Dougal Campbell's geek ramblings

I ran across a great sysadmin story about a problem sending email farther than 500 miles. To a technical person familiar with how SMTP works, that sounds like a user jumping to an incorrect conclusion. But sometimes, life can be stranger than fiction….

“We could send email. Just not more than–”

“–500 miles, yes,” I finished for him, “I got that. But why didn’t
you call earlier?”

“Well, we hadn’t collected enough data to be sure of what was going on
until just now.” Right. This is the chairman of
*statistics*. “Anyway, I asked one of the geostatisticians to look
into it–”

“Geostatisticians…”

“–yes, and she’s produced a map showing the radius within which we
can send email to be slightly more than 500 miles. There are a number
of destinations within that radius that we can’t reach, either, or
reach sporadically, but we can never email farther than this radius.”