Could you elaborate on the problems with FogBugz (or "the FuckBox" as my new coworkers call it)? My new employer has a FogBugz installation that is half-assedly used for product development, but we want to manage support via FB too (using the mail feature) and merge in existing tickets from our Bugzilla (which doesn't handle "standard" tickets at all) so that we end up using FugBogz only for everything. We're only 30 people living off a specialized software, so load won't be an issue. I'm intrigued by the time tracking features and the resulting projected release schedules, but I'm still testing stuff out and would like to know the pitfalls to see whether we can/want to accomodate them.

I'd say it's more a lack of problem description skills. You complain about an application downloading stuff you've subscribed to and call it stupid because of that. As I assumed you're not stupid yourself, I have asked you two times to specify what exactly is wrong about that, because as a long-time TB user I thought I might help you solve a problem. If being an asshat is your reaction to that, can it be that you just hadn't understood TB's design and feel caught because you complained before using your brain or investigating even at the most basic level?

You don't have to like TB and I don't have to defend it. But maybe you want to consider thinking before posting next time. What are you, a teenager? You sure behave like one.

Again, what is the complaint? It downloads what you subscribed to, no matter what you select. If you don't want to automatically download stuff, don't subscribe to folders. It will then do what you want and only download what you select. :-)

OTOH, the common user will expect his MUA to keep his complete account current, which is TB's default behaviour (and that of the other few MUAs I've used for long enough to notice).

When you start it up, it downloads headers for ALL folders you've subscribed to. If it displays "Trash" first in the status bar, maybe it's because INBOX was current already while Trash was modified someplace else (mobile phone, other computer, whatever). Actually that's the whole point of IMAP, having *all* of your mail, including sent, draft and of course trash, available everywhere.

Or maybe I'm not understanding your point. Given what you complain about, that's pretty probable. ^^

(My pet peeve is how the iPhone and Thunderbird have different ideas what the "infrastructure" folders should be named in German - Thunderbird localizes everything while the iPhone creates "Deleted Messages" and "Sent Messages" in my folder structure, but that's a failure in standardizing. I guess if I used Evolution, Apple Mail and mutt besides TB and the phone, I'd end up with several sets of "infrastructure" folders.)

Actually "hacktivist" is a pretty old phrase - I remember reading about "hacktivism" on the cDc homepage at least ten years ago. At that time it was about writing some tool to allow people in totalitarian countries free speech by creating something like TOR, IIRC.

OK, I'll bite. I agree with the notion, but cannot see how you would tax somebody like Google without giving them opportunity to game the system. If some Chinese company buys Google ads for the USA, from Google China, but people watch them in the USA, there's no "American" money involved whatsoever, so nothing going "in and out". Maybe I lack imagination (and I really like your idea).

Whatever happened, if nobody else lost their mail, it was his fault, or that of his software. If he uses the same software as somebody else and that somebody still has their mail, then it's bad news for dad, he borked it. ;-)

I can understand both of you. Your father has lost his trust in the server, however irrational that might be.

However, even with IMAP you have copies of all mail both on the server and on the client simply by subscribing to all folders and syncing once at setup time. So I don't know how geeky your dad is, but I'd tell him that you have "found a way" so that he has his mail BOTH at his laptop AND at the server (call it a backup, if you want, it's not untrue even), and show him the backup strategy in place. Depending on his personality, that might do it. This, or telling him you can't and won't backup his mail that way. Again, it's your father and he might react badly to you "threatening" him. I don't know him, but I'd try one of the two (with my father: the former).

If everything else fails, write startup and shutdown scripts that rsync his ~ to the BSD server and let him be. It's his decision, after all.

I was COO until last year, now I'm a freelance consultant making my money simply by telling CEOs how their business runs so much better if they just treat people like people, weed out the lazy sponges and get the fuck out of the way otherwise. It's kinda ironic really, which is another reason why I enjoy it so much.

Inviting people from different companies was a daily task, for every exec, even for middle management. And frequency doesn't really matter - it's enough when something the boss wants to do doesn't work *once* when it used to work before. If it becomes obvious that "vital" features got removed, expect heads to roll. While I agree that many things execs (or marketing) want isn't "vital" by any stretch, being able to make appointments is *pretty* vital.

But hey, maybe I'm just missing a piece of the puzzle. If there *is* any drop-in replacement for AD + Exchange, please, by all means, let me and all the lurkers know. Implementing this will make everyone a shitload of money.

Yes, that's pretty obvious.

Um, what? First of all, Windows doesn't even DO what this software does, so it's hardly "turning Linux into Windows", more of "turning Linux into OSX".

Second, there are three mainstream OS, Windows, OSX and Linux. None of those "are switching to package managers".

Let's take an example out of my own history: Say you're the COO of a Corporation with several companies, all organized in a Microsoft directory structure (AD or whatever they call it) over several levels of hierarchy and also different places around the country.

Now you need to schedule a meeting with the CTOs of the companies, plus some of the CEOs, and maybe a handful other people from the administrations. Those people are scattered across the directory.

With Exchange (which I shunned myself before working heavily with it), I can just open my schedule, enter the recipients (with working autocomplete, of course I don't have them in my AB), say I need 1.5 hours of time, and press the free/busy button. I've just made an appointment in about one minute. This works on Windows, OSX and Linux, and is pushed to all mobile devices also.

Now, I am admittedly uninformed about the commercial GMail services, but I'd be amazed if they have free/busy functionality that plays even in the same league. And as the genius submitter probably wants to replace the Windows directory, too, I wish him all of luck, because I really don't think such functionality is easily replaced with F/OSS.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a big F/OSS proponent, but I can't imagine it can be feasible, both from a user and financial perspective. This guy just sounds as if he should find another job. He's already beyond his capacity, in several aspects.

Oh MAN, fuck you very much for reminding me of Supergreg. I've met people back then who thought he was serious.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8wrIgbiCgs

DUDE. It's Sacha Baron Cohen. So obviously that was the first thing I've ever seen from him. ^^

Yes, I have, but I haven't figured out why sharks would need lasers. Except for their rocket experiments, of course.

Dick Boobcock FTW.

Um, "a chance to build the browser once again"? It's not as if Marc has built *any* browser in the first place.

http://web.archive.org/web/20030212202753/http://www.chrispy.net/marca/gqarticle.html