Never get tired of seeing this resurface every once and a while. There needs to be a /greatest for posts like these (while still allowing people to repost them every so often)
This, Stalking the Wiley Hacker[1], and others were the stories that got me into computers. I wish so much the experience of working in this industry hadn't so thoroughly annihilated the joy they once brought.
I had a chance to meet Cliff Stoll a couple summers ago. He was giving a presentation to a quilt society and it was great. If you ever have a chance to see him in person, no matter the topic, you will be greatly rewarded! He is such an energetic and enthusiastic person and he finds the beauty in all sorts of everyday things. I was captivated by him the entire time on a topic I only had a passing interest in at the beginning.
About the same time the 500-mile email problem happened (mid 1990s), I had a difficult to understand issue with my office PC. Every morning, I'd come in, slide my hard drive sled in, and turn the computer on. We had 128 Kbps ISDN internet at the office and I had the same at home, but that was too slow to do much work. So I'd take the drive home so I could work at night, especially in the winter when the office was too cold at night.
Suddenly one winter morning, the PC wouldn't boot. I had to run to a meeting. When I got back, I turned the PC off and on again and everything was fine. The next morning, the same thing happened. The third day, I didn't have a meeting. I turned it off and back on, still no boot. I'd gotten in late, so I just turned it off and took an early lunch. When I got back, it still wouldn't boot. But I had a meeting, so I ran to that, leaving the computer on. When I got back, it booted fine.
The next morning, same thing. I decided to look inside, not having any idea what might cause such symptoms. As I took the shell off, a tiny mouse came out, jump off my desk, and ran across my lap before jumping on the floor and scurrying out of sight. From inside the computer came the smell of mouse urine. Apparently he'd been crawling in through the open drive bay to keep warm every night, and urinating while he was in there. Once the computer had been on for a while, the heat and airflow would dry it out enough to eliminate whatever electrical short was keeping it from booting. I went to the store and bought an empty drive sled to put in the drive bay whenever I took my drive out, and the problem never came back. I felt lucky that the liquid didn't cause permanent damage.
Units is a cool piece of software, but I have since switched to qalculate.
Mostly units has some silly defaults like needing to type tempC(30) instead of 30C; and it's nice to have a full calculator.
I know it's a way to specify that the conversion is absolute rather than relative, but qalculate just asks you about it the first time you convert, and since converting oven and outside temperatures is most of what I do, I don't havr to bother with remembering a different syntax.
Also qalculate is an awesome piece of software in general, so if you're excited by units you should check it out!
Favorite feature: you can type in any equation, writing 'x' for an unknown quantity, and it will solve for x. This comes in handy to avoid having to engage brain even for simple calculations. How many pixels per mm is 96 DPI? Just type 96/inch = x/mm. Sure you could rearrange it yourself but why bother?
He doesn't give the chairman due credit, IMHO. The chairman collected information to help solve the problem AND it actually was the information needed. Without it, the author might look for "randomly unreachable servers" for a long time.
It's almost raw data -- exactly what you would wish for. By lecturing people that "email does not work that way", next time you either get no data at all because people don't even try, or no data because people hide it thinking email doesn't work that way, or a misguided conclusion when a layman tries to make a better guess at the cause of the problem.
Our email systems are mostly mediated by giant hyper-scale companies (Microsoft, Google etc). The location of mail servers being where the recipient is seems quaint (and wonderfully decentralised).
And even if we do manage our own servers they are automated, and apps often containerised. Nobody ends up with older MTA due to an OS upgrade.
Remember reading this like 20 years ago nice to see it again.
54 comments
[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 90.1 ms ] thread2023 (1164 points, 198 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37576633
2020 (1034 points, 136 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23775404
2015 (915 points, 140 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9338708
Related:
Can an email go 500 miles in 2025?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44466030
And here we are almost 25 years later.
This is gold.
https://ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail-faq.html
[1] https://archive.org/details/5626281-Clifford-Stoll-Communica...
Suddenly one winter morning, the PC wouldn't boot. I had to run to a meeting. When I got back, I turned the PC off and on again and everything was fine. The next morning, the same thing happened. The third day, I didn't have a meeting. I turned it off and back on, still no boot. I'd gotten in late, so I just turned it off and took an early lunch. When I got back, it still wouldn't boot. But I had a meeting, so I ran to that, leaving the computer on. When I got back, it booted fine.
The next morning, same thing. I decided to look inside, not having any idea what might cause such symptoms. As I took the shell off, a tiny mouse came out, jump off my desk, and ran across my lap before jumping on the floor and scurrying out of sight. From inside the computer came the smell of mouse urine. Apparently he'd been crawling in through the open drive bay to keep warm every night, and urinating while he was in there. Once the computer had been on for a while, the heat and airflow would dry it out enough to eliminate whatever electrical short was keeping it from booting. I went to the store and bought an empty drive sled to put in the drive bay whenever I took my drive out, and the problem never came back. I felt lucky that the liquid didn't cause permanent damage.
You have: 1 mile You want: kilometers * 1.609344 / 0.62137119
You have: 1 unit You want: 1.609344 units * 0.62137119 / 1.609344
I know it's a way to specify that the conversion is absolute rather than relative, but qalculate just asks you about it the first time you convert, and since converting oven and outside temperatures is most of what I do, I don't havr to bother with remembering a different syntax.
Also qalculate is an awesome piece of software in general, so if you're excited by units you should check it out!
Favorite feature: you can type in any equation, writing 'x' for an unknown quantity, and it will solve for x. This comes in handy to avoid having to engage brain even for simple calculations. How many pixels per mm is 96 DPI? Just type 96/inch = x/mm. Sure you could rearrange it yourself but why bother?
It's almost raw data -- exactly what you would wish for. By lecturing people that "email does not work that way", next time you either get no data at all because people don't even try, or no data because people hide it thinking email doesn't work that way, or a misguided conclusion when a layman tries to make a better guess at the cause of the problem.
Just to be the man/woman/non-binary who sends mail 500 miles to your front door?
You had me at EHL0.
Our email systems are mostly mediated by giant hyper-scale companies (Microsoft, Google etc). The location of mail servers being where the recipient is seems quaint (and wonderfully decentralised).
And even if we do manage our own servers they are automated, and apps often containerised. Nobody ends up with older MTA due to an OS upgrade.
Remember reading this like 20 years ago nice to see it again.
But what was the actual timeout and distance?
Presumably 60-70% VF of PVC coated copper?
So a 5ms timeout would be a 500mile run?
Turned out be an old building with loose floorboard. The force of standing up was just enough to short out a failing power supply.