Need a fetchmail guru (JoAnne D.?) who's been using it to pop his/her gmail

Gene Heskett gene.heskett at verizon.net
Thu Dec 27 11:14:14 UTC 2007


On Wednesday 26 December 2007, Tim wrote:
>Tim:
>>> I'd ditch the notion of using an ISP's crappy mail system when you
>>> can easily use a much better server, elsewhere.
>
>Gene Heskett:
>> Yeah, I'm seeing hour plus outages here.  And you can't tell whats
>> going on cuz they have the ping response and traceroute responders
>> disabled, security ya know. vz, being in bed with M$, has to do all
>> that.  Dumb...
>
>To be honest, pinging is a less than adequate test.  It only tests one
>aspect of networking.  It certainly doesn't test anything to do with a
>mail server (the server software, that part that actually relates to
>"mail" serving).
>
>I wouldn't be all that surprised if they'd turned off too much (like the
>hapless users who'll foolishly block *all* ICMP traffic).
>
>> Ask an email related question on the tech support line (now there is
>> an oxymoron for you, "tech support") and mention kmail, then you have
>> to tell them its linux & they say "whazzat, we don't support anything
>> but winderz and macs."  About that time I get pi$$y and point out that
>> a std protocol is a std protocol.  And that they aren't following it.
>
>For larger ISPs, I recommend lying.  Pretend you're using Outlook.  The
>usual webmonkeys can't access logs (they just read a prepared script at
>you, or make a fault log entry for someone else to fix) or wouldn't know
>how to interpret them.

And at that point they want to start a remote session so they can walk around 
in your computer.  I should tell them to go ahead and try & see how far they 
get when the first box connected to their modem is running a recent DD-WRT.  
But I usually tell them sorry, its linux and your little virii has never 
worked and if I have anything to do with it, it never will.

Why is it that while there is supposed to be one rectum per mouth, it seems 
like such a lopsided ratio in favor of a surplus of them?

>I prefer the smaller ISPs, ones that own themselves.  You've more chance
>of actually talking to a tech that maintains their gear.  And even more
>chance that they use Linux, either because they're an enthusiast or they
>use Linux servers.

All they have is dialup around here, darnit.  And they contract out the 
maintenance/config duties.

>I find it amusing that it seems the smaller ISPs *need* less technical
>support staff.  I can only imagine it's because they actually keep their
>gear working.  ;-)

Yup, and if it takes too much time to keep a winderz box doing a job, next 
thing you know its a linux box doing that job.  Country boy dumb maybe, 
doesn't mean stupid.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
You will be the last person to buy a Chrysler.




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