ArtX, Hannibal and Consumer Fraud

Gina writes "The guys over at Ars Technica have an interesting story regarding the schemes that marketing types try to combat bad hype. The story started last week in one of the Ars Comdex reports, when Hannibal said that ArtX's Alladin chipset didn't look too hot, and continued in an email dialog between Hannibal and Rick Calle. The story gets really weird when Mr. Calle went on Ars' forum and started posting stories discounting Hannibal's take on the situation as two different anonymous cowards. How'd Hannibal know it was Mr. Calle? The IPs of users are automatically logged (you know this before you submit your post) and both the anonymous cowards turned out to be from the same IP, which resolved to artxinc.com. Here's Mr. Calle's response to the allegations, "P.S. you're good. snagged my IP, huh?! i'm rotfl - rick." "

Comments

Broken article?

[Kintanon]

Did anyone else have trouble loading the second page of the story? I can only get the first page to load, the rest seem to be gone...
Anyone have a mirror or working link?

Kintanon

Re:Broken article?

[Malacai[GDI]]

Upon first attempt, same here... simply trying again got me in. keep on trying!
===

I just read the entire exchange. His actions are grounds for termination... as a MARKETING director, part of his job is to manage relationships with customers (direct or indirect) and he has just caused any consumer who reads that story to lose trust in his company's words.

my $.02

Re:Broken article?

[g.liche]

I had trouble loading the page as well, but eventually got it to come up. Just keep at it.

Re:Broken article?

[Kintanon]

Thanks, I got in after the 6th reload.

I'm guessing that Mr. Marketing there is going to have his ass hung out to dry. When you alienate so many people who are potential early purchasers of your product as well as the subset of the population that makes recommendations to 80% of the consumers making purchases you have fucked up royally.

How many people are going to recommend this card/chipset to their friends/family after this incident? Not me, I'm still pimping the V3 2000 for cheap gaming and the GeForce 256 for the bad boys. After I check out the V4 and V5 maybe I'll revise my recommendations, but they definately won't go in favor of ArtX.

Kintanon
PS. Watch for my article entitled 'Devil's Advocate' to appear soon on www.dailymac.com, the site isn't open yet, but my article will be one of the first! In the meantime you can check out www.dailyimac.com for a taste of what DailyMac will be like.

Re:Broken article?

[slashdot-terminal]

Just keep trying to access the link I think it took me about 4 tries.

However here's the text version of the article:


================================================
[newlogo9.gif (15244 bytes)] Forum.

[Image] [Maximum PC Network]

ABOUT THIS SITE ArtX: Half-truths and Misrepresentation? Recent:
by Jon "Hannibal" Stokes
FRONT PAGE Asus K7M
motherboard
ARS BeOS
We all know by now that the graphics industry is a Sun's MAJC
ASK ARS! vicious, cutthroat market where companies will do & Intel's
anything to get ahead. Tweaked benchmarks, IA-64
BUYER'S GUIDE over-inflated spec sheets, and out-of-control hype
are all part of the game, and are things that Promise
CPU & CHIPSET consumers have, sadly, come to expect. But what FastTrak66
GUIDE about something truly underhanded, like possible IDE RAID
abuse of a public forum and willful
DIARY OF misrepresentation of oneself to consumers? In an More NT
A GEEK effort to promote a product at all costs, there are Tweaks
some things that cross the line between "creating
THE FORUM good buzz" and outright disrespect. Microsoft's
IntelliEye
PRODUCT I recently had an unpleasant experience with a Mice
REVIEWS graphics company, an experience which seems to me
to be part of a trend of growing overconfidence and Transcend
SEARCH ARS underestimation of the consumer's intelligence on TS-ABX3101
the part of the computing industry. My recent motherboard
SESSE SEKO'S run-in involved a company so seemingly assured of
WANKERDESK the gullibility of the public and the media that Intel vs.
they didn't even take rudimentary precautions to AMD
TIPS FROM cover their tracks. That company is ArtX.
THE CRYPT Athlon Mobo
In Ars Technica's Wednesday Comdex write-up, I Shootout
TWEAKMEISTER'S recounted my experiences at ArtX's demo booth. I
TOME OF LOVE told about my DM battle with top-ranked Quake Transcend
champion Kornelia, and I also gave some of my TS-ABX11
WHO WE ARS impressions of the Aladdin 7 3D graphics technology motherboard
that ArtX was demonstrating. I didn't review a
LINKS product, nor did I run any benchmarks. All I did Infinite
was give brief impression of what I saw and what I Loop
ADVERTISE ON learned from the people working the booth. Here's
ARS TECHNICA what I had to say: The Onion's
"Our Dumb
Century"

[Visit The Chip Merchant] A while back, I reported on ArtX's plans to RISC vs.
integrate high-end 3D graphics on a Super7 mobo. CISC
(For those of you who don't know, ArtX is providing
[Image] the 3D mojo for Nintendo's upcoming Dolphin game Norton
console.) Anyway, I came across a booth where ArtX Speed Disk
was showing off their technology by holding a 4-way 5.0 for NT
Q3 demo deathmatch. Before I talk about the
deathmatch, I need to say a word about ArtX's Rites of
technology. The systems used were K6-based, with War
the ArtX gfx tech integrated on the north bridge.
Now, I don't know if it was the large LCD monitors Swiftech
or the early drivers, but the Q3 demo looked Peltier
absolutely awful. I'm not kidding when I say I Cooler
haven't seen graphics that bad since the Atari
days. I just couldn't believe my eyes. Q3 on my Apex ATX
old Voodoo1 blows away what I saw at the ArtX Full-Tower
booth. Not only was the image quality awful, but
turning on cg_drawfps revealed that the players Browsin' on
were getting FPS scores in the lower 20s. Ouch. I BeOS
sincerely hope that it was the monitors' or
drivers' fault that Q3 looked so bad, because if it PA-600 case
wasn't then Nintendo fans are in for a serious review
disappointment. [Note: It has since been brought to
my attention that the Aladdin 7 tech is supposedly System
different from the Dolphin tech, so things might Building
not be so bad after all. Or then again...] Guide

Buying it
Online
As a result of this small blurb, I entered into an Guide
email exchange with Rick Calle, Director of
Marketing for ArtX. In his emails, he made a Global WIN
number of claims in an effort to defend his FEP32
product. His wanting to defend his product is to
be expected, and is in fact admirable, since so 3D Market:
many companies seem to ignore the enthusiast High Stakes
population. What I did not expect was what I've
interpreted as the underhanded and duplicitous Cool the BX
methods that he chose to use. But before I get to Chipset
the deeply disturbing stuff, I'll lay out what some
of his more legitimate defenses were, and then I'll Computer
tell you what I thought of them. Understand that Architecture
the information I'm presenting isn't in
chronological order. Abit BP6

Deep C
Secrets
It's the LCD, stupid
ASUS P3B-F
In an email sent to me on the morning of 11/18/98, mobo
Mr. Calle's first protest was that the LCD monitors
that ArtX used weren't optimal for displaying the Athlon
product. As I noted in my report, at Comdex, Review
everyone was using LCDs--even those demoing video
card products. I saw UT and Q3A running on a
number of LCDs and none of them looked nearly as /etc:
bad as what I saw at ArtX. I said as much to Mr.
Calle, in an email response I sent on the 22nd, to OpenForum
which he replied:
SETI@Ars
...once we got on the show floor, we realized the
2010's were slower refresh rate. too late to change Take the
and get new ones on sunday nite. We especially saw Poll
this problem on DVD (did you see that demo?), where Technica
we elected to use our spare 21" CRT to eliminate
the "hysteresis" or "smearing" you see on the LCD FAQ:
screen due to it being a slow refresh rate and Celeron
which looks like dropped frames (but isn't). overclocking

This claim intrigued me, so I looked up the specs
for NEC's 2010 on the web. NEC lists the monitor's
max refresh rate as 75Hz @ 1280x1024. By way of
comparison, the Eizo FlexScan L66 that recently won
an Editor's Choice award from C|NET sports a
maximum refresh rate of...75Hz @ 1280x1024. Both
products also have similar horizontal scan rates.

While the fact that Q3A was running on an LCD at a
resolution other than the LCD's native one most
certainly affected its image quality, the fact
still remains that the other games I saw at Comdex
looked great on LCDs, while Q3A at the ArtX booth
looked substantially worse. Nothing can change
that, and for certain, no one working the booth
made any such claims to me, nor did anyone else
reflect on the possibility of the LCDs not
faithfully representing the product. Indeed, it
was quite the contrary. The booth presenters spoke
as if what they were displaying was 100% unleashed
Aladdin 7 tech. So, that's what I wrote about.
But after his reproach and my subsequent research,
I was left with a feeling of suspicion: was this
guy making excuses?



Framerates and the TNT2

In that same Comdex report, I mentioned that a
machine that I looked at had the framerate counter
on, and it was getting FPS scores in the low 20s.
That machine was Kornelia's, and Mr. Calle claims
she was playing not on an Aladdin 7 but on a TNT2.
Actually, in his first email (11/18/99), he claimed
she was playing on at TNT, check it:

If you consider that we had the Quake 3 v1.09
(CHECK your web site....look and see how, even a
TnT is getting problems running over 20-25fps in
v1.09) AND all these were turned on in the game:
- 32-bit rendering
- 32-bit textures
- high res (MAX) textures
- HIGH geometry for smooth curves
- trilinear filtering
then you would see we get great performance out of
this chipset, and it is WAY faster than your old
VooDoo.


A TNT running Q3A @ 20-25FPS is mostly believable,
but when I told him (11/22/99) that any gfx tech
maker that's comparing itself to a TNT at this
point is not shooting for the "budget PC market" as
much as they're shooting for outright obsolescence,
he replied (11/22/99) by saying that by "TNT" he
meant "TNT2." Well, which is it? In the hour I
was there, not a single person uttered the word
"TNT." Not one. You're going to tell me that
their star on-location was playing, and not even
using their tech?

Nevertheless, I saw what I saw. One of the major
points that folks were trying to sell at the booth
is that the Aladdin 7, with on-board T&L, can
supposedly compete with more expensive cards on
more expensive machines. I told Mr. Calle that I
thought that my experienced fleshed out that the
difference between what I saw at the booth and what
I've seen elsewhere was pretty weak.

See, I have a TNT2 that runs Q3A well over 25FPS at
High Quality display settings in the thick of 4-way
DM. And it looks great. In fact, I understand
that the TNT2 is one of the Q3A cards to have. I
can't see where a TNT2 on even a K6-3 450 (the
machine that Kornelia was supposedly using) would
run Q3A substantially slower than on my machine,
considering that I've just got a Celeron 466. I
mean, not night and days of difference.
Furthermore, in my recent Transcend TSABX3101
review I ran Q2 timedemos @ 1024x768 on a TNT2 +
Celeron 400 machine and got 37FPS in Crusher and
54FPS in Massive1!! I know that Q2 runs faster
than Q3, but Massive1 is a huge DM that stresses
the CPU to the max. I'd be very surprised to learn
that Q3A is slow to the point that a 50MHz faster
CPU in a 4-person DM can see an over 50% reduction
in framerate from Q2 @ 1024x768 on Massive1. Maybe
a combination of the K6 being weak and Q3A being
slower could account for it, but does seem like a
stretch. If anyone out there has any actual Q3A
timedemo numbers on a K6-3 (or -2) 450 + TNT2
system, I'd be interested to see them.

So as you can see, I am skeptical that Kornelia was
actually playing on any sort of nVidia card,
because the TNT-branded name was not mentioned in
the hour or so I was at the booth. There were
people there with headsets on exhorting the
audience to "experience the detailed textures and
dynamic lighting of the Aladdin 7...," but I never
heard anything about a TNT-anything. But
regardless of whether or not there were any TNT or
TNT2 cards in use at that booth, I know for a fact
that I was sitting at an Aladdin 7 machine because
there was an ArtX rep standing over my shoulder and
using my screen to show an on-looking rep from
another company exactly what the Aladdin 7 is
capable of. In short, I know what I saw, and I
thought it looked lame. Once again, I did not run
benchmarks, nor did I pretend to review a product.
I came I, I sat, I played, I was thoroughly
unimpressed. End of story.

Too bad this isn't the end of the story for ArtX's
Rick Calle. I found out later on on the 22nd that
all along he'd been up to more than just trying to
"clarify" things for me via email.



Next: things get out of control

Re:Broken article?

[slashdot-terminal]

