It's an Alpha, which means its full of buggy code and hasnt been optimized to the point where the final product will eventually perform. That also means that any benchmarks run using something as unstable, sloppy and chunky as an alpha are a false measure and therefore are completely unreliable.
The cool factor or street cred he thinks he might gain by using a leaked bit of unstable software as part of the testbed are completely worthless when trying to establish some reliable manner of measuring performance.
As Jericho pointed out, using the alpha demonstrates poor judgement, not only because it's technically unsound (or even for the legal risks), but just as a matter of common sense.
This interview with Spaf goes into much more depth about his thinking about security -- or 'assurance' as he says -- because '...security really is a property that's an absolute that we can never quite achieve.'
Some colleagues rescued the Post 9/11 domain from some squatters who were doing something crass.
They've set up a site on some free servers (so don't expect top-notch performance) with some discussion boards and plan to continue what's essentially a post-9/11 blog to news, analysis and other resources about how the world has changed for all of us in the last year.
I guess each of us deal with those events in different ways. Some do it positively, others not so much so. I'm just glad the squatters dont get the last word on this one.
It's bad enough that most so-called technology news and reviews sites don't amount to much more than a collection of regurgitated press releases and graft-driven prose -- most rampant in the games industry as discussed previously on Slashdot in two threads on fraudulent reviews and bribes, junkets and payola -- but does Slashdot have to promote them?
Everyone whines and complains about the problem but they keep helping and promoting sites lacking any integrity by providing them with traffic. The question I have is why do Slashdot's editors participate and add to the problem by directing traffic to them? I'm sure that the editors are concerned by the brochure-style content of more and more sites, although that wouldn't be apparent from posting this 'story'. I've found that Tim generally does a pretty good job of separating the signal and substance from the noise and fluff, but this one got past you.
If you want to see quality Web content, vote with your clicks and posts and discourage blatant product promotion by shills for product manufacturers.
Frankly, these problems are what made us decide to start Geartest.com. We figured that there should be some place on the Internet where people can find unbiased technology product reviews that can be understood by the layperson. It's been difficult getting manufacturers to loan evaluation units because we specifically tell them that they will not necessarily receive positive coverage by virtue of sending their products -- but a few seem to be coming around to our way of thinking.
Hopefully average technology users and Slashdotters will too.
[NOTE: posted on behalf of another Slashdotter who fears professional repercussions]
In addition to the craven self-promotion of sending it in to Slashdot, I'm interested in hearing what everyone thinks of this issue.
Ah, yes. Craven self-promotion and karma-whoring wrapped neatly in a mock self-deprecating tone designed to defuse any criticism. Classic Clive.
What you forgot to mention was WHY you are interested in hearing what everyone thinks of this issue.
For those who are unfamiliar with the esteemed Mr. Thompson's work, he seems to have a history of strip-mining the ideas of people he meets to fuel his lecture-circuit, TV appearances and column-fodder. Those people instantly become his so-called 'friends'. That wouldn't be quite so bad if one could be sure that there was any consistency in attributing those ideas to their respective sources instead of conveniently presenting them (uncredited) as pearls of wisdom from the Oracle of Clive.
[Ed.] The columnist missed a better example of the genre - the EFF's game of digital restrictions management.
Those familiar with Thompson's work already know that he has a history of frequently missing all kinds of things that are evident to people who actually try to be diligent about researching the stories they write.
If the criticism sounds harsh (to some degree) it's meant to. After observing him for some years, he's not quite as bad as some of his pseudo-intellectual contemporaries because his work sometimes rises to the level of being competent. But being damned with faint praise such as that is hardly cause for joy.
Clive, the last thing the world needs right now is yet another self-annointed technology pundit.
The problem with tech product 'reviews' ....
on
Ziff Davis Teeters
·
· Score: 2
You have more tolerance for product faults when it's... just something you're testing for a couple weeks and sending back. AND What's worse are consumer magazines that recommend tech products, often without testing them at all, just because they look cool.
That's the problem with most so-called 'reviews' you see in the technology press. They aren't real reviews at all. Using a gadget for a few hours over a couple of weeks doesn't tell you anything about the product's performance over an extended period of time. Neither does focusing on how pretty something looks.
Long-term testing is a critical part of our review philosophy at Geartest.com: Real gear. Real world. Real reviews. What does that mean? We don't write reviews about products in a pre-release stage or based on press releases. We use the products for an extended period in real conditions. Then we tell readers what we found, with updates as warranted. That results in a fair review. That means that good, bad or mediocre, products will get the reviews that they deserve.
We won't publish even a preliminary look at something until it's consistently been in use for at least 30 days.
As for ZD's staff skewing the 'cool' products, it's up to the reviewer to demonstrate some necessary professionalism and not skew a product evaluation based on its 'coolness' or just because they haven't paid for it. And it's up to the editor to enforce a policy that prevents reviewers from skewing their reviews.
When people evaluate and assess products for an enterprise, they often haven't paid for those products either but it seems that full and fair assessments are made without too much difficulty, even if those reviews are only for private consumption.
And that is the same idea that drives Geartest.com.
Long and interesting interview with Gene Spafford, about the infosec threat landscape;
privacy; the challenges of digital certificates, CRLs, public key infrastructure standards and
interoperability; key escrow, backup and recovery; identity fraud; trust on the Internet; and
the problems of security education today. Sample quote: "Security doesn't work as an
add-on. It really needs to be built-in from the beginning."
I skipped over the intro page but if you really want to see it it's here.
Editorial independence does not necessarily end if one company buys another. It is premature to assume that the quality of SecurityFocus (however you assess that) will materially change for the worse. Don't jump to conclusions until there is a reason to warrant the charges that are being thrown around.
That said, if Symantec simply wanted to support the growth and dissemination of security-related information it could have paid for ads and provided technical resources to SecurityFocus, (however much that may have spurred charges of bias or interference) instead of buying it outright.
The acquisition legitimately raises questions of conflict of interest.
Will we see Symantec advertorial content written by product marketing managers? Will we see Symantec's products being touted as the solutions to problems and vulnerabilities?
The most valuable commodity that SecurityFocus had was its independence (of ownership) from any of the product vendors. Without that independence there will always be doubt and doubters.
How is this item anything more than lame PR disguised as a news item?
Anyone and everyone who uses this site is capable of going to any of the gaming sites to read about this, or to their favorite game studio site to read press releases -- and they probably do.
