Joe Wilcox at Microsoft Monitor had a little problem accessing a Microsoft Web site today and decided to jump to some conclusions:

I found that I could easily get to the Website using Internet Explorer on Windows. This morning, I tried to access the Website using Mozilla’z Firefox and ended up at the same error page. Apparently, Microsoft’s Small Business Center Website is for people using its software, and I think that’s a mistake.

[…]

This wouldn’t be the first time a Microsoft Website locked out other Web browsers. And I can understand why Microsoft wants to hook SMBs as tightly as possible into its technologies.

[…]

The news media loves to rap Microsoft whenever it pulls these kind of proprietary stunts, particularly around Internet Explorer. I know plenty of editors who were reporters during the browser wars or Microsoft’s U.S. antitrust trial; they love to rehash that chapter of Microsoft history. I think Microsoft would serve itself better by making sure its Websites conform to World Wide Web consortium standards rather than assuming everyone uses Internet Explorer. I don’t really believe Microsoft Website developers are trying to lock out other Web browsers, so much as they don’t take them seriously. That’s a mistake.

OK, I use Firefox 1.0 here. I just tried to visit the Web site Joe wrote about. And guess what? It opened right up. So whatever the problem was, it didn’t seem to have anything to do with Microsoft trying to “lock out” other browsers.

Last August, Ed Foster was griping about Microsoft locking out other browsers from its online Knowledge Base. Guess what? That turned out to be a temporary issue also. I checked at the time and had no problem accessing the Knowledge Base search page with Firefox. Almost certainly unrelated to any deliberate decision to lock anyone out.

But it’s much more fun to write stories that say how evil Microsoft is. Even when they’re not true.

Dan Gillmor is an excellent journalist and a ferocious critic of Microsoft. His blog is widely read and respected – in fact, it’s on my must-read list daily. That’s why I was distressed to see that a recent blog entry from Dan contained a startling bit of misinformation. As part of a discussion of Google News, Dan quotes Andrew Orlowski of the Register as having written:

…at one point in an Antitrust deposition Bill Gates claimed that “the computer wrote” one particular incriminating email. It’s the “cat ate my homework” excuse of the 21st Century.

The Washington Post has transcripts of the infamous Gates depositions from the August September 1998 depositions. I read through them, and I can’t find anything remotely resembling what Orlowski wrote and Gillmor quoted without fact-checking.

I’m not going to give Orlowski the benefit of the doubt and say that he was just paraphrasing something else. If you look back, you’ll see that he has spread this story before. In this story about Google, for example, published earlier this year, Orlowski directly quotes BillG:

At an awkward point in his testimony to during the Antitrust trial, Chairman Bill was asked to confirm that he’d written an incriminating email that had come from the account billg@microsoft.com. ‘The computer wrote it,’ said Bill.

I copied the full text of the Gates depositions here and allowed Copernic Desktop Search to index them. I did a dozen searches on a wide variety of words and phrases and can’t find anything remotely like this exchange.

It’s unfortunate when a writer for a Web site that is known for its snarky but entertaining takes on technical news makes up a quote. I don’t believe very many people believe the Register follows the same standards as real journalists. But Dan Gillmor is a real journalist, and he shouldn’t be spreading this sort of misinformation so casually.

Update: I found the passage in question, and I was right. Orlowski is grossly exaggerating, to put it mildly. This is from the Deposition of Bill Gates, September 2, 1998 (follow the link above if you want to read for yourself):

Q. BY MR. BOIES: And you type in here “Importance: High.”

A. No.

Q. No?

A. No, I didn’t type that.

Q. Who typed in “High”?

A. A computer.

Q. A computer. Why did the computer type in “High”?

A. It’s an attribute of the e-mail.

Q. And who set the attribute of the e-mail?

A. Usually the sender sends that attribute.

Q. Who is the sender here, Mr. Gates?

A. In this case it appears I’m the sender.

Q. Yes. And so you’re the one who set the high designation of importance, right, sir?

A. It appears I did that. I don’t remember doing that specifically.

Q. Right. Now, did you send this message on or about August 15, 1997?

A. I don’t remember doing so.

One of the first things a lawyer tells you when you are about to be questioned for a legal proceeding is to answer the question exactly as asked. Don’t volunteer information. Don’t explain. In this case, Boies asked Bill Gates whether he typed a particular phrase at the top of the printed e-mail. Gates answers, truthfully, that he didn’t type that. As any Outlook user knows, that information was inserted by Outlook when the message was printed, based on the Importance attribute. Gates correctly made Boies work to get that information.

