Elliott C. Back: Internet & Technology

Today the IE blog made the most important announcement of its life with Microsoft’s Interoperability Principles and IE8, saying:

We’ve decided that IE8 will, by default, interpret web content in the most standards compliant way it can. This decision is a change from what we’ve posted previously. Microsoft recently published a set of Interoperability Principles. Thinking about IE8’s behavior with these principles in mind, interpreting web content in the most standards compliant way possible is a better thing to do.

Already, web designers are calling this the “holy grail” of Internet Explorer web development, and possibly the best suggestion the Microsoft IE team has ever made. Here’s a choice quote from Eric Meyer:

I’m glad that IE will act as browsers have always done, and default to the latest and greatest in the absence of any explicit direction to the contrary. I’m doubly glad that the IE team is willing to do that, even knowing what they have to handle. And I’m triply glad that the proposal was made in public ahead of time, with plenty of opportunity for debate, so that we could have a chance to weigh in and affect the browser’s behavior.

Broken Links is saying “I am very pleasantly surprised; this is a very wise decision.” Robert McLaws thinks, “This is great news for the web standards community… but not-so-great news for the billions of web pages out there.”

Twelve cartoons were drawn on September 30, 2005 by the editors of Jyllands-Posten, a Danish newspaper, to show Muhammad as they believed he should look. These cartoons drew the wrath of the entire Muslim community, and are reproduced below with commentary. The BBC notes, “It is the satirical intent of the cartoonists, and the association of the Prophet with terrorism, that is so offensive to the vast majority of Muslims.” It is up to you to decide if they are legitimate commentary or blasphemy.

Mohammed wanders the desert, leading a camel far behind him as the sun sets. I read this as an allusion to Jesus who wandered the desert for 40 days and 40 nights resisting temptation and praying, unless there is a parallel story in Islam which I don’t know about. I’ve never had the chance to read the Koran. So, by drawing the prophet in the desert, the first cartoon attempts to bridge Christianity and Islam.

Mohammed is depicted with a halo of horns made from the Islamic crescent symbol. Clearly the intent is to cast the prophet as a demon in thin disguise, which is insensitive because it does not give us a context in which to reinterpret him. OK, you tell us Islam / Mohammed is evil. Why should we believe you because you childishly draw horns on him?

In this third cartoon, the prophet Mohammed is drawn intertwined with the star & crescent. This is an obvious but necessary connection, because without Mohammed there would be no Islam. As the editor is trying to show, the two are synonymous.

It’s harder to interpret this picture of Mohammed in black with two veiled “virgins” and a short sword in his hand. It is clearly intended to contrast the so-called “promised virgins” that a Jihadist is promised in Heaven with women’s rights, terrorism, and Islam. The women are wide-eyed, indicating that either they disapprove of violence, or that they do not relish satisfying a killer in his personal heaven. The prophet’s eyes are censored–I don’t know why.

“Stop, stop, we ran out of virgins!” the fifth reads. I find this just amusing, especially given that the idea of having 72 virgins waiting for you in heaven may be a mistranslation:

Luxenberg tries to show that many obscurities of the Koran disappear if we read certain words as being Syriac and not Arabic. Luxenberg’s new analysis, leaning on the Hymns of Ephrem the Syrian, yields “white raisins” of “crystal clarity” rather than doe-eyed, and ever willing virgins – the houris. Luxenberg claims that the context makes it clear that it is food and drink that is being offerred [sic], and not unsullied maidens or houris.

The sixth cartoon is one of many meta-cartoons by the editors which decry their reactionary attempts to redefine Mohammed in a modern context. However, the shirt of the boy reads “the future” and the board reads “The editorial team of Jyllands-Posten is a bunch of reactionary provocateurs.” We should take this to indict any kind of overreaction by traditional Muslims.

“To draw the Prophet is to die,” thinks this scared editorial cartoonist furtively drawing Mohammed. If Islam were a religion of peace, would he look so nervous? Conversations are protected under free speech, not persecuted by charges of blasphemy.

The text, which is hard to make out, reads, “Hm… I can’t really recognize him” and “Kåre’s public relations, call and get an offer.” Apparently the editor wants to equate all world religions and all kinds of people together in a gigantic mashup.