A press release announcing a game hardly qualifies as news, and it certainly isn't anything that matters.
Integrate established methods and skills wherever possible.
Innovation at the expense of functionality is counterproductive.
The US air traffic control system redesign project had to be scrapped after spending billions because of the horrendous usability issues it ran into, causing confusion among air traffic controllers -- it completely ignored their established ways of working. They are still using slips of acetate that are stacked on a board because its much safer for passengers and the controllers can work with all the information they need at their fingertips.
Aircraft carrier control towers still use a miniature mock-up of the flight deck and the controllers keep track of what's happening with tokens or models of the aircraft and equipment and personnel on the deck. Why? Because it works.
I am also reminded of how a new X-ray machine had to be redesigned because it completely disrupted the way that X-ray technicians work and actually made their jobs more difficult and slower to perform, which was the exact opposite of what the new machine was supposed to do.
The driving layout IS intuitive because it is so ingrained and established in our culture. Well before people reach the driving age, they know how to drive. Their skill and ability to drive is another matter.
Users shouldn't have to 'complain' as you put it. Designers should stop for a moment to think about what they are doing and if it truly helps the user. The 745i control is a driving hazard.
I'm posting this on behalf of a reporter who is working on a story about these types of scams. He is particularly interested in people who have been scammed by Canadian registrars or Canadians who have been scammed by the following:
Verisign
Courtesy Support Team
Domain Registry of Canada
Domain Registry of America
Internet Registry of Canada
Internet Registry of America
If you are Canadian who has been scammed, or if you have been scammed by a Canadian domain registrar, please click here to contact him by e-mail or use the following address (remove the spaces): S K 1 @canada.com
This is just another PR stunt by a firm to get lots of coverage by tying its name to the Star Wars brand. It worked the first time around and the numbers were shown to be wildly exaggerated.
Episode I had 20 years of anticpation built up so the idea of people skipping out of work to see it was plausible.
After audiences discovered that Phantom Menace was less than spectacular it's doubtful masses of people will skip out of work to see Attack of the Clones a mere 3 years later, especially because it will be playing at every multiplex all summer.
Still, the PR stunt seems to be working the second time around because it is being picked up by various media outlets, including Slashdot.
Funny, since John Fluevog's Open Source shoes story over at Red Herring says...
'Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda, cofounder of the open-source site Slashdot.org, calls it a "PR stunt. I ignore stuff like that."'
Interesting that suddenly the comment was modded down as FLAMEBAIT of all things. A REDUNDANT moderation would have been fair since I had unknowingly raised questions similar to two others earlier in the thread -- tcyun and drDugan.
Obviously someone was more than a little sensitive to someone raising questions about experimental ethics and the priorities in countries such as India where the disparity in standards of living between the majority and the few (such as our esteemed experimenter) are almost unimaginable to those of us in the West.
HENRY DORS: Why is it worse for people in third world countries to be (relatively) wealthy?
It isn't. But if you've ever lived or traveled in India, or countries in a similar stage of development, you would see the disproportionate mass of the population that lives at or below the poverty line in conditions that we woudn't allow our pets to endure. And it is in an open sewer that the experimenter decided to place his kiosk, where kids would naturally spend more more time. Do you see what is wrong in that?
I haven't missed the point of what he was trying to do. I simply take issue with the method he used and question the relative merits of one action over another.
As for my sarcasm in using the term troglodyte, the choice of words was deliberate so it's too bad you missed the point. However that is exactly how all too many of those elites see these desperately poor children. I think that the project is a worthy one if you first provide for those children's basic human needs. If the government is unable, unwilling or incapable of doing so than it is up to those elements of society with resources and means to do what they can to help.
POWERBARR: The difference between the US and India is that instead of a few yards away, they are probably ten to twenty blocks away so passersby don't have to see them.
While I agree that poverty like you described is a problem in North America, you are incorrect to reduce the difference to one of geography. The problem is also one of magnitude and proportion. The sheer numbers of Indians living in such conditions dwarfs the number in USA. The proportion of Indian society that lives in abject poverty is far greater (some would say the majority) than in the USA.
MKS113: I find this wonderful. One thing you learn very quickly in a society like that is that you can not change the entire society and alleviate poverty.
Nobody is saying that he has to change the entire society. Just try to do something in your community. What would be wrong with relocating the terminal so kids could surf the net in sanitary conditions? Or occasionally providing a bowl of rice or a glass of milk to the kids who participated in his experiment?
NEGATIVEK: How does that old saying go? "Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he'll eat for a lifetime," or
something like that. Dumping money into a problematic society isn't the way to do things. Educating the members of that
society, teaching them how to make money on their own, helps not only the members of that society, but everyone else
too. Giving away money will make people dependent. Teaching people is a practice that will pay for itself quickly.
Agreed, but the problem is that sticking a computer into a wall isn't teaching. If he wanted to provide some basic self-directed language, literacy, math, and science lessons then that would be one thing. There was no teaching going on here -- at least not by the experimenter. Nobody mentioned anything about giving away money -- just using it a little more wisely. A hungry kid doesn't learn as well as one who is starving.
SISUKAPALLI1: Familiarity with computers without the background education in reading, writing, composition, and comprehension, not to
mention basic math and science will take a person only so far.
Agreed. We are beginning to see that schools equipped with computers don't inherently make children better students by themselves. In fact there is ample evidence that it often does the exact opposite, while diverting critical and scarce funds from other areas of education when these schools are pushed into the upgrade cycle.
Get a solid foundation in the basics and the kids will grow up well-equipped to learn about computers or any other subject they desire.
I have heard of cases where, to avoid the experimenter effect, a benign study was conducted and upon conclusion the subjects were informed and given the option to opt in or out after reviewing the data collected.
I have also read about experiments where the particpants were aware that they were participating in an experiment. However, the stated goal was different from the actual goal. Again, participants were informed after the fact and given the option to opt in or out.
Nowhere did I say that I am in favor of any legislation that outlaws deep linking.
BACKOV: Ignoring the condescension, your reply assumes that the natural tendency of people is to steal and the problem will get worse. What is necessary is education about the value of other people's work.
ANONYMOUS COWARD: Ha Ha Ha! Good one! =)
SPITZAK: We don't want to break everyone's LINKS to us. We want to prevent people from taking our work and representing it as their own -- also known as plagiarism -- and profiting from it without any recognition or recompense.
CAPTAINSUPERBOY: You appear to be one of the few who read and understand what I said.
