I learned early on in my career not to bite the hand that feeds me: I can make fun of just about anybody -- our competition, vendors, readers of other publications -- but not you. And while I certainly don't want to stifle you would-be letter writers by picking on you, it has come to my attention that we haven't published some letters because of, well, interesting content.

Take, for instance, the following note sent to Kevin Novak, a contributor who helped write our recent cover story on Linux in the enterprise: "Linux is not ready for the Enterprise. There is not a single voice-controlled app for any of the mission-critical functions of the Enterprise. Conspicuously absent are warp core control, phaser bank activation, interstellar navigation, transporter operation and the all-important self-destruct sequence. Until these and thousands of other important apps are written and deployed, Linux will just be a toy in the Enterprise."

Much of our content is licensed by publishing companies around the world, and naturally our Web site provides a readership beyond that of the United States. The United Nations lists no universal rules about how to communicate, especially via e-mail, but somewhere there must be a template. We get countless letters that start out with some polite variation on a "dear sir" salutation, followed by an unreasonable and demanding request, and finished off with a polite thanks or regards.

Greg Shipley and his team at Neohapsis regularly get e-mail like this: "Sir, I am Riaz doing my PG in IT and Mgt. Presently I am doing a course on Linux administration. I came to know about u from a magazine in which u have detailed about the scope in Linux in India. Sir, I have some doubts to be clarified. Though I seen in newspapers that Linux is making a wave in the industry plz tell me about the areas where the scope is in. And we have installed Red Hat Linux version 7. To our surprise we found that the kernel version was 2.2. My friends told that it should be 2.4 is it true.

"Today we were working on DHCP but the file dhcpd.conf was not there in /ect dir. So we couldn't work. Plz give info on this and plz tell what is best books for specializing on Linux admin particularly and Web server and NIS. Looking forward for u reply very soon. Thank u."

Zayed from the United Arab Emirates clearly used the same template, because his message came through like this: "Dear Mr. Greg Shipley, You have tested ISS RealSecure 5.5 in the DePaul University network and presented a lot of problems with the product. You have also mentioned that some of these problems have been resolved in ISS RealSecure 6.0 for which you have conducted testing in your lab. Could you please provide me with the test report on RealSecure 6.0 conducted in your lab? I'd really appreciate if you could. Thanks and Regards."

For Riaz, we'll find dhcpd.conf, and for Zayed, a test of RealSecure 6.0. Anything else?

Contributor Don MacVittie recently received this piece of correspondence from Ajay (country unknown): "Dear Sir, we are migrating from Exchange Server 5.5 Windows NT 4.0 to Exchange 2000 Windows 2000. We read your article on Exchange 2000 in Real-World Labs. We are currently encountering some problems in installing Exchange 2000. If you have a flowchart of step-by-step migration from Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2000, it will be a helpful to us. Also when to run ADMT (Active Directory migration tool), ADC (in what sequence). Also, can we install Exchange 2000 immediately after running forestprep and domainprep or we have to wait for some while. Thank you."

In whatever country Ajay is from, apparently it's customary for magazines, not Microsoft, to provide support.

Bhandari A.K borrowed a similar template for his (her?) conversation with contributor Peter Morrissey at Syracuse University. "Dear Sir, I have gone through your article but still not clear about BGP implementation. Please advise me step by step procedure in setting up BGP with two ISPs. We have two Internet connections from two different ISPs. While all our Internet host carry IP addresses from one ISP only. Now how do I go about implementing BGP so that I get benefit of having two ISPs where in my none of the services stop even if one ISP link is down also when both links are up they should work in bandwidth aggregation mode or as load balance. Could you please explain it by showing step by step by configuration. Do I also require something to be done at ISP end in order to achieve the same. Look forward to an elaborate reply from you possibly with a real-life example. Rgds."

One of our readers who works for a French company told me an interesting story about his company's executives: "Once, when our normally delightful French CEO was frustrated at the apparent lack of progress being made building our new Web site, in an e-mail message he threatened (promised?) to come over here and 'kiss some ass' if necessary. He was so close, only off by two letters. Or maybe that's how they do it in France -- you know, the carrot instead of the stick."

Lest I be accused of insensitivity (as if), countries outside of the United States don't corner the market on such correspondence. I don't know from which country Haley resides, but she (he?) sent Peter the following request: "I was wondering if you are able to give me your design process steps for designing your garments as I am in need of them to do a year 11 assessment for design and technology. I am asking you nicely. Please write back to let me know of anything. Thank you."

We, too, have wondered about the color coordination of Peter's wardrobe, but we've kept those musings largely to ourselves.

While I try to define readers as those who use Network Computing in their technology-oriented jobs, we get plenty of vendor mail as well -- perhaps that's where the template started (the bracketed comments are mine): "Dear Sir\Madam [thank you, it's sir], my name is Michael Hampton, I own a software company called Rapid Street Software, which was set up by myself in June 2000 [congratulations]. We have recently just launched several new products to the public and are currently asking good PC magazines and similar magazines with excellent reputations, like yourselves, if they would be able to do a brief review about our software and\or our company [flattery will get you everywhere].

"We appreciate that you may not have much time to do these sort of reviews because of the large workload your company has to deal with, but we would really appreciate it if you could take the time to do a short review for us. The reason we are asking magazines to do a review for us is because we are a relatively new company with some very good products [and no money to advertise] that we believe people will be very interested to hear about. If necessary, we will be able to provide you with some examples of our software and any more required details [oh no, don't worry, we don't actually need the product to review it]. Our Web site address is www.rapidsoftware.org [you already said that], where you will find details about our products, services, company. I look forward to speaking with you soon. If you have any further queries, please do not hesitate to contact me. Best Regards, Michael Hampton."

I'm sure someone will write to tell me I'm being insensitive to the communal nature of the Internet, but I just couldn't help but send the following letter:

"Dear Michael, Riaz, Haley, Ajay, Bhandari: I read your letters. I am having troubles fulfilling your requests. Please send me via letter step-by-step instructions for accessing your bank accounts, complete with PIN numbers and any credit card information we'll require, along with any currency translations we'll require. I'm asking nicely. Best regards, thank you. Fritz."