Open relays and such

[Daniel C.]

On 5/18/07, Dave Smith <dave at thesmithfam.org> wrote:
> Thanks Plug -- you've been very helpful. Now, if you like, we can enter
> into an endless debate on why this is Postfix's fault, and how "real
> men" use $MTA and edit configs with $EDITOR instead of $INFERIOR_EDITOR.

When I was a kid, we didn't have mail transit authorities!  We sat up
all night, waiting for the voltages on our network cables to change,
and when they did we punched the 1's and 0's into cards, and then
re-opened a connection to the destination mainframe and entered the
protocol via hex codes!  And we liked it!

For a setup that's almost as ridiculous, read Mother Earth, Mother
Board by Neal Stephenson:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass.html  It was written
in 1996 but (not surprisingly, given the author in question) is still
quite good.  He goes into a lot of history (telegraphs used to be
digital) and discusses what was then the state of the art in undersea
cable management.  The part about ridiculous setups begins on page 19
under the heading "Thomson and Whitehouse", but if you've got time I
recommend reading the entire thing.

Dan