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

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...

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: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.

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