(crappy display) Just keep trying to access the link I think it took me about 4 tries. However here's the text version of the article: ================================================ [newlogo9.gif (15244 bytes)] Forum. [Image] [Maximum PC Network] ABOUT THIS SITE ArtX: Half-truths and Misrepresentation? Recent: by Jon "Hannibal" Stokes FRONT PAGE Asus K7M motherboard ARS BeOS We all know by now that the graphics industry is a Sun's MAJC ASK ARS! vicious, cutthroat market where companies will do & Intel's anything to get ahead. Tweaked benchmarks, IA-64 BUYER'S GUIDE over-inflated spec sheets, and out-of-control hype are all part of the game, and are things that Promise CPU & CHIPSET consumers have, sadly, come to expect. But what FastTrak66 GUIDE about something truly underhanded, like possible IDE RAID abuse of a public forum and willful DIARY OF misrepresentation of oneself to consumers? In an More NT A GEEK effort to promote a product at all costs, there are Tweaks some things that cross the line between "creating THE FORUM good buzz" and outright disrespect. Microsoft's IntelliEye PRODUCT I recently had an unpleasant experience with a Mice REVIEWS graphics company, an experience which seems to me to be part of a trend of growing overconfidence and Transcend SEARCH ARS underestimation of the consumer's intelligence on TS-ABX3101 the part of the computing industry. My recent motherboard SESSE SEKO'S run-in involved a company so seemingly assured of WANKERDESK the gullibility of the public and the media that Intel vs. they didn't even take rudimentary precautions to AMD TIPS FROM cover their tracks. That company is ArtX. THE CRYPT Athlon Mobo In Ars Technica's Wednesday Comdex write-up, I Shootout TWEAKMEISTER'S recounted my experiences at ArtX's demo booth. I TOME OF LOVE told about my DM battle with top-ranked Quake Transcend champion Kornelia, and I also gave some of my TS-ABX11 WHO WE ARS impressions of the Aladdin 7 3D graphics technology motherboard that ArtX was demonstrating. I didn't review a LINKS product, nor did I run any benchmarks. All I did Infinite was give brief impression of what I saw and what I Loop ADVERTISE ON learned from the people working the booth. Here's ARS TECHNICA what I had to say: The Onion's "Our Dumb Century" [Visit The Chip Merchant] A while back, I reported on ArtX's plans to RISC vs. integrate high-end 3D graphics on a Super7 mobo. CISC (For those of you who don't know, ArtX is providing [Image] the 3D mojo for Nintendo's upcoming Dolphin game Norton console.) Anyway, I came across a booth where ArtX Speed Disk was showing off their technology by holding a 4-way 5.0 for NT Q3 demo deathmatch. Before I talk about the deathmatch, I need to say a word about ArtX's Rites of technology. The systems used were K6-based, with War the ArtX gfx tech integrated on the north bridge. Now, I don't know if it was the large LCD monitors Swiftech or the early drivers, but the Q3 demo looked Peltier absolutely awful. I'm not kidding when I say I Cooler haven't seen graphics that bad since the Atari days. I just couldn't believe my eyes. Q3 on my Apex ATX old Voodoo1 blows away what I saw at the ArtX Full-Tower booth. Not only was the image quality awful, but turning on cg_drawfps revealed that the players Browsin' on were getting FPS scores in the lower 20s. Ouch. I BeOS sincerely hope that it was the monitors' or drivers' fault that Q3 looked so bad, because if it PA-600 case wasn't then Nintendo fans are in for a serious review disappointment. [Note: It has since been brought to my attention that the Aladdin 7 tech is supposedly System different from the Dolphin tech, so things might Building not be so bad after all. Or then again...] Guide Buying it Online As a result of this small blurb, I entered into an Guide email exchange with Rick Calle, Director of Marketing for ArtX. In his emails, he made a Global WIN number of claims in an effort to defend his FEP32 product. His wanting to defend his product is to be expected, and is in fact admirable, since so 3D Market: many companies seem to ignore the enthusiast High Stakes population. What I did not expect was what I've interpreted as the underhanded and duplicitous Cool the BX methods that he chose to use. But before I get to Chipset the deeply disturbing stuff, I'll lay out what some of his more legitimate defenses were, and then I'll Computer tell you what I thought of them. Understand that Architecture the information I'm presenting isn't in chronological order. Abit BP6 Deep C Secrets It's the LCD, stupid ASUS P3B-F In an email sent to me on the morning of 11/18/98, mobo Mr. Calle's first protest was that the LCD monitors that ArtX used weren't optimal for displaying the Athlon product. As I noted in my report, at Comdex, Review everyone was using LCDs--even those demoing video card products. I saw UT and Q3A running on a number of LCDs and none of them looked nearly as /etc: bad as what I saw at ArtX. I said as much to Mr. Calle, in an email response I sent on the 22nd, to OpenForum which he replied: SETI@Ars ...once we got on the show floor, we realized the 2010's were slower refresh rate. too late to change Take the and get new ones on sunday nite. We especially saw Poll this problem on DVD (did you see that demo?), where Technica we elected to use our spare 21" CRT to eliminate the "hysteresis" or "smearing" you see on the LCD FAQ: screen due to it being a slow refresh rate and Celeron which looks like dropped frames (but isn't). overclocking This claim intrigued me, so I looked up the specs for NEC's 2010 on the web. NEC lists the monitor's max refresh rate as 75Hz @ 1280x1024. By way of comparison, the Eizo FlexScan L66 that recently won an Editor's Choice award from C|NET sports a maximum refresh rate of...75Hz @ 1280x1024. Both products also have similar horizontal scan rates. While the fact that Q3A was running on an LCD at a resolution other than the LCD's native one most certainly affected its image quality, the fact still remains that the other games I saw at Comdex looked great on LCDs, while Q3A at the ArtX booth looked substantially worse. Nothing can change that, and for certain, no one working the booth made any such claims to me, nor did anyone else reflect on the possibility of the LCDs not faithfully representing the product. Indeed, it was quite the contrary. The booth presenters spoke as if what they were displaying was 100% unleashed Aladdin 7 tech. So, that's what I wrote about. But after his reproach and my subsequent research, I was left with a feeling of suspicion: was this guy making excuses? Framerates and the TNT2 In that same Comdex report, I mentioned that a machine that I looked at had the framerate counter on, and it was getting FPS scores in the low 20s. That machine was Kornelia's, and Mr. Calle claims she was playing not on an Aladdin 7 but on a TNT2. Actually, in his first email (11/18/99), he claimed she was playing on at TNT, check it: If you consider that we had the Quake 3 v1.09 (CHECK your web site....look and see how, even a TnT is getting problems running over 20-25fps in v1.09) AND all these were turned on in the game: - 32-bit rendering - 32-bit textures - high res (MAX) textures - HIGH geometry for smooth curves - trilinear filtering then you would see we get great performance out of this chipset, and it is WAY faster than your old VooDoo. A TNT running Q3A @ 20-25FPS is mostly believable, but when I told him (11/22/99) that any gfx tech maker that's comparing itself to a TNT at this point is not shooting for the "budget PC market" as much as they're shooting for outright obsolescence, he replied (11/22/99) by saying that by "TNT" he meant "TNT2." Well, which is it? In the hour I was there, not a single person uttered the word "TNT." Not one. You're going to tell me that their star on-location was playing, and not even using their tech? Nevertheless, I saw what I saw. One of the major points that folks were trying to sell at the booth is that the Aladdin 7, with on-board T&L, can supposedly compete with more expensive cards on more expensive machines. I told Mr. Calle that I thought that my experienced fleshed out that the difference between what I saw at the booth and what I've seen elsewhere was pretty weak. See, I have a TNT2 that runs Q3A well over 25FPS at High Quality display settings in the thick of 4-way DM. And it looks great. In fact, I understand that the TNT2 is one of the Q3A cards to have. I can't see where a TNT2 on even a K6-3 450 (the machine that Kornelia was supposedly using) would run Q3A substantially slower than on my machine, considering that I've just got a Celeron 466. I mean, not night and days of difference. Furthermore, in my recent Transcend TSABX3101 review I ran Q2 timedemos @ 1024x768 on a TNT2 + Celeron 400 machine and got 37FPS in Crusher and 54FPS in Massive1!! I know that Q2 runs faster than Q3, but Massive1 is a huge DM that stresses the CPU to the max. I'd be very surprised to learn that Q3A is slow to the point that a 50MHz faster CPU in a 4-person DM can see an over 50% reduction in framerate from Q2 @ 1024x768 on Massive1. Maybe a combination of the K6 being weak and Q3A being slower could account for it, but does seem like a stretch. If anyone out there has any actual Q3A timedemo numbers on a K6-3 (or -2) 450 + TNT2 system, I'd be interested to see them. So as you can see, I am skeptical that Kornelia was actually playing on any sort of nVidia card, because the TNT-branded name was not mentioned in the hour or so I was at the booth. There were people there with headsets on exhorting the audience to "experience the detailed textures and dynamic lighting of the Aladdin 7...," but I never heard anything about a TNT-anything. But regardless of whether or not there were any TNT or TNT2 cards in use at that booth, I know for a fact that I was sitting at an Aladdin 7 machine because there was an ArtX rep standing over my shoulder and using my screen to show an on-looking rep from another company exactly what the Aladdin 7 is capable of. In short, I know what I saw, and I thought it looked lame. Once again, I did not run benchmarks, nor did I pretend to review a product. I came I, I sat, I played, I was thoroughly unimpressed. End of story. Too bad this isn't the end of the story for ArtX's Rick Calle. I found out later on on the 22nd that all along he'd been up to more than just trying to "clarify" things for me via email. Next: things get out of control

Re:Broken article?

[AugstWest]

Well, it's not geeks like us that make the huge difference in video card sales. Unfortunately, they may be able to strike a deal with, say, Dell and sell a couple bazillion units.

I mean, everyone I know who is looking for new hardware asks me about what 3d card to buy, and that's still only like 10 or 12 people.

The subset of consumers who read Ars and Slashdot really isn't enough to make or break a company. And if you ask me, it shouldn't be. One schmuck in marketing shouldn't kill off the parent company.

Maybe he could go work for Alex St. John :]

Re:Broken article?

[Kintanon]

I mean, everyone I know who is looking for new hardware asks me about what 3d card to buy, and that's still only like 10 or 12 people.

The subset of consumers who read Ars and Slashdot really isn't enough to make or break a company. And if you ask me, it shouldn't be. One schmuck in marketing shouldn't kill off the parent company.



It may not make more break the company, but it's still alienating a big chunk of consumers. Which is ALWAYS bad for a new company looking to make it big.I mean, say there are 100K people who read Technica and slashdot combined, and each of those people gives advice to 10 people to steer clear of that company. That's 1 million sales right there. Heck, Sega is exstatic because they just hit 1 million sales with the Dreamcast, 1 million sales could make or break most companies. Of course that deal with nintendo goes a long way towards assuring immunity to market pressure.

Kintanon

rotfl, eh?

[Skyshadow]

This isn't too shocking to me. You see a lot of people like this in really competetive industries -- they seem to assume that the consumer is both stupid and completely irrelevant.

My question is, how much longer will this moron be rotfl with his company completely discredited like this? I mean, to get mentions on all the gamer sites about this has got to be absolutely devestating to their chances at marketing this product (or, for that matter, any other).

This does rank as an important object lesson about believing what anonymous sources have to say, however.

----

Re:rotfl, eh?

[quasimoto]

Too Bad! Hey, where is my copy (deadtree) of Expert Gamer (zd folks). The Nov issue, which I lost, has the Sony PS2 review. More good news for Sony and Sega. Since my work station is just that, work only, I am glad someone found this story. I have to use Sony/Sega/Nin kind of equipment when I ply games. CNBC is doing a good job on games as I write, 'Top PC Games' and the "Intellimouse Explorer" mouse, per George Jones 'Computer Gaming World'. Meaning? Live on TV it is hard to be an ass and get away with it. IP logging equals 'live' on the net when an opinion is launched. Fine By Me(tm). -d

Re:rotfl, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

see, it's really quite simple.

somewhere, somehow, someday down the road, they'll simply find some way of being purchased by someone else.

then, they'll be sitting in the same positions doing the same things to the same people with someone else's money...

...

[Signal 11]

Oh my god, there's stupid marketing people out there! Somebody tell the biologists, this is an AMAZING discovery!

*groan* Yes, stupid people are out there. Many of them work for a living. Suprise - you bumped into one. Now just pick yourself up, and carry on.

--

Re:...

[taniwha]

that's OK - just so long as they don't breed ..... oh wait they keep going to those trade show/mating ritual thingies ...... uurgh pretty soon the linux world will be knee deep in them :-(

Re:...

[Rational]

Unfortunately, being stupid has never been an obstacle to breeding. An argument could be made, in fact, that being stupid makes you more successful at breeding than being intelligent...

To be expected

[jd]

But it's sad. If the product had flaws, it needed to be refined. If the company had spent it's hard-earned cash on fixes, rather than on paying some luser to spam gamer boards, they'd not only have a better product, they'd have a better image, too.

Sadly, negative advertising is seen as being more influential than positive development. It is, but it's also more corrosive. What you end up with is a cynical audience who doesn't believe anyone, because there's no-one left to trust.

Personally, I believe that a decent product will sell itself, and that advertising & promoting is an expensive delusion to cover the cracks that nobody wanted to spend the same money fixing.

We've seen this with Linux, and the *BSD's. Little or no promotion, other than the system working, and most (if not all) the effort going into making these OS' work. Linux has the highest rate of change of uptake of any OS on the market, and the BSD's have support so solid, it would make a neutron star weep.

Re:To be expected

[Gurlia]

*sigh* it's sad, but the unfortunate truth is that most people believe marketing hype. Proof: look at the percentage of computer users out there use M$ products. I'm not saying M$ products are bad by definition, but the proportion of M$ users and other users certainly don't reflect the quality of the products involved. In a way, I've given up hope that "the masses" will ever get the "real truth" behind things. Yes, Linux is definitely a decent product that sells itself... but how many people today choose Linux because they know it's good, and how many "choose" it because it's the "hip" thing to do now, and everybody around them is switching to Linux?

Although I love Linux, I believe that one day something better would come along. The question is, when that day comes, will people stubbornly cling onto Linux the same way they are clinging to M$ now? If so, how different are they from stubborn M$ supporters of today? Or perhaps, one day something inferior to Linux comes along, but it gets super-hyped up and everyone talks about it. I suspect a majority of people will simply switch away from Linux, just because the "omniscient media" tells them so.

Or, witness the amount of media attention Y2K got. For sure, Y2K is a non-trivial problem, and things need to get fixed. But how many people really understand what Y2K all about beyond "Y2K is coming, bad, bad things are going to happen to my computer! But look! My toaster from such and such a company is Y2K-compliant! (Or so it says on the sticker!) We better replace all our toasters, refridgerators, and vacuum cleaners before the Y2K bug hits them!"

Although personally I always take (at least) several grains of salt with whatever I hear from the media/marketing people/etc., I'm afraid most people don't, and they don't really care either.

Re:To be expected

[nmos]

"In a way, I've given up hope that "the masses" will ever get the "real truth" behind things."

I know the feeling but as long as people are willing to buy crap there will be multitues of companies going nuts trying to fill the demand. I do think there is hope however. Over the past couple of years I noticed a huge increase in the level of dissatisfaction with the reliability of Windows based PCs. That's not to say that people recognize that Windows itself is a big part of the problem, most seem to blame the hardware first and then themselves for "breaking" it but at least it's a start.

"although I love Linux, I believe that one day something better would come along. The question is, when that day comes, will people stubbornly cling onto Linux the same way they are clinging to M$ now? If so, how different are they from stubborn M$ supporters of today?"

I think there is a difference. Of the few Linux users I know in the "real world" all can give actual reasons for their choice. Reasons might be "It's more stable" or "It's faster on my system" or just "there are just so many cool free things to play with" and every one of them has used at least a couple of different OSs in their time. When you ask Windows users why they made that choice the answers usually revolve around either "What else is there?" or "I've got to run exactly the same sofware as we use at the office" or "My kid must have exactly the same software he/she uses at school" and hardly any of these people have ever used anything but Windows.

Re:To be expected

[Shadowlion]

To the moderators: I mean *absolutely* no disrespect towards Linux or open source, but I wanted to post this hypothetical question:

Although I love Linux, I believe that one day something better would come along. The question is, when that day comes, will people stubbornly cling onto Linux the same way they are clinging to M$ now?

Who is to say that something better than Linux isn't out already, and the Linux community is dimissing or ignoring it?

What would the qualifications have to be for a product to be considered, "better than Linux?"

Re:To be expected

[nmos]

"Who is to say that something better than Linux isn't out already, and the Linux
community is dimissing or ignoring it? "

Define "better". For some people and some tasks I think you could argue that Free BSD or Be is "better" than Linux right now. Without more details though it's like argueing that a fork is better than a spoon. The one thing I think we can all agree on is that sporks (Windows) suck.

Re:To be expected

[slashdot-terminal]

It's a cost issue with me as well. I find it hard to believe that something could even if it was better actually do so and still be able to grow like linux does. If anything will replace linux it must be open source to allow for open development of applications and elimination of bugs. If it's closed source people will not really feel that it's easy to develop for the platform than developing for windows. Say I write a game for windows I spend maybe 80% of the budged that I had allocated for the project. That leaves about 20% for the linux and other ports. If I wanted to develop for the other platform it would have to be easier to develop on than the windows version was. Therefore something must be streamlined so the use of linux is a good idea.

Re:To be expected

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, you are quite wrong. M$ market share is ENTIRELY based on the quality of their products AS A WHOLE. Bugs & stability are only one aspect of a measure of total quality. Useablilty is another, as is the ability of the products to work together, which is the primary one for many users.

