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HardOCP Wins Against Infinium Labs
An anonymous reader writes "HardOCP has won a huge legal round against Infinium Labs. The WhereIsPhantom website has all the details, straight from the court dockets. There is a list of orders a mile long for Infinium Labs and owner Tim Roberts to comply with by Sept. 30th."
Why are these two in court exactly? It would be nice to provide some basic background for those of us out there who don't religiously follow HardOCP.
"I have a porkchop, you have a porkchop. I have a veal, you have a veal".
You know, I am not one to generally criticize Slashdot for it's mistakes, dupes, slant or whatever. It is what it is. I just wish that the posters or the editors would give just a little background on the stories submitted, even if it is just a review from the last time it was discussed.
There are people on this forum with a great deal of different backgrounds that may not always be familiar with the names, companies, and situations involved in stories that might interest a causal reader, without him or her having to dig up research just to know what the story is even about.
Kudos also to HardOCP for not running scared when faced with legal threats. If more of the "little guys" were able to stand strong against frivolous or iffy strong-armed legal challenges, the world might not be perfect but we'd be headed in a better direction.
While you have a point to be sure, I still haven't seen any proof of a console. When they actually start spitting them out I'll pay attention. Still won't buy one unless we find out they're easy to hack, though.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
originally the unit was "demo'd" nearly 2 years ago...it was nearly 1 year of vapor before kyle ripped on it...and the guy hawking it is still getting VC funding!!! WTF It's a failed business right from the start...any /.r would recognize that from the start... but when a pro starts hawking "computer", "broadband", "pay per play", "Secure" and such terms the VCs still see the $$ no matter how logic seems to fail the situation!!
Actually as far as I can see the phantom would be great for MMORPG players, they just pay their bill to the same company every month and don't need to juggle different companies.
Furthermore it would avoid the ripoff factor of purchasing a game for $80 or whatever and then having to pay a monthly subscription, you could just download it.
Summary, Hard[OCP] is far from an impartial reporter in this, they finally get proof of a real phantom and dis it as much as they can for being exactly what Infinium have always said it was.
Actually if you were following this early on, they were pretty reasonable at first, seeming to take a "we're curious to see what this company has to offer, but it's hard to get information" sort of tack. They didn't really get bitter and spiteful and start smashing machines with sledgehammers or anything until they started getting vitriolic legal threats from Infinium and public attacks on the Phantom website just for having done their jobs as reporters. I kind of have to say, I can't find this totally unreasonable.
The "hatchet piece" on the CEO you mention was totally legitimate investigative reporting. Was it negative? Yes. But it was also accurate and supported by documentation.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
You know what, no matter how many times you rant in this thread about the "hachet job", everything HardOCP posted is true about Infinium and the CEO.
Was it in strong? Yes. Was it perhaps a bit tactless? Yes. Was it all true and provable? Yes.
Oh, and when you threaten someone, except the possibility of getting sued. Most companies and people do not take legal threats lightly.
well, to be fair hardocp's conclusion on that article includes "Let me start off by once again reminding you that what you have seen here is not current generation technology by Infinium Labs. You can head over to their website to see what they are currently representing to the public. It now looks more like some of the bigger laptops on the market sans keyboard and screen. There is no doubt that it is certainly different than what we have shown you here."
.com years were over. seriously, they're pitching that they've got something unique and show proof of it by having a pc in a custom job case(money needed to ).
yes it's just a plastic box and a very early prototype.. but what was intresting that IL could gain substantial amounts of money by just showing a pc in a box to potential investors - and here we thought that
though, it would be nice if IL could produce _some_ list of games available at launch... and display their slightly more unique technology parts(like the supposed downloader thingy).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The reason why they are so nasty to each other is because HardOCP originally ran a piece calling bullshit against Infinuim. That in it of itself is not "having a dick up one's ass". That is just a little journalism. What happened next was that Infinium then said that they were going to sue if HardOCP didn't get rid of the story. Now, it is true the American thing to do is to sue when someone pisses you off. However, it is also very much the American thing to tell someone who is being an ass to go fuck themselves and continue to piss them off just out of spite. Hence you the posting you see today today.
All of that said, I have a great deal of respect for HardOCP. People throw threaten lawsuits over dumb shit like this too often. It is nice to see someone punch these fuckers back.
I should have cited the original comment where I got this from:
s ho ld=1&commentsort=3&tid=124&mode=thread&cid=1018654 6
/. colors on all pages" check box in our prefs...
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=120887&thre
This trick was originally posted by tqft (619476), but tqft cited Jesse Rudderman (Moz/FF/etc guy) as the original source.
Now if taco (or some outsource programmer in Mumbai) could just get us a nice little "use normal
Once they released the specs for that box it seemed pretty obvious that it was just a scan to pull in a few extra VC dollars. All this time with nary a peep coupled with [H]ard ops investigative work and the cover is revealed. In allot of ways the Internet *is* the great equalizer.
CB
free ipod and free gmail!
It would seem that you
/. readers oppose en masse, and perhaps the reason those things are opposed is that advancing those few bad technologies makes advancing the rest of the good ones bad. IMO the DRM people are more the Luddites since they essentially need to make computers illegal to protect their content.
have adopted someting of a Luddite mentality. It
is people such as yourself which impede technical
progress. Subscription based software delivery
via high-speed data pipes *is* the future.
I doubt there are any true "Luddites" on slashdot. Opposing some kinds of technology does not make you a Luddite. Opposing all kinds of technology does. There are very few technological things that
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
The same thing can be said about a confidence game too.
They seemed like nice enough people.
Has it actually escaped your attention that the good con artists always do? It's their primary stock in trade.
Has it also actually escaped your attention that the employees of a good con artist are often as not just as much dupes of the scam as the customers?
"But they seemed so nice!" is the nearly universal cry of the suckered.
KFG
What is amazing? Infinium threatened legal action, and HardOCP responded in kind. This is what you should expect if you threaten to sue someone. Mmmkay?
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
Phantom website
Infinium Labs, Inc. was founded by a management team...
That's all I need to hear.
Using your +1 bonus should be for something useful, not the same thing you already said 10 times in the same story, also not for corrections to yourself and definately not for subthreads when only a few people are involved. I thought that point would be obvious but I guess not. You post the same thing over and over again and use the bonus everytime. THAT IS NOT BENEFICIAL to /. as a whole and makes you look like you have some point to prove for other reasons. That is the reason you are being accused of shilling. Posting the same thing over and over and using your bonus when not justified. You might as well just randomly post your hatchet response to various threads, it would have the same effect.
You are talking total shit.
He did what many many journalists would do and investigated.
I suggest you go learn about good journalism.
I, for one, applaud what he's done.
"We're just a two-bit operation over at Whereisphantom.com trying to bring the truth to light."
I'm watching the E3 footage from infinium, and there does seem to be a prototype, but I'm astounded by the amount they want; $29.99 for a minimum committment of two years comes out at $730, which is a hell of a thing and tends to suggest that they're trying to get behind a subscription model.
So the question is, was this basically a repackaged PC in a nice box?
Hmm...yes, the UI does look suspiciously 'flash', and his language is very evasive, not to mention that the games used are PC.
Oddly Draconis
Too cynical to live, too stubborn to die.