Charles on… anything that comes along

The following got denied for having “questionable content” by the comments filter on Ed Bott’s blog. (I couldn’t work out which bit, and the filter wasn’t telling.) So I’ll have to hope he’ll see this through trackback, as a response to his comment that “Andrew Orlowski [of The Register] is a hack”.

All I wanted to say was:

In fairness - or perhaps, better, precision - the top sentence says “some users”. Not all. So to say, Ed, that because you’re seeing it means that everyone is seeing it falls into what one might call “observer’s syllogism” (if it’s true here, it must be true everywhere).

Also, Robert Scoble saw this problem himself. And the story has been updated, twice, once with a link to Scoble’s blog.

(Disclosure: I write sometimes for The Register; I’ve worked with Andrew Orlowski on some stories, notably about online music stores’ cut of business: his figures were correct.)

Also, I’m never sure if “hack” is such a powerful insult for a journalist. It’s got a long and proud history in the UK.

It certainly seems, anyway, that AO’s story about IE7 beta blocking the Google search bar for some people has caused a storm. Read the story and follow the links, especially to Scoble’s blog and comments, for a good laugh.

(Later..) Ed’s problem was a spare blank line in his filters, which thus rejects all attempted comments. As Ed says, “I get hundreds or thousands of attempts per day” (tch - lightweight). Anyway, he’s gone further into the matter here. I think we can all agree that IE7 is a beta. (That’s why I’m not planning to write about it, nor Vista’s beta, in the next few weeks.) Even so, the discussion on Scoble’s blog is hilarious. Almost as funny as that at Josh Einstein’s. Now there’s a guy who *did* need to get a camping break this weekend. And thankfully did. Else I fear he might have shot his display.

These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
• From here you can see.. someone else's city (9 August 2005; score: 69.9%)
• 'Everyone's very busy': or why the Press Association doesn't want tech stories (23 February 2005; score: 45.37%)
• Blogs vs newspapers.. or not (11 December 2006; score: 29.62%)