This is a truth the the *nix bretheren simply REFUSE to see. When (and if) they DO manage to see it. They will learn two very important things.

1) M$ isn't evil. Neither are they all incompetent programmers. The products do what they are designed to do, which is what the majority of users WILL PAY FOR. This is nothing more than good business sense.

2) Linux and other OS alternatives will continue to be a marginal competitor until they stop focusing all their attention on 'tweaks for geeks' and start focusing on the whole 'out of box' experience of the typical user.

IMHO RedHat is currently doing the best at the latter, but they have a ways to go to really equal
Windows.

...to lazy to log in

Re:To be expected

[Anonymous Coward]

You must love bending over for BillyG. How much is M$ paying you to post this crap to Slashdot? Only dumbasses like you pay to get screwed by software companies.

Re:To be expected

[JimStoner]

Possible sources for this, and my reactions:

Microsoft themselves ...*laughs* ...Owww my sides. Would they really be THAT stupid?

Someone who truly believes this to be the case ...*laughs* ...Get a fucking grip mate!

Someone with a dessicated sense of humour ...*laughs* ...I take my hat off to you sir.

Since it makes no difference, I'm going with the last of the three explanations - by far the closest to how I would like /. to be!

ArtX won't be seeing any of my money

[flatrock]

The best solution to companies like this is to not buy their products. The fact that Nintendo is using their chip in their next generation console makes this decision a little harder for some people, but I'm not much for console games anyway.

Re:ArtX won't be seeing any of my money

[Alkaiser]

Well...the fact that Nintendo is using it in its next generation console totally eliminates any possibility of me buying it. Look at all the crud on that system. The 64 came out years later, and couldn't even out-tech the existing systems on the market. Talk about a company that is behind the times...

Now as to why Slashdot uses an N64 controller as the "games" icon, I'll never really know...It does look cooler than the Dreamcast/Cinnabon swirl, though.

Re:ArtX won't be seeing any of my money

[Danse]

Actually, the N64 is fine tech-wise (or was when it came out). It just has mostly crap for games. That's its number one problem. The only game I'm looking forward to on N64 at the moment is Perfect Dark.

Re:ArtX won't be seeing any of my money

[Alkaiser]

I've seen it 2 years running at E3. Here's a tip from me to you. Don't look forward to it.

Re:ArtX won't be seeing any of my money

[WNight]

I've only played three N64 games, so I'm not experienced with the platform, but I didn't much like it.

The Super Mario racing was fun. For something with about the graphic horsepower of Stunts...

But Zeld64 is what turned me off to the idea of cartridge based consoles. Euch. That game stunk.

They used a hub system which is a good indicator that they couldn't fit enough levels into it. Everything was low poly. And I mean, real low poly. The textures were, if they could be called such, flat. I think they were solid colors except for faces and such. The sound effects were marginal.

And then the fact that it had a camera system straight out of Tomb Raider...

That game could have been so much more if they'd used CDs, but their copy protection was worth more than making a good system.

Consoles are bad enough (lacking keyboards, HDs, etc) without crippling them by loading of a cartridge.

Re:ArtX won't be seeing any of my money

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, 1 guy says it looks like crap.
Every other review I've ever read said it looked awsome.

You decide whether to get it or not.

Marketing types just don't quit

[LocalYokel]

Every successful software company has a good marketing department behind it -- Microsoft, for example, and the (undisclosed) place I work for.

We have extensive art and development departments, but they are all required to use Windoze 9X, not even NT in development (we are a Win32 shop). They have cubicles and fairly wimpy systems, but everyone in the *marketing* department gets a shiny new Mac placed on the desktop of their window office every year...

I still question whether the product would sell better if the time and money taken were spent in making it actually work well, instead of marketing a crummy product to new customers.

OTOH, the marketing approach seems to work pretty well. I'm unsurprised at the lengths those people will go to make a sale or win mindshare.

Re:Marketing types just don't quit

[Anonymous Coward]

While I'm not condoning this behavior at all, at least this marketing person knew that the online forums existed! Too many marketing types are ignorant (either willfully or blissfully so) of the actual market and those pesky users.

Re:Marketing types just don't quit

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh... this kinda reminds me of the time the guy from Micro$oft got caught trashing OS/2 on a compuserv board. I'll bet this sort fo thing happens quite a bit.

BTW - I'll never pour hot grits down my pants.

Re:Marketing types just don't quit

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a salespersons job not to quit! As a former account manager for a fortune 100 IT company its a sales persons job to convince someone to buy that buggy piece of Microcrap becauce some one at the home office signed an exclusive aggrement. face it most sales people out ther work on commission, if you dont sell you dont get paid. if you do sell you can get paid very well! Have you ever gone a couple months w/o a paycheck because a committed shipping date kept getting pushed back??? Have you ever lost $10,000 in income because a components price doubled on the 300 PC's you just sold? Do you have it written in your contract that you will increase sales/Production by 15% annually? Don't take this as flame bait but a lot of people on this thread believe in "if you build it they will come" attitude to business. It takes more than just a good product to have a successful business. no one put a gun to anyones head and MADE them buy Windows, Some one sold it to them. It takes a team effort including finiancial, management, marketing and product. A strong relationship with a account manager with a history of follow-up and accountability will often have more to do with getting the sale than the brand on the product. I'm not endorsing this morons Tactics, I'm just asking the contributers of this thread if they would like to be stereotyped w/o having walked a mile in your shoes? There's good people everywhere, you just have to find them Jeff Wood Not anonymous, not a coward

Just pathetic

[owillis]

It's so sad that this guy lives in this world of total self-denial. Wonder how many other marketing mavens out there are posting in online forums...

Re:Just pathetic

[Black Parrot]

> Wonder how many other marketing mavens out there are posting in online forums...

Or paying their toadies to do it for them.

--
It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?

All too common

[dclydew]

http://www.woz.org has an article about how the NYT tried to mask a pro-MS article as if it were written by Woz. This kind of stuff is getting silly. I can't believe posters.... Pro-MS posters may be MS employees... ArtX anonymous posers (note the spelling). Sigh, I guess it's time to remember... Don't believe anything you hear or read, and only half of what you see.

(Note: MS video evidence would fall into the other "half of what you see")

Man...news travels FAST

[Hard_Code]

Sheesh..I JUST read this on Ars, and some guy posted that they'd submit it to slashdot. Flip my browser window and bing, there it is...second time something like this has happened

good to know Slashdot get the scoop (or 2nd scoop)...

Re:Man...news travels FAST

[Black Parrot]

> good to know Slashdot get the scoop

It's kind of like the 1000 pairs of eyes looking for bugs in OSS code... only here we have 1000s of pairs of eyes skimming the most nerdworthy stories off the whole net.

--
It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?

Anonymous sources can be VERY biased

[Christopher B. Brown]

Everyone can be biased.

Unfortunately, when they're Anonymous Cowards, it gets a bit harder to tell if you've got:

1. Someone that is being honest, that has known biases
2. Someone that is being dishonest, with well-known biases
3. Someone that is being honest, but where you can only infer indirectly what their biases are, or
4. Someone that is being downright dishonest, and perhaps trying to hide their biases.

Unfortunately, as you head down this list, there is a tendancy for honesty to diminish, as well as the usefulness of the information.

The issue isn't new; it was pretty evident in some reviews of LinuxCAD, that there were "reviewers" that may not have been at arms length from the "producers." Another review notes, about the "testimonials," that:

Strangely, these testimonials used the same poor english expression as whoever wrote the LinuxCAD advertisement.

It was quite entertaining when Linux Gazette published an Official Reaction of Software Forge Inc. to "LinuxCAD Review"; I expressed in LG issue 42 that I appreciated their restraint in not using a spell-checker...

No, I haven't much use for Anonymous Cowards...

Re:Anonymous sources can be VERY biased

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a little OT, but you are forgetting a fifth (and possibly more useful Anonymous Coward). Namely:

5. Someone who is being dishonest but intentionally going against their biases.

This type of AC is known as a "Devil's Advocate" in other circles. Sometimes this sort of AC behavior is really useful for getting all the information out of a discussion. Being such a Devils Advocate is the quickest way I know to transform someone from just saying "I like Linux" to someone who can say "These specific reasons are why I like Linux etc". It also helps prevent discussion stagnation (at least until the slashdotters go completely off topic).

Please note there is a difference between being a DA-AC and flamebait. I am also not saying that playing Devils's Advocate was the intention of the guys from either ArtX or LinuxCAD (they blatantly were following their biases), just that the behavior exists and is worth some consideration. And it is very difficult to contribute to a discussion honestly as yourself and also play Devil's Advocate withough the option of anonymous posts.

Building Credibility

[tomblackwell]

Bravo!

This type of self-moderation is essential for online communities. Although some people get really antsy and yell "free speech, free speech!", the interests of the readership are served by precautions such as IP logging. The forum's credibility also benefits.

Re:Building Credibility

[period3]

I agree for the most part, but I think one change has to be made. If a website is logging your IP, it should TELL YOU. Eg. there should be a notice: "By posting on this forum, you understand that your IP is being logged, blah blah blah".

Re:Building Credibility

[Anonymous Coward]

It IS posted at ARS, at the bottom of each and every message it says IP LOGGED.

Ip snagging and E-trade in sweden (offt question)

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really related this one is.

Few weeks ago one of our local e-traders got hit with a dns-attack coming from one of their competitors.
These people claimed they had nothing to do with it.
Anyone know what happened later?

Did you read the entire exchange?

[festers]

I agree that there are lots of stupid marketing people out there, but man, you make it sound like this article is the most boring thing ever posted. I read through all the emails and comments and found it to be rather intersting, even a little exciting. It's cool to read about someone getting busted for their lack of ethics and pure stupidity. Yes, morons abound, but how often are they caught like this?




------

Standard tactics for shady companies?

[Znork]

These things seem to pop up fairly often by now. Companies like Microsoft even seem to put it into regular practice. Of course, it totally destroys the credibility of anyone arguing for them or their products, because you can with a fair certainty assume that anyone having any good experience with them is paid to say so.

Re:Standard tactics for shady companies?

[fleagal]

I just can't agree with you statement that you can, with a fair certainty, assume that anyone having good experiences with MS software is paid to do so. All you are doing is assuming the worst, which is fine to do and something I do often, but it's just like saying, "Anyone who says that they've had a good experience with Linux obviously has sour grapes because of the market dominance of MS." While both statements are possible. Neither is very likely. There are a lot of people who have great experiences with [insert whatever company here]'s software even if you don't. I have no connection to MS other that the company I work for writes Win32 software. (And Unix stuff, too, mind you, but no Linux as of yet)

Re:Standard tactics for shady companies?

[billybob jr]

Absolutely, you can't assume that person is being paid to say something good. However, it doesn't change the fact that the company is still damaging their reputation and more importantly their crediblity.

Shouldn't be too surprising...

[11oh8]

This was only a product review... Stock discussion boards get even worse... company executives anonymously posting to raise their stock or lower a competitor's.... I guess if your product isn't too good and you still have to face the stockholders, some poeple will try just about anything...

Re:GILLIAN ANDERSON

[Mawbid]

Hmm. It appears your cursor was in the wrong window when you started your typing exercise. You should look at the screen instead of the keyboard to prevent such mixups.
--

Should've used VMWARE

[D3]

At least then the IP would have been different. Of course, still the same class C resolving to the same owners.

Wait a minute

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean you can track my IP address? You might find out who I really am when I say "3l337 First Post petrified and naked?"

OH NOOOOO!

I'm sure they'd love to hear your reaction..

[Anonymous Coward]

Care to express you opinion to someone that matters? I'm sure David Orton, president of ArtX, would love to hear what you think about his marketing director. His address? deo@artxinc.com :)

Uh, I don't get it.

[Lord Kano]

>>Although some people get really antsy and yell "free speech, free speech!", the interests of the readership are served by precautions such as IP logging.

What? What does free speech have to do with catching someone lying?

Freedom of speech means just that, you are FREE to speak about whatever you want, BUT other people are free to catch you lying.

If someone were to say "I work at the factory and Cola X is made wht 4% goat urine" I'd hope that someone out there would be able to expose this person for the lying sock of shit that s/he is.

Freedom of speech is NOT freedom from responsibility.

LK

Re:Uh, I don't get it.

[tomblackwell]

Free speech has nothing to do with someone lying. I agree with you totally.

People just seem to get a bee in their bonnet when they think that someone is "censoring" them using moderation, IP logging etc. It isn't censorship, and in fact is essential, but try telling it to them. The argument usually slides into a chest-beating, speechifying, flag-waving mess.

"Free speech" is a great thing, but sometimes people with flimsy arguments try to get a bit further by using it to (erroneously) back up their position.

Re:Uh, I don't get it.

[Lord Kano]

>>People just seem to get a bee in their bonnet when they think that someone is "censoring" them using moderation, IP logging etc. It isn't censorship, and in fact is essential, but try telling it to them. The argument usually slides into a chest-beating, speechifying, flag-waving mess.

I'm FAR more concerned with people abusing the legal system or simple threats to shut down legitimate sites.

Like what the Scientologists did to xenu.net or what the FBI did to that y2k hype site recently or what planned parenthood did to the Nuremberg Files website.

LK

Re:Uh, I don't get it.

[bjk4]

Freedom of speech is NOT freedom from responsibility.

The corollary to this is that freedom of speech gives you the right to speak, but not the right to be heard.

-B

Why marketing types are natural B ship candidates

[Pac]

The story is from one of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books. Pretending the planet was to be destroyed by this or that, a society managed to ship all the middle-class urban modern professionals (from phone-cleaners to hair-dressers to assistant productors to marketing people) away in a no-come-back trip to a distant planet. Naturally, they were told the A and C ships were soon to follow (but as they were the most important elements of the society, they would go first). Also naturally, their ship was fully automatic and programmed not to land, but to crash in the destination planet and destroy its flying capacity in the process (read the books, they are worth your time).

This one guy looks like a perfect choice for the B ship as soon as we manage to discover interstelar travel.

Re:GILLIAN ANDERSON

[Hard_Code]

Man...when Segfault turned off the write-ins and comments, the loonies started flooding slashdot.

How you accumulated -35 Karma with only 13 posts I can only guess Jizmak.

Jeeze!

[Anonymous Coward]

I like the pic of a head of a man with the censor block over his mouth :-D

Clue: Marketing == Lies

[sloth jr]

An interesting example that I personally had the "fortune" to witness. A bit back, I was moonlightning, doing some web work for a high-end networking company. One of the pieces I was asked to convert and put on the web had an interesting graph showing performance curves for a particular product on different architectures.

Now, the product in question was a PCI network board, yet one of the performance curves was prominently labeled "SGI Indigo 2 R4400".

Ummm... the Indigo 2 doesn't have any PCI slots, it's EISA or GIO or nothin'. Thinking somebody just pasted the wrong graphic into the press-release, I read the copy - nope, mentions the Indigo 2. They were ready to run with this until I waved my hands repeatedly in front of them.

