Yes, this just sounds like a conspiracy, but it seems to me that making JBoss better is one of the easiest ways for Microsoft to hurt one of the few cash-cows in the industry that they aren't making money at: application servers.
What do you think IBM and BEA sell a lot of? Application servers.
I think its one of those "the enemy of enemy is my friend" things.
I'm open to being wrong, that'd be great, I'm just not expecting it.
The racist angle is something TripMaster just threw in for kicks I think. An assertion like that would fail the wikipedia NPOV test, but the disarmament won't.
You combine xplanet rendering to your root window with a batch of scripts that grab your favorite data and overlay.
I personally do volcanoes, earthquakes over a certain magnitude, and tropical cyclone activity which are pretty standard. I've embellished a bit with a specular map so you can see the sun reflecting off the ocean, but that's it.
I love the Treo 650, it really is an awesome device.
However
The "WiFi" hack made the wifi card work, but only just barely, and it completely destroys the ease of use of the machine because it requires resets and some manual intervention to enable and disable it. For all intents and purposes, its not worth it. Especially since the 650 does cellular data at 3G speeds, so its not a big deal to simply use the net.
Further, PalmOS is headed towards being linux-based (and thank god! Its like OS9 now, with resets instead of bomb icons). In the future then it should be like Mac OSX - easy to use (for its form factor) but rock-solid when it runs 3rd party apps.
At this point in time though, it is most definitely not unix-based and personal experience indicates that there is no memory protection. That's what explains why the Nintendo Emulator (yeah, on my phone, and it works!) crashes the phone frequently when I exit it (luckily the reset only takes 5s, so its worth it...)
Re:from the oxymoron dept...
on
Effective C#
·
· Score: 1
Fascinating! Thanks for the link.
These appear as though they may affect any implementation of a JVM as well, so they actually affect a CLR implementation as well, or would if you implemented the techniques.
Now I'm definitely splitting hairs, but it was my impression that the actual implementation of the.NET classes may run afoul of patents, whereas an implementation of the JDK core classes would not.
I have nothing to substantiate that though, and I figured while I've got someone who has info on this stuff hanging around, I'd ask if this impression is correct, or whether its just more FUD in a language holy war.
Re:from the oxymoron dept...
on
Effective C#
·
· Score: 1
Nothing personal, but I don't believe you.
I was not able to find evidence of any patented work in the Java core libraries.
Do you have any evidence of this? I would honestly love to see it, as this is one of the things I consider a feature of Java.
I discount your ECMA standard point because Java doesn't have a standardization problem. It has problems, but that's not one of them.
The licensing point is granted though. In practice, something like kaffe or gcj has as much clout and respect as mono though - they both require convincing to deploy I'm sure. So its not ideal, but I'm not sure.NET is better.
So if you want to have a measuring contest, I think it really comes down to patents. Can either vendor stop you from simply reimplimenting the environment even if you aren't attempting to get it certified? If Sun can do that, I'd be surprised, and I'd require proof.
Re:from the oxymoron dept...
on
Effective C#
·
· Score: 1
You do have a point - I obviously can't prove that Sun hasn't patented anything in Java.
However, if they have (and I'm not aware of it?) isn't it a bit late for them to be doing anything with it?
Further, Sun has no monopoly to leverage, so it can't be without suffering quickly - that seems to keep them in check quite well behaviorally.
One other thing I think is interesting is that Fedora actually ships natively compiled Java apps. Little things like...Eclipse. That's amazing, and all libre.
Where are the mono apps? Am I missing them?
Re:from the oxymoron dept...
on
Effective C#
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I've heard.NET is a great platform too, and as a Java programmer I am frankly jealous that.NET has properties and I don't get to use them.
But its not an open platform if you've got a submarine patents laying around. I feel a bit superstitious about saying this - but I just don't trust Microsoft enough to be in control of the tools I use for my livelihood (programming for cash).
My attitude may change, but in the past my experience has shown me its not worth it.
Given that, I'd rather learn Ruby on Rails if I'm going to do sometehing new, really.
Ditton on that - the 650 is the device you've actually been waiting for.
Its no bigger then the cell phone you had last year, which wasn't that big to begin with. But its also a great MP3 play er (PocketTunes) plays DivX movies fantastically (TCPMP), is a palm pilot with alerts, is a usb mass-storage device (Card Export II) and happens to be a really nice guitar tuner (AeroTuner).
