August 28, 2007

LTE: “Citing delays, casinos balk at fees”

Filed under: Casinos, Letters to the editor — morgan @ 18:22

August 28, 2007

Dear Editor:

Re: “Citing delays, casinos balk at fees” in Daily News 8/28/07

This article is a perfect illustration of why re-siting is in the casino operators’ best interest. Many of us are neither anti-casino nor anti-gaming. We are more than happy for the casinos to relocate to sites in the city that are outside of neighborhoods or in neighborhoods where they are wanted.

We are not looking to directly hurt the operators or inflict financial harm, we are protecting our homes and neighborhoods. This is a perfect opportunity for the casinos to ask for new sites. The casino operators can easily get their facilities open and effect the decision of city council: they can work with neighborhoods and the city to re-site to friendly locations. This is not a vendetta against casinos, it’s a vendetta against casino locations near our homes.

In retrospect it might have been a good idea for the gaming applicants to talk to the neighborhoods before they invested in these sites. If they had searched the city for friendly sites years ago their facilities would be built by now.

I and many of my colleagues will never back down as long as casinos are planned for the central Delaware riverfront or any location where they are opposed by neighbors. Even if these are built we will continue to oppose them until they are shut down. Period. If you move them out of neighborhoods that oppose them they will be built and open in peace.

Morgan Jones
Fishtown resident
FAST (Fishtown Against Sugarhouse Takeover)

August 27, 2007

LTE: “Help for problem gambling”

Filed under: Casinos, Letters to the editor — morgan @ 19:36

August 27, 2007

Dear Editor:

Re: “Help for problem gambling” in 8/27/07 Philadelphia Inquirer

This may be the least responsible piece on the state of gaming I’ve seen yet. The former CEO of Harrah’s Entertainment is the chairman of the National Center for Responsible Gaming? Isn’t that like the former CEO of Jack Daniels heading Alcoholics Anonymous with a cocktail in one hand?

Phil’s article suggests that the solution to lack of government funding is private funding. The corporations that stand to benefit the most from gambling are researching the roots of problem gambling? Don’t you think they have some incentive to skew the results in a way that benefits their bottom line? Oh, well, their own research shows that the most serious form of gambling is confined to 1.14 and 1.60 percent. That’s a relief.

Phil then refers to “the unprecedented growth of research on gambling disorders has also made it possible to translate this knowledge into practical tools..” The only tool he offers to is “self-exclusion.” Since when do addicts have the self control to ask to be excluded from their drug?

I have no problem with legalized gaming. However, common sense dictates that research on gambling disorders should be done by an independent, outside party with untainted funds. The gaming industry should be regulated by government or independent entity, not the gaming industry itself.

This article is just another gambling industry insider assuring us that the industry is self regulating and there’s no need for outside scrutiny. It sounds like the fox watching the hen house to me.

Morgan Jones
Fishtown Resident
FAST (Fishtown Against Sugarhouse Takeover)

August 23, 2007

LTE: “Casino hopes to bring neighbors to table”

Filed under: Casinos, Letters to the editor — morgan @ 12:53

August 23, 2007

Dear Editor,

Re: “Casino hopes to bring neighbors to the table” in Philly Metro

My neighbors and I strongly resent the implication that the city negotiated on the neighborhoods’ behalf because the neighborhoods wouldn’t come to the table. This is a perfect example of the city working for the operator and not the people. The city and Ken Fee of Sugarhouse failed to mention that Fishtown Neighbors Association’s first priority in negotiation is resiting this intruder in our neighborhood.

The neighborhoods within the DRNA refuse to negotiate because this development has been forced on them. We have repeatedly asked for support from the city to help us re-site the casinos away from city neighborhoods. All we get in response is noise about sewer improvements and back room deals that undermine the efforts of the neighborhoods and the city’s own negotiations.

Romulo Diaz has never approached the people of Fishtown or, to my knowledge, any other group for input into this agreement. He has only accused us of not negotiating with the operator, and then gone out on his own and negotiated on our behalf. Who does he work for? What are his motives? Who benefits from Mr. Diaz’s efforts? He’s clearly not working for the good of Philadelphia or its neighborhoods.

The recently released agreement between the city and Sugarhouse show that the city wants casinos more than it wants thriving neighborhoods. Mayor Street couldn’t leave a worse legacy for himself — and a worse mess for the next mayor to clean up.

Morgan Jones
Fishtown Resident
FAST (Fishtown Against Sugarhouse Takeover)

August 20, 2007

Canonical address configuration in multi-server Zimbra

Filed under: Messaging, Zimbra — morgan @ 18:29

The Zimbra environment we’ve put together looks like this:
1 LDAP master
3 MTAs
6 stores

We initially installed with only mta instances on the mtas and all hosts pointing to the LDAP master.
This was of course lacking ldap consumers on the MTAs.

So a few weeks ago we upgraded to Zimbra 4.5.6 and added LDAP consumers to the MTAs. This was messy but reliable once you take your lumps and jump through the hoops in the right order. I owe a post on this topic.

Our Zimbra environment is not in production yet, it’s officially pre-production, so we use canonical addresses to make our pre-production users’ mail look to come from productiondomain.com instead of pre-productiondomain.com.

Immediately after adding LDAP consumers to the MTAs our pre-prod users began to complain that their mail was coming from pre-productiondomain.com. This was prematurely releasing our fancy new pre-productiondomain.com which is supposed to be a surprise for some time in the fall.

So.. Zimbra uses canonical maps for the canonical address setting:

$ grep canonical /opt/zimbra/postfix/conf/main.cf
sender_canonical_maps = ldap:/opt/zimbra/conf/ldap-scm.cf
$ cat /opt/zimbra/conf/ldap-scm.cf
server_host = ldap://master_ldap.pre-productiondomain.com:389
server_port = 389
search_base =
query_filter = (&(|(zimbraMailDeliveryAddress=%s)(zimbraMailAlias=%s)
(zimbraMailCatchAllAddress=%s))(zimbraMailStatus=enabled))
result_attribute = zimbraMailCanonicalAddress,
zimbraMailCatchAllCanonicalAddress
version = 3
bind = no
timeout = 30
$

You should immediately notice that postfix is looking to the master for Canonical address rewriting. This may be a side effect of adding an LDAP consumer after the MTA was installed. Either way it’s wrong. It easily tested:


$ ldapsearch -x -h master_ldap.pre-productiondomain.com -b ''
'(&(|(zimbraMailDeliveryAddress=morgan@pre-productiondomain.com)
(zimbraMailAlias=morgan@pre-productiondomain.com)
(zimbraMailCatchAllAddress=morgan@pre-productiondomain.com))
(zimbraMailStatus=enabled))' zimbraMailCanonicalAddress
zimbraMailCatchAllCanonicalAddress

You should get nothing. Repeat the command with -h mta_hostname.pre-productiondomain.com and you should get the canonical address you set in the admin gui.

The solution is to edit /opt/zimbra/conf/ldap-scm.cf and change
server_host to ldap://mta_hostname.pre-productiondomain.com:389

If you tried it and it still doesn’t seem to be working, you might have zimbraPrefFromAddress set. On one of the stores:


$  zmprov ga morgan@pre-proddomain.com|grep -i zimbraPrefFromAddress
zimbraPrefFromAddress: morgan@pre-proddomain.com
$

Fix it by unsetting the attribute:


zmprov ma morgan@pre-proddomain.com zimbraPrefFromAddress ''

It seems to take a few minutes to take effect.

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