Shortly thereafter, the CEO asked if I could possibly work directly in their marketing dept, as they needed someone with a tech background (ah-yup!). I couldn't help but tell the guy that I couldn't stomach working a job where my main function was to lie to my customers. He thought that was pretty funny, and had a good laugh...

Re:Clue: Marketing == Lies

[billybob jr]

There are good reasons to dislike marketing departments, but they exist for a reason. They exist to sell products, because technology is not enough.

Technology is complicated, expecially cutting edge computer technology. When the majority of consumers don't understand how your product works or even what it does, the marketing department fills the gap with bullshit. There is a pretty big divide between those who understand and those who don't understand computers (and many shades of grey also).

Instead of those of us who know belittling those who don't or bitching about the way the world works, perhaps a more productive attitude should be taken. I'm not addressing you personally, but sometimes geeks tend to have condescending attitudes towards those who don't know and that only furthers the divide and makes more room for marketing bullshit.

Re:Clue: Marketing == Lies

[Anonymous Coward]

You should have taken the job and created the best marketing dept in the world.

But marketing is needed, we dont want accountants promoting products do we??

even /. has a marketing arm, simply having a website is part of marketing.

Marketing = LETTING PEOPLE KNOW YOU EXIST.

Re:Clue: Marketing == Lies

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure companies need to sell their products and services but unfortunately many see the profit prerogative as more important than honesty.

Marketing "executives", tied financial "advisors", real estate agents and recruitment agents are almost all lying assholes who fit this profile. There are relatively few exceptions.

Many people, not just computer geeks, are sick of being lied to. There needs to be more effective regulation by professional bodies.

This happens all the time, might as well rofl

[gad_zuki!]

How many fortune 500's out there are constanly getting their fingers caught in the cookie jar?

Consumers won't care as long as the product ships with a MSRP that's 5% lower than the competition or they've bought enough positive reviews with ad revenue to create a decent demand.

Lets not be naive here, in the end I'm sure this'll affect sales by 0.0 percent.

Off topic, Humor

[Anonymous Coward]

>If someone were to say "I work at the factory and Cola X is made wht 4% goat urine" I'd hope that someone out there would be able to expose this person for the lying sock of shit that s/he is.

Good point. Free speech should not protect those who would lie.

Every know that Pepsi contains AT LEAST 5% goat urine. :)

Re:Off topic, Humor

[taniwha]

hey! - be carefull - 'goat urine' is a trademark of Coca Cola Inc :-)

Re:Off topic, Humor

[InThane]

Damn, and I thought that they both were just malted battery acid.

Re:Off topic, Humor

[WNight]

Duh, don't you know the difference? They *patented* goat urine as an additive, they've trademarked the phrase "Got Goat?"

:)

Re:Off topic, Humor

[Anonymous Coward]

Is Coke really 4% goat urine? Wow, I never knew that before. The things you learn on slashdot.

I guess I'll have to go tell my freinds abou the authoritative report I read on the net that Coke and Pepsi both contain goat urine as part of their secret formulae...

Re:Off topic, Humor

[twit]

That doesn't really follow; the US Constitution's protection of free speech already excludes malicious speech (lying, libelling, cheating, yelling fire in a crowded theatre). In other words, you have the right to speak, but you can easily move beyond the limits of that right.

What we should consider is that there is no right to anonymity. While US courts have ruled in favour of a right to privacy in that there is a part of our lives which is not part of the public sphere, and it is incorrect to place it in the public sphere. Anonymity is another matter entirely.

That said, anonymity may be the only way to protect free speech of unpopular opinions in certain situations. Consider the McCarthy era: communists had hypothetical free speech, but many of those who exercised it had their careers ruined by the voluntary organizations to which they belonged.

Free speech should not be protected only by the state and its agents, although perhaps that's the only way it can be effectively be protected. When it comes to one's private life, it becomes not a matter of speech but of taste.

Consider your example: someone says that Pepsi contains 5% goat urine. It may be protected speech, since goat urine's no doubt expensive and nobody could reasonably think that the cheapasses in Pepsi corporate management would fork over that much dough for pee. However, if you are identified as the formerly anonymouse goat urine man, don't count on advancing too far in your career at PepsiCo.

--

Tell the CEO

[Palin Majere]

Perhaps the best thing to do, in addition to boycotting ArtX's products, is to email/snail mail the CEO directly, politely explaining why you'll not be purchasing any of their products.

People that not only lie, but misrepresent the company they work for in an attempt to bolster public opinion wind up doing more damage than good in the long run. I'm sure Mr. Calle's will be deservedly short-lived, but only if the CEO of the company hears about it. Don't let this fall by the wayside folks!

P.S. On that note, does anyone have an address for the CEO? Email/SnailMail/Phone Number # would be nice...

Re:Tell the CEO

[RedX]

The email address of David Orton, ArtX's president, is deo@artxinc.com. You might also want to drop a line to Nintendo since ArtX's main claim-to-fame (before this fiasco anyways) is they'll be providing the graphics chip for the Dolphin, and shouldn't be too happy to hear about these tactics. Nintendo of America's email address is nintendo@nintendo.com.

Re:Tell the CEO

[Mong0]

To elaborate on the contact info this was pulled form the site also. ArtX, Inc. 3400 Hillview Avenue Building 5, 2nd Floor Palo Alto, CA 94304 650/842-8400 phone 650/842-0307 fax

ARTX RULEZ

[Anonymous Coward]

This story is a COMPLETE fabrication, D00DZ!!! ArtX is an INSANELY GREAT COMPANY!!! I saw their PRODUCTS at COMDEX and I WAS BLOWN AWAY!!! Its like having 10 REALITY ENGINES IN A BEOWULF CLUSTER!!! Nintendo was RIGHT to USE ARTX!!!

This thing isn't logging my ip is it?

- rick^H^H^H^H^H^H

Re:ARTX RULEZ

[nutsy]

UN-altered REPRODUCTION and DISSEMINATION of this IMPORTANT Information is ENCOURAGED, ESPECIALLY to COMPUTER BULLETIN BOARDS.

-- Robert McElwaine

How often does this happen in the /. comments?

[Anonymous Coward]

This article makes me wonder how often this kind of thing happens in the slashdot comments...

People can be FUD'ing our ears full without we readers even knowing it. They can be FUD'ing comptetitors products. They can be FUD'ing mozilla, linux, freebsd and whatever right here on slashdot. Some posts may be moderated down but how many posts get through the moderation?

This article really opened my eyes up. I'm such a nice guy, so I guess I have to admit I may have been too naive and unaware of such unethical methods.

Wasn't there an article about Microsoft starting their own Anti linux division. Makes me wonder if those guys are participating in discussions on slashdot and spreading FUD.

I might be a little paranoid but given MS and other companies well known FUD tactics it won't surprise me. If they are, they would at least be smart enough to not have IP's that originate from inside their company.

Re:How often does this happen in the /. comments?

[SoftwareJanitor]

Wasn't there an article about Microsoft starting their own Anti linux division. Makes me wonder if those guys are participating in discussions on slashdot and spreading FUD.

There are many admitted Microsoft employees who participate here. Some on there own time or 'misappropriated' company time I'm sure. However, I wouldn't be surprised if at least some of the Microsoft people here weren't assigned 'handlers' who read and/or post here. To a certain extent all that is to be expected, and probably something that a lot of companies do. And as long as they stick to posting stuff that is clearly labeled as opinions, or documentably factual, they really aren't doing anything wrong.

On the other hand, Microsoft has a history of 'Astroturf' campaigns. What makes this different is that the intent is to mislead people into thinking that there is a widespread outside group of people who have a certain opinion that doesn't in fact exist. And too often such 'Astroturf' campaigns cross over the line to where opinionated information becomes FUD.

Basically where things start to cross over the line is when people claim to be expressing independant opinions when in fact they have a vested (or paid) interest. Unfortunately Microsoft has even duped some groups into unintentionally supporting their PR campaigns by not being quite forthright about how they fund certain groups that are sympathetic to their interest at a given time.

Re:How often does this happen in the /. comments?

[embobo]

There are quite a few Microsoft zombies posting on /.. The common form of their posts is:

Linux rules. I really hate M$ myself and would never use it.

However, I run IIS on my NT machine. It takes 10^23 hits a day and has never crashed.

That is, they will start with some meaningless claim about Linux being good and MS being bad thinking that will give them credibilty and then go on to say how great MS really is.

Re:How often does this happen in the /. comments?

[Stonehand]

I don't know whether there's any coordinated attempts by MS to thusly "infiltrate" public discussion forums; when I was there [intern only], I was purely on the software development side, and never involved with dealing with the Outside. It's very possible to work there for quite some time without being involved with company policy, marketing, any form of PR, and so forth...

I do know, however, that:

* They were concerned with their public image, and have more reason to keep that concern nowadays.

* They do not operate in ignorance of potential competition; for instance, Unix experience does not appear to be a negative when hiring, and their are employees that experiment with other operating systems such as Linux in their free time.

* They do have an extensive marketing department. Chances are, there's at least a few of 'em who are no-holds-barred when promoting their products, just as there are employees who don't evangelize about every MS product as the solution to all problems.

* While one might *think* that they'd have some limits, the repeated violations of the implicit rule "Don't EVER piss off the Judge" (remember the "dramatized" videotaped demos?) suggest strongly that at least somebody there makes seriously bad judgement calls.

Re:How often does this happen in the /. comments?

[bornholtz]

This article makes me wonder how often this kind of thing happens in the slashdot comments...

I think on /. there are enough comments that the FUD can be sorted out. If one person posts a message (anonymously or not) stating a fact, but 25 people post messages contradicting it, then I can safely discredit the original poster.

Re:How often does this happen in the /. comments?

[HP LoveJet]

Really?

I've been a /. user for over a year and I can't recall that being a very common formula. Maybe I'm reading the wrong comments.

If there are any that come to mind, could you point me to the cids?

spawn_of_yog_sothoth

Re:How often does this happen in the /. comments?

[Anonymous Coward]

As the one who started this thread I find everbodys comments very interesting.

However I would like to comment on the following:

if one person posts a message (anonymously or not) stating a fact, but 25 people post messages contradicting it, then I can safely discredit the original poster.

Yes, but (horror) imagine if someone goes to the trouble of making 20 different users and logs in with each one and posts comments like product A is crap bla, bla, bla. I have better experiences with product B and similar.

If they went out and got some random IP's or used spoofing/Ip-aliasing or something to appear to be from random places. Off course they would have to create the new accounts over a period of time so it was not so suspicous with 20 accounts created all at once.

Imagine the credibility 10 different non anonymous cowards mixed with anonymous cowards that to a mixed degree support the same claim would have.

The FUDmeisters would off course need to have technical knowledge of the subject that are being discussed to be credible enough to be believed. I belive a sufficently intelligent team of say 3-5 people could pull something like this off and succeed. They don't have to say outright that product A sucks, they could be very vague, and with and even some of them trying to support product A in a lame way would probably be to their advantage. Now if they even have built up some karma over time on issues they don't want to be FUD'ing and be known to the /. community they would be even more credible.

PPPParanoid? You got that one right....

Re:How often does this happen in the /. comments?

[Kris_J]

If one person posts a message (anonymously or not) stating a fact, but 25 people post messages contradicting it, then I can safely discredit the original poster.

Why 25? What if M$ has a team of 20 people, each with several accounts on each relevant forum and can easily come up with 60+ pro-M$ comments on /., on important issues.

This is the problem, unless you know who the person really is, you don't know when they have a vested interest, or bias on a particular issue. Heck, even when you do know who the person is, you don't always know of background deals - just search for "Cash for Comments" in Australian news feeds (Quick summary; Oz's most popular Radio personality, and others, presented a range of Editorial-style comments that were basically paid adverts, without disclosing relationships and payments)

I've been saying that ACs should be banned, but perhaps /. should provide a way for us to flag with a colour specific posters as being reliable, or unreliable. I know karma attempts this, but it needs to be more obvious - maybe low karma = red postings, high karma = green postings...?

Re:How often does this happen in the /. comments?

[guran]

This is exactly why this "open source community" cannot be trusted.

Open your system to linux, mozilla or free-whatever and you will immediatly open your system to virus makers, illegal mp3, and perhaps even command-line interfaces (shudder)

The proper way to deal ewith these threats is to use a single, well-known, reliable provider (such as Microsoft (TM))
That way every poster will be logged, and any ill intent will be catched by the new MS Echelon 2000 (TM) system

Now if we just substitute the peer moderation system for the much more reliable marketing/lawyer-moderation the quality of /. will improve hugely.

You all know that our freedom to innovate (TM) always has depended on the use of proprietary closed code. Preferably in the hands of a big benevolent company.

Re:How often does this happen in the /. comments?

[Anonymous Coward]

The previous should be moderated as funny.

Re:How often does this happen in the /. comments?

[guran]

Thank you.
You should be moderated as insightful ;-)

Re:How often does this happen in the /. comments?

[m3000]

It happens I'm sure, but just because someone does post a pro-MS comment doesn't make them spies of Microsoft. I myself use and like a lot of Microsoft products, and do defend againt the FUD /. spreads about them, but I do not work for MS in any way what-so-ever. I love Linux too, but that doesn't mean I hate MS. I'm sure there are Linux zombies who go to other boards saying how much Linux rules, but in the Linux world, you can't get paid for it or have someone order you to do it. But that doesn't mean it doesn't get done.

Funny, if a little old, one-liner, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite true:

Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.

For the education of all Slashdot readers, the correct version is:

• Those who do not understand Lisp are doomed to reinvent it... poorly.

C and Unix -with a lot of help from Microsoft- have plunged the computer industry into the dark ages like the Catholic Church plunged Europe into the Dark Ages.

Re:Funny, if a little old, one-liner, but...

[slashdot-terminal]

Well I don't really believe that. And if you want you actually can develop C++ and Java and almost any other new fashionable language on unix/Linux as well. Ever heard of g++ or the gjc (the gnu java compiler). Personally I think that unix is quite good. And for the disabled nothing beats systems that rely on text based technology and the like. I assume that you think macs are the solution correct? Well if that is the case then are there any good tools for say blind people? The more things change the more they stay the same. Until speech technology and intelligent AI are actually created (basically a problem that innovation and cheap hardware can fix) we will be at a disadvantage.

Re:Funny, if a little old, one-liner, but...

[hawk]

>C and Unix -with a lot of help from Microsoft-
>have plunged the computer industry into the
>dark ages like the Catholic Church plunged Europe
>into the Dark Ages.

intriguing, I don't see how to parse this. Is this supposed to mean that C, unix, and MS are all horrible, by the analogy that the Catholic Church actually plunged Europe into the dark ages?

Or is it using the falsity of the latter statement to claim that C, unix, and ms are all free of guilt, and that there is no dark age?

Re:Funny, if a little old, one-liner, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you assume the guy likes Macs? What do Macs and Lisp have to do with each other?

Re:Funny, if a little old, one-liner, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

intriguing, I don't see how to parse this. Is this supposed to mean that C, unix, and MS are all horrible, by the analogy that the Catholic Church actually plunged Europe into the dark ages?

Yes.

