Comment by gabeio

Yes, sites have necessary customizations in sendmail.cf. These do not have to be rewrites that use shiny new syntax.

My biggest problem with the author was not that he uses his admin blunders as a basis to call himself a good sysadmin, but that he assumed that the stats people were idiots who don't know anything about `puters or networks.

I was not surprised by the 500 mile claim. It strikes me as obvious that the 500 miles has to do with some combination of network topology and propagation delays, those being approximately the same in every direction.

Yes, networking does work "that way": farther places take more time to reach than nearer ones, broadly speaking. (Of course, it's faster to reach something 12,000 km away with no packet switch in between than something 50 miles away with switching. That doesn't eliminate the generality.)

It was also obvious why they didn't report the problem instantly; you cannot instantly know that mail isn't reaching beyond 500 miles without gathering data and correlating to a map, which takes time. Instantly, you can only know data points like "I can't mail to users@example.com". You know that if a stats person gives you a number, it was based on data, and not just a couple of data points. The head of the stats department isn't going to give you a number that isn't factual and backed by science. Of course stats people pride themselves on their data analysis; they are not just going to relay a couple of data points with no analysis attached.