Follow-up on the "Muslim community offended by Apple's Fifth Avenue NYC Cube" post

The complaint aroused during the time of the cube being covered up by a black piece of cloth with pictures of it circulating through the net, and several media outlets describing it "the Mecca of Mac lovers" ((and underline Mecca with a thousand lines)).This was the main reason for the uproar caused. Say that they never used 'black' for the cover and the name "Mecca" in their early media hype, the Muslims would have never cared... THIS WAS intentional. :)

However, mocking the Muslim world with depraved claims such as “Cubes as objects of offence” is another story, and shows a great deal of conflict, hate and distrust.

Shame on you Apple, you should know better not to mess with our Islamic icons. I think I will go back to using windows.. Yes sir.. -.-

Yes, but women with uncovered faces, children whistling and office workers not getting blown up also offends some Muslims. Why have I never read reports of Muslims being offended by mass murder of a school full of children?

They have to kidding. Mecca, Muslims, Catholics, Rome will the Muslims stop with all the hate

it's official. laurie doesn't give a rats arse about what we think.

Thanks Laurie for the -promised- followup.

The problem wasn't the piece of news you posted whether credible or not. It's your taste in the choice and the way you clearly stated it in your first title -sans question mark- as a solid fact.

I want to give you an example here to clarify my point. The Apple Gazette has made a post too about this after yours and here it's "http://www.applegazette.com/index.php". This post by by J. Angelo Racoma is very sensible and very wise.
And regarding free speech. I worship it but I don't use that as an excuse to pass judgements about a large group of people who are living eternal hard times in their countries by strugling with their governments and who have been the target of all kinds of media since 9/11 although your latest scientific polls (by CNN and others) revieled clearly that you American people think that afterall those people that you have been torturing for half a decade might not deserve it after all. That is the problem. We have had enough.

Again. My name is Mohamed. I am an arab muslim living in Egypt and I represent the majority of sensible arab muslims who have nothing to do with 9/11 or terrorists like the Bin Ladden or Zawahry.

Well, that's the end of whatever respect I had for you, Laurie. Grow a spine. Make your decisions and stand by them.

Laurie's original post and subsequent apology (a little heavy on the
woe-is-me aspect) undeerscore a problem of this blog phenomenon. People seem
to think that blogs are just as trustworthy as traditional news sources, and
bloggers have let this go to their heads. I don't know Laurie's journalistic
training, but if she has much of it, she ignored it with the original cube
post.

Here's the thing Laurie, you may just have been the messenger, but that
makes you responsible for the message when you're disseminating it in a mass
medium. A newspaper that runs information reported by another paper is just
as culpable if that story proves false.

Here's my advice. Most stories TUAW posts are innocuous and cause little
harm if they turn out not to be true (a few exceptions spring to mind, i.e.
virus-laden software). But when you included something that spanned the
Apple world and the political and religious, you took on a greater
responsibilty. By not asking critical questions about the source -- not by
contacting them, and not by casting doubt in the post -- you did a
disservice to your readers and the world of reporting at large.

If you are unwilling to do more work, stick to the relatively benign world
of computer news. Post stories that creep into the realms of business,
politics and religion ONLY if you are willing to do the extra work to report
them responsibly.

This is a tough lesson to learn, and I hope you won't take it too harshly,
but you have to remember that your actions have quite a bit of power now.

OMG... "It looks like the thing in Mecca?" So what? It isn't, is it? LIVE WITH IT!!!

Thank you for clarifying the policy regarding the deleting of comments. However using your reasoning, shouldn't a title such as "Muslim community offended by Apple's Fifth Avenue NYC Cube" be considered "inflammatory toward a specific group" (in this case Muslims)? A statement like that also does not belong on TUAW.
As for the added question mark. Does that mean I can go around posting "Laurie Duncan should be fired by TUAW?" I mean with the added question mark, I'm not endorsing that point of view nor stating it as a fact, it's just being put out there for other people to discuss.

"but deleting comments is ok?"

Yes, deleting comments that are completely off topic or deliberately offensive and inflammatory and used strictly to provoke or assault a specific person or group is more than OK. It's required. And we will continue deleting such posts as they have no place here. Your comments were repeatedly deleted because you repeatedly hijacked other posts to comment on unrelated subjects. If you can't at least pretend to be civilized you'll continue to have your comments deleted.