Maybe they just don't know what the cause of the problem is. If two pieces of data don't match, who can say which is the wrong piece. If a DNS lookup fails, details are not typically transferred to the mail server. And most mail servers only provide a simple static message insertion for a whole class of failures that could be causes for not accepting the email.
A competent and experienced mail server administrator can figure out the issue and fix it. There's a common set of configurations that all need to be right, and these can all be checked. If all that is correct, then the blacklists are the next likely cause. There are places to enter an address to see if it is listed anywhere.
Still, many mail servers do detail the blacklist identity when it's a blacklist issue. I know Postfix does. Of course it's a matter of what they are running at the destination, and they could be running something stupid that won't say. If you find you are sending email to someone whose ISP is stupid, ask them to get a better ISP (yeah, yeah, I know, most people won't... but tell them, anyway).
As for blacklists answering questions, why should they? If they publish criteria for being listed, then either get the situation changed, or show that the situation doesn't fit the criteria. All the major blacklists can do this w/o any need to answer any questions.
Based on the highest quality of standard definition video on a 4.7 GB DVD (one hour), this thing would store just a bit over 33 YEARS of video. I don't even want to think of how much audio that would hold in MP3 format.
One problem is, despite the fact that you and I would never need to call about anything like a current balance, there are lots of people who do call for just such a purpose (whether they need to or not). And there are lots of people that call to see if their most recent payment has arrived (I admit to doing this myself once when the payment was very large). Directing all these calls to an automated system that actually works (way too many don't even work right) would be a big help. Remember that for all the companies out there that we think are idiots (and most really are), their view on things is that most of the consumers out there are idiots (and most really are).
The number of networks that are blocking dynamic IPs and generic IPs is growing. It is your responsibility as the sender to make sure your email is fully distinguishable from spam (while the spammers are trying very hard to make their junk look like legitimate mail). If your recipient whitelists your email address, that should work. I run my own mail servers - I block all dynamic/generic address (by their names, not IPs) - I whitelist email addresses (not names unless you are the domain owner). It works well for keeping the spam out.
Now I need to find a way to punish those evil ISPs that let the spammers stay connected to keep using up my bandwidth server process time. I know, I'll block the whole ISP and make all their customers move... except those that are whitelisted.
It isn't going to be that long until networks start blocking the entire 0.0.0.0/0 space and require whitelisting to get through. If you don't want it to get to that, then join the fight to get all spammers disconnected.
Maybe your school mail server really is misconfigured. The fact that most mail servers let through mail from a misconfigured server is probably related to the fact that the vast majority of mail servers are either misconfigured or otherwise mismanaged, including at educational institutions which you'd think would know better.
If the school mail server has no reverse DNS, or invalid reverse DNS, or mismatching reverse DNS, then it isn't going to be deliverable to a growing number of other mail servers (including mine). Just because the majority still accept mail (and spam) from misconfigured servers does not justify expecting everyone to do so.
If the school mail server is an open relay, that's even worse. Not only will an even larger number of networks refuse everything from it, many will refuse everything for a long time after it is fixed (since everyone will have to be notified of the fix).
Tell us what the IP address of the school mail server is. Also tell us the hostname. We can check for obvious problems. If any are found, then get them fixed, even if you have to put a cluestick wound on the mail server admin. There's really no excuse for not doing it right (should do it right the first time).
... the Bush administration announces a proposed law to prohibit the use of encrypted web access. "There will be little or no impact by this law, since the Constitution does not provied any right of privacy." stated attorney general Aberto Gonzales.
The jobs here in the USA are still not anywhere near 1997 levels. Postings on the big jobs boards in technology are still just a fraction (about 1/7th right now, which is better than a year ago which was about 1/12th) of what it was around 1996 and 1997 in the "dot com" age just a couple years before it all went "dot comatose". I do find it hard to believe it can ever get as good as it was, but maybe it can get adequate if there isn't the same flood of people into the field that took place during those years and some that followed. So if you love the field, go for it. If not, stay away; there are no (not any more) riches here.