J09824: You, too have missed the point. First, we are not 'in business' in the sense that you mean. We are a group of individuals from various professional backgrounds who contribute to Geartest.com in addition to our regular jobs. How many of your favorite sites have disappeared because they could no longer afford to pay the bandwidth costs? We aren't looking to get rich from our site, just to help people make informed decisions and hopefully break-even while doing it. If you want to know more look here or visit the site. If you can come up with another suggestion among the 'zillions' that you think are out there, we'd be glad to hear them. None of the ones you offered are practical for a whole host of reasons I'm not going to go into here, the least of which are privacy and usability issues. By the way, we don't have any 'web hackers'. If you're interested in helping out let us know.
Finally, your stereotypical, reactionary name-calling and accusations don't help anyone. The actions of your legislators is your responsibility. If you are too apathetic to make your views known to those people who are pursuing legislation against yor interests, you have nobody else to blame but yourself for any consequences.
PHXBLUE: Thanks for your suggestions. They are already on a list of options being considered as we're planning and working on our 3rd-iteration site design.
DAHGHOSTFACEDFIDDLAH: Hilarious! =) We'll put that one down as a back-up plan!
CHANDON SELDON: Again, see the above comments on linking. We'd rather not spend our time in the courts over what we consider to be a fun project. Hopefully it won't come to that. I agree with you that LINKING to our.html files is a good thing. TAKING our content (writing, images, etc.) without permission and without crediting us isn't.
DH003I: you want to punish all of US and destroy the internet WE'VE worked so hard to create.
Please enlighten everyone exactly what it is that you created. I suppose you are the REAL creator of the Internet and not Al Gore.
As for your outrage about corporatism, does your hypocrisy know no bounds? You vote with your dollars. If you don't like the WSJ service then don't pay for it. Why support an organization that is so obviously against your stated interests? Your protests sound hollow.
And next time you can leave your manifesto at home. Just don't forget to adjust your tin foil hat on your way out.
TSHAK: Thanks for your considered opinion. We are going to have to agree to disagree on this. Please clarify what you mean when you say 'free'. You say that others should not be able to copy and claim our work as their own. But if they directly link to an image and embed it in their pages without even a mention of where it came from, ignoring our requests to remove it when we ask, then they are de facto claiming our work as their own. Repeat after me, 'Taking content and representing it as your own is theft!' (Or you can call it plagiarism if you like).
HERBIEROBINSON: The distinction you make is an important one. See above re: litigation.
GRASPEE_LEMOOR: I'd rather not spend my time chasing down referrers when our page-views are consistently in the 5-figure range and on their way to 100,000+ territory.
On the remainder of your post, because you are so obviously responding from a place of ignorance -- especially with regard to commercial entities and a supposed conspiracy of 'employees' modding the post up (you might want to check your tin foil hat too) -- I'm just going to refer you to what I've written above.
What we DO take issue with is individuals and companies stealing our content by linking directly to it and representing it as their own.
This is most rampant with graphics. We try to provide high-quality images about the products we review and the items we write about. Everybody likes big and clear pictures.
Many of these have to be converted from massive TIFF files into Web-sized JPEGs or GIFs. It may not seem like a big deal, but it takes someone's time and effort to optimize every image and fit it within our internal site guidelines to make it as accessible as possible to Web surfers at large. That adds up to a lot of time and effort.
There are those companies who steal our content outright without any attribution whatsoever. A friend was talking to one of his colleagues, who told him that his previous employer regularly visited our site specifically to steal our graphics. (That site has since gone out of business).
And there are those offenders who link directly to our content on their sites -- again without attribution -- causing us to bear the bandwidth costs of transmitting hundreds of megabytes worth of data without any credit, benefit or return to us.
We have found our content abused on major sites (household names), without any response from the Web staff of those companies when we try to contact them about it.
Most of our content is available for syndication. If you like it and want to use it, ASK.
As a footnote, we are considering acquiring and implementing some form of digital rights management, which is something we don't want to do. However, if we continue to see this kind of content theft, then we need to get it under control before the costs reach a point where we are forced to shut down our site.
The image of a huge wall that separates a handful of elite technologists from people who live in such abject poverty and squalor that they use this vacant lot as an open-air toilet is incredibly disturbing.
From a typical techno-geek perspective, yes this is an interesting experiment. But take a step back. Psychosocial experiments, especially those involving children, have strict ethical protocols that must be followed -- at least in North America and Europe they do. Was this a relatively benign experiment? It sounds like it was (the site is down so I can't say one way or the other) but that is not the issue. One of the key principles in experimentation is informed participation, and minors cannot give consent to participate. The purpose is to prevent exploitation.
Food, shelter and decent living conditions come far higher on my list of priorities than learning how to surf the Web. I wonder if the experimenter thought about what the potential health consequences might be for children spending more time hanging around such unsanitary conditions as a result of his kiosk.
Technology does not exist for technology's sake. At it's best, technology exists to improve people's lives.
Perhaps NIIT should see what it can do to improve lives and alleviate the misery in the slums that surround its campus instead of sticking Web terminals into walls to see how the local troglodyte children react to it while standing ankle-deep in human waste.
It's good to see that this problem is getting more attention -- deservedly so -- and it's being recognized as such.
I wrote about it in February in response to a previous Slashdot article on magazines faking game reviews. But the larger problem is that this highly suspect practice is rampant with consumer technology product reviews. In a best-case scenario most so-called reviews are based on a cursory glance at a given piece of technology, instead of an authentic review.
In brief (in case you don't have time to read my somewhat lengthy previous comments), we started Geartest.com because of the problem of fictional and heavily biased reviews that amount to regurgitated press releases. I wrote about some of the difficulties we've had in getting the cooperation of companies despite our growth and consistently high traffic levels, and some of the 'hints' we received about how we could get their cooperation.
Our review philosophy is simple: Real gear. Real world. Real reviews. No reviews of products based on press releases or in a pre-release stage. We use the products for an extended period in real conditions. Then we write about the results, with updates as warranted based on extended usage. That means if a product is good we say so, if it sucks we say so, but we also talk about the shades of gray where most items fall.
Now this problem of compromised 'reviews' and 'reviewers' is not new. The press covering the automotive industry has been criticized for similar problems but as that industry matured, reporters have -- for the most part -- come to understand that their only assets are their credibility and good name. Cautionary tale: Andersen with the whole Enron debacle. Though it reviewed and certified finances instead of technology products, Andersen went from being the most trusted and widely respected auditing firm to being poison because it compromised its integrity.
