Our covers are all designed by Edie Freedman. She is open to suggestions, but has the final say on all cover designs. Here's what Edie has to say about how she designs the animal covers for Nutshell Handbooks:

I ask the authors to supply me with a description of the topic of the book. What I am looking for is adjectives that really give me an idea of the «personality» of the topic. Authors are free to make suggestions about animals, but I prefer to deal with adjectives. Once I have the information from the author, I spend some time thinking about it, and then I choose an animal. Sometimes it is based on no more than what the title sounds like. (COFF, for example, sounded like a walrus noise to me.) Sometimes it is very much linked to the name of the book or software. (For example, vi, the «Visual Editor,» suggested some beast with huge eyes). And it is always subject to what sort of artwork I can find.

It seems to work best this way. We've tried doing animals that the authors want, and have found that it works better if I do the selection, and then submit it for approval. I don't think anyone has been too disappointed with the final choices we've made.

I'll add that if you do want a particular animal, Edie is more inclined to respond to «right brain» reasons than to obvious mental associations. For example, several people on the net suggested the obvious clam for the Perl handbook, but Edie responded instead to Larry Wall's obscure argument for the camel: ugly but serviceable, able to go long distances without a lot of nourishment.

In any event, you'll have a chance to see and comment on Edie's cover design before we commit it to print. If you really hate it, and can't be persuaded to feel otherwise, she'll probably try again (but no promises!).

The lookup first attempts to locate an MX record associated with the
name. If a CNAME record is found, the resulting name is processed as
if it were the initial name. If a non-existent domain error is
returned, this situation MUST be reported as an error. If a
temporary error is returned, the message MUST be queued and retried
later (see Section 4.5.4.1). If an empty list of MXs is returned,
the address is treated as if it was associated with an implicit MX
RR, with a preference of 0, pointing to that host. If MX records are
present, but none of them are usable, or the implicit MX is unusable,
this situation MUST be reported as an error.

If an empty list of MXs is returned,
the address is treated as if it was associated with an implicit MX
RR, with a preference of 0, pointing to that host.

Золотой серединой вижу проверку на корректность домена и на наличие MX-записей.

If an empty list of MXs is returned,
the address is treated as if it was associated with an implicit MX
RR, with a preference of 0, pointing to that host.

через проверку на наличие точки, собаки, и содержание более двух символов между ними; и этого считаю достаточно.

Бывают интересные доклады, если ходишь на совершенно перепендикулярные темы

This server is (was) in the data center of a large financial company backed by a central UPS system. It's in a major metro area with reliable power. I can recall two power outages of about an hour each, and some quick brown-outs. The facility can sail through this no problem.