It may be improving. But it's most likely not improving by as much as the government claims it is. Of course, they have the incentive to make such claims, as it helps keep the current administration and its party in greater power. Even though Dubya is on his way out in 2009, they will still be trying to make it look like good things happened on his watch, whether or not he was even responsible for the bad things that actually happened (some of it was Congress's fault).
Additionally, the government also has the means to get bad statistics. The U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics uses methods to just people as being employed, unemployed, or not in the work force that unfairly misclassifies many people. A computer programmer or network administrator who is currently delivering pizza part time is counted as employed, making things look rosier than they really are. There is no category for "mis-employed" or "under-employed" (but there needs to be). Another source of error is that people are considered not looking for a job if there are no jobs even being offered in their area that they could apply for. If you're one of those who gets surveyed by the BLS and you say you are checking newspaper ads and job postings, but have not found any to send a resume to, or don't have any interviews to go to, and this is all you've done for 4 weeks, you are counted as "not in the work force", not as unemployed (and this helps lower the unemployement rate).
While your scenario probably does need mbox, it's not really typical. The biggest factor is that it deletes all mail in every pickup cycle. Of course that does mean there is mail arriving between the time all mail was fetched and the delete all is requested, which means the IMAP process has to rewrite the mbox file, which means locking out further deliveries while that is taking place. But regardless, it's not the kind of scenario most mail server users are doing. Your setup is probably better off using something else besides either mbox or Maildir, anyway.
I mean the people that are actually looking for a job, for which there are NO such jobs being offered, in their area (or out of their area if someone pays relocation, which is hardly happening at all today), that they qualify for. Not counting them as unemployed is just wrong. Plain wrong. This is as bad, if not worse, than counting the guy with 15 years programming experience as employed because he's currently having to deliver pizza to pay the rent and get some free food.
Where are the jobs? They aren't in the newspaper ads hardly anymore. The job web boards are still under 5% of what they used to be, and mostly filled with very specialized contract jobs that fewer than 1% would ever qualify for (this is probably the tactic used to justify hiring from overseas).
At least now I know why the statistics the government puts out are still totally inconsistent with the reality of the world. Thanks for the solid evidence.
Most of the software engineering, software development, network administration, and systems administration job openings are only open to a few people. Look at all the requirements that the employers put on so many of those. For any one person looking, there's relatively few job openings around. I was looking at a job web site several years ago that had a forms page for selecting all the areas of your qualification. There were over 3300 areas to choose from!
Even this shows how the survey can be bad. For example look at the section on how the determine who is unemployed:
Passive methods of jobsearch do not result in jobseekers actually contacting potential employers, and therefore are not acceptable for classifying persons as unemployed. These would include such things as attending a job training program or course or merely reading the want ads.
That right there. THAT ALONE shows that the statistics they gather are ABSOLUTELY DISTORTED! They are leaving out an entire class of unemployed... INTENTIONALLY!
Thank you for the evidence that I can now take to my Congress person to show that the BLS is pulling a sham on the American people.
However, lots of people don't really care that much about the quality, as long as it is reasonably near perfect. We're talking one level of degradation (lossy compression) verses two or three (the original lossy compression, the analog re-sampling, and another lossy compression if FLAC isn't used). The point is, though, that once the content leaks, it has a fixed level of degradation, and never gets worse than that, no matter how many replications get made of it during online trading.
You think that would work? The issue is the drivers for things like audio and video. Since the kernel is open source, as are virtually all drivers, it's easy for someone to code up an intercept within the kernel and replicate a perfect copy of the playing content out through another logical device where some other process is collecting a pristine copy.
In Windows, you won't be able to do that. And it will rat out any non-authorized driver you try to install, so the content won't play.
There is a way to do this without the software needing to be trusted. Of course Bill will be mad and Steve will throw another chair because Linux will be able to run open source programs that can play audio and video. The way is to do all the work in hardware (not in the application, or the OS, or even in BIOS). More details are in my original comment on this. One interesting thing is that this method even allows for legal content trading.
