Debugging software is not unlike detective work.
We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002)
81–90 of 141 posts
Re: We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002)
#82I've had enough years to become wiser, become a fanatic for configuration management, and get over the embarrassment: I'm the consultant that screwed things up. Some background: the Stat department was running a variety of systems besides the Solaris workstations, and there was, within UNC-CH, a separate support organization that was cheaper and more comfortable with Microsoft products where Stat was sending their su…
> and get over the embarrassment
It's not that bad, these things happen.
It makes an interesting story though
Re: We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002)
#83Best part of reading this is coming away having learned the existence of units the CLI. How did I spend 20 years on the shell and not have needed or discovered this?
Be aware that currencies are stuck with rates from several years ago and don’t update.
$ units
Currency exchange rates from FloatRates (USD base) on 2019-06-05Re: We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002)
#84In network engineering circles, this one is second only to the RFC for IP over avian carriers.
There was also this "implementation" of IP over avian carriers:
Re: We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002)
#85A while back, Andreas Zwinkau collected this kind of stories.
Please post him if there is anything not yet listed.
Re: We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002)
#86I've had enough years to become wiser, become a fanatic for configuration management, and get over the embarrassment: I'm the consultant that screwed things up. Some background: the Stat department was running a variety of systems besides the Solaris workstations, and there was, within UNC-CH, a separate support organization that was cheaper and more comfortable with Microsoft products where Stat was sending their su…
Can I get your autograph? The 500 mile email story has been a story since I was a teenager.
Thank you for the comment. It was delightful to hear your take on the (mildly apocryphal, but highly enjoyable) tale.
Re: We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002)
#87Edit: Found it - its /usr/share/units/definitions.units (on Pop!_OS, so probably same on Ubuntu/Debian). The FAQ[0] mentions: > units on SunOS doesn't know about "millilightseconds." > Yes. So? I used to populate my units.dat file with tons of extra prefixes and units. And actually, I think I was using AIX to run units; I don't know if it knew about millilightseconds. Take a look at the units.dat shipped with Linux t…
units -U gives you the location of definitions file
Re: We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002)
#88So old! DUPE
Re: We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002)
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's better to link to just the past submissions with interesting discussions. Those appear to be: 2008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=123489 2008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=385068 2010 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1293652 2011 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2701063 2015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9338708 2017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14676835
I love that after all these years there are still people discovering this classic for the first time.
That's a great non-cynical non-humbuggy view to have
I see something like this and have to consciously think of https://xkcd.com/1053/
Re: We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002)
#90I've heard this story before, but i didn't realize it was as recent as 2002. It feels like something from a much earlier bygone era, like the early 90s