I have been in orkut for a while, since Taj in­vit­ed me. I had pret­ty much for­got­ten about it, but got an­oth­er mail from them be­cause some­one con­nect­ed to me...

I have nev­er been a fo­rum guy. What´s the use of it? (and yes, Uwe, I know that´s what you asked ;-) Maybe I am miss­ing some­thing here.

Or is it that just be­cause I ac­tu­al­ly know peo­ple in per­son I can´t see the fun of it? ;-)

I was lis­ten­ing to the ra­dio to­day, and there were a group of "in­tel­lec­tu­al­s" dis­cussing why on a foot­ball match, some of the most com­mon in­sults in­volve:

1. Doubt­ing the oth­­er fans ex­­clu­­sive ded­i­­ca­­tion to het­­ero­­sex­u­al­i­­ty

2. Declar­ing that the oth­­er fans come from one of our fine neigh­bour­ing coun­tries.

Well, they went around the sub­jec­t, and brought for­ward stuff like rit­u­al ahem of pris­on­ers of war in an­cient eras, and xeno­pho­bi­a, and ho­mo­pho­bi­a, and racis­m, and in­se­cu­ri­ty about their own sex­u­al in­cli­na­tion­s, and how the anon­im­i­ty of the mass changes be­haviour, and many, many, many oth­er things.

Well, of course, they are stupid mo­rons who should­n't be al­lowed to breath near a mi­crop­o­hone, un­less they are read­ing stuff writ­ten by some­one who is ac­tu­al­ly think­ing.

Those in­sults are used be­cause they work in their in­tend­ed con­tex­t.

What you call some­one else, as­sum­ing you are will­ing to say any­thing does­n't de­pend on the in­sul­ter. It de­pends on the in­sult­ed.

If I think some­one will think of­fense of be­ing called a wood­en wind in­stru­men­t, or a bunch of twigs, and I rel­ly in­tend to hurt him, well, that in­sult will work (no, I don't usu­al­ly do this).

If I think the oth­er guy is a racist and will be dead­ly of­fend­ed by sug­gest­ing his an­ces­tors sailed fom Nor­way, well, call­ing him a Norse­man would be ef­fec­tive.

Since the mem­bers of a holi­gan band are pret­ty much like the mem­bers of the oth­er, this means they don't ac­tu­al­ly be­lieve the oth­er guy is gay, or Ice­landic, or whathavey­ou, but just that they ex­pect the oth­er guy to get an­gry, so a nice fight with cy­cle chains can take place (no, I don't do those things).

In fac­t, it does­n't even mean that they would get very of­fend­ed, it's just a bunch of code­word­s: "they called us tree-­for­ni­ca­tors (no, that's not a re­al in­sult), let's go bash their faces". It's a rit­u­al.

How can five peo­ple bab­bling for two hours not see those ob­vi­ous points, I have no idea.

If you want to see if so­ci­ety evolves about race or sex, it's not a mat­ter of noone call­ing the oth­ers by racist or sex­ist word­s, it's about those words not hurt­ing.

And that, dear read­er, is why po­lit­i­cal cor­rect­ness does­n't work worth a damn.

Imag­ine the most ridicu­lous­ly over-the-­top cliche movie about sport­s. Here are some of the in­gre­di­ents, and how last night´s match be­tween Bo­ca and Riv­er com­pares in a 1/10 scale.

• A bit­ter ri­­val­ry

  9 This is a cen­­tu­ry-old ri­­val­ry, be­tween teams from the same city, who hap­pen to be the most suc­cess­­ful and pop­u­lar teams in the coun­try.

  Trust me, this is se­ri­ous stuff. So se­ri­ous, that for se­cu­ri­­ty rea­­son­s, it was the first time ev­er in ar­­gen­­tine foot­ball his­­to­ry that the vis­it­ing team´s fans were for­bid­­den from at­­tend­ing the match.

• It must be an im­­por­­tant match

  9 It was a do-or-die af­­fair, it be­ing elim­i­­na­­to­ry home­­-and-­­away, but it was on­­ly the semi­­fi­­nal of the most im­­por­­tant club tour­­na­­ment pos­si­ble for them, the Lib­er­­ta­­dores Cup (S.Am. equiv­­a­­lent of the Cham­pi­ons League).

  It would have been bet­ter for this to be the fi­­nal, but there has nev­er been a same-­­coun­try fi­­nal in this tour­­na­­ment (that I know), so this was as good as it get­s.

• A clear favourite

  5 The first match (at Bo­­ca´s home) was won by Bo­­ca 1-0, but Riv­er could have won 2-1 or so, had they been even slight­­ly lucky (Bo­­ca´s coach is rec­og­nized as the luck­­i­est man on earth by some).

