'You're a f**king moron'

Our illuminating piece yesterday by new boy Jefferson Alberry II, regarding al-Qaeda's stance on the iPhone, provoked a seriously adverse reaction in one "Mr Jenkins". His resulting message may be short, but it sure ain't sweet: You're a fucking moron. Crawl back under the rock you live under - you cunt. Good Lord. Mr …

[lansalot]

Not a yank, surely .. ?

Now, a bit of low-brow analysis here would lead me to suspect that this person is in fact an Englishman abroad. It's not often that the transatlantic types would off up the rather short "you cunt" in such a decidedly British manner.

Although, perhaps said suspected-Yank is a die-hard Guy Ritchie fan - but, realistically, what are the odds of that ?

That said, Jason Statham appears to have upped-sticks and moved over - perhaps he was just visiting some IT corp as research for his next flick ("They picked the wrong guy to downsize and outsource this time - and he's going to take 'terminal' literally" etc..) and saw an open console ?

"Crawl back under the rock you live under" does seem a bit wordy. Though if I'd been having a crack at Kelly Brook for a few years, I wouldn't particularly care about my grammar either...

[Anonymous Coward]

Go get 'em

I love the idea of hunting down one of these people who hide behind their computer screen and screech profanities at people more intelligent than them.

If it turns out to be a company we do business with I would be happy to ask my own questions of their IT Leadership as to why their Staff conduct themselves in such a manner.

[Anonymous Coward]

US computer company...

hmm, I wonder which one?

A US computer company with some interest in popular personal music players perhaps?

Best of luck with the investigation, please keep us informed.

[Les Matthew]

The expression

Hoist by your own petard.

Springs to mind. ;)

[Tom]

Well...

I hope he's learn his lesson...

[Owen Sweeney]

Ooooh Lester..very sneaky

Tee hee. That'll learn him, as they say.

/awaits with baited breath.

[George Johnson]

Mr Rufus is back!!

Long live the spirit of Rufus!

[Barry Critchell]

Right wing nutjob?

Surely this must be a Bush lovin' - Al Qaeda fearin - Jeebus lovin republican venting his anger anonymously from his nice, safe concrete bunker.

Actually, I take that back....it was too well spelled.

[Darren Brooke]

hahahaha

now this is more like it

a proper friday story

i hope he gets the bollocking he deserves

maybe he'll be seeing the dole office next tuesday?

;o)

[Alan Paice]

Surely Mr Jobs et al does'nt want OBL to own the iPhone?

Well I would think at the price tag for the iPhone, there won't be many bombs detonated with one. And I am sure no self respecting Al-Qaeda would want to get tied in an 18 month contract with AT&T either.

Mr J.. get a sense of humour.

[Anonymous Coward]

I do so hope that the

US computer corporation referred to is the one I suspect it is.

In other words, is this an iFlame?

[Anonymous Coward]

You utter bastards!

...I knew there was a reason I like you.

[Michael]

Genius

Absolute genius! The funniest story in a long time.

[Paul van der Lingen]

comments...

How dare you.. how very dare you..

:-)

I was going to post something funny and original, but then realised you might contact my boss

[Karl Lattimer]

Ooops

You forgot to capitalise and embolden the E for blimey!

Second correction in 5 mins, are you lot pissed today?

[Giuseppe]

Black Helicopters sent to investigate

So now it seems El Reg are using the Black Helicopters for the benefit of us all. Excellent to see them being used for good rather than evil.

I look forward to seeing what the Helicopters report back to Vulture Central...

[Anonymous Coward]

BLIMEY run by the BOFH ?

Nice to see the BOFH's way of life is deeply ingrained in El Reg. You really are a set of b@stards :-)

Go on, tell us who he works for....

[Dave Murray]

Fruity?

Can't wait to find out who he works for. Could it be a fruity US computer company? :D

[Anton Ivanov]

Lester, did you swap places with Mr Travaglia by any chance?

You are not playing fair lester, you should warn the unsuspecting populace when you leave the BOFH handle the mailbag. Not fair. Definitely not fair.

Cheers,

[R MacReady]

Title

Find who the yank is and demand his extradition ala Gary McKinnon

[Ian Sargent]

Luv it!

I suspect that we will not hear who the company is, let alone the culprit (or should that be culPRAT), but I just love the way you work - in the style of BOFH.

Spoofing an email addy is one thing but to do so to someone like El Reg is something else and who would have imagined being able to capture someone's IP addy on a form, let alone record it...... tee hee hee!

[Will Leamon]

Huh?

I've seen far worse comments here at El Reg before and will do so again... So is the outrage because it was an American IP address?

And frankly I would like to argue that the original author was a fucking a moron. Even my 12 year old nephew said 'This would have been funnier if Al-Qaeda had reviewed the Iphone' - you know too expensive to detonate a bomb. Too light to whip suspected prostitutes and music retailers..." could have been a gold mine from Bin-Laden himself.

And personally I found this comment to be most offensive of the lot.

