--On Thursday, October 23, 2003 16:13:47 -0700 "Sheahan, Tram Hoang (DIS)"
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Dear List Owner,
> I found the response that I received from Mans Nilsson to be very rude and
> quite inappropriate.  Whether he found my message as a stupid question,
> his response was not necessary. I have chosen to report this directly to
> the list owners in hopes that they please take action and remove Mans
> Nilsson, especially if this has been a pattern of continual obnoxious
> behavior.

        (If you really wanted to get to the list owner, why did you post 
         to the list instead of to the list-owner alias? LISTSERV lists 
         do have such aliases by design.)

I am sorry if you feel offended by my advice. Frankly, I do not understand
what you experience as offensive. 

Let me reiterate my points and try to explain. 

> If you need support of that kind (which is the subject of quite a
> rant about the "blame culture") I suggest you either:

My point is that it would be more efficient for many (not specifically
yours) organisations to stop trying to defend their backs and instead
direct that considerable effort towards doing their job properly, a much
too common need. Your question was phrased in a way that led me to believe
you were the sufferer of over-heavy policies like this.

> * buy an expensive MTA system, Intermail or so.

This is one way to put the burden of blame somewhere. The vendor. 

> * pay someone huge amount of tax money to babysit your sendmail install.

Another way. "The consultants told us so. Not our fault."

> Or, oh blasphemous thought, you could set up sendmail, maintain it by
> RTFM,  and use support from comp.mail.sendmail. That is what I do. It
> works. 

My preferred way; I take the blame for things gone haywire personally, and
try to be good at my job. 

PLEASE: Do not take this as personal and directed towards you. It is rather
directed at the corporate/governmental back-protection disease, of which I
thought you (by account of my interpretation of your words) were a
"sufferer", not a "supporter". 

Again, my apologies. 

Best regards, 
-- 
Måns Nilsson            Systems Specialist
+46 70 681 7204         KTHNOC  MN1334-RIPE

We're sysadmins. To us, data is a protocol-overhead.