If you remember the old bat-light they used to call batman by projecting his logo into the sky, you’ll instantly recognize this call for the people of the book with the Star of David and the Crescent and Moon prominently jutting up into the sky. Does this mean Islam needs more heroes? The text (Prophet, you crazy bloke! Keeping women under yoke) seems to indicate it needs more female ones…

Another pro-free-speech cartoon degrading the Muslim and Arabic response to religious criticism. Why should they worry about a cartoon drawn by some guy from the middle of nowhere? Their heresies are our freedoms.

The most controversial of the cartoons, this one features the Islamic creed written on the helm and a lit fuse and bomb instead of a turban. The idea is dumb–Islam brings suicide bombers. But the image itself is powerful, and the overstated fact is true. Why are there not any Christian suicide bombers? Why aren’t there any atheist suicide bombers??

Another meta-cartoon, this one is excited about all the publicity these cartoons will generate for their publication. I have no comment.

I’m feeling like gadget blog Gizmodo (nofollow) has lost all its credibility in the blogging world. I am sure you’ve all hear about their scandal at CES 2008, which has hurt all bloggers’ credibility and left at least one of their staff banned from CES for life. Ironically, Gizmodo even had the stones to blog about it, calling their childish prank “the meanest thing Gizmodo did at CES (nofollow):”

CES has no shortage of displays. And when MAKE offered us some TV-B-Gone clickers to bring to the show, we pretty much couldn’t help ourselves. We shut off a TV. And then another. And then a wall of TVs. And we just couldn’t stop.

Their title implies Gizmodo did other, but less mean, things at CES. I don’t get why they decided to sabotage a trade show? Their actions show they were there as irresponsible bloggers, and not the members of the press their badges said they were. This isn’t the only thing that’s made me give up on them, though. Here’s a running list:

1) Posting porn to Kotaku

If you check out this apology note from Kotaku, a well respected gaming blog, you’ll find that a Gizmodo editor decided “to post a very inappropriate photo on the top of Kotaku using someone else’s name.” The photo, an obscene shock / porn image known as “Tubgirl” was visible on the site for at least 20 minutes before a Kotaku editor noticed and removed it.

2) Immature staff

I can’t help but reproduce this photo from a pit stop competition (nofollow) Gizmodo did where they thought it would make a cool and professional photo of them all giving the finger. Such displays have their place, but stick them in your Facebook photos where your other drunk exploits go, please?

3) Misleading stories, headlines

When there isn’t news, according to Apple Gazette, Brian Lam–editor of Gizmodo–will just make some up, dropping a delicious teaser story a year ago about the iPhone. Unfortunately, he wasn’t writing about the Apple iPhone, he was writing about the Cisco one. Nevertheless, making it seem like it was about Apple got Gizmodo lots of hits.

4) Gizmodo’s foray into porn

We’ve heard that the “internet is for porn,” but Gizmodo keeps posting inappropriate gadget-unrelated material to their homepage, the latest of which is a tour of the AVN expo (nofollow) also occurring near CES. Sexuality and technology is an interesting topic–one that magazines like Wired cover better and more professionally–but Gizmodo is incapable of handling adult matters with delicacy, and just ruts around with them in the mud.

If you use wordpress and would like to boycott Gizmodo, you can run a simple database query to add nofollow to all of their links:

UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = replace(post_content, '<a href="http://gizmodo', '<a rel="nofollow" href="http://gizmodo') WHERE post_content LIKE '%gizmodo%' AND post_content NOT LIKE '%nofollow%'
;
UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = replace(post_content, '<a href="http://www.gizmodo', '<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.gizmodo') WHERE post_content LIKE '%gizmodo%' AND post_content NOT LIKE '%nofollow%'
;

This checks to see if any of the old links have a rel attribute in them. This SQL will only touch posts with Gizmodo in them, so rest safe, but at the same time don’t trust me either!

Update: Somehow Gizmodo now thinks that their childish prank is hard hitting journalism (nofollow). How is turning off TVs at a conference about TVs journalism? Would it be excellent journalism if you also firebombed the place?