you keep things simple.
Currently I host about 3000 domains, and roughly 5000 email accounts, though most are nothing more than SPAM traps.
If you do go this route, the key is a reliable and robust MYSQL server(s).
The main advantage of MYSQL based virtual acounts is web-based management is trivial. ADD / UPDATE / DELETE can be done simply by updating a record.
The draw backs I have found are: a database/DB Server is an additional point of failure. Replication has been a bit tricky at times. Do not run DSPAM in the same database as your user / hosting accounts.
-MS2k
I have been out of school for a while, but I sure wish I had my BB 7230 back in the day. It makes entering appointments /dates easy, handles email (which is still a stable with college profs and instructors) extremely well. Does IM nicelt through third party software like Verichat, can do SSH, so connecting to your CS account is easy, and has a respectible memo pad feature.
Really I liek the intuitive typing / symbol layout. It is easy to access lesser used keys. Much easier than when using a palm,or an Ipaq (I have both of those, and have not hardly touched them since I got the blackberry).
The only cons - no multimedia (other than image attactments in emails), the screen on the 7230 is dim, (but works extremely well outside in the brightest light, so walking to class and checking email would be very feasible). Also no wifi, so the web is a bit slow via GPRS.
The networking with the IPAQ is better, but the browsers on IPAQ suck, minimo shows some promise. And email and chat with IPAQ over wifi really do not seem any faster.
-MS2K
Is it a static IP address that is from a "consumer" provider, i.e. did you pay extra for a static comcast address?
I believe that in those cases the reverse lookup of the IP address would either not resolve or would resovle to a generic name on your ISPs block, as opposed to resolving to your mail servers actual hostname (the host name identified in the messages headers. My understanding is that this is typically done as part of the HELO check).
In my experience having an IP address reverse resolve is one of the most critical components, especially when dealing with AOL. I have not had as much trouble with yahoo/hotmail.
-MS2k
I bet if there were a technology workers union, this sort of thing would not happen nearly as often.
I personally loathe unions as outdated overly powerful groups, that promote lazy workers and wasted money. However, I think this illustrates perfectly how the big companies will stick it to the little guy given the chance.
I still believe most unions are bad in their current state, but it is obvious to me now that they represent a critical part in the checks and balances that make up our work force.
-MS2k
This looks like it might be helpful:
http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-VOIP+GSM+Gateways
The site www.voip-info.org itself looked promising during my brief visit....
How many of those staff will have to be retrained every couple years with the planned obsolense of MS software?
Training is a weak argument. It is likely already incorporated in their budget. Most endusers familiar with Office will do just fine with OO.
I know from my time working for a large University that there was training for every iteration of Windows, Office, and all the specialty apps. If you ask me the training was a complete racket, but we (as IT staff) were required to go through the training.
As for legacy apps, yes there will be a need to ween people off them. There will likely be hold outs, but the sooner the process starts the sooner the true savings can be realized.
What savings? My point is we have know idea what budget is in place, simply one line item - $15K per year for software. Would using free software cost the institution MORE than $15K per year? I doubt it.
Dumb ass moderators.... Yes you may spend more, but the $15,000 figure quoted is only for software licensing. We don't know what the budget for special projects and staff currently is set at.
Migrating may cost some money upfront but the software would be free, and will continu to be free. Chances are there is a budget for major projects, upgrades etc.
Also it is wel know that Linux/Unix systems are much cheaper per server/per machine to administer. One study I believe quoted aprox 1 admin to 30 machines for Windows while 1 admin for 200+ Unix/Linux srvers. Obviously, there are a myriad of factors to consider.
Anyway, the point is this original comment most certainly is not insightful, it is misleading at best and malicious flaim bait IMHO at worst.
-MS2K
I agree. I have been getting very basic MSI boards for lowend servers, and workstations.
They have everything on them, but I just disable everything I am not going to use in the bios, so those components do not interfere. The boards are usually about $50 on NewEgg.com
The other advantage to having all the stuff on board, is the airflow in the case . Things run cooler (not to mention no other heat causing cards. But obviously if you have a nice video board it will run circles around anything that you'll find built in.
-MS2k
As an owner of a small business that does consulting and other computer related work, I will say that the flexibility is great, but usually only for a few hours at a time.
For example I have a lot of time to spend with the kids after school. I can go on field trips, etc. What I as a business owner do not have time and flexibity for is extended vacations. Maybe a week if I am lucky, and even then I am constantly checking in with clients.
If you are going to run a small business your clients will expect you to be there for them when they need you. If you are not, then they will find somebody who will be.
If you really want extended freedom. The only thing I have can think of is the temp jobs offered on "rent-a-coder" or other hired-gun web sites. There you are just bidding for a variety of simple jobs. In that case you get specs and a deadline usually when your done, that is it. there is no long term realionshoip with the client (in fact that sort of thing is frowned upon). So vacationing in that scenerio is easy.
Obviously, if you choose the route of working for another company you will ahve a different set of issues to deal with. Its been a while since I was in that boat, and others here seam to have it covered. So I will wish you luck with your decision.
-MS2k
I agree wholeheartly. Another line of reasoning to support these views is exactly what does performance enhancing mean? Where is the line drawn? Would performance enhancing substances be legal if there where not side effects? I think they already are.
For example, "sports drinks" like gatorade can help an athlete, and give them an edge. Sucking down a bottle of oxygen can improve endurance. Maybe sports should ban O2? All sports should go completely natural. Athletes can only eat farm fresh organically grown food, uniforms must be handwoven of natural fibers. Heck maybe the breathability of cotton is an advantage. Perhaps the greeks got it right: nude olimpics. Those fancy suits track athletes wear must make them faster.
Today's athletes arguably have better diets and "legal" training supplements available to them, as well as superior equipment as compared to their counter parts from earlier eras. Our society values continuous improvement, and limiting drugs is simply an artificial measure, that seems to go against the true values of our society.
Eventaully there will be two versions of every sport. It is pretty easy to guess which version woulf be popular and attract the fans.
-MS2k