Not too smart

Hmmm... have to say if I was setting up a malware/scam/phishing site, I'm not sure that I'd chose anything that might involve the US Immigration Service.

Mine's the orange boiler suit.

Convincing

"In fact it's far more convincing than the official ESTA website, which has a design provided by a seven-year-old and the user functionality of a frightened horse."

Actually, those two qualities are usually what convince me I AM on an official US.gov web site...

Of course Angelina Jolie is missing

If she dies, she just re-spawns back at the last save point.

Quote of the week

"the user functionality of a frightened horse."

Favourite quote of the week. I can think of more than a few websites I have to deal with that it applies to.

I intend to use this phrase frequently for now on.

It's worse than that

I went to have a look at the allegedly real ESTA site. It took about 30 seconds to load... and promptly displayed a message stating that my 'session' had timed out. (Safari 5, OS X) The page loaded somewhat faster in FireFox 3.6 on OS X, but was just as prompt in telling me that my session had timed out. Opera 10.6 on OS X was faster still... and even faster to time out. I was now starting to wonder exactly what kind of idiocy was on that page. MSIE 5.2.3 on OS X was up next, that being the last (the very, very, VERY last) version of MSIE for Mac... (and El Reg looks really funky in it, too) and, lo! the ESTA site takes a _very_ long time to load, and then times out _immediately_. Hmm. Next up, Firefox 3.6 on Win7... slower to load than on Mac, just as quick to time out. Even MSIE 8 on Windows exhibits the same behaviour... It wasn't a seven-year-old who built that site, it was a four-year-old. And he used a box a box of crayons tied to the tail of a blind squirrel.

IT? icon 'cause no-one remotely connected with the IT business went near that site while it was being built. At least I hope no-one got paid for perpetuating that, that, that... thing.

the reg link is timing out

this link doesn't

https://esta.cbp.dhs.gov/esta/esta.html

just remove the kak at the end....

Alternatively...

... just don't bother visiting the Land of the Fee!

box of crayons

it only times out on the first time with opera ..

hit refresh and it loves ya ..

( though why anyone would want to mix cookies and javascript that way deliberately ..

presuming that they told their boss that is was deliberate ..or didn't know better ..or never tested it away from the "home dev' box" )

re the design ..

Unfortunately see(ing) much, much worse very day ..:-((

slap adsense code on it and it'll probably make a fortune ..fugly is good for CTR ..Nielson knows..to judge by his cover ..

The ESTA page ( and Nielson's ) should come with a notice "warning ..this page may give you styes !"

Something "unexpected" appears to have given Paris an eye problem