Your friend is a much a victim of the greedy content industry as his patrons are. Sure, there is some piracy around. Sure, it has grown with the internet. But piracy is still way less than half of all uses of music and even less for video. DRM really isn't there to stop piracy. It doesn't even do things that stop piracy. Instead, it is there to (try to) force people to pay more and more for the same content. This will include things like forcing the use of the original media (which wears out, forcing a re-buy) by prohibiting the use of hard drive juke boxes, unless an "upgrade" is purchased. It's all about dunning the listener of music and the viewer of video for more and more revenues, which can way exceed the revenues lost to piracy. To the content industry, piracy is a godsend that allowed them to ask for laws against defeating DRM so they could deploy it to shake down the majority of consumers. Piracy will never go away, and the content industry would just as well have it stay around, lest someone try to get rid of the anti-DRM laws that can bring in huge profits.
Don't hold your breath... if the content industry were to ever get a clue. Of course that's not likely. But if they were to do something like I previously described, they could have a DRM that worked in Linux w/o any trusted software being needed because the software would only be touching encrypted content and encrypted authorization keys.
Doing DRM in hardware the right way would eliminate the need for software to have any major special capabilities, or licensing. The hardware would do the decrypting if it hard the right keys and authorization. All this could be provided by the software in a clear manner. DRM would only need to trust the hardware. It would not only be platform portable, but also even allow legal content file trading. More details are in my original comment. Of course, Microsoft's perspective is that DRM in software, exclusive to them, gives them leverage over Linux. And Linux being DRM-free gives it leverage over Windows.
The content industry could, if they wanted to, make DRM that really would work even on Linux. The problem right now is they are trying to do DRM as a software solution. This is likely because they were approached by a big software company in Redmond to do DRM in software, so that software company could do their own leveraging and push their own OS. Of course, that software company is prone to big blunders, so it's very unlikely to work. Had the content industry gone to a hardware solution, then they could have made DRM work on all operating systems, opened up a wider variety of playback programs, and even allowed legal trading! See my original comment on how that could have been made to work. Had they done that, then Linux would have been without its own leverage as a DRM-free OS.
What does it matter to us whether others use Linux or not? If it would make a difference as to whether the content industry would release DRM-free content or not, then that might make it important. But then, having DRM in Linux defeats that.
I've found plenty of DRM-free music online. Some is even free to download and play. Others you do have to pay for to have legally, but they don't put DRM in it, so you can fully use what you buy. There will be even more of this as the big content providers move to more DRM. That would then move more people over to the DRM-free providers who will grow, and a DRM-free Linux, which will grow.
DRM isn't about stopping piracy. Piracy is nothing compared to the potential market of forcing the rest of the population that doesn't do pirating (about 85% right now, though that will decline as they push this) to have to pay extra just to play the music or watch the videos they already have. The content industry sees riches in everyone having to buy yet another copy for each different device, and even having to buy replacements for worn out copies (something they tried back when music was on 12 inch vinyl disks by going to a cheap product that would wear out in 10 to 20 plays). Getting the revenues from piracy is about a 15% gain. Getting the revenues from DRM forced re-buys could double or even triple their sales.
Whine about lost sales due to piracy.
Get tough laws to block anti-DRM products.
Leave piracy running to keep the laws in place.
Make content only play on DRM devices.
Force re-buys for worn, lost, or stolen media (disallow backups).
There are already binary kernel modules. But that's really not relevant. It will get cracked, anyway. Of course they'd rather not let out the source, because that means the crack would be only hours away. With binary, it will be weeks.
If the DRM people really wanted a strong DRM system that is nearly impossible to crack, they would be it in hardware... all of it. Software's role would then be just providing communication with the hardware, user interface, storage of the encrypted content and... now get this... legal trading. See my original comment on how that is possible.
So I think the red guy holding the pitchfork will be freezing his brass balls off before Linux gets DRM built into the kernel.
A true hardware DRM solution would not have anything to do with the OS or BIOS. It would even be fully cross platform capable. To accomplish that, all you need to do is get rid of the people that are trying to design DRM to force everyone to use their product and no other. Then it can be a clean solution (despite the great dislike for DRM by myself and almost everyone else).
