Ogwaros Iwenâl

Here’s a story about a Craigslist scam with a very interesting twist.

I tried to keep my expectations in check. I called this my “job” in scare quotes and laughed and said that I thought one day my “boss” would steal my “identity.” Whenever I talked about the Global Speculator with friends or with my parents, I always made sure to say that I still didn’t know enough about this whole thing to be sure I’d really get the money. But I was sure I’d get it. This work was too hard, too ordinary, and I needed the money too badly, to go uncompensated.

Plus, I thought, no one would ask for all that personal information and steal our identities only to keep us working on this dull project while they had a good time using our brand new credit cards. They’d get our Social Security numbers and run.

And I had another thought: Who indeed would be stupid or brazen enough to hire all these lawyers and then cheat them out of money?

My brother said, “You know, it’s that kind of cockiness that would make someone brazen enough to cheat a bunch of lawyers. You all think no one would cheat you, so you let down your guard.”

OK, but still, I reasoned, let’s say it is a plan to cheat us: What’s the payoff? What would they do with all this research on Slovenia’s investment opportunities if this Web site weren’t for real? What could anyone do with all this work that would make it worth going through the trouble of cheating us?

The reason they were scammed and the last line really make the story.  Worth reading.

After much moaning on my part, and eventual acceptance of the idea, Microsoft turned around and announced that IE8 will default to IE8 mode after all.  To this I can only say:  stop toying with my emotions, Microsoft!

Seriously, though, this is great news.   The old default didn’t make any sense from a design standpoint (though it made perfect sense from a business standpoint).  While this change doesn’t ameliorate all my concerns with browser version targeting, it will at least stop IE7 from becoming a de-facto “web standard.”  That was one of my largest concerns in the first place.

So if the original decision was a business decision, why the sudden change?  I very much doubt it was all the complaints across the web.  The announcement does give us a hint:

We think that acting in accordance with principles is important, and IE8’s default is a demonstration of the interoperability principles in action. While we do not believe any current legal requirements would dictate which rendering mode a browser must use, this step clearly removes this question as a potential legal and regulatory issue. As stated above, we think it’s the better choice. [emphasis mine]

The whispers around the internets is that this change is to avoid anymore potential legal trouble with the EU.  I can see this angle, and it would be fixed if IE were entirely separated from Windows itself.  Since it’s unlikely Microsoft will ever release standalone versions of IE, they had to make this change to avoid the appearance of locking customers into IE7 mode HTML+CSS+Javascript.  I don’t know if this line of thought was what caused the change of heart, but it seems like it would be a factor.

At any rate, IE8 will function like every other browser out there, thus minimizing browser specific hacks.  And in the end, that’s a lot more important to me than the whys.