| The Ultimate Business Machine Technology, business And, not least, about by: Bernard Teo
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Fri 13 May 2005 Postfix Enabler 1.1.3 for Case-sensitive SystemsCategory : Commentary/PFE113Announce.txt Okay, I think I've solved it. We now have a system that will work also on systems that have been formatted case-sensitive - i.e., as Mac OS X Extended Journaled (case sensitive). This will be version 1.1.3. This is probably the last of the compatibility fixes for people moving over to Tiger. I hope that after that it'll all settle down and then we can move to something new. Case-Sensitive File SystemCategory : Technology/case-sensitiveSystems.txt I've just formatted a Mac with a case-sensitive file system. Mac OS X is case-insensitive by default (because that's what Mac users are used to) but I've had a couple of cases where the users had formatted it as Mac OS X Journaled Extended (case sensitive). A Linux user coming back to the Mac may want to keep the file system the way it was in Linux, which is case sensitive, like in most Unix systems. Unfortunately Postfix Enabler breaks when faced with that. It'll be interesting to see how a Mac works under this format, and to see if I can get Postfix Enabler to run properly on case-sensitive systems. We'll see how it goes. It took me some time to get a Mac free that I can use for this experiment. To test Postfix Enabler, I've had a machine running on 10.3.8, one on 10.3.9, a couple on Tiger (one of which I don't touch so that I can see what files came with the original install), and now one with this new variation. All sacrificed on the altar of Quality Control. Thu 12 May 2005 Version TrackerCategory : Commentary/versionTracker.txt I've just updated Version Tracker and MacUpdate. I hadn't updated them for a while but they seem to be able to pick up the Postfix Enabler for Tiger releases all on their own. But they had the links wrong. So I had to go update them. I saw a comment on Version Tracker just now about the password or serial number not working on the login screen. This is puzzling because I never had a single e-mail about this. One would have thought that a person in this situation would have first contacted the author, having paid good money for something that didn't work. So, this is another MBA moment. How do you handle this? In times like this, I think we need to go back to first principles - with the acceptance that people are not actually buying, say, Postfix Enabler. They have a problem they think Postfix Enabler can solve. So they're buying a solution to their problem. Following this, I've made a refund to a person living in a dorm who did get his SMTP server to send mail, but he realised that he still had to go through the Smart Host, so there wasn't any point in using his own SMTP server. The software worked, but he didn't get what he was looking for - so I returned the money. That's sort of working according to the principle. You know when Postfix Enabler works, it works beautifully. But there were a couple of cases where I couldn't tell why Postfix Enabler wouldn't work on those users' machines. It's quite difficult to debug these remotely. So many things can go wrong in the system (the network settings, the network itself, no available DNS server, a case-sensitive file system, a machine without a host name, manual modifications to the config files that Postfix Enabler is too stupid to work around, plus a zillion other things). But I think people appreciate it when I do give it a go anyway because it's really not worth the 10 bucks. So I'm actually relieved to be able to refund the money when things don't work out. There's a limit to what I can do a few thousand miles away. So, I try my best to do the right thing but I am still disappointed with that comment on Version Tracker. I'll be glad to be shown where the login screen doesn't work and fix it. Until then, the evidence from all these downloads is that it does work. But it does leave a trace of fear, uncertainty and doubt, doesn't it? Postfix Enabler for Tiger Release 1.1.2 is outCategory : Technology/PFEforT112Released.txt I've released version 1.1.2 of Postfix Enabler for Tiger. It fixes SMTP Authentication via the SASLDB method, which broke in Tiger. I had wanted to drop support for this, thinking that SMTP authentication via the built-in OS X accounts should be sufficient, but it seems like there were quite a few people using it. So, here it is, fixed and usable again. There's a probably a better way to do this in Tiger, with some of the new mechanisms in place. But this will do for now. I've fixed this in all three iterations, from Jaguar to Panther to Tiger, proving that everything you know yesterday is obsolete by tomorrow. This version also contains an updated French translation from Michel Pansanel of Carpo.org. Thanks, Michel, I really appreciate it. About PayPal and Automated WorkflowsCategory : Technology/PayPal.txt It's been a week since we've had this system going which allows us to process credit card payments from almost anywhere around the world. Well, almost everywhere. I've learnt that it doesn't work in Panama, Indonesia, and Slovenia (plus a few other places I've yet to encounter). But using PayPal is probably the easiest way to go. Technically, it's relatively easy to set up and you get to test the system before going live. From the business end of