I'm reminded of a couple of items I saw on a regional TV newcast during the last year. The news program serves millions of people. The health and science report was a four-minute segment on a new breath freshening product under the guise of a report on halitosis -- bad breath -- after which the on-air personalities (I won't call them journalists) proceeded to try the aforementioned 'revolutionary' breath product. The segment was the only thing that was noisome. The second item, was a 7-minute segment on a brand-name SUV 'boot camp' that was being offered to consumers for 'free' -- except for the 1 to 5 hours required to complete various elements of the simulated off-road course while test-driving the SUV line-up for that manufacturer. Never mind the fact that hardly any SUVs see terrain more difficult than a gravel shoulder. It was just another puff piece that was free advertising for a company that wanted to get consumers to come to its facility where salespeople would have a captive audience.
Let's be clear: writing about an industry and its products is a symbiotic relationship by its very nature. If you can't get access to the people and products that you are supposed to be writing about, then it becomes very difficult if not impossible to review those very items. Conversely, without coverage of their offerings by trusted media, consumers might overlook a given company's products. At Geartest.com we make it simple. Give us access to your product, answer any questions we may have, do not interfere with our process, and you will get a fair review. The concept that a fair review doesn't always guarantee a favorable one causes many to balk.
For some reason computer gaming seems to be among the areas where this happens most frequently. That industry is among the most resistant to provide access without a guarantee of a rave review. Our review policy instantly scares many marketing drones off when they are accustomed to dealing with pliable and willing 'reviewers.'
Of course you have reviewers at the exact opposite extreme that strive for excellence. Consumer Reports is among the best-known and most trusted examples of reviews with integrity. A healthy, skeptical and critical approach -- if not a slightly adversarial one -- is good for consumers, reviewers, and even for manufacturers who are interested in building high-quality products and a trusted brand.
One of our staff members is participating in a journalism conference next week where one of the policy sessions aims to (in part) address the problem of junkets and payola-based product reviews that amount to nothing more than free advertising. It will be interesting to see what the resultant ethical policy and statement of principles will say about reviewing commercial products.
Whatever the outcome at the conference, we're determined to stick to our review philosophy because we honestly believe it serves everyone's best interest. On another note, we're working on a new site design and have a number of products under review at the moment, with several more waiting in the wings. There are some managers out there who understand and endorse our approach, though it would be nice if there were more.
Please check us out and let us know what you think -- What you like, don't like and where we can improve. After all, we're not above being reviewed ourselves. =)
This is interesting. The following post about this very topic was Pending for 3 months (I submitted it in January) until last week, when it was somewhat surprisingly rejected. Here it is for those interested.
2002-01-08 15:54:26 'The Future of Ideas': Intellectual Property (yro,doj)
Stanford Law professor Lawrence Lessig's book is about intellectual property, copyright law and the Internet. He proposes an 'open access' society with less of the IP extremism we've seen in the recent years. Lessig thinks patents and copyrights should be short, renewable 5-year terms vs. the current 90- to 150-year terms, writing, 'The distinctive feature of modern American copyright law is its almost limitless bloating.' And on the Internet he writes 'An environment designed to enable the new is being transformed to protect the old.' Lessig is pro-Napster and anti-RIAA and rails against Lucasfilm on the Phantom Edit. You can read a review at the New York Times, as well as the first chapter of 'The Future of Ideas'.
'Stainless steel batteries? ' I think not. More likely that they are plutonium or some other nuclear material, and the reason that no predictions are being made about where they will land is because NASA doesn't want to start a panic. As I understand it they are designed to burn up on re-entry to avoid ground level contamination (that says nothing of atmospheric contamination along the flight path). If they survive all the way to the ground and they are radiological....
Actually I've found the moderators to be very helpful when I've bothered to e-mail them about something -- Tim and I had a fun and informative exchange of several e-mails a few months back.
I'd rather not e-mail them directly about this since it sort of falls into the category of 'Why haven't you accepted my post yet?' which I'm sure they get way too many of. Then again, I suppose inflicting my request on the readership at large isn't too smart a move either!
This problem of fictional reviews is the main reason we started Geartest.com. The problem doesn't only exist with video games but with most consumer technology products. Most tech 'reviews' out there are nothing more than regurgitated press releases with 'reviewer' doing nothing more than spending a few hours of playing around with one product or another.
That's in stark contrast to our review philosophy: Real gear. Real world. Real reviews. We don't write reviews about products based on press releases or in a pre-release stage. We use the products for an extended period in real conditions. And we tell the people what we found, with updates as warranted. That means if it's good we'll say so, and if it sucks we'll say that too... but usually the truth is somewhere in between.
We have had difficulty in getting manufacturers to send products to us for review. That is despite having grown to the point where we consistently have 5-figure impression levels, projecting breaking the 100,000 impression level soon. All of that is without us doing any advertising. Pure word-of-mouth. It's no Slashdot but we think it's decent traffic.
We suspect that the biggest problem (from the point of view of manufacturers) is that they simply don't want to risk getting a negative review. We believe it's in a manufacturer's interest to receive unbiased, journalistically sound reviews of its products. Ultimately that can enhance their credibility and add value to a brand in the eyes of the product-buying public.
We have had some people suggest to us that we 'play ball' if we want their cooperation. Frankly, it's not going to happen. We may miss out on getting 'insider' opportunities to cover and review items -- and we may not get to review some items that our users have asked us to -- but the feedback and response we have received from our readership (a good mix of techies and laypeople) tells us that we are on the right track.
The way we see it is this: if you have confidence in your product, then you should have no problem putting it to an unbiased test. It's surprising how many product managers recoil and refuse when you put it to them so plainly.
We're in the process of designing our 3rd-iteration site to enhance user-friendliness and add some more features and functionality. The one thing that will stay constant is that we won't trade our integrity for 'A-list' access to products. If that means we don't get access, we'll just deal with the people and companies who see the value in what we're doing.
Check out Geartest.com and let us know what you think.
Slashdot Mirror
It's an Alpha, which means its full of buggy code and hasnt been optimized to the point where the final product will eventually perform. That also means that any benchmarks run using something as unstable, sloppy and chunky as an alpha are a false measure and therefore are completely unreliable.
