As a member of the Apostrophe Protection Society, it warms my heart to see such inspired ranting. 

What is it with eBay sellers that they think everybody owes them something?  As an occasional eBay purchaser, there are two extremely common practices that are totally unethical and unacceptable:

1. Mandatory delays before shipping an item: Today i received an email from a seller confirming that he had received my payment and that he would ship the item in two days.  Why?  I've already paid for the item - the money is sitting in his bank account.  How is there any excuse for not shipping an item immediately on payment?  The item should be ready for posting when it is listed, or at least as soon as bidding is closed.  If i buy an item in a store, i expect to be able to take it away with me straight away.  As an eBay customer, how am i entitled to less?

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As if we didn't have enough already, Apple has given us one more reason not to use Mac OS X as a server OS.  Add untimely and unclear security updates to the existing list of:

• Intense heat - heat and power management is why Apple switched to Intel.  While you wait for Xserve to catch up with Apple's dual-Intel-core desktop range, buy a dual core Dell PE 850 or IBM x306m - cheaper, faster, quieter, and easier to manage.
• No VGA port or remote console interface, so you must have another Mac to manage it.  Linux web management via Webmin is far more portable.
  ...

Since i've moved to my present role as the IT manager of a private school, i've had more unsolicited mail, email, and phone calls than i care to mention.  It has reached such plague proportions that i now have our school receptionist screening calls for me, and if i haven't heard of the person, she doesn't put ner through.

I'd like to send out this message to all IT vendors: it doesn't matter if you think you are a legitimate company, if you send unsolicited postal, fax, or electronic mail, or phone me without an existing business relationship, i consider you a spammer.  Your envelopes end up in my rubbish bin, your emails end up in my Mozilla Thunderbird junk folder (usually without me seeing them), and your phone calls stop at reception.  If you persist, you get put on my list of people never to buy from (and i like to spread this information around to my colleagues).
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Original date: Thu Mar 25 20:31:34 EST 2004

Having been a long-term (see below) Red Hat Linux supporter, i read Bruce Perens' latest whitepaper with interest.  I am still a Red Hat Linux 9 user (since i can't get my ITE IT8212F RAID controller to work with Fedora Core 1), but Bruce's arguments about the "Enterprise Linux" movement are poignant.  I'm downloading the ISO now.  :-)

For the record, i've been using Linux since kern