things, it's easy on the pocket because there's no signing-on fee, no set-up fees, and no monthly fees. You do have to pay 6 cents off each dollar of the transaction to PayPal. And there's a sizeable exchange-rate conversion charge when you transfer the money to a local bank. But the pay-as-you-go approach makes it bearable. Oops. It should read "6 cents off each dollar" rather than "60 cents off each dollar". One significant factor that has made life easier for me is PayPal's policy on refund. When you make a refund, PayPal also refunds its transaction charge. What I understand, from a traditional credit card arrangement, is that the merchant has to pay a fee to the credit card company for processing a refund. If this were so, every time I offer to make a refund (because I can't figure out why Postfix Enabler isn't working for a customer), I'm doubly punished by the system. If you've ever tried to build a credit card processing system using the other (brain-dead) companies' systems, you'll understand what I mean when I say here's a breakthrough - on top of the fees after fees, you'll meet obstacles after obstacles just to get to test the other systems. Of course, you could out-source all these to people like Kagi. But, if you have an accounting system at the end of the process, you could get a lot of productivity and efficiency advantages just by tying everything together. It's the ultimate business machine that I'm trying to build. I think, then, that this could grow into something big. PayPal says that it has over 63 million accounts - which should make it a big enough ecosystem for people to trade with each other. We've started off collecting donations from people happy to use our software. That gave us some time to think about what we need to do to make the transition towards actually selling things on the 'Net - which involves collecting money before we turn over the goods, in this case a serial number that will open our software. The complications here are : 1) Timing issues. Sometimes, when PayPal is too busy, we get the notification that the transaction has completed very late, making the customer wait too long for his serial number. 2) E-mail issues. For any number of reasons, sometimes the e-mail with the serial number doesn't reach the customer (because he supplied an invalid e-mail address, or he has a picky mail server that bounced our message, etc...) And there's a major technical issue concerning synchronising the transactions (keeping all the concurrent sessions apart), and avoiding deadlocks because they're all going thru a single serial number generator. These can break and they're disastrous when they do. These are the things that really matter. They're invisible but they matter more than knowing how to say cold-start or warm-start, three-tier or n-tier systems, etc. Building systems is fun. Dealing with buzzword-compliant systems architects is not. It's been a week and there's a lot to be learnt just from doing these - not only the technical issues but also the business issues - like how we can reduce the number of support calls - by either improving the user interface or simply improving the documentation? So, in terms of the range of experience gained, I think doing a stint as a would-be on-line entrepreneur may be almost as good as enrolling for an MBA course. The Journey is The Reward ? ... Mon 09 May 2005 What has Escher got to do with this?Category : Commentary/Escher.txt There's a self-referential nature to this weblog, like in an MC Escher print:
On one hand, I write about the ideas that I have - about how a business could use technology to create the ultimate business machine. By the ultimate business machine, I mean a business whose processes have been so systematised - through the (judicious) use of technology - that its owners could spend their waking hours improving their products, and their sleeping hours collecting the money that flows back into it. I've felt so strongly about these ideas that the only way I could express myself was to come out and do something about it. Over the two years of writing this weblog, I've tried to show how the technology has become cheap, powerful, and flexible enough for even a small business to exploit them in a simple, un-cluttered, and business-centric way. And where I could, I have tried to build the tools that will hopefully, one day, work in concert to make such scenarios a reality - tools like a mail server enabler, a web server log monitor and an accounting system, etc... Now that one of these tools (Postfix Enabler) has become good enough to be sold commercially, I've taken the opportunity to bring in the other elements (credit card processing, work flow and database integration) to show how even a home-based business could use consumer-level tools to achieve a degree of technical sophistication - one that will allow it to trade with the whole wide world. So, while you're downloading and paying for Postfix Enabler, you should also get the notion that all these ideas can work. After all, you're seeing it in action. It's a demo. Yet it's also real. Think Different may be more than a mantra. It could also make good business sense. OK, so I'm re-writing this. I wasn't comfortable with the previous version. It was too self-congratulatory. That's tempting fate. A heartbreak's always round the corner. Blog writing is a performance art. Sun 08 May 2005 Postfix Enabler