[oclug][OT] Standing on the shoulders of giants

[Ian Kemp]

After wading through 100+ e-mails on "ease of use," I have to say that
this one gave me a good chuckle!  

This sounds like the true lazy geek's way of solving a problem.  I mean
that as the most sincerest compliment.  :)

My hat's off to you!

Ian

 

On Thu, 2002-11-28 at 16:23, Brian's Linux Box wrote:
> I've been working on a small bash script and have it working pretty much the
> way I want it now.  My wife's Win98 machine runs 24x7 and acts as our
> answering machine.  (Hey it's a Winmodem anyway!) After receiving an
> incoming message, it sets off my numeric pager to indicate a new message is
> there.  The problem was when I was out of town or on the road I would have
> to call long distance or use the cell phone just to find out it was a
> hang-up, or otherwise not worth checking.  So, linux to the rescue...
> >From a cron job my linux box mounts the appropriate folder on the Windows
> machine via Samba, checks for new stored messages, converts .wav to .mp3 and
> emails the new messages to an account readily available via webmail.  Next
> stage of the project will put the messages on a folder on my webserver
> accessible only with a password for even easier access.  I was patting
> myself on the back for using linux to make something like this possible
> without spending a ton of money.
> 
> So what's the point?
> 
> If I look at the hardware and software required to take a message and make
> it available to me anywhere in the world because I'm too impatient to just
> wait until I get home and too polite to just not have an answering machine I
> find myself giggling hysterically.
>  Follow the chain from the phone line at my house to my ear at a remote
> location and there is probably several millions of dollars worth of software
> and hardware to deliver a message that is usually worthless.  Crazy world
> we've got going here isn't it?
> 
> Brian
> 
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-- 
Ian Kemp <ikemp at magma.ca>