  Riv­er had kicked Bo­­ca´s butt all over the field a few weeks ago, play­ing ten times bet­ter, but...

  Bo­­ca has River´s num­ber, and has had it for ten years or so. Bo­­ca has won close, and has won clear, has won at home and away, has won in lo­­cal, in­­ter­­na­­tion­al and friend­­ly match­es, has won de­serv­ing­­ly and has won by sheer luck. But they have won al­­most ev­ery­thing for 5 or 6 years, in­­­clud­ing three of these cup­s, and two In­­ter­­con­ti­­nen­­tal cups against the Cham­pi­ons League win­n­er, so... noone was go­ing to say Riv­er was a clear favourite. At al­l.

• A hos­tile en­vi­ron­­ment

  9 The largest hos­tile crowd in ar­­gen­­tine foot­ball his­­to­ry. 66000 chan­t­ing, blood­­thirsty Riv­er fan­s. And in the mid­­dle of it, about 20 Bo­­ca play­er­s, coach­es and as­­sis­­tants. Scary stuff.

  It was­n´t Brazil-U­ruguay in 1950, but then again, there has nev­er been any­thing like Brazil-U­ruguay in 1950 (and nev­er could be again).

• Ridicu­lous sus­pense.

  9 Bo­­ca came 1-0 ahead. Riv­er scored, evening the ag­­gre­­gate.

  Bo­­ca play­er ejec­t­ed. Things look grim for them.

  Then Riv­er lost two play­ers in the same play (one ejec­t­ed, one in­­jured, no re­­place­­ments avail­able).

  In the 89th min­ute, Bo­­ca scores. They are now ahead.

  In the 94th min­ute(!) Riv­er scores, all even. Pe­nal­ties.

  The first 8 pe­nal­ties are scored. It comes down to the last pe­nal­­ty for each team. The riv­er play­er mis­s­es! It all is now in the hands of a sin­­gle play­er, and a sin­­gle kick. Which brings us to...

• The un­­like­­ly hero

  9 The guy is 21. He is not even a reg­u­lar sub­­sti­­tute, but all the reg­u­lar pe­nal­­ty shoot­ers are for some rea­­son un­able to take them, they have been ejec­t­ed, or re­­placed, or in­­jured.

  So, he takes it, he scores, Bo­­ca win­s, and 66000 looks as if some­one has played a evil trick with their gut­s.

Man, I love this game.

Clee: it's re­al­ly quite sim­ple, IMVHO.

If the goal of plan­etkde is to syn­di­cate blogs about KDE, then you should on­ly ag­gre­gate feeds that are about KDE. The god­dess knows mine is­n't, ex­cept oc­casi­nal­ly (y­ou should use this one in­stead (it is bor­ing and emp­ty, though).

How­ev­er, if the goal of plan­etkde is to syn­di­cate the blogs of kde-re­lat­ed peo­ple, then you just ag­gre­gate them (with the agree­ment of the blog­ger) and that's that.

If some­one posts some­thing strange or sad or what­ev­er, the oth­ers can post replies, en­cour­age­ments, what­ev­er, and life goes on.

Since it's your site, you are the one that choos­es. I would pre­fer the sec­ond ap­proach, though.

I have been in­stalling qmail servers for a while.

I start­ed by us­ing Bu­ruce Guenter's un­trou­bled qmail+­patch­es RPM set, which was good, but he seems to have aban­doned them.

In the last year or so, I have kept work­ing on them, and now they are some­what more heav­i­ly patched.

I have added:

• quo­­ta (bounce over-quo­­ta im­me­di­ate­­ly)

• re­al­r­cp­t­­to (bounce im­me­di­ate­­ly un­ex­is­­tant ad­­dress­es)

• tarpit­t­ing (add de­lays over n re­­cip­i­ents)

• er­rno patch (to make it build on RH 9 or lat­er)

• smtp au­th+tls (well, smtp auth and TLS ;-)

And mis­ce­la­neous changes to the de­fault con­fig so that, for ex­am­ple smtp­suth sim­ply works by de­fault.

I think this is prob­a­bly the eas­i­est way to in­stall a tra­di­tion­al mul­ti­-UID qmail on Red Hat-­like sys­tem­s.

It has been a lit­tle (not too much) work, be­cause when you pile patch over patch over patch, usu­al­ly the third one does­n't ap­ply, and this patch­set has 22 patch­es in it.

But... the qmail source is pret­ty clean for C!

I think I am go­ing to put it on sf.net or some­such.