for Tiger (1.1.2) - to be releasedCategory : Commentary/PFETigger1.1.2ToBeReleased.txt SMTP authentication on the server, through the SASLDB database, broke in Tiger. I have a fix I will release in version 1.1.2, next week. This is, I think, the last remaining service that needs to be restored to our Postfix Enabled-mail server, in our migration to Tiger. I've concentrated, up to now, on getting the migration done - to help people get their old functionality back as soon as I can. It's instructive to watch how Mac users jump towards new operating system upgrades with such cheerful willingness. A couple of falls, and off they go, even on their "live" business systems. What explains this optimism? ... Tiger has new ways of doing the old things. I've got the old functionality back, sometimes using the old ways. The next few updates, I will try to conform to the new ways of doing things, as soon as I can understand how they work. Plus, a few new features that I had been wanting to do. Postfix Enabler helps you set up the ultimate buzzword-compliant mail server. I've also learnt that there is another thing that it needs to be compliant with - case-sensitivity. There are a couple of people who had formatted their Mac using OS X Extended Journaled, with case-sensitivity on, like on Linux systems. The Mac, of course, is by default case-insensitive ... /etc/postfix is the same as /etc/Postfix. Postfix Enabler currently breaks on case-sensitive systems. All the World's a WebCategory : Commentary/PFETigerReview.txt It's been a week since I released Postfix Enabler for Tiger. I was amazed that withing a minute of my updating the server, I had a sale! How did these people know? The only thing I did was to mention it here. Plus, place a banner on top of the old Postfix Enabler for Panther page. And that was all that was needed to get the downloads going. The web's a truly awesome phenomenon. Sun 01 May 2005 The WorldCategory : Commentary/PFEFlags.txt
Now that I am able to map IP addresses to country codes, I have a better idea of where Postfix Enabler (or any of the other software that I've put up for download) is being used. These are some of the countries I've found, when I made a list from my server log this morning. Of course, I wouldn't know if it's used in Paris, New York, or Tokyo. But you get the drift. It's a weightless world. The bits go where they're wanted. And the money flows into the bank. Like the rain, the clouds, and the wind. No matter how hard it gets sometimes, I've always felt that it's a privilege to be doing this - we're in the midst of some significant changes in the way we choose to live and work. There's no better way to understand the changes than to dive in and participate. Take credit card processing as an example. Just two or three months ago, we wouldn't have been able to do that. We would have been banging our heads against the barriers put up by WorldPay or Planet Payment, supposedly new-age companies with old-world mindsets. When PayPal made it possible for any business to receive credit card payments without opening a merchant account, we waited anxiously to be offered the same service outside the US. Hai Hwee didn't just wait. She thought through the workflow, so that when we got that email from PayPal that we're on, she had the system set up in a couple of days. Every time we get a payment, I think about how technology has made it possible for two people to trade with the whole world, from the comfort of their homes. Sat 30 Apr 2005 Postfix Enabler for Tiger - Back AgainCategory : Technology/PFETigerUpAgain.txt
I think it's okay to put this back up again. The response has been great. Postfix Enabler for Tiger - UpdateCategory : Technology/PFEforTigerUpdate.txt I think I've solved it. A few things essential for Postfix to run were missing from the final Tiger release installer. Postfix Enabler for Tiger will check, and if they're not there in the system, it'll attempt to put them back. Postfix on Tiger seems to work fine again on my test PowerBook. But we're going to do one more round of testing before we release the update. It'll be version 1.1.1 now. Basically, the entry for MAILSERVER was missing from /etc/hostconfig, plus a couple of other things, and these confused Postfix Enabler because I wasn't expecting that. Actually I had made sure to test both a fresh install and an upgraded system using my developer release of Tiger, which was updated up to December or January. The changes must have come after that. Never ever again will I attempt to release something the same day as Apple's OS launch. It's just not worth it. And maybe, try not to ask me for free serial numbers unless you've contributed something like $50. My mood's changed. This is really hard work. Postfix Enabler for TigerCategory : Technology/PFETigerNotWorking.txt I've had to hold this. I've just found that the retail version of Tiger hasn't got a couple of things that were on the developer version. This is making Postfix Enabler not work for those who're using a totally fresh version Tiger. It seems to work OK for those who're upgrading. Will try to fix this problem now. Read more ... |
Mac@Work
Services running on this server, a Mac Mini running Mac OS X 10.9.2 Mavericks:
all set up using MailServe, WebMon, DNS Enabler, DNS Agent, VPN Enabler, Liya and our SQL installers, all on Mavericks. |
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