I'm going to vote for the candidate that likes to "shake things up."
Good luck. One such politician (before he died in a plane crash) was Paul Wellstone. A little too far left for my tastes, but a nice guy from my conversations with him.
He went in all fire and zeal, and was basically told by the party leadership to STFU and play ball or he will get NO SUPPORT on ANYTHING - including basic normal federal funding for highway projects and such.
The system is broken - I don't care WHO you elect.
Many, MANY companies, applications, and even some free webmail companies send HTML *only* email. This practice must die. Try reading a list digest sometime where some moron sends a HTML email to a mailing list. Even HTML capable clients can't handle this.
I really don't understand why people keep pushing Fedora Core for production systems. It's not appropriate. Not that FC is bad, it's not, but in a production systen you need a level of stability and consistancy that FC by design does not provide. This is especially the case when it comes to things like SAN's and such. Centos is MUCH more appropriate. The Fedora legacy project was supposed to help, but has proven to be ineffective.
Ding ding! Verizon also won't carry it because it's not CDMA. If they DID carry (a CDMA version of) it, they would ensure that it only ran the qualcom crappy DRM encumbered OS that doesn't allow third party apps that are not digitally signed by Verizon. They would also ensure that bluetooth only worked with headsets and nothing else. Why pick on Verizon? Because they are "the" Poster Child for a carrier that behaves badly in regards to user flexability. They also have one of the best networks from my experience (of course they do have their deadspots as all wireless carriers do.)
Anyone else notice that wireless plans have gotten WORSE in the past few years? Now the "nationwide no roaming" has so many exceptions that it's basically useless outside of major cities. And text messaging is more expensive if you go outside the carriers network (not that it really costs them any more...)
Back in the early 70's I laminated mine. Now the new ones claim that you are not supposed to laminate them. So, they give you this cheesy paper card that is supposed to last a lifetime, make it hard to get a replacement, and tell you that you shouild not take steps to keep it in good shape. Cute. I still have my laminated card. Fuckem.
You must not pay much attention to what is going on today...
We have the NSA monitoring internet traffic (AT&T), logging all phone calls, and probably much much more. We have the FBI doing "sneak and peak" searches without warrants, expanding wiretaps, delving into library records and requiring secrecy on that (or go to jail), holding people for years without charging them with a crime, etc. etc. etc.
Every single day we have the government gathering more and more data and invading privacy to levels our founding fathers could not possibly conceive of. Some people don't want to know what's going on... "LA LA LA, I can't hear you... All is good, government can be trusted even though history since the beginning of civilization proves otherwise... If you are not doing something wrong you have nothing to worry about... LA LA LA!"
Um, Word is not a desktop publishing system, and SUCKS as one. The larger and more complex a document gets the more unstable Word gets. Style management is also horrible. Worse, *most* people don't know how to use styles anyway, and hard-code all the formatting.
A new UI is going to confuse a user for all of 5 minutes while they navigate through it and find where their favorite functions are... provided that said user had any clue what the fuck they were doing in the first place.
I think you would be surprised in a typical large company just how many people really *don't* have a clue when it comes to computers. It's a rather sizable percentage.
AOL's entire userbase comes to mind... One person I know with a cablemodem pays EXTRA for AOL because she just can't come to grips with changing the UI. Of course, this same person also can't figure out how to save an email message either.
Never underestimate the stupidity (when it comes to computers) of the average person.
Yeah, it seems as most kids involved in computers are gamers or myspace addicts. Then there are the "script kiddie" wannabe criminal hackers.
It does remind me back in the day of the Amiga (late 80's,) a friend of mine and I had a dispute about C versus Basic, so we decided to have a programming contest on who could write a clone of Pong the fastest. Well, to make a long story short, my Basic friend won by about 15 minutes on something that worked, (I think it took us a little over an hour) but I still maintain that my version more closely matched the behavior and playability of the original:-)
I think there are still a lot of kids out there that are truely interested in programming and other deeper understanding. It's just not a huge percentage (and never was.) I think computers are also a lot more complex and less "hackable" today. The Apple ][ was fun because you could go in and really tweak things (peek and poke the hardware) at a very low level. People really had to learn a LOT about how things worked in assembly language - you KNEW binary / hex / decimal / ascii conversions intimately. Anyone remember the Merlin assembler and Sourcerer disassembler?:-)
Well, the poster is asking for a Windows solution. Luckily, Exim / ClamAV / Perl (spamassassin) runs in cygwin!! Yeah, I know, cygwin is an abortion, but it does work.
