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Damn, wasted about 7 hours on this one. I so wish I didn't have to run a mail server. Anyway, the issue was that Qmail was not allowing outgoing messages with 15 or more recipients. Up through 14 would be fine, but then at 15 it would reject all messages (including the first 14) with this error: sorry, reached maximum number of recipients for one session (#5.7.1 - chkuser). Error 5571

So obviously Chkuser is the problem. But how to change this? I took a bunch of wrong turns trying to create a /var/qmail/control/maxrcpt file, but it turns out my Qmailtoaster installation is not compiled to understand the maxrcpt control file. So no luck there.

Hours of googling later I finally found the mailing list question that put me on the right track: I needed to edit tcp.smtp (which I was told would be at /etc/tcp.smtp but of course nothing is easy and mine was instead at /etc/tcprules.d/tcp.smtp). So I changed CHKUSER_RCPTLIMIT="15" to CHKUSER_RCPTLIMIT="150" in tcp.smtp. And then ran qmailctl cdb to reload the new rules (I guess this makes the tcp.smtp.cdb file out of the tcp.smtp file that just got edited.)

And now it works. Fun fun fun.
- jim 2-22-2007 10:19 pm [link] [add a comment]

StorageMojo's look at Bianca Schroeder of CMU's Parallel Data Lab paper Disk failures in the real world: What does an MTTF of 1,000,000 hours mean to you?

Storage is very conservative, so don't expect overnight change, but these papers will accelerate the consumerization of large-scale storage. High-end drives still have advantages, but those fictive MTBFs aren't one of them anymore.

Further, these results validate the Google File System's central redundancy concept: forget RAID, just replicate the data three times. If I'm an IT architect, the idea that I can spend less money and get higher reliability from simple cluster storage file replication should be very attractive.
By much different methodology I've come to the same conclusion for a big set of my data: forget RAID and replicate the data.
- jim 2-21-2007 5:21 am [link] [1 comment]

Ars Nokia N800 internet tablet review. I'm really intrigued by this thing. Unfortunately I can't actually justify buying it. But if I can ever find a buyer for my uber digital music system idea I think this would be the remote control.
- jim 2-13-2007 10:15 pm [link] [1 comment]

Often hilarious, to me at least, fake Steve Jobs blog: "Dude, I invented the friggin iPod. Have you heard of it?"
- jim 2-10-2007 7:41 pm [link] [add a comment]

POW (Plain Old Webserver) is, amazingly, a FireFox plugin that turns your browser into a web server. It's written entirely in javascript.

Javascript is sure growing up fast.
- jim 2-09-2007 11:20 pm [link] [add a comment]

Sweet looking Samsung Ultra Smart F700 mobile addresses all the complaints against the iPhone. Namely, it has a full qwerty keyboard, a 5 megapixel camera, HSDPA high speed data, SD memory slot, and removable battery. On the downside, this was announced in Korea (where else?) with no specific availability date (so it will hit US shores approximately never) and I assume it will be running Windows Mobile (or if not, there's little chance Samsung will get the software right.) Still, it's nice to dream. I can't wait for the iPhone, but really I can't wait for something like revision 3 of the iPhone.
- jim 2-08-2007 5:51 pm [link] [1 comment]

Steve Jobs comes out against DRM on digital media. I'm only commenting because this was all over the news yesterday. Obviously I'm a big fan of Jobs. But this needs a little clarification. I mean, I believe him, but...

First, keep in mind that Apple is under legal attack in several European countries about the iTunes music store. So, in some ways this is probably a maneuver to shift focus off of the iTMS (and Apple's FairPlay DRM) and onto the record labels. And this seems fair, since it definitely is the record labels who forced Apple to sell music encumbered with DRM.

On the other hand, a little pinch of salt is needed here since Jobs seems to indicate that he would rather sell non-DRM'd music online (just as he points out the labels sell non-DRM'd music on CD,) but the fact is that many bands are interested in selling their music this way (and have asked Apple) yet Apple says it's not possible. Clearly it is technically possible to have both DRM and DRM free tracks for sale at the same time on iTMS.

I'm not really trying to criticize him here, it's a very complex issue, and Apple has to walk a number of very fine lines. I think they have done a very good job given the backwardsness of the record industry. Still, in a perfect world, Apple could be doing more. And these comments of Jobs shouldn't be taken as an indication that they are about to start selling mp3s without digital rights management.
- jim 2-08-2007 5:35 pm [link] [5 comments]

Interesting, very technical paper on the Bitfrost security platform for Nicholas Negroponte's OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project.

I've always been skeptical about the OLPC, although, sure, it's a great idea (I just didn't/don't think they can deliver what they promised.) But this paper has value in terms of security thinking far beyond that project.
- jim 2-08-2007 5:17 pm [link] [1 ref] [add a comment]

Wired magazine editor and "The Long Tail" author Chris Anderson says this is "[t]he most inspiring thing I saw all day. This is why I do what I do...." He's talking about this 4.5 minute YouTube video that attempts to explain whatever it is we are trying to do in building online interconnected databases that is variously described as "the web," "the semantic web," "web 2.0," "XML," etc....

Pretty nicely done. A good, if a little slick, high level overview of the situation. Worth a look.
- jim 2-08-2007 5:08 pm [link] [add a comment]

Short interview (advertisement?) in Salon with Scott Rosenberg about his new book "Dreaming in Code". It is an effort to explain coding to non programmers, or as he puts it:

My goal was really more to write something that, if you were a developer, then yes, you might find it interesting. But even more, if you had a relative who was always wondering, "What is it that you do all day?" you could hand my book to that relative and say, This is what my work is really like.
Most of what he has to say really resonates with me as being correct. Especially the parts about the advantages of having only one person writing a particular piece of software.

Jonathan Rentzsch, an actual programmer (Rosenberg is just an observer,) has some push back that strikes me as correct as well.

Interesting discussion.
- jim 2-05-2007 6:53 pm [link] [2 refs] [1 comment]

Internal Microsoft emails discussing Apple's release of OS X 10.4 (Tiger,) made public recently during an anti-trust trial in Iowa. I am surprised how impressed they are by it - especially spotlight.

This is from a Microsoft engineer who had an early release he had just gotten at the WWDC (Apple developer's conference)

You will have to take Vic's disk ... I am not giving mine up ;)

Tonight I got on corpnet, hooked up Mail.app to my Exchange server and then downloaded all of my mail into the local file store. I did system wide queries against docs, contacts, apps, photos, music, and ... my Microsoft email on a Mac. It was fucking amazing. It is like I just got a free pass to Lonqhorn land today.
I like that he won't give up the Mac install disks!

It reads like a spoof.
- jim 2-02-2007 1:43 am [link] [add a comment]

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