aidanfindlater.com

I watched Closer tonight. One of my friends told me it was the worst movie, like, ever. I actually thought it was pretty good, and not just because Natalie Portman is hot. I think the problem some people have is that they think of it as portraying real modern relationships (which is what it purports to be doing). Personally, I thought Jude Law was a bit too sociopathic to make such an interpretation. As well, the fact that the movie relies on something akin to ‘love at first sight’ was kinda weird, but maybe that was part of the point.

Setting up Postfix/Courier-IMAP/MySQL to do email was pretty straightforward, except when it wouldn’t work. I managed to get everything working on my box, and I think it’s working on Drew’s (yes?). However, authenticated SMTP is ridiculous with this setup, IMO. I have IMAP checking against a crypt’ed password in the database, which is good. But Cyrus-SASL, which authenticates the SMTP, can only handle plaintext passwords in the database, from what I’ve been able to discover. This has to be one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen. For those who aren’t nerds who are reading this anyway, that means that whoever runs the server (in this case, me) can look at your password. If you’re an average person who uses the same password everywhere, this means I potentially have access to your other email accounts, your MSN, your financial information, etc. If it’s stored in crypt’ed form all I see is random gobbledygook. Stupid stupid Postfix. Stupid stupid Cyrus.

My possible solutions are thus:

• allow users to send mail only through the web interface - far from ideal
• store the passwords as plaintext - not gonna happen
• patch Cyrus-SASL to be able to check crypt’ed passwords - the ‘cleanest’ solution, IMO, but it would make upgrading a pain in the ass
• use POP-before-SMTP so that users can send emails without a password for a limited time after they’ve checked their mail through POP (the solution which I’m leaning towards) - this would mean that I’d have to set up Courier-POP, which shouldn’t be too difficult, but means that IMAP would be next to useless afterwards.

I must say that I’m really disappointed with my options. I expected something better when I decided to try out what seems to be one of the most popular combinations out there.

I’m still setting up the blog and photo software (see “Projects” on the right hand side). Hopefully I’ll get everything up to snuff within the next week or so.