Re:Funny, if a little old, one-liner, but...

[GregWebb]

C and Unix - with a lot of help from Microsoft - have plunged the computer industry into the dark ages like the Catholic Church plunged Europe into the Dark Ages.

Oh, it's nice to find someone else who doesn't like C!

My attitude for quite a while has simply been that it was devised as a portable asembler for writing operating systems. All well and good, and a purpose it fulfils admirably, I'm sure. But I don't write operating systems - I natter on about them lots with KOSH, but I'm not an OS coder. So why should I have to use that level of control? I'd much rather use Delphi (or an equivalent uprated Pascal) which gives me power when I need it, simplicity the rest of the time. That way writing the code becomes second nature so quickly it's silly, whereas there's a lot more language to learn with C, for little or no benefit to most programmers IMO.

BTW, this isn't me saying that I would fight the use of C within KOSH to anyone who knows what I'm talking about, merely that I don't choose it for my own coding.

Greg

Re:Funny, if a little old, one-liner, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

This guy is just pissed that the Lisp Machines went bye bye. All the languages you listed are still procedural or object oriented. He evidently prefers functional languages. Of course, the only functional language I've found that doesn't make me want to vomit is Haskell.

Re:Funny, if a little old, one-liner, but...

[hawk]

OK, just checking. SO it is that you're ignorant about both past and present; at least you're consistent.

[Either that or he has a rational explanation about how the Catholic Church (as an institution, not just Christian morality) caused the collapse of the Roman Empire, rather than a rant about the knowledge the Church preserved as society collapsed was kept to itself for too long.

But then again, it's an AC, so it needn't be rational . . .]

Not Just Consumer Hardware

[netpuppy]

This kind of manipulation doesn't just happen in the consumer hardware space. Network hardware, in particular, seems to be based entirely on marketingspeak and fudged benchmarks. I haven't seen anyone go so far as to try to poison reviews in a public forum, but I have seen:

Single-processor 250Mhz Sun servers tested against Quad P3-500 Xeons

Performance numbers which assume that there are no features running on the product

Liberal use of "catchphrases" like "non-blocking switch" when technical details disagree

Benchmarks which favor vendor-specific implementations (just see how much better ASAPI does than Perl/CGI in a benchmark)

Blaming everything else around the device which seems to be having a problem (it's the router/firewall/switch/NIC/Server Proc, not my load-balancing device)

The more someone thinks they can get away with, the more they'll try. We should just crucify/boycott companies who use these tactics, as it will be impossible to trust them in the future. The free market, if properly informed, will take care of these abusers of consumer trust.

Re:Not Just Consumer Hardware

[JimStoner]

Isn't Open Source Good, Fast and Free ?

OT: monospace

[tzanger]

Unfortunately, when they're Anonymous Cowards, it gets a bit harder to tell if you've got:

Sorry for the OT post, but how the hell do you get monospace output on /.????

I've tried the pre, blockquote and tt tags... anyone?

Re:OT: monospace

[zantispam]

It is the <tt> tag. View the source and see that Mr. Brown used this tag.

As an example, I'm using them right now.

Jedi Hacker (Apprentice) and Code Poet

Some Dirt on a Former Company

[Anonymous Coward]

The only reason I see for keeping AC post is for posts like this one. Former employees.

At a game company I used to work for they had a military guy hired/paid to endorse thier arcade flight sim as the most realistic ever(you probably can guess the company from that phrase). For some time after the product shipped, this guy would post in the flightsim newgroup about how he was a military pilot and that the companie's flight sim flew just like the real thing,blah,blah,blah... People eventually caught on. It's hard to say if this really made any difference in sales. But it certainly made a lot of people on the net hate the company even more.

Another example comes from before the above mentioned flight sim shipped. They had their two sales dudes and the tech support staff constanlly calling stores asking when the companies flight sim was comming out - maybe even preordering it - to whip up preorders. This has got to be pretty common.

If it wasn't for MicroSoft, you might think these practices were pretty sleazy...

Re:Some Dirt on a Former Company

[SoftwareJanitor]

In the book and record industries some companies will actually buy their own books/CDs/tapes at retail outlets (generally ones that they have identified as being ones that are participating in rating services or which are believed to be influential in determining ordering for the chain) in order to make them 'bestsellers' or to drive further stock orders.

One particular book publisher who has been accused of this is Bridge Publications which is a Scientology front company and primary publisher of the pulp sci-fi writings of the late L. Ron Hubbard (Scientology founder). Employees of one of the major bookstore chains have said that books shipped to them by Bridge often come pre-labeled with the bookstore chain's own price stickers and occasionally with price stickers from other stores).

There have been rumors that Microsoft has used the same tactic in promotion of Bill Gate's books ("The Road Ahead" and more recently "Business @ the Speed of Thought"), although I haven't heard any damning evidence like the price stickers to substantiate them.

Re:Some Dirt on a Former Company

[swordgeek]

Here's a sad state of affairs.

Despite being a (moderately) avid flight sim fan, I have no idea what company you're talking about. Why? Because just about every sim I can remember in recent history has been hyped as 'just like flying a plane' etc. etc., and as someone who has flown a plane, none of 'em are even close.[1]

So much noise that the message gets ignored? Marketing types, in general, don't seem to understand that concept.

[1] Oh, except maybe the original Flight Unlimited. Damned fine sim! Even there, you don't bank in your computer chair, though.

Re:Some Dirt on a Former Company

[Anonymous Coward]

"most realistic flight sim ever" was a quote on the box of NovaLogics's F22. They got slamed pretty hard on it. Should have been obvious to anyone who doesn't pirate their games, but actually buys them...

Re:Some Dirt on a Former Company

[wct]

I'm not sure if we're on the same wavelength, but to shed more light if we are:

It was pretty well known that "Wild" Bill Stealey, Microprose prez, held a desk job in the Air Force while thoroughly endorsing his company's sim in the computer press.

Daniel.

This is not very good... For him...

[WowTIP]

*rotflol* Hoho... i haven't laughed so much in a week... How could a company employ such a loon for a that important position in the company? Isn't it better to just redesign their own homepage??? "Our product suck, We lie to you & we are not ashamed about it...".

Cheap...

[intensity]

What ever happened to reputable business practices...? We all know what a cut-throat market the computer industry is. What gets me is that most of us choose products based on prior experience and from reading reviews and other user experiences from places like Ars... A company succeeds in this industry by providing the best technology for the price, staying on top of new developments and supporting those loyal customers that invested in their technology to begin with. I don't think I will ever purchase anything from ArtX after seeing this....

I've seen worse.

[jcr]

The one time a few years back when I had to evaluate some UPS's for a company that was going to but 4,000 of them, I was completely disgusted at the behaviour of the sales reps.

These clowns kept calling me up to try to feed me with misinformation about the compatibility of their competitors' product and the power monitoring software I was testing.

I felt like I'd wandered into a convention of used-car salesmen.

-jcr

Contact info

[El Volio]

Please behave responsibly with this information. IOW, express your feelings, but do so politely and professionally -- otherwise you are sinking to Calle's level.

From ArtX Press Announcements:

For Additional Press Information about ArtX, please contact:

Rick Calle, Director Marketing ArtX
650/842-8455
Rcalle@artxinc.com

For additional information about Ali or Ali products, please contact:

Nancy Hartsoch ALi 408/467-7450
nancy_hartsoch@acer.com


From Contact ArtX:

ArtX, Inc.
3400 Hillview Avenue Building 5, 2nd Floor
Palo Alto, CA 94304
650/842-8400 phone
650/842-0307 fax
info@artxinc.com

From Investor Relations:

For further information, please contact David Orton, President:

deo@artxinc.com

Hardly unique...

[seebs]

Amazon did the same thing to news.admin.net-abuse.email a while back.

Slime does this kind of thing.

Down with Marketing!

[Alkaiser]

Hahaha...oh the evils of marketing. When I used to work at "undisclosed" entertainment software developer, there was no end to what the marketing dept. did.

It seemed to us that all they ever had to do was go to lunch, and eat with people from other marketing departments. (They insisted it wasn't true...sometimes they had to eat dinner.) Then when problems with the games would come up, they didn't field any of the phone calls or complaints. People would complain about our translations, have questions about future games, etc, and of course, none of those calls were routed to marketing.

When we finished our big project of the year everyone who worked on the project got these nice gifts, even the receptionist, who worked for a temp agency, and was leaving fairly soon. There was a hugely upbuilding for everyone, except for the software testers, some of whom had stayed at the office 96 hours straight, who got nothing, because they couldn't order enough. When we asked if we could order more from the company that made them, we were informed that they cost too much. (It's nice to know that Marketing was really looking out for the testing department, and not letting them spend their meager paychecks frivolously.)

Also on repeated occasions, we requested soundtracks, posters, action figures, etc. of the characters from the games we were working on, but apparently, there was only enough of that stuff to hand out to the important people in marketing...and all of our vendors.

And if you ever want to see some other people really get screwed, watch for the next time Interplay (obviously not the company I used to work for.) releases something that is developed in-house. Those games are replete with bugs, because the Marketing people push for the games to be released ahead of schedule. The games come out with errors that have been documented, well before the game is released, and then when the public finds them, the company message boards are full of people flaming the testers. Do the Marketing people say, "Hey, we made a mistake, we set an unreachable deadline." Of course not. They let the testers get flamed, and forbid the testers from saying anything to the contrary of the public opinion of them.

I guess in Marketing, you've got to lie a lot. And in order to lie effectively, you have to delude yourself into thinking that what you're saying is the truth. Maybe it makes it just oh-so much easier to phase out the stupid things you're doing, as well as everything else that goes on around you, so that you think you're the center of the Universe. (Which makes you really uncomfortable when Stephen Hawking talks about whether the Universe is expanding or not. "Should I go on a diet? Am I really expanding that much?")

Or maybe they should all be rounded up and stuck in internment camps.

But it's not just me...there's a great story that I've heard (passed down through many others, of course.) about a Microsoft Marketing Drone and David Corn.

------------------------------------------

"You mean to tell me that the citizens of New York are drinking water with all the electricity taken out of it?!"
-Former Mayor of New York, while on a tour of a hydroelectric dam.

Re:Down with Marketing!

[cpt kangarooski]

But it's not just me...there's a great story that I've heard (passed down through many others, of course.) about a Microsoft Marketing Drone and David Corn.

Ooh, now you have to tell it. I really don't like marketdroids, and this sucks for me b/c I do graphic design and frequently take orders from them.

Re:Down with Marketing!

[Alkaiser]

Hahaha...I feel sorry for you. And me...I currently do website design. All the constant "Hey, that looks good, but can you change this?" Must...control...fist of death.

Anyway, this was related to me by a friend 2 years ago, who wasn't actually there either, so this story's going to be a bit tweaked, (i.e. I don't remember specific product names, etc.) and I'll probably have other /.-ers posting the "real" way it went soon.

Story goes something like this. At some conference of another, Microsoft is unveiling a product which utilizes the Corn kernel. Some guy in the audience stands up while the drone is giving his pre-rehearsed speech. He wants to know why they used a Corn kernel because it's got so many problems. Marketing drone goes on and on about how it has perfect compatiblity, etc. The battle between the audience member and drone goes on for a good 5-10 minutes, when someone else finally stands up and says to the drone, "Dude, that's David Corn." (Sorry for the convolution, but the punch line still works.)

Re:Hi People

[Anonymous Coward]

Happy T Day to you too grits boy !!!

M$

[jrs]

This make's me wonder how many times people from m$ do that. Especially on here :)

One guy?

[Colossus11]

Sounds to me like this isn't a case of the "evil corporation, it's just one guy.

Real big corporations would rather ignore negative Web sites or bury them some other way, not resort to these amateurish tactics.

Making assumptions based on IP address.

[GrimJack]

Althought I read the article and see that the accused basicly owned up to faking both posts (At least that's my take on the response) assuming that multiple messages from the same ip are by the same person is problematic.
At my company we use a firewall with masqing which makes it appear that we are all coming from one ip address, so in the theoretical case that we were to defend our product in a forum like this (Although I wouldn't advocate doing it anonymously) it would look like one person is doing all the posting when it could be multiple people from different departments.

ROTFL, eh?

[Pariah]

"P.S. you're good. snagged my IP, huh?! i'm rotfl - rick." "

To quote Lord John Worfin (John Lithgow in Buckaroo Banzai): 'Laugh-a while you can, Monkey Boy."

I wonder if he'll still be laughing when his company gets Slashdotted with email complaining about him.

Incidentally, his boss is the President of ArtX, David Orton. Mr. Orton's email address is deo@artxinc.com, if you'd care to express your thoughts on this type of behavior to him.

Re:Why marketing types are natural B ship candidat

[blazer1024]

Don't forget that those left on the planet eventually all died from a disease contracted from a dirty telephone... and also don't forget that the B ship ended up on Earth and is where the human race started :)

But seriously, I am getting really sick of these marketing people. You can't really go anywhere and get a reliable objective review. Usually someone's posting anonymously or has been paid to give good reviews. Sigh.

Quotes are Quotes, Whether Claims are True or Not

[Christopher B. Brown]

Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.

It's what Henry Spencer said.

It's widely known.

There may be merit to your contention that not understanding Lisp results in reinventing it badly; Erik Naggum commonly makes that contention about Scheme, and I have no problem with the assertion that anyone building new systems that ignores the Common Lisp HyperSpec is likely doomed to reinvent parts of it less well than CLTL2.

That may mean that a more valid claim would be more like

Those who do not understand both Lisp and UNIX are doomed to reinvent parts of both, badly.

That still does not deny that what is in my .signature is what Henry Spencer said.

I've got a "cookie file" that populates email and news .signatures with random quotes; not all of them are true, at all. Some represent downright falsehoods; the Spencer quote isn't one of those.

If you are feeling so much feeling towards Lisp, then I'm wondering why you're not running Ocelot or SilkOS or NASOS or the rendition of DrScheme atop FluxOS, or, if you're a Common Lisp partisan, perhaps Genera.

Quotes are Quotes, Whether Claims are True or Not

[Christopher B. Brown]

Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.

It's what Henry Spencer said.

It's widely known.

There may be merit to your contention that not understanding Lisp results in reinventing it badly; Erik Naggum commonly makes that contention about Scheme, and I have no problem with the assertion that anyone building new systems that ignores the Common Lisp HyperSpec is likely doomed to reinvent parts of it less well than CLTL2.

That may mean that a more valid claim would be more like

Those who do not understand both Lisp and UNIX are doomed to reinvent parts of both, badly.

That still does not deny the historical fact that what is in my .signature is what Henry Spencer said.

I've got a "cookie file" that populates email and news .signatures with random quotes; not all of them are true, at all. Some represent downright falsehoods; the Spencer quote isn't one of those.

If you are feeling so much feeling towards Lisp, then I'm wondering why you're not running Ocelot or SilkOS or NASOS or the rendition of DrScheme atop FluxOS, or, if you're a Common Lisp partisan, perhaps Genera.

It wasn't a product review.

[Otto]

Several people mentioned that this guy was just defending a product review... Actually, not.