See my original comment on how DRM in hardware could be made to work.
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Maybe they just don't know what the cause of the problem is. If two pieces of data don't match, who can say which is the wrong piece. If a DNS lookup fails, details are not typically transferred to the mail server. And most mail servers only provide a simple static message insertion for a whole class of failures that could be causes for not accepting the email.
A competent and experienced mail server administrator can figure out the issue and fix it. There's a common set of configurations that all need to be right, and these can all be checked. If all that is correct, then the blacklists are the next likely cause. There are places to enter an address to see if it is listed anywhere.
Still, many mail servers do detail the blacklist identity when it's a blacklist issue. I know Postfix does. Of course it's a matter of what they are running at the destination, and they could be running something stupid that won't say. If you find you are sending email to someone whose ISP is stupid, ask them to get a better ISP (yeah, yeah, I know, most people won't ... but tell them, anyway).
As for blacklists answering questions, why should they? If they publish criteria for being listed, then either get the situation changed, or show that the situation doesn't fit the criteria. All the major blacklists can do this w/o any need to answer any questions.
Based on the highest quality of standard definition video on a 4.7 GB DVD (one hour), this thing would store just a bit over 33 YEARS of video. I don't even want to think of how much audio that would hold in MP3 format.
One problem is, despite the fact that you and I would never need to call about anything like a current balance, there are lots of people who do call for just such a purpose (whether they need to or not). And there are lots of people that call to see if their most recent payment has arrived (I admit to doing this myself once when the payment was very large). Directing all these calls to an automated system that actually works (way too many don't even work right) would be a big help. Remember that for all the companies out there that we think are idiots (and most really are), their view on things is that most of the consumers out there are idiots (and most really are).
The number of networks that are blocking dynamic IPs and generic IPs is growing. It is your responsibility as the sender to make sure your email is fully distinguishable from spam (while the spammers are trying very hard to make their junk look like legitimate mail). If your recipient whitelists your email address, that should work. I run my own mail servers - I block all dynamic/generic address (by their names, not IPs) - I whitelist email addresses (not names unless you are the domain owner). It works well for keeping the spam out.
Now I need to find a way to punish those evil ISPs that let the spammers stay connected to keep using up my bandwidth server process time. I know, I'll block the whole ISP and make all their customers move ... except those that are whitelisted.
It isn't going to be that long until networks start blocking the entire 0.0.0.0/0 space and require whitelisting to get through. If you don't want it to get to that, then join the fight to get all spammers disconnected.
Maybe your school mail server really is misconfigured. The fact that most mail servers let through mail from a misconfigured server is probably related to the fact that the vast majority of mail servers are either misconfigured or otherwise mismanaged, including at educational institutions which you'd think would know better.
If the school mail server has no reverse DNS, or invalid reverse DNS, or mismatching reverse DNS, then it isn't going to be deliverable to a growing number of other mail servers (including mine). Just because the majority still accept mail (and spam) from misconfigured servers does not justify expecting everyone to do so.
If the school mail server is an open relay, that's even worse. Not only will an even larger number of networks refuse everything from it, many will refuse everything for a long time after it is fixed (since everyone will have to be notified of the fix).
Tell us what the IP address of the school mail server is. Also tell us the hostname. We can check for obvious problems. If any are found, then get them fixed, even if you have to put a cluestick wound on the mail server admin. There's really no excuse for not doing it right (should do it right the first time).
... the Bush administration announces a proposed law to prohibit the use of encrypted web access. "There will be little or no impact by this law, since the Constitution does not provied any right of privacy." stated attorney general Aberto Gonzales.
The Olympics five ring configuration is a registered, and legally recognized, trademark. That's a very different thing than an artistic style.
The jobs here in the USA are still not anywhere near 1997 levels. Postings on the big jobs boards in technology are still just a fraction (about 1/7th right now, which is better than a year ago which was about 1/12th) of what it was around 1996 and 1997 in the "dot com" age just a couple years before it all went "dot comatose". I do find it hard to believe it can ever get as good as it was, but maybe it can get adequate if there isn't the same flood of people into the field that took place during those years and some that followed. So if you love the field, go for it. If not, stay away; there are no (not any more) riches here.
