Klatt's clunkers 2: Bernard Klatt wrong on IE 6 date

As we have already seen, Bernard Klatt is the technology "expert" of choice of Canada's white supremacist movement, appearing most recently in Warman v. Lemire, where his testimony was substandard in several ways. But that was not his first appearance in court and found wanting. In the Zundel hearing of 2002, Klatt was criticized in the tribunal's final report for (among other things) being "unable to answer elementary questions in his field." If you've been following this blog over the last weeks, this won't come as a surprise.

Consider the transcript to the right. This is part of the cross-examination of his assertion that Richard Warman must be the racist-poster "90sAREover" because they both used Windows 98 and Internet Explorer 6.0. (As it turned out, that was itself wrong, a point to which we'll return.) Klatt wants to argue that IE 6.0 was not widely used: it was, he asserts a "relatively new release at that point" (that is, in Sept. 2003). The implication: that since "90sAREover" and "lucy" were both using it, they were more likely to be identical.

The problem? Internet Explorer 6.0 was released in August, 2001, a full two years before the posts in question. And far from being unusual or cutting-edge by 2003, it was far-and-away the most commonly used browser: 70% of all internet traffic used IE 6.0 in Sept. 2003.

This is, of course, a small mistake, and is less significant in itself than in the fact that it betrays Klatt's desire to throw everything possible at Warman. Still, we expect technology experts to get the basic facts right. And Klatt doesn't. And that's a problem.

Other posts in the Klatt's clunkers series:

• Klatt's clunkers 1: Bernard Klatt given an award for tendentious testimony
  
• Klatt's clunkers 2: Bernard Klatt wrong on IE 6 date
• Klatt's clunkers 3: Bernard Klatt misreads the user agent string
• Klatt's clunkers 4: Bernard Klatt mistakes the combined log format for the common log format
• Klatt's clunkers 5: Bernard Klatt doesn't recognize RealPlayer browser
• Klatt's clunkers 6: Bernard Klatt on Rogers service in BC
• Klatt's Clunkers 7: Bernard Klatt doesn't understand Rogers web caching
• Klatt's Clunkers 8: Bernard Klatt comes close on proxies
• Klatt's Clunkers: why Bernard Klatt should be disbelieved (summary thread)