M$ excludes non-customers from voting... > http://www.theregister.co.uk/991111-000014.html > > Posted 11/11/99 2:34pm by Graham Lea > > MSNBC blunders over poll position > > Polls conducted on the Internet are prone to being invaded by > afficionados who wish their view to prevail. There are, of course, other > ways to give an incorrect picture of sentiment, such as miscounting the > voting, or -- as has just happened -- having a bug that does not allow > certain categories of voters to express a view. > > As pointed out by Joeri Sebrechts ("How about that MSNBC?" in The > Register Bulletin Board), an MSNBC poll after Judge Jackson's findings > strangely did not allow Netscape Navigator users to vote. Nobody > expects MSNBC to be particularly anti-Microsoft, but the service was > badly caught out when it asked whether readers agreed that Microsoft had > monopoly power and that consumers have been harmed, and what should > happen. As is so often the case, the form of the questions was > technically flawed, but that was not the major problem (only one remedy > could be suggested, for example). > > Netscape users found they could not vote because the voting buttons, > which appeared fleetingly, did not render properly. Debate centred > around whether this was deliberate, since denying voting to Netscape > users would most likely bias the result towards Microsoft, or whether it > was just incompetent. It was soon flushed out that the problem was with > Netscape's buggy way of dealing with cascading style sheets. The Opera > browser (which is as near standard as you can get in a browser) did > render the questionnaire correctly, as did Mozilla M10 but not KDF. This > begs the question as to whether MSNBC knew that Netscape had a problem > in this area, which was exploited, or again, was just technically > incompetent. It was noteworthy that the site proclaims that it is > "optimised for IE and Windows Media Player" and is maintained by MSNBC > Interactive News, One Microsoft Way, Fort Redmond. The problem was > reported to MSNBC, and suddenly the applet was fixed for Netscape with > Windows. ^^^^ > ^^^^^^^ [...]