The poster is really asking for a push-button point and clicky GUI interface type thing ("easy to use administrative interface"), due to the non-technical IT staff and the "Must be windows" requirement which just happens to exclude the ALL the best options. Really. So the alternatives are overpriced crapware which are not nearly as effective (or flexible.)
MTA software in general is complex. Exchange sure as hell is... Exim running in "smart host" mode is pretty simple, but you need to be able to use complex applications like "Notepad" to configure it. You also have to be able to read and understand the manual because it doesn't have a built-in idiot proof GUI management tool with online help (nor should it, IMHO for the simple reason that no GUI can ever have enough flexibility and options to point and click your way through all the possibilities. Something that tried would be 100 times more complex than Exchange and STILL not get there.) That given, there are probably only about 10 - 20 lines of configuration that need to be changed from the stock config file to setup exim for this task. Ditto for clamav / spamassassin.
It "should" be configured to query exchange to determine valid local email addresses so it doesn't accept then bounce email which causes collateral spam / damage, as ANY smarthost solution should (and few do, or are configured to. Demand that your solution has that capability.)
Maybe not New Hampshire. They are in the process of passing a law rejecting the standard. Governor said he will sign it. Quite apt for the "Live Free or Die" state.
Anything that can be handled by software is a non-issue as it can be dealt with via a firmware / software / driver upgrade. The physical stuff is what really matters as any hardware created NOW will have to be replaced if the standards are not compatible and need to be changed to be compatible. So, no, the gp is not a boob. He is looking at things from a different point of view.
Smoking bans have historically had a temporary impact to business, but then bars have seen an eventual increase in business from non-smokers who had been staying away.
California and Maine are good examples of this.
Voluntary bans don't work because your competitors take your business. If ALL bars are smoke free then it's a level playing field.
Only problem with that is that most markets do not have many last-mile providers. Furthermore, this tiered level of service is aimed at the very-high speed market (Verizon FIOS) where the competition just doesn't exist.
In areas where FIOS exists, DSL and Cable are very pale competitors - basically like the proposed lower level of service in the tiered model.
When it comes to fiber, the sheer cost makes competition very unlikely - much like there isn't much competition in a market for electricity transmission or natural gas pipe. This basically means that they will be a monopoly.
With FIOS, the FCC has granted them special status where they do NOT have to open their fiber to competitors, like they do for copper.
I wouldn't call the DMCA and the (un)Patriot(ic) act "submarine legislation" - they had quite vocal critics that had damn good arguments, but the people in power were not listening to the critics.
Um, but don't ALL internet users have a huge vested interest in preventing a tiered Internet? Not that they all REALIZE that preventing a tiered Internet is important, but still...
Actually, no, the system from Verizon (VOL) is not a step in the right direction.
Imagine the impact to email in general if EVERY ISP and company use such a bonehead system. Everytime you sent email to a new person (customer / client,) you would have to *find*, then fill out some bizzaro web form. MAYBE in a week or so you will finally be able to send your email. Exactly how does this help things???
VOL's problem is that the group running their email service is a bunch of totally incompetant BOFH a-holes. Instead of deploying well known and effective anti-spam solutions, they are just blacklisting up a storm, and utilizing broken home-grown "sender verification" systems. Meanwhile, the spew of filth from VOL's own network continues to infest the rest of the internet unabated.
VOL's problem with unreliable email service is VERY VERY well known to its customers - check the internal Verizon newsgroups. VOL's customers continue to complain constantly, as they have for nearly 2 years now, about missing or delayed email - but nobody at VOL is listening (or cares.)
2T? How do you get by? Damn, I have nearly that on my desktop...:-)
EMC's not bad either, but I think you get better bang for the buck with Netapp. They are faster. Isn't IBM just rebranding the Netapp's now anyway??? Netapp's snapshots are so cool. Wish we could get that on Linux. EMC doesn't come close either.
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I'm going to vote for the candidate that likes to "shake things up."
Good luck. One such politician (before he died in a plane crash) was Paul Wellstone. A little too far left for my tastes, but a nice guy from my conversations with him.
He went in all fire and zeal, and was basically told by the party leadership to STFU and play ball or he will get NO SUPPORT on ANYTHING - including basic normal federal funding for highway projects and such.
The system is broken - I don't care WHO you elect.
The concept of "Privacy" was dead a long time ago.