Basically, the original post said that the guy had seen the product (video chipset i think) at a trade show (comdex?) and that it looked pretty crappy there, but that it could be for reasons other than the product itself.

Then this guy from the company concerned starts an email conversation with the poster of the article, saying why it didn't look as good as it could.

It gets pretty involved from here, but basically the marketing guy lied in his emails, then posted two messages using anon accounts to discredit the original poster. ("I saw that, he's full of shit!" type of thing) He used the tactic of making the first post look like it was written by an idiot, agreeing with the article, then the second post (a reply) looks more intelligent, and backs the company and the product.

Original article poster checks IP's on the posts, sees they're the same, and posts a note saying to be warned as both these posts were made by the same guy.

Then the marketing guy sends another e-mail to the article poster and says "found my IP's out, eh? pretty smart" or something to that effect.

Naturally, this is pretty appalling to the original article poster.

I mean here's a marketing guy trying to defend his product. A noble cause, nothing wrong with that, but the tactics used are nothing short of disgusting. Admittedly, used right they WORK, but still...

I think this is a case of someone just being caught in the act. Obviously, the marketing guy is a bit clueless, since he admitted his guilt via e-mail, and didn't realize how disturbing this was to the internet user psyche.

Marketing tactics have done stuff like this for decades. The "rumor mill" and "word of mouth" is a well-known phenomenon. Commercials and advertising will notify an audience your product exists. Product reviews will get a select few to buy. Word of mouth can get the entire population to go for it.

Just look at the movies, for example. How many of you have seen a movie because a friend recommended it? Hell, usually that's the only reason I'll see a movie. Reviews often just don't have that much impact.

But many years ago on the Usenet, someone discovered the secret to easy word of mouth on the 'net. Anonymity.

Bit sad, really. I think a product will sell itself, if it's a good product.


---

Re:It wasn't a product review.

[Some Strange Guy]

>Bit sad, really. I think a product will sell
>itself, if it's a good product.

Ahh, if only this were true. Time and time again, though, it's simply not the case; having a good product is important, but it's neither critical nor is it the MOST important aspect of surviving in the marketplace.

Some quick examples we should all know about:

• 95 vs (OS/2|Be|etc)
• x86 vs (Alpha|Sparc|Mips|etc)
• NT vs (Unix|Linux|VMS|etc)

And these are areas in which paid IT professionals are often doing the purchasing! It's those areas wherein people without experience, much less expertise, do the purchasing that marketing REALLY reigns supreme. Consumer electronics is just ripe for the picking of marketers.

A friend taking a business class at a university once told me about a survey which asked for an agree/disagree on this:

The first obligation of a company is to the stockholders. Any action which increases profits is always ethical and justified.

Well over half the class agreed wholeheartedly.

This culture of greed, more than anything else, is what bothers me about our future.

Re:It wasn't a product review.

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it sad that the original (non-)reveiwer refused to consider the possibility that he was wrong in any way as well. He states that he was at the booth for an hour and didn't see any mention of the TNT. One glance at ALI's comdex web site and you'd see that they were demoing 2 chipsets. One was the Aladin TNT and one was the Aladin 7. Somehow I doubt that the TNT chipset was completely left out of the show...

Re:It wasn't a product review.

[jemfinch]

One point to be made is that "the original poster" wasn't just a "poster". He is one of the owners and operators of ArsTechnica (an incredible website). He's not just some joe blow off the internet, spouting off about how some video he saw at comdex sucked; he's a very knowledgeable computer professional currently in grad school at Harvard Divinity School.

So it's not just a case of a crazy marketing nut posting anonymously on some website. It's the king nut of marketing at a company, posting and calling the owner/operator of a significantly trafficked website a liar. To his face. In front of everyone who reads Ars.

This is far beyond simple FUD.

Jeremy

Re:It wasn't a product review.

[jemfinch]

The original reviewer was not just some guy posting on a forum about his experience at comdex. He's one of the operators of website. He's a knowledgeable computer professional and is now in grad school at Harvard. His website's integrity is at stake when he recounts his experience at Comdex, so if he says the Aladin TNT wasn't there, I believe the Aladin TNT wasn't there.

It'd be interesting if slashdot logged IP addresses...this post sounds quite like the ones made by a certain executive at ArtX...

Jeremy

Re:It wasn't a product review.

[es]

The original reviewer was not just some guy posting on a forum about his experience at comdex. He's one of the operators of website. He's a knowledgeable computer professional and is now in grad school at Harvard. His website's integrity is at stake when he recounts his experience at Comdex, so if he says the Aladin TNT wasn't there, I believe the Aladin TNT wasn't there. Ok, if it will make you feel better, here are some links you can visit:

ALI/nVidia press release about their combined TNT2/nortbridge chipset: http://www.ali.com.tw/eng/news/sep99b.htm

ALI/ArtX press release about their combined gfx/northbridge chipset: http://www.ali.com.tw/eng/news/nov99a.htm

ALI advance info about what they are showing at Comdex: http://www.ali.com.tw/eng/news/nov99b.htm

Note that in the last one they say: It is that time of the year again for Comdex Fall, considered one of the largest computer exhibitions in the world. As usual, Acer Laboratories, Inc. (ALi), the world's leading integrated circuit solution provider, is joining the exhibition. Aside from the recently introduced Aladdin 7, Socket 7's graphics integration system chipset, the company will also exhibits Aladdin TNT2, graphics integration system chipset for Slot1/Socket 370, as well as MPEG-2 decode and DVD channel control total solution for DVD-ROM and DVD player.

Pretty clearly states they showed a TNT2 chipset there as well doesn't it?

Re:It wasn't a product review.

[drwr]

if he says the Aladin TNT wasn't there, I believe the Aladin TNT wasn't there.

Read a bit more carefully. He didn't actually say the TNT wasn't there--he said he doesn't know. (And how could he?)

But he did say he was at the booth for an hour and that no one there mentioned the TNT in any way.

He also offers two more arguments in partial support of the suspicion that what he saw was not a TNT2 board (whether or not there were TNT boards at the booth or not): (1) it would be surprising that ArtX would put the Quake star on some other hardware than their own, and (2) one would expect a TNT2 board to generate a higher frame rate.

However, these are just arguments. Hannibal only presents, reasonably objectively, the facts as he saw them. He does not make ungrounded assertions one way or the other about what he did or did not see. When he does present his opinion it is clearly introduced as such.

This reasonable and rational behavior is in clear contrast to Calle's schoolboy pranks.

Re:It wasn't a product review.

[JimStoner]

This culture of greed, more than anything else, is what bothers me about our future.

I agree. I feel this culture of greed is the shadow of the American dream - It is the top issue I would like to see America address. Consider the business practices of Coke, Malboro, Microsoft, Nike, McDonalds.

I'm not "bashing" the USA. This is a considered statement. I also see many positive aspects to America.

...I think it comes from being English *laughs*.

Look to law enforcement.

[slashdot-terminal]

Law enforcement makes it a matter of pride that they catch "stupid people" commiting crimes. And before that artists and free thinkers were considered morons. It's all about what the intellectual climate is in the place that you live.

link for the lazy

[Ender Ryan]

deo@artxinc.com

1999 - The Year We Got Hyped

[Randy Rathbun]

I was sitting here thinking about all this. Just yesterday we got to see the story about the book seller reading everyone's email to find out what they were saying to Amazon.com. Today it is this. Hell, it has not even been a whole year since all the DIVX sites started popping up all over the place.

It is for these reasons I am grateful that Slashdot exists. It is the net.community's way of keeping the bullshit level from the money grubbers to a minimum.

Keep it up folks. I think we all appreciate it.

Is boycotting appropriate?

[B!!]

Is boycotting thier products neccessary, and appropriate? You'd hate to see a company destroyed because they hired some bumbling idiot to do their marketing. Regardless of how childish Mr. Calle acted, if their product is superior (not that it sounds like it is) to what is on the market, then people should/will buy it. I'm sure Mr. Calle will be dealt with shortly anyways.

Re:Why marketing types are natural B ship candidat

[stuntpope]

This scenario was replayed in Futurama recently. I'd forgotten it came from the Hitchhiker's Guide while watching...I should re-read the series (again).

Re:Hi People

[Anonymous Coward]

Uv crbcyr. V'ir whfg cbherq ubg tevgf qbja zl cnagf !!!

Unccl Gunaxftvivat sebz gur tevgf obl !!!

Wasn't the Mrktng dept of Sirius Cybernetics

[ch-chuck]

Corporation to be the first one's up against the wall when the revolution comes ? :))

Chuck

Its about logging IPs

[seyed]

I think the guy meant that some people get all up in arms when people log there IP, because their anonymity isn't preserved.

That is still an issue in my book...

Re:Its about logging IPs

[Lord Kano]

>>I think the guy meant that some people get all up in arms when people log there IP, because their anonymity isn't preserved.


There are ways to get around IP logging.

LK

A part of the "self regulating internet"

[sfmarco]

Quite interesting to see how a self regulating society (i.e. internet) keep up finding solutions for unwanted behaviour.

People are aware of the IP logging and I think (IMHO) people should post honnest opinions, or make clear with what intent the message is written.

The anonymous post is more avoiding SPAM etc, and gives a certain degree of privacy. It should not be an excuse for misbehaviour.

The level on the internet has gone down quite a bit since it left the university/scientific world. So let's go back and share information. Not just misleading "well hard so say" information

Boycotting is a effective tool

[GoofyBoy]

Yes boycotting is appropriate.

The only voice a consumer has is with his/her wallet. If everyone did buy their product regardless of the actions of the employees wouldn't that RE-ENFORCE their behavour?

"How did you company get to be so successful?"
"Well the key is to get the consumer to buy, not matter what the quality of your product. Crush any bad-word of mouth and critics, by any means, including lying. "
"Isn't that wrong?"
"Hey, it got me rich!"

Winning by any means is not acceptable.

By not speaking out, you are still sending a message.

I just wish that Artx would respond to this either here or on Ars.

Re:first post

[Anonymous Coward]

Svefg Cbfg!!!

Re:GILLIAN ANDERSON

[Anonymous Coward]

ya know slashdot needs to record the lowest karma and the highest karma on a page somewhere cuz that would be kewl. It would be fun to read the most important idiotic posts ever too. Like the first "First Post". Or a Meept collection or the lignux guy. I loved him, I wish he would come back.

Nintendo Contact info?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anonymous Coward here...

Does anyone know who to contact over at Nintendo about this little incident? I'd like to explain to them why I will be buying Playstation2 over the Dolphin.

Thank you.

Re:Nintendo Contact info?

[Mong0]

Their online manager's email address is dano@nintedo.com.

More contact info

Corporate address:
Nintendo of America PO Box 957 Redmond, WA 98073

General questions and comments: E-mail nintendo@nintendo.com.

Hope this helps you out.

Re:Hi People

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you freakin' drownin' or sumthin'?

marketing agencies and guerilla marketing

[coffeedreg]

I word for a somewhat large ad agency -- we do work for a soda company, a major European car company, a baby food company and a major watch company. Anyway, an encouraged and smiled-upon practice here is what they call "guerilla marketing," which is not limited to: spraypainting/chaulking walls and sidewalks with a client's product name in an attempt to fake "grass roots" support and buzz; engaging in "viral emailing" wherein an account executive or project director emails 10 - 20 people they know with product hype in the hope that those people will email 10 - 20 people, etc.; by camping in newsgroups that may contain our audience's demographic and posting about their "experiences" with a product, and, as seen recently, by posting in forums on enthusiast Web sites. Such practices are often done with the client's express consent and I can guarantee that other agencies do these things as well.

Anyway, the point is that ArtX is not the only company that is seeding "interest" in their products or services by posing as outsiders. At least at the firm I work at, it is actively encouraged.

Re:marketing agencies and guerilla marketing

[Morel]

AFAIK the term Guerilla Marketing was coined by Jay Conrad Levinson (see www.gmarketing.com) for his series of books by the same name. The idea was, for small businesses, to minimize the cost of marketing by employing alternative tactics that would provide big results without the typical and expensive mediums (TV) and strategies (Wide shotgun pattern approach).
The tactics you describe sound a wee bit unethical to me, and it seems that this sort of usage of the web is increasing.
There was an article in TIME recently that mentioned a similar phenomenon: a shift from a scientist/hacker dominated atmosphere where most things are free and meritocracy rules, to a place where MBAs from Stanford and Harvard are gunning for the IPOs without any regard for accepted web ethics.

Morel

Re:Hi People

[Anonymous Coward]

He (or she) was using ROT-13, for some deranged reason. Here's what it says:

Hi people. I've just poured hot grits down my pants !!!

Happy Thanksgiving from the grits boy !!!

Well well well, it appears to be gritboy!

Re:Why marketing types are natural B ship candidat

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I see no need to wait for the development of interstellar travel. Just load up a ship and send them off. s/coward/lazy bastard/i

Scheme...ick.

[Alkaiser]

Just gotta give Erik Naggum props for supporting my contention that Scheme is a POS.

What about poor Kornelia?

[tallpaul]

It looks like this marketing guy implied that she was the one that lied (to him) which is why he was "confused." Are you out there Kornelia? Are you still working for these guys?

Fake posters on Slashdot.

[Dacta]

Yesterday, in the story about John Carmack there was someone pretending to be John Carmack & getting moderated up.

The otherday, (The sourceforge story) someone said something bad about Chris DiBone (sp?) from VA, and someone called Chris DiBone replied in a very inflamatory manner, and got moderated up.

I do blame the moderators for this, but there is not way of checking if these people are for real - maybe IP addresses should be posted with logged in users, unless they check a box that says "Do not post IP address"....

--Donate food by clicking: www.thehungersite.com

Re:GILLIAN ANDERSON

[strredwolf]

-35 Karma?!?

Sheesh, at that level, it's proven the person is only hot air and doesn't exist at all. Don't we have a "You're a proven kook" flag which removed posting abilities from the member (or better yet, just remove the member)?

Game over, man, game over!

---
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com." The purpose of that site was not known. -- MSNBC 10-26-1999 on MS crack

Absolutely!

[The OPTiCIAN]

• 
  I mean here's a marketing guy trying to defend his product. A noble cause, nothing wrong with that, but the tactics used are nothing short of disgusting. Admittedly, used right they WORK, but still...
  
  I think this is a case of someone just being caught in the act. Obviously, the marketing guy is a bit clueless, since he admitted his guilt via e-mail, and didn't realize how disturbing this was to the internet user psyche.
  

Absolutely! It's important we keep this in prespective and see a larger problem rather than scapegoat one guy. I mean, part of what he was doing was somewhat tongue in cheek. If I was gong to fake comments (and I've never done it, but we've lall thought about how it wold be done), I'd do a hell of a lot better than he did, but maybe it just became something of a game between him and Hannibal (arstechnica writer).

I mean - his comments made it pretty obvious that there was a connection between the email exchange and the posts.

