Date Dunce

[Oren Beck]

Uncle Jim wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Tue, Mar 29, 2005 at 05:09:29PM -0600, Oren Beck wrote:
> 
> 
>>To really take this as a point of constructive discourse could anyone 
>>here suggest
>>mail software that uses something other than local system time?
> 
> 
> I understand weird system configurations because I often do it myself.  But
> I can't conceive the convoluted configuration you must have where accurate
> local system time is a bad thing and just the mail software should get time
> from somewhere else.  Understanding your setup sounds like a good "computer
> game" so please tell me what you have.
> 

This HAS been a learning experience for I suspect many of us.
Most non admin folks are quite unaware of system clocks even being a 
concern.
Accurate local system time is seldom a bad thing. Also it's seldom a 
trivial thing to keep consistent
absent external sync schemes. Sadder still is the gobsmacking amount of 
spyware/adware or worse purporting to be time correction software 
preying on the unaware windows users .
And more folks are using older hardware with Linux so hardware clock 
drift is only going to get worse.
Hence the concept of somehow making such anomalies a non issue.
My query was initially directed at making the mail server timestamp on 
both in and out akin to a postmark and defaulting to using postmark 
date/time in local clients . Propagation delays are unlikely to be an 
issue .

MY system is the Starband model 360 VSAT running on Win98  simply because
Starband does not ALLOW a non MS client for this Satmodem. Upgrading to 
to the
self contained Satmodem is prohibitive expensive for the near future.
WE also have to use for the moment the sat host as a workstation for 
reasons of too long to go into here .
The main time issue here seems to be a bug in the sat config which 
literally
changes system hardware clock for no good reason.  My Linux boxes have 
been running
Xandros or Knoppix with one Lycoris kiosk  that is rarely used.  Thunderbird
and Hotmail popper are on my sat box because the reservation program we 
use is a kludge of  Excel macros written by a past worker here. it's 
only saving fact is it more or less works and all staff are already 
comfortable with it .
Those macros seem not to work in any Open Source  office to date - So I 
took the path of least resistance.
Eventually I wish to go backward in time and use something like Pine 
simply for it's light footprint.

Oren