- Reliability. The electric transmission net was shit at this time. Blackouts each week, sometimes each day were typical
- Cross-transmission i.e. a shared transmission net instead of one net per provider, so you could switch without much hassle if your provider failed you
- Better contracts to guarantee that you will get your electricity and that a company cannot dump you without notice
AFAIK they can't just cut your power one day because you tripped some arbitrary secret metric.
The only thing left to be desired is support for tagging in Roundcube. Thunderbird has it, but it would be nice to have it in the web interface, too. There's a ticket for it in the Roundcube tracker[2] but it doesn't seem to receive much attention yet.
Personally I hope that with the recent closures of Google services more people choose to run their own services with free/open source software. With VPSes and modern tools this is cheaper and easier than ever, and if we want the web to remain free and open, it's much better to have some diversity and decentralization, instead of placing everything in the hands of Google and Facebook.
[1] https://patrick-nagel.net/blog/archives/389 [2] http://trac.roundcube.net/ticket/1485799
I've had terrible trouble with SpamAssassin in the past; can you share an effective config, and are there pre-built spam/ham databases around so you don't need to go through the entire training process?
Are you checking RBLs on a regular basis, or is an SPF record and a reputable VPS provider enough to keep you off blacklists?
Any other tips for someone wanting to try their hand with a VPS + Dovecot + Postfix setup (assuming a Linux sysadmin background)?
Usually less than 5-10 spam mails per day survive with this config, which is acceptable for me, I view it as a typical 80:20 solution and don't want to lose potential customer communication anyway.
Regarding outbound mail, in my experience it is sufficient to have a clean IP from a reputable provider with proper reverse lookup to have most sent mail go through. I don't check RBLs regularly but I did once when setting up the server, since sometimes one can get an IP which has been burnt by a spammer before. For a quick check whether everything is configured properly I recommend using the email check of webcheck.me[2], while not covering every single aspect, it gives starters a good overview where they can improve.
If you want to host a blog or personal site in addition to e-mail you should definitely have a look at Froxlor[3]. Froxlor (fork/successor of SysCP) is a lightweight control panel which allows to add domains and mailboxes through a web interface, without taking over your whole /etc (like Plesk or cPanel). Even if you don't use it in the end, the suggested configs contained in Froxlor are a good starting point.
[1] http://www.heise.de/ix/NiX-Spam-DNSBL-and-blacklist-for-down... [2] https://webcheck.me/ [3] http://froxlor.org
(Of course I have to keep a backup of all the mail, but that's as easy as having some client download it.)
http://sourceforge.net/p/bagoma/home/BaGoMa/
Thanks
OTOH GMVault does the job fine, which I guess is most important.
The main difference with Google is, I think they'd like to take my money :) and have customer support. If the need arises (hopefully some of my plans take off), I'll gladly pay them.
"Free email, with 1 GB of email storage? Neat". "Nice fast web-browser, nice features? Neat!" etc etc.
People on HN do AB testing for button colours in an effort to reduce friction to the lowest possible. It's not that surprising that people think "it wont happen to me".
See also people who never make backups until they learn the lesson that first time they lose everything.
A. Does anyone have a valid story were the user actually lost everything, for good?
B. Assuming it's possible the risk of catastrophic failure by losing Google can still be lower in a risk assessment than the cost of redundancy or of making each part independent. Especially in a startup where there is already risk everywhere.
"A few minutes into my Google-less existence, I realized how dependent I had become. I couldn’t finish my work or my taxes, because my notes and expenses were stored in Google Drive, and I didn’t know what else I should work on because my Google calendar had disappeared. I couldn’t publicly gripe about what I was going through, because my Blogger no longer existed. My Picasa albums were gone. I’d lost my contacts and calling plan through Google Voice; otherwise I would have called friends to cry."
And that list of losses can be expanded if you use other Google tools.
Personally, I just don't get it. I was using various forms of email before Google even existed. I settled on Outlook and self-hosted email on Linux a long time ago. Oh yes, MS Office for docs, calendars, etc.. Perfect? Nope. But nobody can flip a switch and take it all away overnight.
I simply could not fathom running any of my businesses with this kind of daily risk. Any one of your employees could trigger a Google account shutdown and cost you dearly.
What's the problem here? Are MS license fees too expensive when compared to loosing all of your data overnight?
As for the other non-MS Office services offered by Google, well, there are tons of alternatives, free and paid.
I was lucky enough to learn this lesson about three years ago when a client's account was shut down merely for moving about two hundred domains to a an "AdSense for Domains" service they used to offer. Bam! Three days later their entire account is shutdown, AdWords, AdSense, Gmail, Docs, everything. Wow. New user too.
From that point forward I made a few decisions I have yet to violate:
So far, so good. Email, documents, backups and collaboration existed just fine before Google was even an idea in someone's head. Don't be lured into something that can kill your business and cause you personal financial damage.If I were running an investment firm I would have a clause in my contracts requiring that no business-critical services are to be hosted by Google on any companies we'd invest on. Talk about playing with fire. Invest millions into a venture and Google pulls their data backbone from right under them? Crap! Screw that.