But what's to say I'm not just saying this to protect him? :) :) My IP traces to Australia and this account has a karma of 3 :) :)

Cash for Comments

[The OPTiCIAN]

In Australia atm there is a huge furor about marketing tactics used through prominent radio personalities. There's a Sydney talkback personality called John Laws who has become renoun for his near-baseless and irrational but extremely influential criticisms of policy, etc. His rating are amazing. However our ever diligent "Media-Watch" program uncovered a scheme whereby he waqs being paid to participate in 'subtle' advertising tachniques. Optus, or the Banks' lobby group, or Qantus or a number of other companies would pay him several hundred thousand dollars in return for a 'spontaneous' piece of praise of mention of their services, products or reputation. But boy, is he screwed now that it's out in public!

Re: I don't think so

[Anonymous Coward]

I know everyone's heard this a million times, but...

I don't think that people use Micros~1 products just becuase they believe the hype. Microsoft has momentum, they have a large portion of the market. Any smart software company is going to develop (at least for the end users) for Windows. They make money this way. It doesn't matter if it's inferior, it's where all the products, users, and money is. Even if people (like myself) believe there are better products out there, there's not the software base.

I know it's changing, I'm just saying that I don't think people use Windows just because of the hype.

After Linux is... (Was: Re:To be expected)

[Gurlia]

IMHO GNU/Hurd looks promising... it's based on a new OS technology (microkernel), which Linux has traces of (dynamically loaded modules), but probably won't have since it's an architectural/design change. I personally like the microkernel concept, because from my viewpoint an OS should be there to support what applications want to do, and not dictate what they can do. As such, the "untouchable" part of the OS (ie. the kernel) should be as small as possible. In the case of Hurd, the Mach microkernel provides almost the bare minimum an OS provides -- Hurd is simply a set of services ("interfaces" to be precise) that run on top of Mach. The good thing about this is that apps that expect a POSIX interface will find that it's implemented in Hurd; whereas if an app ever wants to do things differently, it can always implement its own interface and run off that. So, it is possible to "bypass" Hurd if you ever wanted to: it's there as a convenience (we don't want to keep reimplementing POSIX services for example) but it's not imposed on you.

However, at the moment Hurd is still in its development and it's really hard to tell whether it will be the "Next Big Thing" after Linux. This is just my take on Hurd. :-)

In defense of ACs

[Anonymous Coward]

I've noticed that the vast majority of posters who have accounts on /. don't supply any email or web address. Therefore, they are just as anonymous as an AC. You are an exception.

Does that mean you are opposed to all posters who are anonymous (including those who have accounts), or just ACs?

Re:In defense of ACs

[Tony-A]

Most of us would rather not be spammed or the target of email bombing. Also the opinions expressed are private and not those of our employers.

Easy solution...

[cabbey]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

need I say more?
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGPfreeware 6.0 for non-commercial use

iQA/AwUBODxtVJbuFrVpZ9bSEQLdKQCdHTC0cRO8tgwRHzSi IyWNsJX2D1UAn3j4
EfaIDJ4tZDgqPb9O6z28Z3mP
=X8pF
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----





admitedly the layout of slashdot makes it more difficult to copy this out to verify it than it should... a link to retrieve the text of a comment/story as plain text (without the html formatting wrapper) would help a LOT (hint hint rob)

The "Technocracy"

[Alkaiser]

If someone is computer illiterate, I have no qualms about helping them. But then, should they be doing the advertising for a product that is going to be used by people who are computer illiterate? I'm not belittling people who don't know, I'm belitting who don't know, and whose job it is to act like they DO know.

Why not have 2 camps of marketing? The one for the novice end-user, and the department for the techies? (One guy who DOES know what he's talking about can handle the workload of 4 people trying to make stuff up.)

Truth of the matter is, that marketers, at least in the bloated, lying form they are present in now, do not need to exist. They get made fun of because they are responsible for the majority of the public eyesores that develop...

Re:The "Technocracy"

[billybob jr]

I agree, my main point was that marketing bs works because the consumer doesn't know better.

Devils Advocates...

[Christopher B. Brown]

Yes, that probably is a useful form of "Anonymous Coward."

If you look at one of the threads that my comments spawned, there's some opportunity for such... One AC commented on the Henry Spencer quote that I use as .signature, suggesting essentially that "Using UNIX, not Lisp" has set computing back ten years. I can play both sides of that one, to some extent, as I'm involved with writing Lisp code for GnuCash, and my "contribution of the week" has been to figure out how to make Guile hash tables Generally Useful. (Guile doesn't have a (hash-for-each FUNCTION TABLE) function; I wrote one that runs in reasonably-close-to-linear time, which probably ought to wander both to GnuCash as well as to the Guile developers...)

It surely would be difficult to contribute usefully to a discussion when playing multiple roles.

Astroturf

[Ungrounded Lightning]

In politics the equivalent strategy is called "Astroturf" - because it's creating phony grass-roots comments.

An ArtX employee's thoughts...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is in no way an official response, but I felt I better speak up before things get really out of hand.

I'm really disappointed in the responses with the readers of Slashdot. Though I can understand where everyone may be coming from, as an employee of ArtX, this disappoints me tremendously.

Fact of the matter is, the ArtX chip is really good for what it's supposed to be. The ALi booth at COMDEX had both the ArtX product as well as the Aladdin TNT2 product. I'm not sure what Hannibal saw at the booth but, IMHO, the ArtX part looked better than the TNT2 part, both in terms of video quality and in terms of frame rate on Quake III Arena (I was at COMDEX on Friday so I can also comment on this though you may not believe me due to my obvious bias).

Though the Aladdin 7 part is not as good as the GeForce 256 or the other latest-generation add-in card products, it is still extremely good for an integrated solution. The goal for this part is to get good gaming performance to low-cost (sub-$1000, even sub-$600) machines. I believe we've succeeded.

As for the Nintendo console product, Nintendo picked ArtX because of the proven track-record of its engineers. All of us at ArtX and Nintendo think this will be a kick-ass console system.

Like a few people have said in earlier threads, sales of the ArtX part will probably not be hurt by the comments on /., but I still want to make sure I clear up any misconceptions. It hurts me tremendously to see this negative response on a site that I've come to count on for good news over the past few years and I really hope everyone at /. gives ArtX more of a chance.

-anand (Anand Mandapati) anand@artxinc.com

Re:An ArtX employee's thoughts...

[Anonymous Coward]

The point wasn't whether or not your product is any good, really. it is that your marketing guy went out and faked posts, and, beyond that, went as far as to try and disparage the original poster who posted a negative opinion about your product, while masquerading as a third party. Went as far as to use expletives and to claim the original poster was a liar. This is plain wrong behavior. ------- >I'm really disappointed in the responses with >the readers of Slashdot. Though I can understand >where everyone may be coming from, as an >employee of ArtX, this disappoints me >tremendously. >Fact of the matter is, the ArtX chip is really >good for what it's supposed to be

Re:An ArtX employee's thoughts...

[radja]

I for one will not use any more artX products. The company has shown it cannot be trusted. This tactic would be illegal in most countries probably.. and if it isn't.. well.. it's about time it was. I will never recommend any artX product, and will inform customers on their malicious spread of inaccurate information. With a bit of luck, artX will get a hefty fine.

//rdj

Re:An ArtX employee's thoughts...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just give it up, Rick.

Back up your claims, please?

[Gorphrim]

I hadn't heard about those cases. Any idea where they might be documented?

Re:Back up your claims, please?

[Lord Kano]

The xenu case and the Y2k case are linked form Slashdot.

See

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/11/24/0132 32&mode=thread

and

http://slashdot.org/yro/99/11/19/0219227.shtml

The Nuremberg Files incident can be found with a simple yahoo, google, or metacrawler search look for "Nuremberg files" and you'll get tons of hits about the situation.

LK

my soapbox... again

[kwashiorkor]

So a few days ago there was something about lawyers responding to /. questions about the MS monopoly situation, and I tried to make a few points about how no matter what "solution" is applied, we'll simply face the problem again because of two simple reasons:

1. we can't shut up marketing departments without infringing on their rights.
2. we can't educate the populace that enjoys being blissfully unaware of being led around by the nose by the hucksters.

[click to read]

Maybe my comments were not exactly on topic in the MS monopoly forum, and maybe they're not on topic here but when I read about this situation sometime this afternoon, I felt that maybe rehashing what I had to say might be appropriate.

No matter that free market theory is based on the ascendence of product superiority, reality indicates that it's simply about the sales job. It's all about mindshare and that's why the marketing department gets brand new workstations every year, and the actual product engineers get screwed. It's not about how good the product is, it's all about how well it sells.

So, the ArtX product chews. Rick the marketing guy is an ass. So what? It's all irrelevant.

The only sector of the populace that cares are those in the know, namely, us. We know that they're screwing the public and making big chunks of change in an underhanded manner. We're angry because they're doing it once again and we can't do a thing about it.

So we trash the ArtX product. It gets smeared across all forms of media. We laugh triumphantly at the doom that Rick brought down on their heads. Irrelevant. They'll probably still sell enough of the product to recoup their initial investement; remember, they are now in the public eye, thanks to our free negative _publicity_.

In any case, Rick will be sacked (along with a golden parachute) by ArtX as a gesture to the "community", proving their good intentions. Then Rick will get a job somewhere else. If he's been paying attention to his mistakes thus far, he has probably learned a lesson. Now he'll know how to coordinate a proper mindshare assault over the net. Maybe he'll end up working for MS on their next "stop picking on poor-little-old MS" grassroots campaign.

Whatever. He and his breed will always be there as long as people want to make lots of money. They're 10 times more important then the producers, because they have all the numbers to prove it.

That's not the point.

[Hanno]

The readers at /. are not angry because of your product, so there's no need to defend it. These people are p*ssed because of the behaviour of your marketing department (or at least one person of it).

While it's nice that you come here to post a message, it would have been nice to actually hear *your view* on the *actual matter*.

So thanks for coming by, but now, let's talk about the original subject.

------------------

Re:That's not the point.

[es]

*my view* (and mine alone) is that Rick handled the situation poorly. A well worded forum post giving details on the setup at Comdex in the ALI booth, and signed by him, would have gone very far in clearing up the misconceptions about what was there. 2 of the 4 machines hooked up for deathmatch were running with the integrated Aladdin TNT2 chipset. 2 were running with the Aladdin 7.

The fact that Hannibal failed to even notice the existence of the TNT2's bothers me as well. As does his refusal to believe that TNT2's were there, or do any checking into the matter with another source. 2/3 of the article talks about the email exchange (noone has bitched about him taking private email and publicizing it yet).

It is far too easy to pick on a marketing person trying to discuss technical details. 2 paragraphs about the LCD information. So in his email Rick mixed up refresh with persistence. That was an unfortunate mistake. You should try watching a DVD movie on one of those screens and you will see the persistence problem.

Fast forward to another couple paragraphs discussing the performance of a TNT2 AIB, which is, of course, completely irrelevant when discussing an integrated chipset. (which is what the other 2 machines had, the Aladdin TNT)

This is followed up by a couple paragraphs discussing whether or not someone was fragged. This really could've been an honest mistake.

In the end, I think that intentionally posting the anonymous messages to the forum was wrong. Nothing said in the email exchange was wrong however. I also think that Hannibal's refusal to accept the possibility of his own mistake was wrong, as was the lack of any attempt to find out what was really shown at Comdex. (Is a trip to the ALI web site so hard?) If you are going to write about something and publish it, you should at least expend some effort to make sure that what you are writing about is the truth.

And yes, I do work at ArtX, though this email is not at all an official company position. I prefer my non-work-related email at home(eric@ericscott.net).

Re:That's not the point.

[Anonymous Coward]

Once again the point is avoided - if Hannibal posting emails was a sin (and I doubt it), the dishonor he brought would be only upon himself. Your marketing guy faked imflamatory postings, even attacking the guy personally (claiming he lied about the fragging, for example). This dishonor rests upon the company he was representing when he took these actions, and the real question is what will ArtX do about it?

Re:That's not the point.

[es]

Once again the point is avoided - if Hannibal posting emails was a sin (and I doubt it), the dishonor he brought would be only upon himself. Your marketing guy faked imflamatory postings, even attacking the guy personally (claiming he lied about the fragging, for example).

Where exactly did I avoid the point? I thought I was pretty clear in stating that what he did was wrong.

In addition I also brought up the other points, including the email part. I never said posting private emails was a sin, but it is frowned upon. What about the other things I brought up, or are you going to avoid those? Did Hannibal use poor judgement in publishing things without doing his homework? How about spitting out performance numbers for a TNT2 AIB when the discussion is about lower priced, and lower performance integrated chipsets?

Hanno asked to hear *my view* on the *actual matter*. And you've heard it. In case you're partly blind, I'll repeat it. What he did was wrong.

This dishonor rests upon the company he was representing when he took these actions, and the real question is what will ArtX do about it?

There is no question that his behavior reflects on the company as a whole. As director of marketing he is one of our representatives. However in case you are asking *me* what ArtX will do about it, I don't know the answer, and couldn't give it if I did. I'm not a representative of the company, so a can't (and *don't*) speak for them. I'm just a peon engineer. Hanno asked to hear the opinion of someone who worked there so I gave it.

"Believe it if you need it, if you don't just pass it on." - Box of Rain, Hunter

Re:That's not the point.

[Hanno]

> Hanno asked to hear *my view* on
> the *actual matter*. And you've
> heard it.

Yip. And I'd like to thank you for the straightforward answer. Kudos.

------------------

Some useful links - ALI's comdex press releases

[es]

These are also found in another message burried inside of a thread. In case you don't see them there I'm repeating them.

ALI press release on their comdex booth

ALI/Artx press release on the Aladdin 7

ALI/nVidia press release on the Aladdin TNT

If you take the time to look at them, you'll see that ALI was showing both the Artx chip and a TNT2 based chip in the same booth. This is precisely what has been denied by the person giving his thoughts on the booth. In fact he states that he was at the booth for an *hour* and the word TNT was never mentioned. Seeing as one of the 3 products there was called the 'Aladdin TNT,' I find this hard to believe.

There is no denying that Rick Calle screwed up. He should have posted a note to the discussion list pointing out the facts of what was actually shown at the booth and provided proof(such as the URLs above). He should have posted this and put his name and email address at the bottom. He didn't, and that was a mistake. Unfortunately he seemed in a rush to counter some potentially incorrect information that was out there about his company and it's product.

I think we all need to ask ourselves what would happen if we had just released something and someone started talking about in a negative way, *and* it appears that the person may not have even been looking at the product in question? What if I were talking about some new Linux distribution that looked remarkably like Windows98, and performed just as poorly? (And it turned out to actually have been Windows98, but I was *mistaken* in believing that it was Linux?)

David Korn vs. Microsoft Spokesdroid

[Anonymous Coward]

The following was found at http://vancouver-webpages.com /vanlug/1998-5/0401.html. The original author is not clear from the message posted:

I've been attending the USENIX NT and LISA NT (Large Installation Systems Administration for NT) conference in downtown Seattle this weed.

One of those magical Microsoft moments(tm) happened yesterday and I thought that I'd share. Non-geeks may not find this funny at all, but those in geekdom (particularly UNIX geekdom) will appreciate it.

