I'd love to hear from Paul Thurrott or someone from Penton Media, Inc... and YOU

Paul, or Penton Media, Inc, I’d like you to respond to my last post.  I’d also like to ambush you guys with these questions:

• How much web development experience do you actually have Paul? 
• How is IE6 (XPSP2) insecure? 
• How is IE7 under Vista (with the new low-rights stuff) insecure? 
• If you recommend Firefox, how do you explain the numerous recent securityproblems reported with FireFox and some extensions? 
• What about the Javascript Dialog Spoofing exploit.. thats present in all browsers including Safari and Opera? 

After collapse of Enron and Worldcom, has anyone noticed that the reporters who discuss stocks are required to disclose if they own the stock or are attached in anyway to the stock they are reporting on?  If we extract these good ideas from financial journalism standards inject them into the tech journal standards, this brings up some more interesting questions:

• Does Paul get incentives for highly viewed/publicized articles?
• Does Paul have any stake in the Mozilla Foundation, Apple, or Opera?
• Are the opinions of Windows IT Pro magazine influenced by any companies?
• To what lengths does Penton Media, Inc. ensure that the information expressed in their publications is accurate, and explains the entire issue properly?

 Now the questions for you (“not Paul or Penton”):

• What three technology publications do you read most frequently?
• Out of those three publications, have you ever questioned the publication’s objectiveness?
• If yes, can you describe any specific examples?
• If no, can you explain why you’ve given a publication your blind trust? :-P
• Would you like a technology publication to clearly list their affiliations on a page?  I can imagine this being like the financial disclosure that the people do on CNBC .

Seriously guys, this is the just the tip of the iceberg for this stuff.  Once you realize advertisements support InfoWorld.. you’ll never trust one review on various products! (InfoWorld is just an example here, it applies everywhere else too)  Guess what, site’s like Bink.nu, Extended64, Neowin, OSNN, and ActiveWin aren’t being paid the big bucks directly from tech companies.  When we write opinions, we write what we feel, not what we think companies want to see.  I think it’s time to see a huge shift in where many of us get our news - out goes the mainstream tech publication, in comes the Neowin’s and Bink’s of the internet.  And you know what?  You can't even fully trust them.  But don't worry, the blogosphere is keeping a close eye on these types of things: just look at Robert McLaws from LonghornBlogs.com - he had a response back to Paul before I did even. 

So post a comment reply below, or write your own blog post and send me a trackback.  I really want to know what everyone thinks – and I’m sure everyone else would love to see what other people are thinking too.

Update:  I recieved a question on how to leave a comment.  In order to control comment spam, you must be a registered user of Extended64.com to post a comment.  You can register here.