There are basically only two possibilities when it comes to MSNBC's recent anti-Mac web hijinx. The first is that MSNBC's webmasters are simply completely incompetent and should be replaced by a cow and a duck; the farm animals wouldn't do a better job (probably), but at least they'd accept a much lower salary. The second possibility here is that the "MS" part of MSNBC is up to the usual kinds of slimy behavior that put Redmond on the map as the Sleazy Business Tricks Capital of the World. Remember the recent MSNBC poll asking for opinions on the "Redmond Justice" trial? At first, only Internet Explorer users could vote. And even after users complained and MSNBC corrected the "mistake" to allow Netscape users to vote as well, Mac users of any browser were still locked out. What a fun way to skew an opinion poll, right?

So now here's the latest "mistake" made by the MSNBC webdorks: according to a Mac Observer article, Mac users are prevented from viewing any video on the site. MSNBC doesn't offer QuickTime or RealVideo versions of its video content-- it's Windows Media Player or nothing. That's not terribly surprising, given the company's Microsoft ties. But what's particularly interesting is that Mac browsers attempting to view the Media Player content find themselves locked out with a curt message stating that "Windows Media Player for Macintosh is not currently available." The Javascript code on the page actually checks to see if you're using a Mac, and if you are, it doesn't give you the link to the video files. And the strangest thing of all, here, is that there is a version of Windows Media Player for the Mac, although it's "only" a beta version. (As if all Microsoft software isn't a beta version...) Loading MSNBC video files on a Mac running Windows Media Player reportedly works fine, once you work around the "get lost" code that MSNBC put up.

Of course, just as when the poll "mistake" was made public, MSNBC has stated that everything will be fixed by Monday. According to MacNN, some MSNBC spokesperson says that "the block put on Mac browsers because of Media Player was a simple programming error." Yeah, a "simple programming error" that explicitly checks for the string "mac" in the browser identification data and then blocks the user: "Whoops, I accidentally leaned on the keyboard and constructed a working if-then routine, complete with a terse notification that Mac users are screwed. Sorry about that." Please. At best it was ignorance of Mac Media Player's existence. At worst it was a deliberate attempt to make Mac users think their computers can't handle Internet video as well as Wintel systems can. But there's no way the Mac block was an actual programming error. That's like calling Judge Jackson's findings of fact a "typo." (Whoops, we hope we didn't just give Microsoft's lawyers any ideas.)