It may be improving. But it's most likely not improving by as much as the government claims it is. Of course, they have the incentive to make such claims, as it helps keep the current administration and its party in greater power. Even though Dubya is on his way out in 2009, they will still be trying to make it look like good things happened on his watch, whether or not he was even responsible for the bad things that actually happened (some of it was Congress's fault).
Additionally, the government also has the means to get bad statistics. The U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics uses methods to just people as being employed, unemployed, or not in the work force that unfairly misclassifies many people. A computer programmer or network administrator who is currently delivering pizza part time is counted as employed, making things look rosier than they really are. There is no category for "mis-employed" or "under-employed" (but there needs to be). Another source of error is that people are considered not looking for a job if there are no jobs even being offered in their area that they could apply for. If you're one of those who gets surveyed by the BLS and you say you are checking newspaper ads and job postings, but have not found any to send a resume to, or don't have any interviews to go to, and this is all you've done for 4 weeks, you are counted as "not in the work force", not as unemployed (and this helps lower the unemployement rate).
For more information, see "How the Government Measures Unemployment".
While your scenario probably does need mbox, it's not really typical. The biggest factor is that it deletes all mail in every pickup cycle. Of course that does mean there is mail arriving between the time all mail was fetched and the delete all is requested, which means the IMAP process has to rewrite the mbox file, which means locking out further deliveries while that is taking place. But regardless, it's not the kind of scenario most mail server users are doing. Your setup is probably better off using something else besides either mbox or Maildir, anyway.
That's why we've advanced to using triple-ROT13.
This seems to be wise advice for the non-rich.
I mean the people that are actually looking for a job, for which there are NO such jobs being offered, in their area (or out of their area if someone pays relocation, which is hardly happening at all today), that they qualify for. Not counting them as unemployed is just wrong. Plain wrong. This is as bad, if not worse, than counting the guy with 15 years programming experience as employed because he's currently having to deliver pizza to pay the rent and get some free food.
Where are the jobs? They aren't in the newspaper ads hardly anymore. The job web boards are still under 5% of what they used to be, and mostly filled with very specialized contract jobs that fewer than 1% would ever qualify for (this is probably the tactic used to justify hiring from overseas).
At least now I know why the statistics the government puts out are still totally inconsistent with the reality of the world. Thanks for the solid evidence.
Most of the software engineering, software development, network administration, and systems administration job openings are only open to a few people. Look at all the requirements that the employers put on so many of those. For any one person looking, there's relatively few job openings around. I was looking at a job web site several years ago that had a forms page for selecting all the areas of your qualification. There were over 3300 areas to choose from!
Even this shows how the survey can be bad. For example look at the section on how the determine who is unemployed:
That right there. THAT ALONE shows that the statistics they gather are ABSOLUTELY DISTORTED! They are leaving out an entire class of unemployed ... INTENTIONALLY!
Thank you for the evidence that I can now take to my Congress person to show that the BLS is pulling a sham on the American people.
However, lots of people don't really care that much about the quality, as long as it is reasonably near perfect. We're talking one level of degradation (lossy compression) verses two or three (the original lossy compression, the analog re-sampling, and another lossy compression if FLAC isn't used). The point is, though, that once the content leaks, it has a fixed level of degradation, and never gets worse than that, no matter how many replications get made of it during online trading.
You think that would work? The issue is the drivers for things like audio and video. Since the kernel is open source, as are virtually all drivers, it's easy for someone to code up an intercept within the kernel and replicate a perfect copy of the playing content out through another logical device where some other process is collecting a pristine copy.
In Windows, you won't be able to do that. And it will rat out any non-authorized driver you try to install, so the content won't play.
There is a way to do this without the software needing to be trusted. Of course Bill will be mad and Steve will throw another chair because Linux will be able to run open source programs that can play audio and video. The way is to do all the work in hardware (not in the application, or the OS, or even in BIOS). More details are in my original comment on this. One interesting thing is that this method even allows for legal content trading.