'ZOMG IT'S ALIVE! IT'S HUGE! IT'S A FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER !!!!111!1ONEONEONE'

And this one's still there!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nasty Precedent

Come on, El Reg... ignore the comment. Clearly, this was just some inane mindless comment from yet another disgruntled-with-life interweb luser.

Chasing up his company/boss isn't a good precedent to set when you receive comments that you find offensive. Add some community moderation (up/down vote) functionality to the comments (a la reddit.com) and you'll see this kind of rubbish weeded out with a minimum of fuss.

[Brian]

Spoofing the email address

How exactly did he "spoof" the email address? You have to register to post, correct?

And to register, you have to supply an email address to which a unique URL is sent to confirm registration... How is this person registered unless they have access to the provided email address?

Surely, you're not just saying that the post was sent from a different IP address to the email addy's domain's IP... please tell me that's NOT what you're saying.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Karl Lattimer

" Second correction in 5 mins, are you lot pissed today? "

Well duh! What part of "It's Friday" don't you get?

;-)

[Anonymous Coward]

All fine and dandy, but...

How is this supposed to encourage your readers to feel comfortable in providing honest feedback? I know I'm going to be much less likely to post stuff on The Register for fear that they'll publicize who I am to the world.

Damn, too late... Can I even trust the "Post anonymously" checkbox at the bottom of this form?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hunt the B@stard down!!!

Hey you all know that sometimes you just have to go out there and make a point of hunting twats down and making them suffer for their mistakes, sure that is why we all got into IT isn't it??

-Been reading BOFH since the beginning and it has warped my views on (L)users-

[Kurt Guntheroth]

hey Bob!

"Hey Bob, some wanker from the back side of the planet called to complain about your potty mouth. Wha'd you say to those morons, anyway?"

"Huh? I can't even remember. That was like two days ago, and I've been coding for like 20 hours straight. Well f**k 'em. God I need some coffee."

[Paul]

Re: BLIMEY and the C word?

Splendid stuff. But I thought your black ops team was called the Global Operation for Network and Data Sniffing?

Also, lansalot... Have you never seen an episode of the Sopranos? Plenty of adequately delivered C word action there.

[Tom Peach]

brilliant

short, sharp and to the point. You should find out who he is to publicly commend him

[Morely Dotes]

Mixed feelings

While the wanker in question may well be entitled to use an @ac.uk address (because he's an alumnus, perhaps, or a professor on loan to $US_COMPUTER_CORP), I still like the concept of asking his iBoss WTF he thinks he's playing at.

After all, if *I* post a flame, I'm not pretending to represent Google while posting from $DAY_JOB, but if an employee of the company which sells a reviewed product appears to be pretending to be somewhere else, that's what we call "astroturf," and a fake grassroots critic is a reprehensible c*nt. Even if he does work for the Pirates of Silicon Valley.

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't be fruity - they're not a computer company any more

Don't you remember? They dropped the "computer" part of their name.

[Dillon Pyron]

This and that

I've got real email addresses for several el Reg columnists. We've traded friendly emails. BTW, Lester, I still need to post those pix from the USGP, including the hat.

Cunt British? Bloody hell it is!

Now twat. I think that has a different meaning in the UK than it does in the US. And I know fanny does.

[Sean Nevin]

FotW

He read the rather obvious spoof and wrote that? I wonder if it hurt much when he had his sense of humor surgically removed...

[Jamie Jones]

Re: Spoofing the email address

> How exactly did he "spoof" the email address? You have to register to post, correct?

Presumably, it was via the feedback-to-author form, NOT the comments section.

Re: All fine and dandy, but...

This also, incidently, makes it a bit more personal than a comment posted here, and anyway there are ways to disagree in a comment without becoming a FoTW !

[J]

Re: Not a yank, surely .. ?

But what if he is just doing some linguistic camouflaging there, with the spelling, grammar and vocabulary decoys? :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

Talking of brainless...

One guy wrote me a thousand word rant full of much personal (and poorly spelled) "your mother..." type abuse via one of my sites, but clearly thought it OK to use his work connection and email address. A quick search for the email addy showed up a couple of dozen CVs posted to job sites, and being Indian he had helpfully included family details like who his father was and the family residential address. Indian culture being what it is, I printed and mailed the email to his father ( a senior and prominent ex-civil servant), asking what he thought of his son's poor spelling and grammar. I could almost hear the yelling 4,000 miles away, and thoroughly enjoyed the grovelling apology, heavily laced with "ji", that arrived a week later.

[Pete James]

Maybe this person thinks Dogbert is real...

...and the phrase "on the Internet no-one knows you're a dog" to be factually true?

[Philip J.F. Quinlan]

The Greater Internet Fuckwad theory

The link below provides a theoretical basis for the idiocy one sees in online forum(s|a)

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19

[Colin Jackson]

US Twat?

@Dillon Pyron: What does "twat" mean in the US that it doesn't mean in the UK? Just out of interest?