Frankly amazing.
And yes, ipods are overpriced for what they do. I spent about the same on my Treo as I would have for an ipod with similar storage. Pathetic!
At the very least, I can replace the Treo battery;-)
Upfront design is certainly valuable, but here's the rub.
After you finish with the code, its doubtful you will ever go back and generate enough tests to have good coverage on your code, and even if you did, the quality of the tests (number of assertions, correctness of assertions, etc) will likely not be very high.
So grant coding tests while generating the original code gives you higher quality tests.
Now, move into the maintenance phase (or the "version 2" phase) where you have discovered that you must change the design to accomodate new or different requirements than you originally thought.
Its easy to show that if you have quality tests with good coverage, you'll be able to alter the code to meet the new requirements with a much lower chance of breaking compatibility with the old requirements.
Without the tests, you're most likely going too end up hacking in new features and breaking the coherence of the design because you can't safely alter as much code as you need to.
So, are tests a substitute for good design? Not even close.
But, will tests and good design go hand and hand over time? I think so...
I don't understand why people use CPUs instead of special-purpose ASICs for everything.
I only say that because I'm jealous. I grew up in an oil-and-stir popping family and am now reduced to microwave popping due to space and storage concerns.
What if your hard drive crashes and all your music is only on one of their devices?
Okay, that's possible, but its a specious argument, and I do see your point. For this specific device its so big of a deal.
I was sucked into a DRM argument that was speaking of things in general though, and this behavior on Sony's part does fit *their* pattern of "not getting it", as opposed to "our" pattern, we we are of course the enlightened folks that want to be guaranteed in perpetuity the ability to media-shift and time-shift content we own currently.
A transfer that imposes data loss is inadequate, and doesn't count in my book.
Similarly, is Hymn legal? I doubt it is in America, so that doesn't qualify either.
Are you really arguing that proprietary formats are okay for content you purchase?
If so, its just "agree to disagree" time, because I just don't assign any points to the arguments for proprietary formats, even after I honestly consider the pros and cons.
The problem with reasoning along the lines of "in this case..." is that its a short-term mentality. 10 years from now you may want to do something totally different with the content, but you'll be stuck.
Just because that sounds like typical RMS-style zealotry doesn't make it less true.
Bowing to pragmatism, I use mp3 and mpeg2/avi as my formats (encoded at high bitrate to limit lossiness) but that's as far as I'll go, and only because decoders with source are available.
For games I've basically given up and just do console. They're throwaway (or resale) for me now.
I disagree in the case of DRM. That makes me just a customer, not a competitor.
However, it also makes me an ongoing support cost. They'll have to provide updated software for new operating systems or hardware for that version of DRM forever if I'm to maintain access to the content.
Its in my interest to have updates, but its in there interest (profit motive / fiduciary responsibility) not to provide them.
I guess the heart of it is that you say the corporation's sole interest is to provide a product I will pay for. I say its more base than that, the corporation's sole interest is to profit.
The best way to do that is to provide a product or service worth the least amount to people or other corporations or people that will pay the most for it.
Framing it that way, the corporation's got to minimize the value to maximize the profit, and that means dropping support eventually.
Extreme example: No one's going to be playing the Half-Life 2 games they own on an x86 emulator 20 years from now because Steam will be gone. Valve will have to discontinue support or shareholders will revolt. But we can all play Atari 2600's DigDug legally (media-shifting), provide we own the ROMs
You make a very valid point, but my argument for open formats still works in general, e.g. with office documents.
To make this relevant then, I could argue Sony should play MP3 and Ogg, so they get the masses involved, but the hardware works with fully open things as well.
Bonus points for implementing the driver as a USB mass storage device too, as opposed to requiring some proprietary transfer application, that renders the entire device to be a "proprietary content format" imho.
You ignore the cases where the manufacturer / service provider ceases to exist (or ceases doing business with you, a la BitMover) and you lose access to the content (either slowly as hardware dies and software succumbs to entropy, or quickly if something like Steam goes away)
Open content formats are the only way to be sure you can access your content, period. Anything else requires trust, and I don't trust corporations because our interests are always in conflict.
Doesn't seem odd to me to want to be sure you can access your content, so it seems reasonable to demand open formats.
"Illegal Activity" is a red herring, and something of the Godwin's Law of copyright arguments.
First step - rip media to disk Second step - mount media image on disk as virtual disk in virtualization software Final step - profit! (I kid, but it is/.) Seriously, then you do whatever you need to...
