Yes, but their tactics not only stop people like myself from sending mail from our own mail servers ( aggressive ), they also tend to stop mail coming from the ISP's legitimate SMTP server that the customers are supposed to be using to send email through ( too aggressive ).

So if you have an ISP that doesn't provide a reverse DNS lookup for your IP, what are you supposed to do? Your ISP is under no obligation to provide that. AOL is simply beeing too aggressive in what they're doing. I had done the same with my own spam filtering, to the point where perfectly legitimate email was simply not getting through because I had chosen a set of public blacklisting servers run by people who had the restrictions set way too high.

I don't think AOL anticipates privately hosted websites by linux dudes ;)

The vast majority of websites are on servers with static IPs.

Nothing out that forces you to have a valid reverse DNS even for a static IP though, and frankly, these days dynamic IP based hosts are becoming far more common, especially as Linux catches more and more of the mainstream, which is, for a change, getting a boost from Microsoft by their travesty they dubbed Vista. :wink:

Just get a gmail account and all your email and spam issues will be fixed.



I don't think Microsoft is all that concerned about the web server OS market. Vista's primary function seems to be to make money from those dumb enough to purchase a beta OS and get people to upgrade their hardware while they happily fix bugs and use the Vista architecture to create the next OS that will blow the competition out of the water like XP did.

The gmail account isn't a bad idea. My host has a cumbersome spam filtering system (the always fun "if this is spam, forward it to spam-yourname@whatever.com to create a rule for it" type) Gmail has a feature that allows you to use it like a pop/imap client now. I use it to download the messages off my server and 99.9% of the spam gets junked. Oddly enough, if not for those emails, I wouldn't get any at all :sad:

Having a reason isn't necessarily a "good" reason. While most major websites have a static IP, as a contractor I often have to work with small businesses that do occassionally use a dynamic IP address. Missing emails from clients can quickly add up to thousands of dollars. That being said, it's on reason I pay for an email account separate from my ISP.

While spam filtering is necessary, false positives are worst than evil.

Scandum, I just meant that Vista was a bad enough product that people who otherwise wouldn't have are starting to look into Linux.
Exodus, I sent you emails. :tongue:
Justice, I agree completely.

Vista, I think, will do well, regardless of its initial hate.

99% of people care much more about the way it looks and their video games than security or stability.

Gmail is the BEST email host I've ever had. Its really great.

It isn't the linux uptake that M$ is worried about. It's the fact that Macs with OS X are on the rise as a direct result of the release of Vista.

Most people may not be techies, but in general they do tend to know at least one person who is, and so far every techie type I know of is strongly advising staying away from Vista. Some even going so far as to recommend new PC buyers just get a Mac instead. That sort of thing didn't happen with XP when it came out.

I wasn't saying that M$ was concerned by it, just that they're helping it. *shrug*

I think vista will do well in the long run

it seems geared towards gamers and i think that will be its salvation but i wouldn"t be surprised if they came out with a special edition for business professionals with advanced versions of office applications

There's probably a decent portion that tells people to stick with XP.

I read that in a year you won't be able to buy XP anymore, and already I am having trouble finding a copy for my new box

http://www.buycheapsoftware.com/ms_produ...

in new zealand =in new zealand =[

You can't buy things off the internet from New Zealand?

Yes, there's also a decent portion who will recommend sticking with XP if you already have a computer. But for those recommendations where they don't, Mac is where they're being guided to. I've considered it myself. Finding a store with a new PC that still has XP on it is impossible. And I wouldn't wish a Dell on anyone even if it was the only way to get XP.

I'm one who commonly suggests my troubled PC using clients move to OS X. With the capability to run windows via BootCamp or Paralells on the intel Macs these users have virtually nothing to lose.

If the gaming market ever moves away from DirectX we'll see a huge abandonment of Windows OS, but until then it's doubtful we'll see anything of the sort.

I was kind of hoping MS would shoot itself in the foot by killing the PC game market with their emphasis on the console, but it doesn't seem to be happening. :P

Dells are good pcs, samson…why don't you like them?

I'd never reccomend a mac to someone if only for the lack of upgrade ability…

If you buy a mac, buy a trashbag with it, great for when you need to "upgrade".

Alot of techies stuck to NT when XP came out, too. Not as many, but some.

Its not that big a deal. Vista will take soon enough.

Dells are an abomination. A plague upon PCdom. In the time I've spent at work having to support them for our internal corporate users, our field sales team, and in the kiosks, I've never run into one that could be considered anything close to reliable. Cheap junk parts. Several bad runs of capacitors which explode, rendering whole batches of PCs useless when it happens. Underpowered CPUs. Crap memory. System boards which fail far too easily. Even the lowly floppy and CD-ROM drives they come with. We've got nearly 10,000 of these things in use throughout the company doing various things. Easily more than half of them has suffered one or more of the problems I've listed.

We started switching to IBM as our primary PC hardware vendor 2 years ago. In that time, we've installed another 3,000 internal corporate units, 800 new kiosks, and upgraded at least 300 of our field sales team to one of the IBM boxes. In that time we've had maybe 5% fail across the board. Compared to 60% or more for Dells of similar specs and age.

Do the math. The reliability just isn't there. Cruise by the Dell customer support forums sometime and take a look at how many people complain. Terrible customer service. Hardware with known design flaws. Warranty claims which are rejected without cause. IBM customer service and warranty support isn't a great deal better, but at least there hardware quality has limited our exposure to it.

Our marketing and graphics teams both switched to Mac computers around the same time. Not a single hardware or software failure in 2 years time. It's led to serious discussion about taking the entire corporate team over to Mac. But as with most things IT, decisions like this take time. I'm confident that in the time it takes to decide we'll be forced to replace more Dells and IBMs as they continue to fail.