On Fri, 19 Mar 1999, Allan Burrington wrote:

You must be a Unix sysadmin - presumably, that is why transposing SNMP and SMTP is such an issue to you.

Before we get into a religious war, let me paraphrase some Dilbert for you "Here sonny have a nickel. Go get yourself a better operating system." Take YOUR condescending posture someplace else, with statements like, "The person is obviously a Unix sysadmin - take it easy on him..."

Pointing out the obvious is non-helpful to the other 10,000 people on the mailing list.

Are you sure there are exactly 10,001 people on this list? Why do YOU waste the other 10,000 people's bandwidth, not to mention time?

Pointing out that the funny numbers were in the MIB without telling him where to find the Netapp MIB.

Perhaps you should re-read your mail spool. He referenced the filename of the mib.

Then telling him what a tree structure is. Looking at a SNMP id and being bewildered is a standard newbee experience.

That's why I suggested that he should read a book on TCP/IP so he can distinguish SMTP from SNMP before contemplating more delicate distinctions.

Telling the poor soul to buy a book is beyond unhelpful - digests are so you do not have to buy something, and you do not have to call tech support.

No, I didn't just tell him to buy a book. I told him which book he should purchase. In addition, I mentioned that he should read the SNMP RFCs since SNMP is a very simple protocol. If he didn't feel up to it, then he should get a book on SNMP. O'Reilly usually has very palatable books.

The reference to Unix Sysadmin was to account for their approach to life - they're Unix Sysadmins because they couldn't pass the civil servent exam.

Apparently proper spelling was not tested on the civil _servant_ exam.

Tom

P.S. I hope this letter provided some comedic relief to this mail list.