To tack on another meme (since I've already got the third step / profit thing in there), this strategy does make it all the more important that media shifting continues to be a right instead of an illegal nuisance to media publishers...
Anyway, does that make sense? I actually do this, so I know it works. I typically refuse to let media actually play - if I can't rip it and then play or use the media through this method, I won't use it. I haven't had anything fail to work yet though (3-4 years, and counting)
Or Bochs or similar. I admit its a little silly, but as long as what you're working on is completely open, i.e. fully understood specs down to the hardware, its completely virtualizable, and you can just package your data up along with all the open source software that reads and runs it, and know that it will be available later
I will be fully amazed if the chain of necessary virtualizations to recreate an x86 computing environment, implemented in an open source way, capable of running linux ever breaks.
Obviously this is unprovable at this point, but I think its a safe bet, and I've taken it - its not just conjecture - I've got massive amounts of data, and I use optical media as coasters. Mine lives on multiple raid5 arrays, monitored closely, but online.
Hard drive storage, DVD.iso files as format, linux loopback mount to read them. Dish them out over the network.
This is probably one of the reasons hard drives look more attractive than any optical media, despite the obvious drawback of having things like moving parts and needing power...
Cloudscape is great for automated unit testing
on
Cloudscape Gains Momentum
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I was having a hard time maintaining a distinction between unit testing and integration testing with some of my back-end code until Cloudscape came out.
Now, instead of needing to have a container up, or have a database running or similar, I can embed cloudscape (which is quite small, really), set up a group of in-memory tables with the state I need, execute a unit, then check the tables for correctness and destroy the database.
Shazam, database unit tests - no external dependencies.
A lot of people are mumbling and complaining about Java and databases and speed, but apparently they've missed the whole Moore's law thing. I'm betting they either haven't tried it or they have some over-inflated view of how fast their applications need to be (or how much it costs to get fast hardware vs. their time).
This stuff easily meets the "fast-enough" test for lots of uses, unit testing being just one of them.
I just saw in ye ole slashdot message center that someone (or a few, actually) had replied, and you were interested in what I was implying by my last comment.
Zontar pretty much summed up what the post was about: I was essentially trying to convey the results of a research paper that the NYTimes had reported. I really wasn't trying to imply anything, though I did think the research was interesting. Primarily because its findings pained me in the same way that most research about poverty and racism pain me.
Anyway, I hope you didn't take offense, none was intended.
The IEEE solutions sound like they might be able to evade the problem of a "superior staff" by distributing the analysis phase to all interested parties, as well as special masters.
But the problem of the whole system being financed by those that are trying to get patents leads me to think that it will always be crooked unless the money link between people that want patents and people that grant patents is broken
I recognize you were talking postfix, but sendmail has a plugin interface for this, where the modules are called "mail filters", or "milters" for short.
So you what you want then is spamass-milter and clamav-milter (both available from the dag RPM repository for modern redhat/fedore systems - so you can update them automatically for errata packages).
There must be something similar for postfix - its more advanced than sendmail, right? No sarcasm there either - I'm sure there's a way.
The only thing to watch out for is that both spamassassin and clamav will lock up sometimes while processing mail.
I finally took a second computer and scripted up a nagios filter check that sends mail to the mail server on a specific userid, then attempts to scp the mailbox over to make sure it got filtered. If the mail doesn't show up in 5 seconds, something is wrong, and it service stop/starts all the mail server components.
That sounds bad, but it really isn't. Happens about once a day, but no mail ever drops, the sending server just queues.
Finally, spammers and virus writers learn, so you're system needs to learn too, right? Set up "RulesDuJour" to update rules from the SpamAssassin Rules Emporium (SARE - http://www.rulesemporium.com/) so SA learns as the spammers learn, and be sure to update the ClamAV definitions regularly in an automated way, and you've got a robust system that updates itself and is monitored while being a good netizen by rejecting stuff at the MTA level.
The next thing you know, inboxes are squeeky clean, and the admin is relaxed.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, this just sounds like a conspiracy, but it seems to me that making JBoss better is one of the easiest ways for Microsoft to hurt one of the few cash-cows in the industry that they aren't making money at: application servers.
What do you think IBM and BEA sell a lot of? Application servers.
I think its one of those "the enemy of enemy is my friend" things.
