[We get a lot of anger here. Some would say it is an anonymous person's way of getting over their own inadequacy. But we think the lid's just been screwed on too tight]

My Big-Brother workplace is telling me today's Register is...

WEBsweeper Notice
Page blocked - content unsuitable.

Um? Could you pretty please tone down whatever nasties you've got up there? Why your readership is down by 2 at the moment. Of course our same over-zealous system won't let me access a series of columns called 'Deep C++' on Microsoft's site...

Censorship is evil.

Cheers
Steve

I wanted to offer a small correction to the last paragraph of your article. You state that "the real reason behind the hack stems from the continuing activity of a range of hacking groups, who then post their efforts on attrition.org."

None too surprisingly, I take issue with this. First off, hacking groups do not post -anything- on attrition.org. Attrition staff post defacements on our mirror, which is widely used by federal agencies, law enforcement, and security professionals.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, I resent the statement that we are the real reason behind this or -any - hack. Attrition in no way condones web site defacement; we would all, in fact, be quite happy if all defacements stopped and there were no longer any use for our mirror. While it is true that some groups do use our mirror for their own glorification, we accept no more responsibility for that than the nightly news should be given for glorifying the exploits of arsonists. There are quite a few defacement mirrors out there; we just happen to be the most comptetent and comprehensive.

We would appreciate you refraining from such implications in the future.
Thanks.

/dev/null

A sea of RIP bill (slipping through, without being discussed in mainstream media), Daily Mail claiming victory over section 28, Paedophile witch-hunt propaganda, naming and shaming etc etc etc.

Has the country gone absolutely crazy and turned into an Orwellian nightmare of big brother with added national socialism and publicly supported genuine witch hunts???

or

Have I gone totally mad???

Your article has given me hope that it is all a hoax and that one day I'll wake up to find everything right again!

Best regards
Nik

While I hate the Mail as much as the next guy cabable of forming his own opinions, do we really need The Register to cover what was essentially a story about drugs and the ridiculous naivety of the people in charge of this country? (I'm referring to the article you wrote today about the BBC Radio 1 website and its drug advice btw.)

I'm a young person myself (almost 18) I agree with most, if not all of the points you raised - but, well, I read the Register to keep up to date on the world of failing Internet businesses, to chuckle at the BOFH and to read some sharp articles written about what you guys know best - not to read articles written by old people arguing about how young people should be treated (no offence ;),

Oh - btw - you can't let Lucy go - she writes some good stuff - how about you let the Readers vote ;))

Keep up the good work,

Chris.

[As we emailed back to our friend: "The story was based on the accounts of three software security experts. They may be wrong and you may be right. But then we wouldn't put any money on it."]

I would say that it was amazing that you called this article "Java flaws..." etc, but I have learned that you guys never actually check for factual correctness before posting a "really good story that'll mean we're ahead of the other IT press".

Basically, your article shows that you know diddly squat about Java and Java Security. Sure there's a security hole within Navigator's implementation of Java, which supplied by Symantec by the way, and not Sun.

Every time an applet attempts to do something "dodgy" such as read a file using "file://" then the SecurityManager is checked to see whether that is allowed. Obviously in this case the SecurityManager has allowed access where it should have denied it. I could go into more details, but since you're a journalist you're unlikely to be interested - or understand.

So, it's actually a flaw in Symantec's implementation of the SecurityManager as bundled with Netscape Navigator that's the problem. Not Java. Not Sun. Did I see a mention of Symantec in your article? No, of course not. That would require you to actually do some research rather than drink copious amounts of lager down the pub while slapping yourself on the back saying how brilliant you are compared to VNUnet or ZDnet etc etc.

You may be better than them, but when it comes to actual IT knowledge, you're really quite shit.

Thanks

Alasdair Thomson

Why don't they just get it over with and stick a big electronic tracking device up everyones a*se?!

[

says: go f*** yourself you self-rig*****s piece ** ****. Oh Christ, we've done it again]

As a new reader to the register, I found the news content very informative, but then I came across what appears to be a deliberate policy of publishing intentionally offensive articles.

