Letters: Trustbusting

Total Linux

In response to Jonathan Feldman's "Total Linux" article (Feb. 5, 2004), I have two questions. First, is there a rules checklist to follow when deploying Linux? Second, has Linux ever been used to support airline reservation software?
ERNEST DELUGO
Senior Managing Director
DeLugo Technologies LLC
[email protected]

Jonathan Feldman replies: Plenty of task-specific checklists exist. For example, there are security-lockdown documents from various sources, as well as application-deployment checklists.

Alaska Airlines recently switched its online travel planning and pricing engine to an Intel-based system running Linux. Lufthansa's ticketing Web site relies on Linux Apache/PHP, and United Airlines uses Apache (open source) on Solaris (proprietary). Alitalia recently replaced its airfare search engine with a system from ITA Software that supports Linux and other operating systems.

SPAM

Regarding Ron Anderson's cover story "Sick of Spam" (May 13, page 42, ID# 1509f1), adding up the costs of spam is more than a bit foolish. Even in our nondigital lives, we're forced to face the consequences of annoying, even unethical, people. Yet we don't constantly total up the cost of dealing with thieves when we lock our doors.

I abhor spam, not so much because it costs money, but because it's ruining e-mail as a tool. Many systems administrators are instituting policies so draconian that almost everything gets labeled as spam. As a result, fewer legitimate e-mail messages reach their destinations.

When I was a systems administrator, it galled me to see an employee logged on to a porn site for hours, or a high-priced executive constantly checking stock prices. That sort of thing costs a lot more than the few minutes it takes to delete spam.
MARK RICE
CEO

Zero One
[email protected]

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