I'm open to being wrong, that'd be great, I'm just not expecting it.
Lazy. You didn't even try google.
Short story was that this story was everywhere, and its fact that they were disarming folks.
http://news.google.com/news?q=katrina%20new%20orl
The racist angle is something TripMaster just threw in for kicks I think. An assertion like that would fail the wikipedia NPOV test, but the disarmament won't.
You combine xplanet rendering to your root window with a batch of scripts that grab your favorite data and overlay.
I personally do volcanoes, earthquakes over a certain magnitude, and tropical cyclone activity which are pretty standard. I've embellished a bit with a specular map so you can see the sun reflecting off the ocean, but that's it.
http://mikehardy.net/xplanet_desktop.jpg
Total eye candy, highly worth it.
I can hook anyone with the package of config files I use (so you don't have to tweak it so hard out of the gate) if there's interest.
I love the Treo 650, it really is an awesome device.
However
The "WiFi" hack made the wifi card work, but only just barely, and it completely destroys the ease of use of the machine because it requires resets and some manual intervention to enable and disable it. For all intents and purposes, its not worth it. Especially since the 650 does cellular data at 3G speeds, so its not a big deal to simply use the net.
Further, PalmOS is headed towards being linux-based (and thank god! Its like OS9 now, with resets instead of bomb icons). In the future then it should be like Mac OSX - easy to use (for its form factor) but rock-solid when it runs 3rd party apps.
At this point in time though, it is most definitely not unix-based and personal experience indicates that there is no memory protection. That's what explains why the Nintendo Emulator (yeah, on my phone, and it works!) crashes the phone frequently when I exit it (luckily the reset only takes 5s, so its worth it...)
Fascinating! Thanks for the link.
.NET classes may run afoul of patents, whereas an implementation of the JDK core classes would not.
These appear as though they may affect any implementation of a JVM as well, so they actually affect a CLR implementation as well, or would if you implemented the techniques.
Now I'm definitely splitting hairs, but it was my impression that the actual implementation of the
I have nothing to substantiate that though, and I figured while I've got someone who has info on this stuff hanging around, I'd ask if this impression is correct, or whether its just more FUD in a language holy war.
Nothing personal, but I don't believe you.
.NET is better.
I was not able to find evidence of any patented work in the Java core libraries.
Do you have any evidence of this? I would honestly love to see it, as this is one of the things I consider a feature of Java.
I discount your ECMA standard point because Java doesn't have a standardization problem. It has problems, but that's not one of them.
The licensing point is granted though. In practice, something like kaffe or gcj has as much clout and respect as mono though - they both require convincing to deploy I'm sure. So its not ideal, but I'm not sure
So if you want to have a measuring contest, I think it really comes down to patents. Can either vendor stop you from simply reimplimenting the environment even if you aren't attempting to get it certified? If Sun can do that, I'd be surprised, and I'd require proof.
You do have a point - I obviously can't prove that Sun hasn't patented anything in Java.
However, if they have (and I'm not aware of it?) isn't it a bit late for them to be doing anything with it?
Further, Sun has no monopoly to leverage, so it can't be without suffering quickly - that seems to keep them in check quite well behaviorally.
One other thing I think is interesting is that Fedora actually ships natively compiled Java apps. Little things like...Eclipse. That's amazing, and all libre.
Where are the mono apps? Am I missing them?
I've heard .NET is a great platform too, and as a Java programmer I am frankly jealous that .NET has properties and I don't get to use them.
But its not an open platform if you've got a submarine patents laying around. I feel a bit superstitious about saying this - but I just don't trust Microsoft enough to be in control of the tools I use for my livelihood (programming for cash).
My attitude may change, but in the past my experience has shown me its not worth it.
Given that, I'd rather learn Ruby on Rails if I'm going to do sometehing new, really.
Ditton on that - the 650 is the device you've actually been waiting for.
;-)
Its no bigger then the cell phone you had last year, which wasn't that big to begin with. But its also a great MP3 play er (PocketTunes) plays DivX movies fantastically (TCPMP), is a palm pilot with alerts, is a usb mass-storage device (Card Export II) and happens to be a really nice guitar tuner (AeroTuner).
Frankly amazing.
And yes, ipods are overpriced for what they do. I spent about the same on my Treo as I would have for an ipod with similar storage. Pathetic!
At the very least, I can replace the Treo battery
Had the same thing happen to me in Dallas in the early nineties. "The Eagle" (a rock format) was turning in to some country station or some such.