As a result of reading a few such items, I won't bother reading The Register again, (my usual policy with silicon and electromagnetic based trash).

It's a shame that the earth's resources are squandered in such a senseless and unproductive way. Of course, I realise that you probably don't care about my decision, but then, that's unimportant.

Please don't bother to reply, filling up my inbox with trash would only compound my distaste.

Regards
Ken Steele

[And again]

To the writers at the Register

What's with the stupid language ?
I generally enjoy your articles, but besides 'pissing me off' you keep loosing your cool by dropping in words like :

Tosser
Bollocks
Mates
Arse
Toddy
Hobnob
Foork orf

There's a lot more like that and I want you to stop it. It's 'very quaint', 'burlesque' and 'dare I say rural to be sure' or something like that, understandable too, you being social-class-confused-inside from watching hip (i.e. boring) lower-class moron-glorifying films like Trainspotting and upper-class Jane Austen crap featuring pale actresses sipping tea. But this is the 21st century and people from all over the world visit your site, right ? So snap out of it and stop mixing those Neanderthal sounding words with your otherwise coherent writing. And another thing; stop talking about your hanging in pubs. Everybody knows your beer got only 2% alcohol and we're not impressed (at least I'm not).

Never mind MY language, I'm Dutch.

Thanks,
Ian Verrijn, Amsterdam

Tony Blair and co still mugging grandmothers and grandfathers 75p this year up to yet to pay price increases, thank you supanet for helping with your free services. New labour not better labour if you are 73 years old.

Harold Shelton

[Goes on a bit this one]

Dear Mr. Lea,

Your article contains inaccuracies that even the most cursory fact checking could have corrected.

You assert that MAPS "gets its income from ISPs," and you use language such as "its financial supporters," and "its own paymasters," to imply that MAPS is subordinate to a group of ISPs who use it to further sinister agendas. This is completely inaccurate, and your choice of words makes it difficult to believe you did not wilfully misrepresent MAPS.

For the record, MAPS is an independent, not-for-profit organization. Although it has considered a paid subscription model for some of its services, to this day it does not charge for its services, nor indeed keeps track of who uses them. MAPS is largely staffed by volunteers, and intends to remain so.

Another gross inaccuracy is your claim that after a blacklisted open relay is secured, access to it is "usually restored in 10 to 20 days." Wrong! MAPS gives a high priority to removing servers that have been secured, and will verify the server's security as soon as the server's owner notifies them. In fact, during office hours, the owner of a blacklisted server can telephone MAPS, and have the server verified and removed from the database before the server's owner hangs up. Furthermore, in its instructions to users, MAPS warns not to "cache the results of a MAPS RBL lookup, since a blackholed host can right itself and be removed in a matter of seconds."

It dawns on me how little you bothered to investigate your article when you write that this matter is not "simply one of the anti-spammer David versus the spammer Goliath, but is more likely a scrap between rival pollsters." It's apparent that you did not know that the request that started the process that resulted in Harris being blackholed came not from one of MAPS' "financial supporters," but from a mail recipient in Russia who could not, despite repeated and documented attempts, get Harris to stop mailing him. If you were looking for a sensationalist angle to all this, you could have more credibly theorized that Harris's sinking stock price and increasingly poor financial shape were what triggered this desperate publicity stunt.

Had you spent fifteen minutes looking through Deja, you would have discovered that Harris's aggressive spamming long ago earned it the sad-but-funny moniker of "Harass Marketing," and that they continue - even AFTER lodging their lawsuit - to send mail to people who object to receiving it. And had you spent fifteen minutes browsing the MAPS site, you would have discovered that it's not spamming, per se, that gets someone blacklisted, but rather an obstinate refusal to even address the matter. Getting listed in the MAPS database is actually pretty difficult.

It's hard to tell what your article reflects more, honest ignorance or anti-MAPS bias, but in either case, your readers deserved better.

Regards,
Walt Roberts