Reg competition: Cisco goes isup

Can you solve the mystery of the lost leer?

By John Leyden • Get more from this author

Posted in Bootnotes, 29th September 2008 18:47 GMT

Join our expert panel in discussing application security

It's five days since the lower case letter 't' briefly disappeared from Cisco's home page.

Since the curious case of the missing lower case letter (a browse of the html source showed that capital letter Ts were not affected) surfaced on Thursday morning, we've sought in vain for an explanation through Cisco's PR UK agency. After drawing a blank there, we've also tried an internal PR person and the networking giant's webmaster, again without success.

Perhaps they're all on an extended t-break.

Various theories have surfaced to explain the mystery disappearance, ranging from a search-and-replace screw-up to some kind of (very subtle) hacking attack.

In the absence of an explanation from the neworking firm we've decided to turn the mystery over to you, our beloved readers, through the medium of a competition.

Ge your rouers and sorage here

Entries need to be in by Friday. The best (wittiest and/or most plausible) will win a fabulous, well, T-shirt.

Comments to our earlier story already suggest a few promising ideas. Such as Infocom game fan Paul Coen's contribution:

I can only conclude that a group of salesmen showed up at the door, and in return for a flashlight, gave them a T-remover.

Ah, yes, Adventure and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy were fine examples of text adventure games for those old enough to remember the days of gaming before the fancy dan Wii and PlayStation 3 ruled the roost.

Craig McLean was the first to suggest that a cack-handed application of a text editor on page code might be to blame.