[snoozie]

Thanks shotspine now you have replaced the other stupid song I can't get out of my head for this one JK...Sue


Doris Day
Que Sera Sera
When I was just a little girl
I asked my mother, what will I be
Will I be pretty, will I be rich
Here's what she said to me.

Que Sera, Sera,
Whatever will be, will be
The future's not ours, to see
Que Sera, Sera
What will be, will be.

When I was young, I fell in love
I asked my sweetheart what lies ahead
Will we have rainbows, day after day
Here's what my sweetheart said.

Que Sera, Sera,
Whatever will be, will be
The future's not ours, to see
Que Sera, Sera
What will be, will be.

Now I have children of my own
They ask their mother, what will I be
Will I be handsome, will I be rich
I tell them tenderly.

Que Sera, Sera,
Whatever will be, will be
The future's not ours, to see
Que Sera, Sera
What will be, will be.

[shotspine]

Thank You! Thank You! Where in the world did you find those words? In your memory? Gosh, going back many decades ago, my best friend and I sang that song in our Elementary School Talent Show. Ohhhh! The poor parents that had to listen. No, I can't sing, not even in the shower.

It's sure good to see you. I didn't see you on the CP forum much for quite awhile before the board went down. You were missed. I hope we can all keep in touch, which ever forum we land at. For me, it's just much too soon to make any decisions. Right now I'm thinking there is no reason not to be at both, but who knows? The future is not ours (mine) to see!! Personally, I just want to be reunited with all those I care about and get back to sharing, supporting and educating. I'd love to leave all the trolls and ugly stuff behind and build a big tall wall around us to keep the uglies out and an big open door for all those that want to give and take with kindness and caring. Hmmmm, suppose that can happen?

Wishing you all good things Sue!!

What was the other "stupid" song you had roaming around in your head? Or maybe I shouldn't know for fear of it roaming in mine too.

[snoozie]

Hi Shotspine, I found the words using google. I do remember that song from way way back though. I knew if I didn't find the words I would sing the first part in my head over and over and over...well you get it. By the way the other song was a Barney song and my youngest is 13, I heard it in the background while talking to a friend who has a 3 year old and it was still in the memory some 10 years later. So why can't I remember anything that just happened??? I would gladly give up brain space taken up by Barney for some more relevant info

I was on vacation when the OBT went down. I was camping by Panguitch Lake in Utah with no phone, no TV just fresh air and fishing. I really like our new home here so I will be staying and hopefully many of our friends will too. At least here the mods have names and we know where they live hee hee hee just kidding mods Good to "see" you again...Sue

[JD]

AHHHH My mother sang that to me when I was little; nice memory on that! I hope yall don't leave here, kinda like having ya around TC. JD

[shotspine]

Ahhhhhh, camping and fishing.......my most favorite things to do were travelling, camping, hiking......and eating fish someone else caught. My one and only child is about to be 40 with my youngest grandchild about to be 11. Since I lived 2500 miles away during my grandkids growing up days I have little memory of the "in" songs/trends of those years. Like you, I can remember grade school, but not this morning. Thank God for my desk calendar. If I don't write it down.....it's gone.

Thanks JD, that was nice of you to say! That song has good memories for me also.

Here's to friends like you two, where ever we land. I'm much more concerned about the posters than I am the moderators. I may change my mind though.

Que Sera Sera

[evie]

Originally Posted by Wittesea

...I was thinking maybe the system there is sending out the mass emails in "packets" (200 people at a time or something) but if it is doing 'packets' it is doing it in a strange order (not by alphabet if Wings got one and Wittesea didn't, not by post count because mine was high, not by last visit because I was at OBT the day before it broke).... and I can't think of another way that a system would sort the packets... (If it is even set up to do it that way)....

The way mass mailings like these (assuming a mail was sent out to all members of BT and not just to a few addresses that survived the crash) are normally sent out is in packages of several hundred/thousand addresses. If the software is clever (which I will assume for this), it or the sending mail server bundles the addresses by server, eg. all addresses @aol.com are being bundled together and 1 single mail is then sent to that server. So, say 2000 thousand addresses at 20 different places are being sent a mail, the mail server (or even the board software) will create 20 mails with 100 receipients each.

As many of the providers have a maximum no. of receipients per mail (after all, spam is sent out the same way), these, say, 20 mails with 100 receipients are then broken down into chunks the receiving mail server accept, eg. max 50 receipients per mail.

So, in the end, in the example given, 40 mails are sent out with 50 receipients per mail.

For the assumed 50000 members of BT, this would mean quite a few mails.

If there is an error on any of these mails and the receiving mail server rejects a mail, none of the intended receipients in that mail will receive that mail and JL or whoever does the mail admin will receive an error/rejection msg (a bounce msg) instead.
If one of the intended receiving mail servers is down for...hmm...say 3 days...the mail will be rejected and none of the intended receipients in that mail will receive the mail either.

There are a few other problems that can happen which will result in a number of people not receiving the mail or receiving it delayed by several days.

In the case where single mails to everybody are generated, it can take a long time until all mails are sent; I calculate high at maybe 1/2 sec per mail which comes to 25'000 seconds which is several days...ok, I did say I calculated high, in reality a lot more mails could be generated but as I don't know the board software, I chose a high value as sending time.

I don't think that with 50'000 receipients, anybody would take the time and trouble to single anybody out for special treatment...a simple technical explanation is the much more likely reason why some people will or won't receive a mail.

cheers
eve

[Wittesea]

Thank you evie for explaining the packet thing to me.

I knew that mass mailings are often done in packets of some sort, I just never knew how (and it totally makes sense that the packets would be sorted by email provider).... and that also probably explains why I haven't gotten an email yet.