No, the concept is alive and well. You just don't get much of it anymore because we don't have many laws to preserve it.
Um, no. I would not want to see ANY of my neighbors naked. Eeww.
Many, MANY companies, applications, and even some free webmail companies send HTML *only* email. This practice must die. Try reading a list digest sometime where some moron sends a HTML email to a mailing list. Even HTML capable clients can't handle this.
I really don't understand why people keep pushing Fedora Core for production systems. It's not appropriate. Not that FC is bad, it's not, but in a production systen you need a level of stability and consistancy that FC by design does not provide. This is especially the case when it comes to things like SAN's and such. Centos is MUCH more appropriate. The Fedora legacy project was supposed to help, but has proven to be ineffective.
Ding ding! Verizon also won't carry it because it's not CDMA. If they DID carry (a CDMA version of) it, they would ensure that it only ran the qualcom crappy DRM encumbered OS that doesn't allow third party apps that are not digitally signed by Verizon. They would also ensure that bluetooth only worked with headsets and nothing else. Why pick on Verizon? Because they are "the" Poster Child for a carrier that behaves badly in regards to user flexability. They also have one of the best networks from my experience (of course they do have their deadspots as all wireless carriers do.)
Anyone else notice that wireless plans have gotten WORSE in the past few years? Now the "nationwide no roaming" has so many exceptions that it's basically useless outside of major cities. And text messaging is more expensive if you go outside the carriers network (not that it really costs them any more...)
Back in the early 70's I laminated mine. Now the new ones claim that you are not supposed to laminate them. So, they give you this cheesy paper card that is supposed to last a lifetime, make it hard to get a replacement, and tell you that you shouild not take steps to keep it in good shape. Cute. I still have my laminated card. Fuckem.
You must not pay much attention to what is going on today...
We have the NSA monitoring internet traffic (AT&T), logging all phone calls, and probably much much more. We have the FBI doing "sneak and peak" searches without warrants, expanding wiretaps, delving into library records and requiring secrecy on that (or go to jail), holding people for years without charging them with a crime, etc. etc. etc.
Every single day we have the government gathering more and more data and invading privacy to levels our founding fathers could not possibly conceive of. Some people don't want to know what's going on... "LA LA LA, I can't hear you... All is good, government can be trusted even though history since the beginning of civilization proves otherwise... If you are not doing something wrong you have nothing to worry about... LA LA LA!"
Um, open office is open source. It should be possible for anyone interested to add hooks for screenreaders / etc.
Um, Word is not a desktop publishing system, and SUCKS as one. The larger and more complex a document gets the more unstable Word gets. Style management is also horrible. Worse, *most* people don't know how to use styles anyway, and hard-code all the formatting.
A new UI is going to confuse a user for all of 5 minutes while they navigate through it and find where their favorite functions are ... provided that said user had any clue what the fuck they were doing in the first place.
I think you would be surprised in a typical large company just how many people really *don't* have a clue when it comes to computers. It's a rather sizable percentage.
AOL's entire userbase comes to mind... One person I know with a cablemodem pays EXTRA for AOL because she just can't come to grips with changing the UI. Of course, this same person also can't figure out how to save an email message either.
Never underestimate the stupidity (when it comes to computers) of the average person.
Case in point: everytime X is updated on Debian, I have to re-install the nvidia driver. PITA.
Heh!
:-)
:-)
Yeah, it seems as most kids involved in computers are gamers or myspace addicts. Then there are the "script kiddie" wannabe criminal hackers.
It does remind me back in the day of the Amiga (late 80's,) a friend of mine and I had a dispute about C versus Basic, so we decided to have a programming contest on who could write a clone of Pong the fastest. Well, to make a long story short, my Basic friend won by about 15 minutes on something that worked, (I think it took us a little over an hour) but I still maintain that my version more closely matched the behavior and playability of the original
I think there are still a lot of kids out there that are truely interested in programming and other deeper understanding. It's just not a huge percentage (and never was.) I think computers are also a lot more complex and less "hackable" today. The Apple ][ was fun because you could go in and really tweak things (peek and poke the hardware) at a very low level. People really had to learn a LOT about how things worked in assembly language - you KNEW binary / hex / decimal / ascii conversions intimately. Anyone remember the Merlin assembler and Sourcerer disassembler?
Well, the poster is asking for a Windows solution. Luckily, Exim / ClamAV / Perl (spamassassin) runs in cygwin!! Yeah, I know, cygwin is an abortion, but it does work.