Your friend is a much a victim of the greedy content industry as his patrons are. Sure, there is some piracy around. Sure, it has grown with the internet. But piracy is still way less than half of all uses of music and even less for video. DRM really isn't there to stop piracy. It doesn't even do things that stop piracy. Instead, it is there to (try to) force people to pay more and more for the same content. This will include things like forcing the use of the original media (which wears out, forcing a re-buy) by prohibiting the use of hard drive juke boxes, unless an "upgrade" is purchased. It's all about dunning the listener of music and the viewer of video for more and more revenues, which can way exceed the revenues lost to piracy. To the content industry, piracy is a godsend that allowed them to ask for laws against defeating DRM so they could deploy it to shake down the majority of consumers. Piracy will never go away, and the content industry would just as well have it stay around, lest someone try to get rid of the anti-DRM laws that can bring in huge profits.
Don't hold your breath ... if the content industry were to ever get a clue. Of course that's not likely. But if they were to do something like I previously described, they could have a DRM that worked in Linux w/o any trusted software being needed because the software would only be touching encrypted content and encrypted authorization keys.
Doing DRM in hardware the right way would eliminate the need for software to have any major special capabilities, or licensing. The hardware would do the decrypting if it hard the right keys and authorization. All this could be provided by the software in a clear manner. DRM would only need to trust the hardware. It would not only be platform portable, but also even allow legal content file trading. More details are in my original comment. Of course, Microsoft's perspective is that DRM in software, exclusive to them, gives them leverage over Linux. And Linux being DRM-free gives it leverage over Windows.
The content industry could, if they wanted to, make DRM that really would work even on Linux. The problem right now is they are trying to do DRM as a software solution. This is likely because they were approached by a big software company in Redmond to do DRM in software, so that software company could do their own leveraging and push their own OS. Of course, that software company is prone to big blunders, so it's very unlikely to work. Had the content industry gone to a hardware solution, then they could have made DRM work on all operating systems, opened up a wider variety of playback programs, and even allowed legal trading! See my original comment on how that could have been made to work. Had they done that, then Linux would have been without its own leverage as a DRM-free OS.
What does it matter to us whether others use Linux or not? If it would make a difference as to whether the content industry would release DRM-free content or not, then that might make it important. But then, having DRM in Linux defeats that.
I've found plenty of DRM-free music online. Some is even free to download and play. Others you do have to pay for to have legally, but they don't put DRM in it, so you can fully use what you buy. There will be even more of this as the big content providers move to more DRM. That would then move more people over to the DRM-free providers who will grow, and a DRM-free Linux, which will grow.
DRM isn't about stopping piracy. Piracy is nothing compared to the potential market of forcing the rest of the population that doesn't do pirating (about 85% right now, though that will decline as they push this) to have to pay extra just to play the music or watch the videos they already have. The content industry sees riches in everyone having to buy yet another copy for each different device, and even having to buy replacements for worn out copies (something they tried back when music was on 12 inch vinyl disks by going to a cheap product that would wear out in 10 to 20 plays). Getting the revenues from piracy is about a 15% gain. Getting the revenues from DRM forced re-buys could double or even triple their sales.
There are already binary kernel modules. But that's really not relevant. It will get cracked, anyway. Of course they'd rather not let out the source, because that means the crack would be only hours away. With binary, it will be weeks.
If the DRM people really wanted a strong DRM system that is nearly impossible to crack, they would be it in hardware ... all of it. Software's role would then be just providing communication with the hardware, user interface, storage of the encrypted content and ... now get this ... legal trading. See my original comment on how that is possible.
And there's no need to insult BSD :-)
A true hardware DRM solution would not have anything to do with the OS or BIOS. It would even be fully cross platform capable. To accomplish that, all you need to do is get rid of the people that are trying to design DRM to force everyone to use their product and no other. Then it can be a clean solution (despite the great dislike for DRM by myself and almost everyone else).
See my original comment on how DRM in hardware could be made to work.