The cool factor or street cred he thinks he might gain by using a leaked bit of unstable software as part of the testbed are completely worthless when trying to establish some reliable manner of measuring performance.
As Jericho pointed out, using the alpha demonstrates poor judgement, not only because it's technically unsound (or even for the legal risks), but just as a matter of common sense.
Please choose from the following list:
- wolf-poodle
- poodle-rabbit
- poodle-sheep
- rabbit-sheep
- poodle-AIBO
Don't know if all these options will be available, but we're supposed to see the fearsome results next year: Impossible CreaturesThis interview with Spaf goes into much more depth about his thinking about security -- or 'assurance' as he says -- because '...security really is a property that's an absolute that we can never quite achieve.'
Read the interview.
Some colleagues rescued the Post 9/11 domain from some squatters who were doing something crass.
They've set up a site on some free servers (so don't expect top-notch performance) with some discussion boards and plan to continue what's essentially a post-9/11 blog to news, analysis and other resources about how the world has changed for all of us in the last year.
I guess each of us deal with those events in different ways. Some do it positively, others not so much so. I'm just glad the squatters dont get the last word on this one.
It's bad enough that most so-called technology news and reviews sites don't amount to much more than a collection of regurgitated press releases and graft-driven prose -- most rampant in the games industry as discussed previously on Slashdot in two threads on fraudulent reviews and bribes, junkets and payola -- but does Slashdot have to promote them?
The item above is identical to the DSC-FX77 digital camera press release from Sony Europe's site. Could the reason for posting a press release as news be more payola from Sony?
Everyone whines and complains about the problem but they keep helping and promoting sites lacking any integrity by providing them with traffic. The question I have is why do Slashdot's editors participate and add to the problem by directing traffic to them? I'm sure that the editors are concerned by the brochure-style content of more and more sites, although that wouldn't be apparent from posting this 'story'. I've found that Tim generally does a pretty good job of separating the signal and substance from the noise and fluff, but this one got past you.
If you want to see quality Web content, vote with your clicks and posts and discourage blatant product promotion by shills for product manufacturers.
Frankly, these problems are what made us decide to start Geartest.com. We figured that there should be some place on the Internet where people can find unbiased technology product reviews that can be understood by the layperson. It's been difficult getting manufacturers to loan evaluation units because we specifically tell them that they will not necessarily receive positive coverage by virtue of sending their products -- but a few seem to be coming around to our way of thinking.
Hopefully average technology users and Slashdotters will too.
[NOTE: posted on behalf of another Slashdotter who fears professional repercussions]
In addition to the craven self-promotion of sending it in to Slashdot, I'm interested in hearing what everyone thinks of this issue.
Ah, yes. Craven self-promotion and karma-whoring wrapped neatly in a mock self-deprecating tone designed to defuse any criticism. Classic Clive.
What you forgot to mention was WHY you are interested in hearing what everyone thinks of this issue.
For those who are unfamiliar with the esteemed Mr. Thompson's work, he seems to have a history of strip-mining the ideas of people he meets to fuel his lecture-circuit, TV appearances and column-fodder. Those people instantly become his so-called 'friends'. That wouldn't be quite so bad if one could be sure that there was any consistency in attributing those ideas to their respective sources instead of conveniently presenting them (uncredited) as pearls of wisdom from the Oracle of Clive.
[Ed.] The columnist missed a better example of the genre - the EFF's game of digital restrictions management.
Those familiar with Thompson's work already know that he has a history of frequently missing all kinds of things that are evident to people who actually try to be diligent about researching the stories they write.
If the criticism sounds harsh (to some degree) it's meant to. After observing him for some years, he's not quite as bad as some of his pseudo-intellectual contemporaries because his work sometimes rises to the level of being competent. But being damned with faint praise such as that is hardly cause for joy.
Clive, the last thing the world needs right now is yet another self-annointed technology pundit.
You have more tolerance for product faults when it's
AND
What's worse are consumer magazines that recommend tech products, often without testing them at all, just because they look cool.
That's the problem with most so-called 'reviews' you see in the technology press. They aren't real reviews at all. Using a gadget for a few hours over a couple of weeks doesn't tell you anything about the product's performance over an extended period of time. Neither does focusing on how pretty something looks.
Long-term testing is a critical part of our review philosophy at Geartest.com: Real gear. Real world. Real reviews. What does that mean? We don't write reviews about products in a pre-release stage or based on press releases. We use the products for an extended period in real conditions. Then we tell readers what we found, with updates as warranted. That results in a fair review. That means that good, bad or mediocre, products will get the reviews that they deserve.
We won't publish even a preliminary look at something until it's consistently been in use for at least 30 days.
As for ZD's staff skewing the 'cool' products, it's up to the reviewer to demonstrate some necessary professionalism and not skew a product evaluation based on its 'coolness' or just because they haven't paid for it. And it's up to the editor to enforce a policy that prevents reviewers from skewing their reviews.
When people evaluate and assess products for an enterprise, they often haven't paid for those products either but it seems that full and fair assessments are made without too much difficulty, even if those reviews are only for private consumption.
And that is the same idea that drives Geartest.com.
This interview with Gene Spafford was recommended by Bruce Schneier in his Crypto-Gram newsletter some months back.
Bruce says:
I skipped over the intro page but if you really want to see it it's here.
Editorial independence does not necessarily end if one company buys another. It is premature to assume that the quality of SecurityFocus (however you assess that) will materially change for the worse. Don't jump to conclusions until there is a reason to warrant the charges that are being thrown around.
That said, if Symantec simply wanted to support the growth and dissemination of security-related information it could have paid for ads and provided technical resources to SecurityFocus, (however much that may have spurred charges of bias or interference) instead of buying it outright.
The acquisition legitimately raises questions of conflict of interest.
Will we see Symantec advertorial content written by product marketing managers? Will we see Symantec's products being touted as the solutions to problems and vulnerabilities?
The most valuable commodity that SecurityFocus had was its independence (of ownership) from any of the product vendors. Without that independence there will always be doubt and doubters.
How is this item anything more than lame PR disguised as a news item?
Anyone and everyone who uses this site is capable of going to any of the gaming sites to read about this, or to their favorite game studio site to read press releases -- and they probably do.
A press release announcing a game hardly qualifies as news, and it certainly isn't anything that matters.
Do not break existing interfaces.
Integrate established methods and skills wherever possible.
Innovation at the expense of functionality is counterproductive.
