Digex wrote to associate reviews editor Lorna Garey about our Sept. 3 cover story on Web hosting providers: "We contacted you as someone who might be able to include Digex in the hosting piece that ran in this past week's issue." As much as we'd like to be able to go back in time, we've been unable to accommodate this request (or else I'd go back and recant my prediction of Lucent's grand success, too).

In a galactic punctuation display, one ellipsis-frenzied, emoticon-obsessed reader/vendor (Paul) sent me the following plea: "Here is the heads-up regarding one solution to your article about 'languages' :-) What I've done is taken the mystery out of--and leveled the playing field of: 'dot coms.' Globally ... Please visit: http://www.anybodysdot.com.

"Now ... the person that is a 'Plumber' (for example) can have his domain name (i.e. 'dot com'), on the back of his truck in vinyl letters for all to see (while his fleet drives up and down the highways in sunny Sacramento, Calif.) and not have a clue about how to use a computer--or, receive e-mail. The phones continue to ring, because: '.com's, are more powerful than a phone number.' And ... he can have his name (e.g. jeffs plumbing.com) on his business cards and T-shirts, too; for all to see. And ... he's the only one in the world that is 'jeffsplumbing.com'. :-)

"Probably, the best part, is the money he would get as 'goodwill' if and when he ever sold his 'plumbing' business and he brought his 'dot com' in to the mix; with his 'assets and liabilities'. Just the paper alone, could be worth tens of thousands of extra dollars." [sic]

The ever-opportunistic F5 alerted us to the demise of HydraWeb, a content-switching vendor, and then asked us to tell it where it could find a listing of HydraWeb's customers. On the Hydra.com fleet running up and down the Sacramento highways, no doubt.

While vendors aren't in the habit of telling us who their customers are, there are always exceptions. Like Compaq. According to The Register: "Compaq has outdone itself by leaving extensive customer details for anyone to see on the Internet. For some reason it has decided that everyone in the world ought to be able to see everyone who has bought a Pocket PC 2002 upgrade."

Vendors don't corner the market on cranial dysfunction. One T. Manivasagam sent the following request to technology editor Lori MacVittie: "Sir, help me configure Aries Mail Server to send and receive e-mails (Web mail)."

Lori shared with me the reply she wanted to send: "Dear technologically challenged, gender-confused soul, your Aries will not send and receive e-mail because it is infinitely more intelligent than you are. These new SOHO devices can discern the level of technological incompetence of their users and immediately take measures to ensure more cerebrally challenged individuals are unable to send or receive e-mail. Besides, do I look like technical support?"