Flame of the Week: an apology

We would like to apologise unreservedly for over-estimating our readers' intelligence. We also extend our condolences to those who choose to use sentences to build up an understanding of context.

We refer of course to last week's Flame of the Week. Titled "Flame of the Week: BOFH is absymal" and with the subhead "A very well-spoken computer speaks its mind", we had hoped that readers would notice that the flame was in fact the product of a computer-generated complaint letter program.

In fact, we broke in halfway to make this point clear, listing the URL where the program could be found.

It is with regret then that we have received numerous emails containing different levels of misunderstanding. One reader smugly pointed out to us that this may have been the product of a computer program and wasn't a real flame at all.

From here, things only got worse, culminating in several readers angrily writing to yours truly criticising me for failing to notice that BOFH is not factual and is supposed to be humourous, over-looking the fact that I work at The Register.

Following this debacle, we shall adopt a new policy whenever subtleties are called for. Hence, from now on, we will include the following tags whenever called for: <GAG COMING UP>, <SARCASM> and <PUNCHLINE>.

And just for those still confused.

• 
  
• The flame was sent in by a reader
  
• That reader had used a complaint-generating program
  
• The program had now idea about BOFH and the fact that it is a jokey IT column
  
• I then posted the complaint
  

Yours sincerely

Captain Confusion ®