The email I used for registration at OBT is an uncommon email provider, so it's possible that the packets are being done in order of largest email providers first (AOL, yahoo, hotmail etc...) and the little ones that only a few people use would be done last.

Again, thank you for explaining the way servers sort and send the email packets... I always love learning about how things work

[evie]

Imagine those bundles being created and queued almost at the same time. Mail servers are extremely efficient at 1 job and that is to deliver mail. This process is completely impartial and normally goes on a first in, first out base. It doesn't know about big or small, it only knows about mails in/mails out.

As an example from one of the mail servers, I administer: right now there are 16 mail queues open which means that mail is waiting to be delivered to 16 different destinations to an unknown number of receipients. This particular mail server seems to be blacklisted (=they refuse to receive mail from it) by mac.com so there are 180+ msgs in the queue and they will sit there until mac.com decides to like this server again or the 3 days waiting period are up whichever comes first. Until that time, all msgs for mac.com sit there...let's say hastypastry.net was in a similar situation then all member having a mail address at mac.com would have to wait.

A small provider is more likely to have some spam prevention measurements in place than a big one. It may accept less receipients per mail than a big one or it might use what is called greylisting (the 1st mail from an unknown provider will be refused on principle; spammers hopefully won't try again whereas legal mail server will try again after a certain time) or it may have other anti spam tactics in place...all of them will at least delay the mail delivery (greylisting) if not make it impossible (no of receipients over the limit). In the latter case, it may even lock out the offending sending server for a time completely so you wouldn't ever get the mail.

In the case of delaying tactics, the mailqueue goes to the back of the queue to be sent and waits its next turn which will normally be around 20 mins later. The more times it is refused the longer it will wait before trying again.

I use the word "normally" a lot here. This is because everything I said, all times, etc. can be adjusted by the mail admins.

These are just some of the things that can go wrong; looking at all the different ways mail can and does go wrong it is sometimes very surprising that any mail arrives where it is supposed to go.

As JL gets a msg whenever a mail couldn't be delivered, he could, in theory, resend those mails but I would bet he doesn't. It is just plain too much work. A real life example from an announcement mailing list that runs here with around 2500 receipients. For every mail that is sent, we get back several 100KBs of plain text bounce msgs immediately after sending and that again over the next few days as mail servers return errors in their own sweet time. Some of them accept the mail but return errors up to 2 weeks later. Now, bounces are plain text and contain no pictures and/or formatting...I'd say on that list about 1/5th of the member addresses produce bounces. So is it reasonable to expect the list owner to clean up 500 addresses manually for every mail he sends?

Let's apply that to BT. JL sent about 50'000 msgs (if he did send a mass mailing), 1/5th bounces back (=10'000)...would anybody expect him to clean up 10'000 mail addresses manually? No? Good, because he won't.

Have I bored everybody to tears yet?

cheers
eve

[mrsD]

The internet never ceases to humble ME!

Did JL use the BT list from that software? Or do you think he has a separate
file? I don't remember seeing 50,000 members, either, I recall the high 30,000
the last time I looked, probably in spring.

When the MAC OS came page up, soon after the mails were sent, I don't suppose
he could access the mail addresses either? How would that work? If he is restoring a database...wouldn't that preclude access? Does he have everyone's email in his own gmail acct? An address book with 30,000 names in it?

I have Yahoo... so that is a common one.

Jeeeesh....how do the spammers do it! There is probably a short cut for THEM! or a robot...etc.

Thanks Evie... I needed some education on this... I just type..I have no idea what is really happening most of the time!

[evie]

Originally Posted by mrsd

Did JL use the BT list from that software? Or do you think he has a separate
file? I don't remember seeing 50,000 members, either, I recall the high 30,000
the last time I looked, probably in spring.

Not much difference between 30'000 or 50'000 for this. Even if all people entered valid mail addresses, there will be some with full mailboxes, etc.

I don't know this bulletin system so I don't know where the addresses are stored; with our software, some memberdata is stored in a different place so I might be able to recover them to send them mail.

Originally Posted by mrsd

When the MAC OS came page up, soon after the mails were sent, I don't suppose
he could access the mail addresses either? How would that work? If he is restoring a database...wouldn't that preclude access? Does he have everyone's email in his own gmail acct? An address book with 30,000 names in it?

I don't know his setup so I don't know where he stored the addresses but assuming that he has a working backup in place, I'd guess those addresses are available on a backup and can be recovered. I doubt very much that he has them anywhere else, there are just too many of them.

I just checked to see whether I got that mail but I haven't. With the extended headers, I could probably say a bit more but this way I have no idea.

OTOH, he may just have sent out a msg to some who sent him a mail. Again, assuming that of the people who are actually active in a forum, many sent him a mail, he may have ended up with 1000+ mails all asking what is happening, some offering to help. Sending them all a reply manually would be too much so he may have just cherry picked a few.

Originally Posted by mrsd

I have Yahoo... so that is a common one.

Jeeeesh....how do the spammers do it! There is probably a short cut for THEM! or a robot...etc.

Spammers have many different ways depending on their goal; they don't just send spams, they also collect addresses by all out attacks on servers and many other ways, try to abuse other providers mail servers for sending their stuff and only then, last but by far not least, try and send their spam/scams/etc.
If you run mail servers, the Internet is a big war place with the battles taking place on every server. I spend quite a bit of my working time battling spammers and their spams.

Originally Posted by mrsd

Thanks Evie... I needed some education on this... I just type..I have no idea what is really happening most of the time!

No need to either If you throw a letter into the mailbox, you don't think of all the people/machines that have to handle it before it finally arrives at the destination and this should be much the same.

Btw. the page(s) being shown right now is/are just the standard OS X server page(s) if nothing is set up yet.

cheers
eve