![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=10e3fad1-d988-46c3-ad89-5906e1d3a0e8)
It's a shame, really.
MS-Exchange has the ability to send a request that will hide the email, but most non-Exchange providers don't support the protocol. Besides, the horse has left the barn. You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube.
Gmail has the ability to unsend an email if you sent it in the last 10 seconds. Useful and cute, but not awesome. (Awesomer is their "prove you are sober before sending a message" feature.)
One way to mitigate this risk of wishing you had an "undo" is to send out a first paragraph plus a URL to the entire message. This way you can rewrite, refine, and update the body of the email as much as you want.
We use this technique at work. Suppose we want to tell people that the printing system will be down on Thursday evening so that we can upgrade the print server software. We put the basic message in a 1-paragraph email, and list a link to a document with more info. The link might be to a ticket # that tracks the issue, or a blog post (yes, we have internal blogs), a web page, or a document. We can constantly update the document over time.
Maybe we should extend this. All email should be a subject line plus a URL to the actual message. Made a typo? Correct it. Regretted what you said? Delete it. Called your boss an asshole? Change it to be a loverletter.
You still need to get the subject right, but the message can change. Maybe we could invent a way for the email to be "frozen" once the person reads it (one way would be for the email client to cache the message once it is downloaded). Spammers would have a harder time spamming us, since we'd be able to track their message back to their web site and therefore identifying them would be, well, if not easier, differently harder.
Or maybe we shouldn't even send email. The user interface would still look the same. Behind the scenes it would just be sending URLs.
Usenet made this transition. Usenet was replaced by RSS feeds, which are just lists of URLs. Maybe email should make the same change.
LOPSA PICC last night published the final slate of papers and speakers (if you didn't get your accept/sorry email, please let us know). http://picconf.org now contains the complete schedule.
You can attend for as little as $249, or $99 for students. The training program is extra.
If you aren't sure how to ask your boss for permission, we have some advice.
Tom
]]>
What's the biggest problem facing system administrators? Is it the vendors? The managers? The tools? Is it us? (nah, it couldn't be us! Must be the tools). Scaling? The inconsistant syntax of Perl? It probably isn't any one thing.
I will be facilitating group discussion. Hopefully we'll learn something about our technology and ourselves.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=97c5cb00-cf9a-40b9-a974-45f678305257)
Today is the deadline for proposals for papers, talks, and such.
We're a little low on submissions so I'd like to make one more "beg". We'd love to have a talk about PHP for sysadmins, something fun you've done with Arduino, your favorite JS
library, a walk-through on setting up Google Apps. Demo your favorite open source project, or propose a panel of people to talk about something you find interesting (I can help find others for your panel). It is an excellent way to spread the word about a project you are involved with.
We've tried to make the proposal process really easy. Just send your
contact info and topic plus a 1-2 paragraph description to
submissions@lopsanj.org
For more info IM me and/or view:
http://lopsanj.org/events/picc10/cfp
Tom
P.S. Today is the deadline but we can grant extensions to anyone that writes and asks.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=a947e4e1-94aa-4142-ae21-6d330440249e)
Alternatively I have tried to improve my memory. Having improved memory helps all aspects of life. It turns out that memory is like a muscle: exercise it and it gets stronger, don't use it and it gets weaker. The techniques I learned help me in many little ways.
]]> I found Page-a-Minute Memory Book to have very practical advice for improving my memory. The first part explains why we don't remember things so that we are more self-aware of how to fix it. That alone made it worth the price of the book. The second part has a lot of useful techniques for common things: how to remember people's names, remembering short lists, etc. I stopped reading when he started onto tips for remembering things that, well, would put you into the guinness book of world records. However, the remainder of the book was very helpful.Last night I watched the 1957 Katherine Hepburn film, "Desk Set" (Amazon or Netflix). In this movie she plays the head of research for a major TV network. She has their entire research library practically memorized. When Spensor Tracy arrives to replace her department with a computer (very proto-Google, if I dare say) the hilarity ensues. (The movie is kind of shocking for the way it portrays office life in the 1950s. She's dating her own boss and there's no HR policy to stop it! The depiction of the computer is awesome.)
There's a great scene where Hepburn demonstrates the use of mnemonics as a way of improving ones ability to memorize random facts. She doesn't use the term mnemonics, but she shows show she's related anything she needs to remember to another fact. Since I use mnemonics (thanks to the Page-A-Minute Memory Book), it was great to see it in action and very interesting to see how the script portrays it.
]]>Registration is open and the speakers have been announced!
The cost is low, and the benefits are huge. I know from Google Analytics that this site receives hits from over 500 unique users in the region of this conference, every month. We don't have that kind of space at the conference. It's going to sell out at some point, so make sure that you talk to your boss now about attending. We've even drafted a letter to help convince them that it's worth your time and their money.
It isn't often that you get a local conference with internationally known speakers like David Blank-Edelman (O'Reilly's "Automating System Administration with Perl") as well as Eben M Haber from the IBM research lab in Almaden, CA! This conference is going to get you the biggest bang for your buck out there.
(Oh, and I'll be speaking too. I've reworked 2 of my half-day tutorials ("Time Management" and "Help! Everyone hates our IT department!") plus, I've been asked to give the Saturday morning keynote, which I'll be using to premiere material from my yet-unannounced new book! But the book is a secret still, so hush!)
What I'd like you to do is to help me get the word out. Please. Not everyone reading this is in the NJ/NY/PA/CT/DE/RI/MA area. For those of you who aren't, please tell other people. Follow us on twitter at @picconf, email the site (http://www.picconf.org) to anyone you know in the area who might be interested, tell user groups about it, heck, we've even got a facebook page that you can become a fan of.
This is absolutely a grass-roots kind of effort. We have a very small advertising budget, so I want to use that as intelligently as possible. That means getting your help for the initial waves, and to spread it by word of mouth, by email, link, tweet, IM, and whatever else you've got.
A very big thank you to every one of you out there who reads this blog and supports me. I appreciate all of you.
]]>Your camera thinks it is a 2G memory card. However, it has a WiFi thingie built in and your Mac or PC sees it as a computer it can download pictures from. The advanced cards have an "infiniite memory" mode where it is always downloading to your computer, freeing up space for more pictures.
As cameras get bigger and bigger memories I download the photos less and less often. I recently found 1+ year old photos that hadn't been copied to my computer. That means if the camera was lost, stolen, or broken I would have lost those photos. Someday a device like this should just notice when it is near a WiFi hotspot and magically start uploading the photos to an online service like Picasa or Flickr without any manual intervention. The most expensive model has all the features to permit that (including a $14.99/year service that gets "free" wifi at major hotel and other hotspots) but at $149.99, + $14.99/year (first year "free"), I'm willing to do it manually.
If I do start to crave the new features, I can upgrade this model (they have tons of activation codes for sale, but you have to call their customer service people to find out they exist). Or, I can buy the super cool "Pro X2" model that has every feature under the sun, and re-gift my current model.
I had heard of this product before but what convinced me to get one was the demo I saw at MacWorld 2010 2 weeks ago. The company had booth and were doing demos. I was impressed and the woman said, "Do you have your camera with you?" I said yes and soon she had pulled her demo unit out of her camera and put it in my camera. We took a few pictures which were instantly displayed on her computer's big display. Proof positive that my camera was compatible. I nearly bought one right then and there!
]]>