Greg Sullivan, a Microsoft product manager (henceforth MPM), was holding forth on a forthcoming product that will provide Unix style scripting and shell services on NT for compatibility and to leverage UNIX expertise that moves to the NT platform. The product suite includes the MKS (Mortise Kern Systems) windowing Korn shell, a windowing PERL, and lots of goodies like awk, sed and grep. It actually fills a nice niche for which other products (like the MKS suite) have either been too highly priced or not well enough integrated.

An older man, probably mid-50s, stands up in the back of the room and asserts that Microsoft could have done better with their choice of Korn shell. He asks if they had considered others that are more compatible with existing UNIX versions of KSH.

The MPM said that the MKS shell was pretty compatible and should be able to run all UNIX scripts.

The questioner again asserted that the MKS shell was not very compatible and didn't do a lot of things right that are defined in the KSH language spec.

The MPM asserted again that the shell was pretty compatible and should work quite well.

This assertion and counter assertion went back and forth for a bit, when another fellow member of the audience announced to the MPM that the questioner was, in fact David Korn of AT&T (now Lucent) Bell Labs. (David Korn is the author of the Korn shell)

Uproarious laughter burst forth from the audience, and it was one of the only times that I have seen a (by then pink cheeked) MPM lost for words or momentarily lacking the usual unflappable confidence. So, what's a body to do when Microsoft reality collides with everyone elses?

Great if you already know their .sig

[Dacta]

Unless you already know their PGP signature, what is the use of them posting one?

--Donate food by clicking: www.thehungersite.com

What cost ACs?

[Kris_J]

After reading the article, my first response was to ask /. to Ban ACs, as it's obvious that the potential for abuse is too high.

But, since there is a fairly decent moderation-based way of avoiding them, I'd like to ask for one thing.

I'd like one day soon to be AC free. Pick one day soon and ban anonymous comments on that day. Then let's see if the quality of the comments goes up or down. If it goes up, then perhaps one day each month can be sans-AC...

Re:What cost ACs?

[Captain Teflon]

I think not. You can't have /. one day banning AC's (some of whom may actually post good solid info, and may be seeking anonymity for legit reasons), and on another posting stories bemoaning attempts to control privacy, encryption, and content.

Sorry sport, you will still have to use your brain to sort the diamonds from the shit.

Re:What cost ACs?

[Kris_J]

and on another posting stories bemoaning attempts to control privacy, encryption, and content.

Banning ACs isn't censorship. People are still free to post whatever they what, but they can't hide behind anonimity. Freedom of speech isn't about yelling whatever crap you want at passers-by while you hide in the shadows.

Sorry sport, you will still have to use your brain to sort the diamonds from the shit.

After seeing recent efforts from ACs on various forums, I would now have to dismiss anything people are unwilling to put their name to. Fewer and fewer have had legit reasons, most are simply cowards, or lying, or libelous, or all three.

SlashDot - at the very least, give us a way to filter out all ACs from our comments display, TIA.

Re:What cost ACs?

[Anonymous Coward]

I use AC a lot, mostly as protection agains Linux zealots when I post a pro-MS comment. I've gotten some pretty nasty flame mail from them, even if I did have good points, or even if I just mentioned the word Microsoft. Anyways, I could make another account, but it would be a hassle to login/logout each time I was posting normally and each time I was posting a controversial comment.

Re:What cost ACs?

[Kris_J]

Since you posted as an AC and I've never received an e-mail as a result of a post on /. I have no choice but to simply discount your comment as baseless, or even as a bit of anti-linux FUD. See my dilemma.

Just like the Soviet Union

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, that's exactly what a represenative from the Soviet Union said about freedom of speech in the Soviet Union when he visited my college campus about fifteen years ago. He said that Russians had just as much freedom of speech as Americans because they could say whatever they wanted as long as they were willing to accept the consequences, and he was right.
Somehow people who make the argument of the above poster or similar one's about "responsibility" completely ignore the fact that the laws that "irresponsible" speakers are punished by are often arbitrary and oppressive. So what if people lie, grow up and learn to live with it. Anonymity is necessary. What counteracts "irresponsible" speech is the presence of a multitude of independent sources not the punishment of "irresponsible" speakers.

Re:Hi People

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that this is grits boy you're talking to, wouldn't it be more appropriate to say it's from the bottom of your pants?

Why not try a holiday on Venus?

[Anonymous Coward]

Read Cyril Kornbluth's 1950's novella The Marching Morons.

Brief synopsis: In Kornbluth's hypothetical future, intelligent people have refrained from breeding, and stupidity has run rampant. One of the few intelligent people of this future world discovers a cryogenic suspension device from the twentieth century and thaws out its occupant, who turns out to be a 1950's advertising executive. The advertising executive is asked to help solve the problem of the rapidly increasing population of unintelligent people which is threatening to destroy all the planet's resources. He creates an ad campaign for holidays on Venus. Favourite line (paraphrased): The rockets weren't very well made, but then they didn't have to be.

Kornbluth's descriptions of the rabid consumer culture are hilarious: everything is form over function - cars with outrageous rocket fins, speedometers registering above the actual speed, and simulated wind blowing back your hair to make you think you're goind really fast, airplanes made unnecessarily to look like rocketships. Of course he was actually describing the consumer culture of 1950's America...
Also recommended are his collaborations with Fred Pohl: one is called The Space Merchants and I forget the title of the other one. (Doh!)

Read the history of posts

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the history of posts this guy has posted. They are absolutely hilarious. No wonder all his posts are -1..

Re:Read the history of posts

[Captain Teflon]

I did as suggested. There's some really weird and funny stuff here. A useless diversion, but entertaining.

It makes you wonder where Jizmak lives ( a padded room maybe? ), and what his OTHER "interests" are ...

Re:Read the history of posts

[HP LoveJet]

For the first time since I joined Slashdot, I've been inspired to change my signature.

spawn_of_yog_sothoth

Re:GILLIAN ANDERSON

[Harvey]

I remember the GNUlix guy... It seems to me that he, and others of his time actually had a point, or more accurately could form more than one sentence ;) Back in that day, men were real men, women were real women, trolls were real trolls, and small fuzzy creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small fuzzy creatures from Alpha Centauri.

--
Harvey

journalists credability?

[period3]

Has anybody checked into the credibility of this Ars Technica writer? Just curious - I trust the article implicitly, though I'm not sure why. :) I should probably look at this journalist's credibility - how do we know HE isn't talking out of his ass to discredit someone he's pissed off at? (is a web writer called a journalist?)

public key crypto 101

[cabbey]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

apparently I do need to say more...

The message here was not a signature; in fact the signature is useless
as a standalone piece of text. The message was: "need I say more?"
Anyone who want to verify that I was the one to post that need
only grab a copy of my public key and verify the message. If they're
really paranoid then they'll do some leg work to verify the key is
legit... through a network of trusted keys or offline or whatever. If
it's important enough to both parties they will find a trusted
connection to validate the keys used. People who are in danger of
being impersonated - if they care about their image and understand
crypto (torvalds@transmeta.com=0x449FA3AB; marc@redhat.com=0x251E09D1;
nugget@distributed.net=0xE43C5FC3 for three examples off my key ring)
- - then their public key is widely distributed and easily verified.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGPfreeware 6.0 for non-commercial use

iQA/AwUBODywmJbuFrVpZ9bSEQK9bgCg2ZJpEPJqC2+gu+cn hbr3CvUr4bUAoPuK
jLx/EOVd289UPpF7A5aAXUSU
=TGtE
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Netiquette, Blind Faith, etc.

[phaedo]

Disclaimer: I don't have anything to do with Artx nor do I know "Hannibal" on any basis other than the fact that I read his article.

I'm a bit concerned about both sides of this debacle. It seems to me that people on the one hand are more than willing to denounce some marketing droid from a graphics startup, but on the other hand are willing to make the leap of faith that the author of the aforementioned diatribe doesn't have an agenda and is actually capable of writing a report that isn't tainted with a high degree of subjectivity.

What he said may very well have been true to one degree or another, but that still doesn't excuse the fact that he posted *private* email. Now, maybe I'm just dating myself here by saying this, but I seem to recall that in the good old days of usenet, doing things like that would get you carbonized, no matter how right your arguments were.

It read like a very vindictive article and given what I've seen and heard from the press in the past I'm certain he's not got the entire story straight either (whether it was intentional or not). People never-the-less took for granted that he was absolutely right and the ensuing rabid lemming effect took hold, everyone is up in arms and all the city folk are storming the castle with pitchforks and torches.

I think people need to think twice before they trust anything, especially when it was published on the web.

Read some of his other stuff

[himi]

I recently read through a number of Hannibal's old tech articles on Arstechnica, and they're _good_ - this guy isn't some kind of idiot ZD* writer with only half a clue on a good day.

The point is, _any_ journalist out there, be they in the print/television/radio or Internet worlds, _earn_ their credibility. They write enough stories that we get to know them and trust what they say. It's like Karma here on /., only not so organised ;-)

himi

Re:One guy? - wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. You're forgetting that the larger the company the more money is involved and the stronger is the incentive to lie in fora like this. Only thing stopping them is the very high cost of being found out - and that's only likely if their technical people are stupid or they have a whistleblower.

Another case of this

[NightHwk]

this is similar to the case of the website www.andylives.com which is a marketing site which was disguised as a fan site, with a forum where marketers posted posing as andy kaufman fans. The scam was eventualy figured out by some questioning readers. I found out about this on www.oldmanmurray.com and felt exactly the same was as they did about the whole thing. I think the next step in marketing is marketers will not even know a thing about their product, and will just make up the craziest stuff they can. "This pentium4 can hold 7.64 jigaherts of megabits"

Be anon, stay anon

[kris]

Snagged my IP, eh?

Set your proxy to nrl.onion-router.net:9200.

Read about AT&T Crowds, about TAZ-WWW, see the Proxy Mate, see the COTSE anonymizer or look what fravia has to say about anonymity.
© Copyright 1999 Kristian Köhntopp

Uh, and who are you, "es"?

[Paul Crowley]

I find the charity you're prepared to extend to Mr Calle pins my implausibility meter. There's little room for doubt that Calle's actions were deliberate dishonesty rather than accidental omission. I'd also note that you've posted to this forum four times, it's the only time you've posted to /. and you give no contact details.
--

Re:Uh, and who are you, "es"?

[es]

you give no contact details.

True, I didn't bother to fill out any of my user info. However if you bothered to go look at the other posts I made you would know full well who I am. I didn't try to hide it. Take a look and feel free to email me if you think I'm lying.

Read this for my thoughts on the matter.

I find the charity you're prepared to extend to Mr Calle pins my implausibility meter.

I find equally unnerving your inability to accept the possibility that Hannibal was wrong. I suppose the fact that ALI said they were bringing the Aladdin TNT2 has less creedence than the writings of a person who went to Comdex to see a lot of things and spent (maybe) an hour at the booth in question? Unfortunately I wasn't one of the ones who went to Comdex (though I love Vegas), but I saw pictures of the setup. In the pictures I can see signs for the Aladdin TNT2. If he could've spent an hour there and not seen them, I think that he may need to have his eyesight checked.

There's little room for doubt that Calle's actions were deliberate dishonesty rather than accidental omission.

If you had read my other writings on this matter (since you went to the trouble to check on their existance), you would see that I don't deny that I think some of Rick's actions were wrong. However I also take issue with Hannibal's notion of journalism. He was also wrong for not checking the facts before writing a story, and for refusing to check them even after being contacted about it.

Banning ACs probably wouldnt help much

[BeanThere]

You dont have to be an AC to pull anonymous dirty tricks in an online forum; its incredibly easy for anyone at MS or Artx (for example) to just get a small collection of /. logins that have no real identifying information in them, and then happily plunder away with "grass-roots support" lying campaigns, etc. Is there that much difference?

Doom... (slightly OT) (oops)

[!Dozer]

Wasn't this how ID software originally marketed DOOM? I heard that they posted to newsgroups generate interest in their new (at the time) game.

I understand it's not quite the same, but it is interesting if it's true.


Dozer

"The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going to be when you kill them."

Re:Why marketing types are natural B ship candidat

[Bartmoss]

...of course you fail to metion that we're their descendants. Go figure.

Re:GILLIAN ANDERSON

[Bartmoss]

Nope, that'd infringe on the Great American Right Of Freedom Of Speech.

One Bullet

[bloodrat]

Interesting. I've watched the video. Here's a synopsis - Some guy working for the government, elects to make a video to help his 'people' get a better layout of Times Square. It seems that him and his 'people' intend to invoke rioting in order to validate a military take over of New York. It's filmed in the style popularized by movies like the Blair Witch Project. So yes, it does feel quite real.

This of course, begs the question of wither the government pulled the plug because they were honestly concerned or if the film may have some basis in fact. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, so I'll just assume they're not planning a military takeover of the US. (Regardless, I have to concede that the New Year would be the perfect time. Civilian police already pre-occupied, many of our legitimate military forces positioned to control rioting. Many of our resources already allocated.) Anyhow, If the FBI was acting in order to protect the people, or even to protect the reputation of the government, does that make their actions correct?

No.

What to do? Mirror the site(I did), distribute it via FTP, mass email. Undermine whatever control the FBI believed that they had over the situation. Call your congressman, the ACLU, your best friend, your mother, tell them about it, send them the movie. Even if this Mike Z. guy was planning a terrorist takeover of the US, or trying to slander the government, we live in a society that is supposed to represent free speech. The government isn't a corporation, slander laws don't apply here, and even complete psychopaths are entitled to free speech. This guy and his ISP need to stand up for themselves, because when one person resigns their rights, we all suffer from it.

"One bullet is all you need to control one hundred people.. So long as they all are afraid of it."

Re:GILLIAN ANDERSON

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought it went something like "the rough and ready early days of C, when men were men and pointers were ints...."

Re:GILLIAN ANDERSON

[Hard_Code]

Perhaps Slashdot should include small icons depicting the karmic state of a poster in his post. Those with high karma will be glowing self-actualized visages in nirvana. Those with low karma will be undesirables, or some form of disgusting bug...you could then tell which posts to not waste your time reading by the icon.

Re:GILLIAN ANDERSON

[strredwolf]

That'd infringe on the Great American Right Of Freedom of Speach

It would, yes, ONLY IF SLASHDOT WERE THE GOVERNMENT!!! Reread the Bill of Rights. That right is only applicable for the government. On Slashdot, it is a privlage. Slashdot is privately owned, and we are given the privlage to post our own minds here. Some get moderated up, saying that the person's worth listening to. Some are moderated down, saying that the person's full of hot air.

-35 tells me that the person's abusing his or her privlage to post on Slashdot.

---
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com." The purpose of that site was not known. -- MSNBC 10-26-1999 on MS crack

Re:GILLIAN ANDERSON

[Harvey]

I was alluding to Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker trilogy

__
Harvey

Re:Why marketing types are natural B ship candidat

[roomfull of blues]

Yeah, but the rest of the world later died from an un-sanitary telephone. And that we are the descendants of the B ship's survivors. Remember when they declared leaves official currency and then went on burning forests to combat inflation?? The perfect economic strategy...