They played nothing but Eagles for a day, then just put Hotel California on for two days straight.
The sad thing was, it was the best thing on most of the time. And I like the Eagles, but not *that* much.
Must've been fun to do though, as a parting shot, if you were the DJ.
False syllogism. Ad hominem attack. So there.
Upfront design is certainly valuable, but here's the rub.
After you finish with the code, its doubtful you will ever go back and generate enough tests to have good coverage on your code, and even if you did, the quality of the tests (number of assertions, correctness of assertions, etc) will likely not be very high.
So grant coding tests while generating the original code gives you higher quality tests.
Now, move into the maintenance phase (or the "version 2" phase) where you have discovered that you must change the design to accomodate new or different requirements than you originally thought.
Its easy to show that if you have quality tests with good coverage, you'll be able to alter the code to meet the new requirements with a much lower chance of breaking compatibility with the old requirements.
Without the tests, you're most likely going too end up hacking in new features and breaking the coherence of the design because you can't safely alter as much code as you need to.
So, are tests a substitute for good design? Not even close.
But, will tests and good design go hand and hand over time? I think so...
I don't understand why people use CPUs instead of special-purpose ASICs for everything.
I only say that because I'm jealous. I grew up in an oil-and-stir popping family and am now reduced to microwave popping due to space and storage concerns.
Alas.
What if your hard drive crashes and all your music is only on one of their devices?
Okay, that's possible, but its a specious argument, and I do see your point. For this specific device its so big of a deal.
I was sucked into a DRM argument that was speaking of things in general though, and this behavior on Sony's part does fit *their* pattern of "not getting it", as opposed to "our" pattern, we we are of course the enlightened folks that want to be guaranteed in perpetuity the ability to media-shift and time-shift content we own currently.
A transfer that imposes data loss is inadequate, and doesn't count in my book.
Similarly, is Hymn legal? I doubt it is in America, so that doesn't qualify either.
Are you really arguing that proprietary formats are okay for content you purchase?
If so, its just "agree to disagree" time, because I just don't assign any points to the arguments for proprietary formats, even after I honestly consider the pros and cons.
The problem with reasoning along the lines of "in this case..." is that its a short-term mentality. 10 years from now you may want to do something totally different with the content, but you'll be stuck.
Just because that sounds like typical RMS-style zealotry doesn't make it less true.
Bowing to pragmatism, I use mp3 and mpeg2/avi as my formats (encoded at high bitrate to limit lossiness) but that's as far as I'll go, and only because decoders with source are available.
For games I've basically given up and just do console. They're throwaway (or resale) for me now.
I disagree in the case of DRM. That makes me just a customer, not a competitor.
However, it also makes me an ongoing support cost. They'll have to provide updated software for new operating systems or hardware for that version of DRM forever if I'm to maintain access to the content.
Its in my interest to have updates, but its in there interest (profit motive / fiduciary responsibility) not to provide them.
I guess the heart of it is that you say the corporation's sole interest is to provide a product I will pay for. I say its more base than that, the corporation's sole interest is to profit.
The best way to do that is to provide a product or service worth the least amount to people or other corporations or people that will pay the most for it.
Framing it that way, the corporation's got to minimize the value to maximize the profit, and that means dropping support eventually.
Extreme example: No one's going to be playing the Half-Life 2 games they own on an x86 emulator 20 years from now because Steam will be gone. Valve will have to discontinue support or shareholders will revolt. But we can all play Atari 2600's DigDug legally (media-shifting), provide we own the ROMs
You make a very valid point, but my argument for open formats still works in general, e.g. with office documents.
To make this relevant then, I could argue Sony should play MP3 and Ogg, so they get the masses involved, but the hardware works with fully open things as well.
Bonus points for implementing the driver as a USB mass storage device too, as opposed to requiring some proprietary transfer application, that renders the entire device to be a "proprietary content format" imho.
You ignore the cases where the manufacturer / service provider ceases to exist (or ceases doing business with you, a la BitMover) and you lose access to the content (either slowly as hardware dies and software succumbs to entropy, or quickly if something like Steam goes away)
Open content formats are the only way to be sure you can access your content, period. Anything else requires trust, and I don't trust corporations because our interests are always in conflict.
Doesn't seem odd to me to want to be sure you can access your content, so it seems reasonable to demand open formats.
