Cubic

Two of my least-favorite open source products are Postfix and anything that interfaces with it. I use Postfix and Dovecot extensively and still find new annoyances with both of them. My major gripe is the lack of a simple package in Ubuntu that simply asks questions and then automatically does stuff based on the answers to set up a working mail server.

The objective of this post is to show a simple setup of Postfix and Dovecot for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS to enable command-line scripts on a box on a local network to send e-mail to itself and then retrieve those e-mails over POP3 using a normal e-mail client. This is NOT a full-blown e-mail server setup. It is a notification message drop with POP3 access. The e-mail client will only be able to retrieve e-mails from the box (not send them), which completely eliminates the possibility of the box accidentally turning into a remote mail relay.

First, install Postfix and Dovecot:

sudo apt-get install postfix sudo apt-get install dovecot-pop3…

Programmers dread the "code review". This is where the programmer sits down with his or her peers and their peers bash their fellow programmer's code - and, in not so many words, tell the programmer that they are a terrible person. The code review is about ego boosting/ego crushing disguised as a quality assurance practice. Well, that's what happens in a lot of code reviews and, when it happens, it is a form of bullying. The word "review" implies that the code is being judged:

Review: "a formal assessment or examination of something with the possibility or intention of instituting change if necessary."

Judged: "form an opinion or conclusion about" or "give a verdict on someone."

Also, the code review involves not only judgment but the peers are the jury and executioner in some sort of twisted intervention:

Intervention: "an occasion on which a person with an addiction or other behavioral problem is confronted by…