Now, you can argue, and I won’t disagree, that Bill Gates made some serious mistakes during this deposition, not the least of which was coming across as hostile and uncooperative. But that’s a question of public relations, not law.

Anyway, Orlowski’s repeated assertion that Bill Gates said “The computer wrote” that e-mail isn’t true. It makes a great urban legend, but it isn’t based on the facts. Unfortunately, when a savvy reporter like Dan Gillmor prints a story like this one without comment or fact-checking, it becomes another hit in the Google cache, and pretty soon this “fact” becomes common knowledge.

I know Dan has been busy lately with his new venture into “emerging grassroots journalism.” This is very exciting stuff. I wish him the best of luck and can’t wait to see and maybe even participate in it.

Alan Meckler offers up his thoughts on PC Magazine The Barometer:

The Internet is killing PC Magazine and its competitor PC World … just as it has killed several other books over the previous few years. The information in these magazines is dated by the time it is published because of the speed of Internet publishing. Price guides and comparisons are nice to see in print, but this information is more readily updated and found on hundreds of Web sites that are changed daily.

I have long been predicting the further decline of trade and tech print magazines. This latest news from Ziff Davis only reconfirms what we have all been watching — a very slow but steady decline and death of computer magazines.

A while back I snagged a three-year subscription to PC Magazine’s electronic edition for something like 12 cents an issue. It arrives via the Zinio Reader, and for the last few months I haven’t even bothered opening it. I didn’t renew my PC World subscription either. PC Magazine’s Web site is a pitiful joke, as I and others have blogged before.

So, how long before PC Mag is gone completely? Anyone want to start a pool?

Articles like this one, “Kitchen Notes: Buying Whole Turkeys”, are why I love the Cooking for Engineers site.

We’re doing our traditional turkey the week after Thanksgiving, on the grill. First time ever. Judy learned the technique at a cooking class at Sur la Table and claims it’s really easy. We’ll see.

I love living in a place where I can use the grill all winter long.

Scoble says everyone needs to redesign their Web sites so it looks good on a cell phone.

There’s some very simple tips to make your site work great on cell phones (millions of people look at the Web on cell phones and that number is going up every day). A poorly designed site does makes it very frustrating to look at sites on cell phones, though.

Just for the record, I don’t plan to redesign my site so it can be browsed on a cell phone. I don’t want people browsing my site from a two-inch screen. On this site I talk about how to make better use of your personal computer running Windows and Office. It only makes sense to read it on a PC running Windows.

I think Robert may need an intervention.

Elliott Back links to an old post of mine and reports that Google has fixed a longstanding problem:

In a news release today, Google releases new numbers for the number of pages it can search. Looks like Google has overcome its 4-byte DocID problem and happily doubled its index:

You probably never notice the large number that appears in tiny type at the bottom of the Google home page, but I do. It’s a measure of how many pages we have in our index and gives an indication of how broadly we search to find the information you’re looking for. Today that number nearly doubled to more than 8 billion pages.

As Elliott correctly notes, Google’s apparently relying less and less on its flawed pagerank formula and more on other measures of relevance. I’m still impressed with how often Google finds just exactly the right page in response to a search request.

Have you seen the new, exceedingly annoying commercials for AOL? Mike at Techdirt has, and he pens this comment about one of them:

It shows every AOL customer showing up at the headquarters to give suggestions. The message is supposed to be “AOL listens to its customers,” but what I (and apparently Seth) got was “every one of AOL’s customers has problems with the service and wants to complain.” Not exactly a strong selling point.

Heh. And if every one of those customers showed up at AOL headquarters with all the CDs that have arrived in the mail this year, they could probably make a stack that reaches about halfway to the moon.

How do you like this?

homeHTML = “”; document.getElementById(“hm”).innerHTML = homeHTML;

I’ve been thinking about time today. This weekend marks the end of Daylight Saving Time. Fortunately, I live in a state that doesn’t spring forward or fall back, so I don’t have to run around like a madman this weekend and change all the clocks, but you probably do. So don’t forget!

I was also thinking about time this morning because I had to place a call to some associates in Italy. What time is it there? I thought I knew, but wasn’t sure, so I went to one of my all-time favorite sites: www.timeanddate.com.

They’ve got time zone converters, international dialing codes, DST information, and much more. My favorite is a Personal World Clock, which lets you build a custom display of the current time in up to 16 cities from around the world.

Bookmark it!

I didn’t know that Google offered a cheat sheet with lists of useful search operators and links to most Google services.

I knew about 75% of this stuff, but I picked up a few tricks. Check it out.

Thanks to J-Walk Blog for the tip.