"Illegal Activity" is a red herring, and something of the Godwin's Law of copyright arguments.
First step - rip media to disk /.) Seriously, then you do whatever you need to...
Second step - mount media image on disk as virtual disk in virtualization software
Final step - profit! (I kid, but it is
To tack on another meme (since I've already got the third step / profit thing in there), this strategy does make it all the more important that media shifting continues to be a right instead of an illegal nuisance to media publishers...
Anyway, does that make sense? I actually do this, so I know it works. I typically refuse to let media actually play - if I can't rip it and then play or use the media through this method, I won't use it. I haven't had anything fail to work yet though (3-4 years, and counting)
VMWare :-)
Or Bochs or similar. I admit its a little silly, but as long as what you're working on is completely open, i.e. fully understood specs down to the hardware, its completely virtualizable, and you can just package your data up along with all the open source software that reads and runs it, and know that it will be available later
I will be fully amazed if the chain of necessary virtualizations to recreate an x86 computing environment, implemented in an open source way, capable of running linux ever breaks.
Obviously this is unprovable at this point, but I think its a safe bet, and I've taken it - its not just conjecture - I've got massive amounts of data, and I use optical media as coasters. Mine lives on multiple raid5 arrays, monitored closely, but online.
Hard drive storage, DVD .iso files as format, linux loopback mount to read them. Dish them out over the network.
This is probably one of the reasons hard drives look more attractive than any optical media, despite the obvious drawback of having things like moving parts and needing power...
I was having a hard time maintaining a distinction between unit testing and integration testing with some of my back-end code until Cloudscape came out.
Now, instead of needing to have a container up, or have a database running or similar, I can embed cloudscape (which is quite small, really), set up a group of in-memory tables with the state I need, execute a unit, then check the tables for correctness and destroy the database.
Shazam, database unit tests - no external dependencies.
A lot of people are mumbling and complaining about Java and databases and speed, but apparently they've missed the whole Moore's law thing. I'm betting they either haven't tried it or they have some over-inflated view of how fast their applications need to be (or how much it costs to get fast hardware vs. their time).
This stuff easily meets the "fast-enough" test for lots of uses, unit testing being just one of them.
I just saw in ye ole slashdot message center that someone (or a few, actually) had replied, and you were interested in what I was implying by my last comment.
Zontar pretty much summed up what the post was about: I was essentially trying to convey the results of a research paper that the NYTimes had reported. I really wasn't trying to imply anything, though I did think the research was interesting. Primarily because its findings pained me in the same way that most research about poverty and racism pain me.
Anyway, I hope you didn't take offense, none was intended.
The main problem with the system is that it suffers from regulatory capture:
o J: www.iipe.org/conference2002/papers/McMahon.pdf+reg ulatory+capture&hl=en
http://64.233.179.104/search?q=cache:yDK_liolfE
The IEEE solutions sound like they might be able to evade the problem of a "superior staff" by distributing the analysis phase to all interested parties, as well as special masters.
But the problem of the whole system being financed by those that are trying to get patents leads me to think that it will always be crooked unless the money link between people that want patents and people that grant patents is broken
I recognize you were talking postfix, but sendmail has a plugin interface for this, where the modules are called "mail filters", or "milters" for short.
So you what you want then is spamass-milter and clamav-milter (both available from the dag RPM repository for modern redhat/fedore systems - so you can update them automatically for errata packages).
There must be something similar for postfix - its more advanced than sendmail, right? No sarcasm there either - I'm sure there's a way.
The only thing to watch out for is that both spamassassin and clamav will lock up sometimes while processing mail.
I finally took a second computer and scripted up a nagios filter check that sends mail to the mail server on a specific userid, then attempts to scp the mailbox over to make sure it got filtered. If the mail doesn't show up in 5 seconds, something is wrong, and it service stop/starts all the mail server components.
That sounds bad, but it really isn't. Happens about once a day, but no mail ever drops, the sending server just queues.
Finally, spammers and virus writers learn, so you're system needs to learn too, right? Set up "RulesDuJour" to update rules from the SpamAssassin Rules Emporium (SARE - http://www.rulesemporium.com/) so SA learns as the spammers learn, and be sure to update the ClamAV definitions regularly in an automated way, and you've got a robust system that updates itself and is monitored while being a good netizen by rejecting stuff at the MTA level.
The next thing you know, inboxes are squeeky clean, and the admin is relaxed.
Cheers.