The US air traffic control system redesign project had to be scrapped after spending billions because of the horrendous usability issues it ran into, causing confusion among air traffic controllers -- it completely ignored their established ways of working. They are still using slips of acetate that are stacked on a board because its much safer for passengers and the controllers can work with all the information they need at their fingertips.
Aircraft carrier control towers still use a miniature mock-up of the flight deck and the controllers keep track of what's happening with tokens or models of the aircraft and equipment and personnel on the deck. Why? Because it works.
I am also reminded of how a new X-ray machine had to be redesigned because it completely disrupted the way that X-ray technicians work and actually made their jobs more difficult and slower to perform, which was the exact opposite of what the new machine was supposed to do.
The driving layout IS intuitive because it is so ingrained and established in our culture. Well before people reach the driving age, they know how to drive. Their skill and ability to drive is another matter.
Users shouldn't have to 'complain' as you put it. Designers should stop for a moment to think about what they are doing and if it truly helps the user. The 745i control is a driving hazard.
If you are Canadian who has been scammed, or if you have been scammed by a Canadian domain registrar, please click here to contact him by e-mail or use the following address (remove the spaces): .com
S K 1 @canada
(Don't reply to me). Thanks.
This is just another PR stunt by a firm to get lots of coverage by tying its name to the Star Wars brand. It worked the first time around and the numbers were shown to be wildly exaggerated.
0 .h tml
Episode I had 20 years of anticpation built up so the idea of people skipping out of work to see it was plausible.
After audiences discovered that Phantom Menace was less than spectacular it's doubtful masses of people will skip out of work to see Attack of the Clones a mere 3 years later, especially because it will be playing at every multiplex all summer.
Still, the PR stunt seems to be working the second time around because it is being picked up by various media outlets, including Slashdot.
Funny, since John Fluevog's Open Source shoes story over at Red Herring says...
'Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda, cofounder of the open-source site Slashdot.org, calls it a "PR stunt. I ignore stuff like that."'
http://www.redherring.com/insider/2002/0424/278
Interesting that suddenly the comment was modded down as FLAMEBAIT of all things. A REDUNDANT moderation would have been fair since I had unknowingly raised questions similar to two others earlier in the thread -- tcyun and drDugan.
Obviously someone was more than a little sensitive to someone raising questions about experimental ethics and the priorities in countries such as India where the disparity in standards of living between the majority and the few (such as our esteemed experimenter) are almost unimaginable to those of us in the West.
HENRY DORS: Why is it worse for people in third world countries to be (relatively) wealthy?
It isn't. But if you've ever lived or traveled in India, or countries in a similar stage of development, you would see the disproportionate mass of the population that lives at or below the poverty line in conditions that we woudn't allow our pets to endure. And it is in an open sewer that the experimenter decided to place his kiosk, where kids would naturally spend more more time. Do you see what is wrong in that?
I haven't missed the point of what he was trying to do. I simply take issue with the method he used and question the relative merits of one action over another.
As for my sarcasm in using the term troglodyte, the choice of words was deliberate so it's too bad you missed the point. However that is exactly how all too many of those elites see these desperately poor children. I think that the project is a worthy one if you first provide for those children's basic human needs. If the government is unable, unwilling or incapable of doing so than it is up to those elements of society with resources and means to do what they can to help.
POWERBARR: The difference between the US and India is that instead of a few yards away, they are probably ten to twenty blocks away so passersby don't have to see them.
While I agree that poverty like you described is a problem in North America, you are incorrect to reduce the difference to one of geography. The problem is also one of magnitude and proportion. The sheer numbers of Indians living in such conditions dwarfs the number in USA. The proportion of Indian society that lives in abject poverty is far greater (some would say the majority) than in the USA.
MKS113: I find this wonderful. One thing you learn very quickly in a society like that is that you can not change the entire society and alleviate poverty.
Nobody is saying that he has to change the entire society. Just try to do something in your community. What would be wrong with relocating the terminal so kids could surf the net in sanitary conditions? Or occasionally providing a bowl of rice or a glass of milk to the kids who participated in his experiment?
NEGATIVEK: How does that old saying go? "Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he'll eat for a lifetime," or something like that. Dumping money into a problematic society isn't the way to do things. Educating the members of that society, teaching them how to make money on their own, helps not only the members of that society, but everyone else too. Giving away money will make people dependent. Teaching people is a practice that will pay for itself quickly.
Agreed, but the problem is that sticking a computer into a wall isn't teaching. If he wanted to provide some basic self-directed language, literacy, math, and science lessons then that would be one thing. There was no teaching going on here -- at least not by the experimenter. Nobody mentioned anything about giving away money -- just using it a little more wisely. A hungry kid doesn't learn as well as one who is starving.
SISUKAPALLI1: Familiarity with computers without the background education in reading, writing, composition, and comprehension, not to mention basic math and science will take a person only so far.
Agreed. We are beginning to see that schools equipped with computers don't inherently make children better students by themselves. In fact there is ample evidence that it often does the exact opposite, while diverting critical and scarce funds from other areas of education when these schools are pushed into the upgrade cycle.
Get a solid foundation in the basics and the kids will grow up well-equipped to learn about computers or any other subject they desire.
I have heard of cases where, to avoid the experimenter effect, a benign study was conducted and upon conclusion the subjects were informed and given the option to opt in or out after reviewing the data collected.
I have also read about experiments where the particpants were aware that they were participating in an experiment. However, the stated goal was different from the actual goal. Again, participants were informed after the fact and given the option to opt in or out.
Then you'll love our upcoming look at titanium alloy cylindrical gears and ceramic composite wormwheels! =)
I suggest that most of you go back and read what I wrote. It's clear that some didn't even bother to read a word of what I said.
Again, We have no problem with people linking to our site .
Nowhere did I say that I am in favor of any legislation that outlaws deep linking.
BACKOV: Ignoring the condescension, your reply assumes that the natural tendency of people is to steal and the problem will get worse. What is necessary is education about the value of other people's work.
ANONYMOUS COWARD: Ha Ha Ha! Good one! =)
SPITZAK: We don't want to break everyone's LINKS to us. We want to prevent people from taking our work and representing it as their own -- also known as plagiarism -- and profiting from it without any recognition or recompense.
CAPTAINSUPERBOY: You appear to be one of the few who read and understand what I said.