The poster is really asking for a push-button point and clicky GUI interface type thing ("easy to use administrative interface"), due to the non-technical IT staff and the "Must be windows" requirement which just happens to exclude the ALL the best options. Really. So the alternatives are overpriced crapware which are not nearly as effective (or flexible.)
MTA software in general is complex. Exchange sure as hell is... Exim running in "smart host" mode is pretty simple, but you need to be able to use complex applications like "Notepad" to configure it. You also have to be able to read and understand the manual because it doesn't have a built-in idiot proof GUI management tool with online help (nor should it, IMHO for the simple reason that no GUI can ever have enough flexibility and options to point and click your way through all the possibilities. Something that tried would be 100 times more complex than Exchange and STILL not get there.) That given, there are probably only about 10 - 20 lines of configuration that need to be changed from the stock config file to setup exim for this task. Ditto for clamav / spamassassin.
It "should" be configured to query exchange to determine valid local email addresses so it doesn't accept then bounce email which causes collateral spam / damage, as ANY smarthost solution should (and few do, or are configured to. Demand that your solution has that capability.)
Maybe not New Hampshire. They are in the process of passing a law rejecting the standard. Governor said he will sign it. Quite apt for the "Live Free or Die" state.
Anything that can be handled by software is a non-issue as it can be dealt with via a firmware / software / driver upgrade. The physical stuff is what really matters as any hardware created NOW will have to be replaced if the standards are not compatible and need to be changed to be compatible. So, no, the gp is not a boob. He is looking at things from a different point of view.
In order to work, these things are going to be right under the skin. A small enough cut that a bandaid would fix is all it would take.
You need to get out more.
Smoking bans have historically had a temporary impact to business, but then bars have seen an eventual increase in business from non-smokers who had been staying away.
California and Maine are good examples of this.
Voluntary bans don't work because your competitors take your business. If ALL bars are smoke free then it's a level playing field.
Only problem with that is that most markets do not have many last-mile providers. Furthermore, this tiered level of service is aimed at the very-high speed market (Verizon FIOS) where the competition just doesn't exist.
In areas where FIOS exists, DSL and Cable are very pale competitors - basically like the proposed lower level of service in the tiered model.
When it comes to fiber, the sheer cost makes competition very unlikely - much like there isn't much competition in a market for electricity transmission or natural gas pipe. This basically means that they will be a monopoly.
With FIOS, the FCC has granted them special status where they do NOT have to open their fiber to competitors, like they do for copper.
I wouldn't call the DMCA and the (un)Patriot(ic) act "submarine legislation" - they had quite vocal critics that had damn good arguments, but the people in power were not listening to the critics.
Um, but don't ALL internet users have a huge vested interest in preventing a tiered Internet? Not that they all REALIZE that preventing a tiered Internet is important, but still...
reverse DNS only returns the first PTR record for a given IP address
Actually, that's not true at all. Setup multiple PTR records and use dig -x to view. Works FINE.
Now some stupid clients only use the first result received, and some stupid DNS management tools only allow one, but that is not a limitation of DNS.
Actually, no, the system from Verizon (VOL) is not a step in the right direction.
Imagine the impact to email in general if EVERY ISP and company use such a bonehead system. Everytime you sent email to a new person (customer / client,) you would have to *find*, then fill out some bizzaro web form. MAYBE in a week or so you will finally be able to send your email. Exactly how does this help things???
VOL's problem is that the group running their email service is a bunch of totally incompetant BOFH a-holes. Instead of deploying well known and effective anti-spam solutions, they are just blacklisting up a storm, and utilizing broken home-grown "sender verification" systems. Meanwhile, the spew of filth from VOL's own network continues to infest the rest of the internet unabated.
VOL's problem with unreliable email service is VERY VERY well known to its customers - check the internal Verizon newsgroups. VOL's customers continue to complain constantly, as they have for nearly 2 years now, about missing or delayed email - but nobody at VOL is listening (or cares.)
No. NetApp snapshots are VERY different and much further advanced. Read their whitepapers on it to understand.
2T? How do you get by? Damn, I have nearly that on my desktop... :-)
EMC's not bad either, but I think you get better bang for the buck with Netapp. They are faster. Isn't IBM just rebranding the Netapp's now anyway??? Netapp's snapshots are so cool. Wish we could get that on Linux. EMC doesn't come close either.