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By editorial@silicon.com, 3 May 2001 16:30

COMMENT BT this week announced that new boss, Sir Christopher Bland, will be receiving an annual salary of £500,000 in exchange for three days work a week (see: BT gives 'fat cat' Bland £500,000 for three-day weeks http://www.silicon.com/a44189 ). Sounds like a good deal. For Bland that is. Many of you seemed to agree, taking issue as well with the share options Bland will be given and joining us in thinking of better ways of spending the money (see: What would you do with £500,000? http://www.silicon.com/a44190 ): Basic instincts I'd have to spend a substantial amount of that cash on despicable sex acts, outrageously exotic cocktails, eye-wateringly fast cars. And I'd just waste the rest. What about the share options!!
By Liz Gold-Lewis What about the £1bn free share options??? I'd rather think of how to spend that!! What about the share options??
By Rupert Boswell Share options in BT? Ooh! Big wow! The 'post it' notes that Bland steals* from the stationery cupboard are probably worth more. How about share options with an adhesive band on the back so you can stick them to your computer and write useful notes on them. Like 'Get a real job'. *(silicon.com in no way supports Mr Boswell's allegation that Sir Christopher Bland makes free with the office stationery) It could be worse - it could be £840,000
By Mike Tree It's a good job he's ONLY working a three-day week! Don't ever let it be said silicon.com runs scared from its critics. One story in which we used Napster as an example of peer-to-peer services which have been exposed as a security threat (see: 'Napster' technology threatens server security: http://www.silicon.com/a44133 ) brought several responses - one of which turned the gun on us (clue: it's the second one): Don't blame Napster...
By Jeffrey Simons To point the blame for these types of security threats at the doorstep of Napster and similar applications is ridiculous, it looks like Evidian are simply trying to avoid pointing the finger at the obviously under trained and uninformed IT CIOs (Evidian's customers) whose responsibility it is to keep up with new technologies and control their corporate networks. If the users of their networks can install and use such programs, and generally know more about the network than the admin staff then they have only themselves to blame for their inadequate security policies. ... blame the lazy hacks instead
By Paul Macnicol What a load of rubbish - any of you 'reporters' ever tried to get Napster going from behind a corporate firewall? Must be a slow news day but I'd prefer you reported nothing at all than filling my inbox with 'World's biggest security threat' claims... Still, it's not all lazy journalism. Amid a climate of 'dot-com doom' we did find a very rare beast indeed. A dot-com that is making money (see: Dot-com good news shocker: Travel site arrives in profitability http://www.silicon.com/a44157 ). But you couldn't quite believe it: Armageddon?
By Karen Challinor Surely this is one of the seven signs, next is the blood red moon and shortly after the four horsemen will come among us. Time for a short holiday I think. Finally, we ran a story about allegations launched at European governments and the part they have played in holding back the launch of DSL services (see: Guess who's to blame for DSL hell? (And it's not BT) http://www.silicon.com/a44166 ). Bordering on the unfair In my part of the UK there probably will never be such a thing as DSL. BT has deemed that it will not profit from the Scottish Borders region. So it looks like we'll be getting DSL the same time as the Shetlands then. And as for the vast amounts of information available on DSL, it looks like no-one was even informed that we'd moved away from paper cups and string, never mind a revolutionary internet access medium. Lets hope two way satellite broadband becomes a more viable alternative in the future. Or to sum it up in six words...
By James Peacock ... bring on the satellites, sod BT