J09824: You, too have missed the point. First, we are not 'in business' in the sense that you mean. We are a group of individuals from various professional backgrounds who contribute to Geartest.com in addition to our regular jobs. How many of your favorite sites have disappeared because they could no longer afford to pay the bandwidth costs? We aren't looking to get rich from our site, just to help people make informed decisions and hopefully break-even while doing it. If you want to know more look here or visit the site. If you can come up with another suggestion among the 'zillions' that you think are out there, we'd be glad to hear them. None of the ones you offered are practical for a whole host of reasons I'm not going to go into here, the least of which are privacy and usability issues. By the way, we don't have any 'web hackers'. If you're interested in helping out let us know.
Finally, your stereotypical, reactionary name-calling and accusations don't help anyone. The actions of your legislators is your responsibility. If you are too apathetic to make your views known to those people who are pursuing legislation against yor interests, you have nobody else to blame but yourself for any consequences.
PHXBLUE: Thanks for your suggestions. They are already on a list of options being considered as we're planning and working on our 3rd-iteration site design.
DAHGHOSTFACEDFIDDLAH: Hilarious! =) We'll put that one down as a back-up plan!
CHANDON SELDON: Again, see the above comments on linking. We'd rather not spend our time in the courts over what we consider to be a fun project. Hopefully it won't come to that. I agree with you that LINKING to our .html files is a good thing. TAKING our content (writing, images, etc.) without permission and without crediting us isn't.
DH003I: you want to punish all of US and destroy the internet WE'VE worked so hard to create.
Please enlighten everyone exactly what it is that you created. I suppose you are the REAL creator of the Internet and not Al Gore.
As for your outrage about corporatism, does your hypocrisy know no bounds? You vote with your dollars. If you don't like the WSJ service then don't pay for it. Why support an organization that is so obviously against your stated interests? Your protests sound hollow.
And next time you can leave your manifesto at home. Just don't forget to adjust your tin foil hat on your way out.
TSHAK: Thanks for your considered opinion. We are going to have to agree to disagree on this. Please clarify what you mean when you say 'free'. You say that others should not be able to copy and claim our work as their own. But if they directly link to an image and embed it in their pages without even a mention of where it came from, ignoring our requests to remove it when we ask, then they are de facto claiming our work as their own. Repeat after me, 'Taking content and representing it as your own is theft!' (Or you can call it plagiarism if you like).
HERBIEROBINSON: The distinction you make is an important one. See above re: litigation.
GRASPEE_LEMOOR: I'd rather not spend my time chasing down referrers when our page-views are consistently in the 5-figure range and on their way to 100,000+ territory.
On the remainder of your post, because you are so obviously responding from a place of ignorance -- especially with regard to commercial entities and a supposed conspiracy of 'employees' modding the post up (you might want to check your tin foil hat too) -- I'm just going to refer you to what I've written above.
Thanks to all for an interesting discussion!
We have no problem with people linking to our site.
What we DO take issue with is individuals and companies stealing our content by linking directly to it and representing it as their own.
This is most rampant with graphics. We try to provide high-quality images about the products we review and the items we write about. Everybody likes big and clear pictures.
Many of these have to be converted from massive TIFF files into Web-sized JPEGs or GIFs. It may not seem like a big deal, but it takes someone's time and effort to optimize every image and fit it within our internal site guidelines to make it as accessible as possible to Web surfers at large. That adds up to a lot of time and effort.
There are those companies who steal our content outright without any attribution whatsoever. A friend was talking to one of his colleagues, who told him that his previous employer regularly visited our site specifically to steal our graphics. (That site has since gone out of business).
And there are those offenders who link directly to our content on their sites -- again without attribution -- causing us to bear the bandwidth costs of transmitting hundreds of megabytes worth of data without any credit, benefit or return to us.
We have found our content abused on major sites (household names), without any response from the Web staff of those companies when we try to contact them about it.
Most of our content is available for syndication. If you like it and want to use it, ASK.
As a footnote, we are considering acquiring and implementing some form of digital rights management, which is something we don't want to do. However, if we continue to see this kind of content theft, then we need to get it under control before the costs reach a point where we are forced to shut down our site.
The image of a huge wall that separates a handful of elite technologists from people who live in such abject poverty and squalor that they use this vacant lot as an open-air toilet is incredibly disturbing.
From a typical techno-geek perspective, yes this is an interesting experiment. But take a step back. Psychosocial experiments, especially those involving children, have strict ethical protocols that must be followed -- at least in North America and Europe they do. Was this a relatively benign experiment? It sounds like it was (the site is down so I can't say one way or the other) but that is not the issue. One of the key principles in experimentation is informed participation, and minors cannot give consent to participate. The purpose is to prevent exploitation.
Food, shelter and decent living conditions come far higher on my list of priorities than learning how to surf the Web. I wonder if the experimenter thought about what the potential health consequences might be for children spending more time hanging around such unsanitary conditions as a result of his kiosk.
Technology does not exist for technology's sake. At it's best, technology exists to improve people's lives.
Perhaps NIIT should see what it can do to improve lives and alleviate the misery in the slums that surround its campus instead of sticking Web terminals into walls to see how the local troglodyte children react to it while standing ankle-deep in human waste.
It's good to see that this problem is getting more attention -- deservedly so -- and it's being recognized as such.
I wrote about it in February in response to a previous Slashdot article on magazines faking game reviews. But the larger problem is that this highly suspect practice is rampant with consumer technology product reviews. In a best-case scenario most so-called reviews are based on a cursory glance at a given piece of technology, instead of an authentic review.
In brief (in case you don't have time to read my somewhat lengthy previous comments), we started Geartest.com because of the problem of fictional and heavily biased reviews that amount to regurgitated press releases. I wrote about some of the difficulties we've had in getting the cooperation of companies despite our growth and consistently high traffic levels, and some of the 'hints' we received about how we could get their cooperation.
Our review philosophy is simple: Real gear. Real world. Real reviews. No reviews of products based on press releases or in a pre-release stage. We use the products for an extended period in real conditions. Then we write about the results, with updates as warranted based on extended usage. That means if a product is good we say so, if it sucks we say so, but we also talk about the shades of gray where most items fall.
Now this problem of compromised 'reviews' and 'reviewers' is not new. The press covering the automotive industry has been criticized for similar problems but as that industry matured, reporters have -- for the most part -- come to understand that their only assets are their credibility and good name. Cautionary tale: Andersen with the whole Enron debacle. Though it reviewed and certified finances instead of technology products, Andersen went from being the most trusted and widely respected auditing firm to being poison because it compromised its integrity.
