ALDERGROVE, BC, CANADA – Using the alternative browser iCab, someone here at Altering Time was notified that the C|NET Homepage had 807 errors in it yesterday. This caused laughter, then uneasiness. Allen’s first comment was, “WTF?” At first it was assumed this included warnings, but it doesn’t. “Altogether 807 errors found, only 25 displayed,” iCab said. There looked to be about as many warnings as well. While this should be concerning to the webmaster at C|NET, it’s good news for Altering Time. “Doesn’t make me feel as bad about those 4 errors that come up for Altering Time,” Allen said.

iCab tries to render web pages using the official standards for HTML that the World Wide Web Consortium established years ago and updates regularly. Every time someone does something in their webpage that isn’t proper HTML, such as a typo or a feature that is no longer supposed to be used, it will generate an error that the user doesn’t usually see. The downside of 807 error messages popping up before you see the page is obvious. “While 10 or 20 errors is understandable, 807 is just freakin’ retarded,” said a second analyst. The first analyst was unavailable for comment.

But a man pretending to be a spokesperson for C|NET thought differently. “Why does it matter if it’s standard, as long as it looks fine in major browsers?” he asked. “C|NET’s solution is to sue the standards for not approving our site.” When asked if he was suing the standards or the people who made the standards, he replied, “You reject… we’re suing the standards for being ignorant, and for emotional anguish.” He proceeded to gibber like a goose and then jump out a window.

Altering Time at least makes an effort to make their page standard for four reasons. 1) Eventually browsers will no longer support pages coded in really old versions of HTML. 2) Standard pages look the same on all standard browsers. 3) Allen is in a web development course and his teacher knows the address of this site. 4) A lot of crappy stuff is non-standard (i.e. Q Codec 7.)

A highly scientific study of major websites has shown what seems to be a vague corellation between how evil an organization is and how many HTML errors there are on their homepage. While one might argue that AOL (who owns Netscape) is more evil than C|NET, both are more evil than, say, Google. The 18 websites to be testedwere chosen somewhat at random.

The author of this article realizes that C|NET and Microsoft have much more content than Altering Time, which could be the cause of more total errors. He also realizes the USA has more people than Canada, which could be the cause of them having hundreds of times more deaths by firearms every year.