I'm reminded of a couple of items I saw on a regional TV newcast during the last year. The news program serves millions of people. The health and science report was a four-minute segment on a new breath freshening product under the guise of a report on halitosis -- bad breath -- after which the on-air personalities (I won't call them journalists) proceeded to try the aforementioned 'revolutionary' breath product. The segment was the only thing that was noisome. The second item, was a 7-minute segment on a brand-name SUV 'boot camp' that was being offered to consumers for 'free' -- except for the 1 to 5 hours required to complete various elements of the simulated off-road course while test-driving the SUV line-up for that manufacturer. Never mind the fact that hardly any SUVs see terrain more difficult than a gravel shoulder. It was just another puff piece that was free advertising for a company that wanted to get consumers to come to its facility where salespeople would have a captive audience.
Let's be clear: writing about an industry and its products is a symbiotic relationship by its very nature. If you can't get access to the people and products that you are supposed to be writing about, then it becomes very difficult if not impossible to review those very items. Conversely, without coverage of their offerings by trusted media, consumers might overlook a given company's products. At Geartest.com we make it simple. Give us access to your product, answer any questions we may have, do not interfere with our process, and you will get a fair review. The concept that a fair review doesn't always guarantee a favorable one causes many to balk.
For some reason computer gaming seems to be among the areas where this happens most frequently. That industry is among the most resistant to provide access without a guarantee of a rave review. Our review policy instantly scares many marketing drones off when they are accustomed to dealing with pliable and willing 'reviewers.'
Of course you have reviewers at the exact opposite extreme that strive for excellence. Consumer Reports is among the best-known and most trusted examples of reviews with integrity. A healthy, skeptical and critical approach -- if not a slightly adversarial one -- is good for consumers, reviewers, and even for manufacturers who are interested in building high-quality products and a trusted brand.
One of our staff members is participating in a journalism conference next week where one of the policy sessions aims to (in part) address the problem of junkets and payola-based product reviews that amount to nothing more than free advertising. It will be interesting to see what the resultant ethical policy and statement of principles will say about reviewing commercial products.
Whatever the outcome at the conference, we're determined to stick to our review philosophy because we honestly believe it serves everyone's best interest. On another note, we're working on a new site design and have a number of products under review at the moment, with several more waiting in the wings. There are some managers out there who understand and endorse our approach, though it would be nice if there were more.
Please check us out and let us know what you think -- What you like, don't like and where we can improve. After all, we're not above being reviewed ourselves. =)
This is interesting. The following post about this very topic was Pending for 3 months (I submitted it in January) until last week, when it was somewhat surprisingly rejected. Here it is for those interested.
2002-01-08 15:54:26 'The Future of Ideas': Intellectual Property (yro,doj)
Stanford Law professor Lawrence Lessig's book is about intellectual property, copyright law and the Internet. He proposes an 'open access' society with less of the IP extremism we've seen in the recent years. Lessig thinks patents and copyrights should be short, renewable 5-year terms vs. the current 90- to 150-year terms, writing, 'The distinctive feature of modern American copyright law is its almost limitless bloating.' And on the Internet he writes 'An environment designed to enable the new is being transformed to protect the old.' Lessig is pro-Napster and anti-RIAA and rails against Lucasfilm on the Phantom Edit. You can read a review at the New York Times, as well as the first chapter of 'The Future of Ideas'.
'Stainless steel batteries? ' I think not. More likely that they are plutonium or some other nuclear material, and the reason that no predictions are being made about where they will land is because NASA doesn't want to start a panic. As I understand it they are designed to burn up on re-entry to avoid ground level contamination (that says nothing of atmospheric contamination along the flight path). If they survive all the way to the ground and they are radiological....
Space Nuclear Power Systems
Space Nuclear Power System Accidents
Bulletin of Atomic Scientists: How many nuclear devices are there in space?
Link to CNN story.
Actually I've found the moderators to be very helpful when I've bothered to e-mail them about something -- Tim and I had a fun and informative exchange of several e-mails a few months back.
I'd rather not e-mail them directly about this since it sort of falls into the category of 'Why haven't you accepted my post yet?' which I'm sure they get way too many of. Then again, I suppose inflicting my request on the readership at large isn't too smart a move either!
... will one of the moderators PLEASE look into the story queue and make a decision on the Lessig feature I submitted on 2002-01-08 15:54:26?
I'm sure this will get an off-topic but its driving me crazy whenever I log in to see that
'pending (1)' still there.
This problem of fictional reviews is the main reason we started Geartest.com. The problem doesn't only exist with video games but with most consumer technology products. Most tech 'reviews' out there are nothing more than regurgitated press releases with 'reviewer' doing nothing more than spending a few hours of playing around with one product or another.
That's in stark contrast to our review philosophy: Real gear. Real world. Real reviews. We don't write reviews about products based on press releases or in a pre-release stage. We use the products for an extended period in real conditions. And we tell the people what we found, with updates as warranted. That means if it's good we'll say so, and if it sucks we'll say that too... but usually the truth is somewhere in between.
We have had difficulty in getting manufacturers to send products to us for review. That is despite having grown to the point where we consistently have 5-figure impression levels, projecting breaking the 100,000 impression level soon. All of that is without us doing any advertising. Pure word-of-mouth. It's no Slashdot but we think it's decent traffic.
We suspect that the biggest problem (from the point of view of manufacturers) is that they simply don't want to risk getting a negative review. We believe it's in a manufacturer's interest to receive unbiased, journalistically sound reviews of its products. Ultimately that can enhance their credibility and add value to a brand in the eyes of the product-buying public.
We have had some people suggest to us that we 'play ball' if we want their cooperation. Frankly, it's not going to happen. We may miss out on getting 'insider' opportunities to cover and review items -- and we may not get to review some items that our users have asked us to -- but the feedback and response we have received from our readership (a good mix of techies and laypeople) tells us that we are on the right track.
The way we see it is this: if you have confidence in your product, then you should have no problem putting it to an unbiased test. It's surprising how many product managers recoil and refuse when you put it to them so plainly.
We're in the process of designing our 3rd-iteration site to enhance user-friendliness and add some more features and functionality. The one thing that will stay constant is that we won't trade our integrity for 'A-list' access to products. If that means we don't get access, we'll just deal with the people and companies who see the value in what we're doing.
Check out Geartest.com and let us know what you think.