ArtX, Hannibal and Consumer Fraud 210
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." "
Broken article? (Score:1)
Anyone have a mirror or working link?
Kintanon
rotfl, eh? (Score:3)
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:Broken article? (Score:1)
===
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? (Score:1)
... (Score:2)
*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.
--
To be expected (Score:3)
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.
ArtX won't be seeing any of my money (Score:2)
Marketing types just don't quit (Score:2)
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:Broken article? (Score:2)
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:... (Score:1)
Just pathetic (Score:1)
All too common (Score:3)
(Note: MS video evidence would fall into the other "half of what you see")
Man...news travels FAST (Score:1)
good to know Slashdot get the scoop (or 2nd scoop)...
Anonymous sources can be VERY biased (Score:4)
Unfortunately, when they're Anonymous Cowards, it gets a bit harder to tell if you've got:
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, [zip.com.au] that there were "reviewers" that may not have been at arms length from the "producers." Another review [netcom.com] notes, about the "testimonials," that:
It was quite entertaining when Linux Gazette published an Official Reaction of Software Forge Inc. to "LinuxCAD Review"; [linuxgazette.com] I expressed in LG issue 42 [linuxgazette.com] that I appreciated their restraint in not using a spell-checker...
No, I haven't much use for Anonymous Cowards...
Building Credibility (Score:4)
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.
Did you read the entire exchange? (Score:1)
------
Standard tactics for shady companies? (Score:2)
Shouldn't be too surprising... (Score:2)
Re:GILLIAN ANDERSON (Score:1)
--
Re:To be expected (Score:3)
*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.
Wait a minute (Score:2)
OH NOOOOO!
I'm sure they'd love to hear your reaction.. (Score:3)
Uh, I don't get it. (Score:2)
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
Why marketing types are natural B ship candidates (Score:2)
This one guy looks like a perfect choice for the B ship as soon as we manage to discover interstelar travel.
Re:GILLIAN ANDERSON (Score:2)
How you accumulated -35 Karma with only 13 posts I can only guess Jizmak.
Re:Just pathetic (Score:2)
Or paying their toadies to do it for them.
--
It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
Clue: Marketing == Lies (Score:5)
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...
This happens all the time, might as well rofl (Score:2)
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 (Score:1)
Good point. Free speech should not protect those who would lie.
Every know that Pepsi contains AT LEAST 5% goat urine.
Re:Man...news travels FAST (Score:1)
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?
Tell the CEO (Score:4)
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...
ARTX RULEZ (Score:4)
This thing isn't logging my ip is it?
- rick^H^H^H^H^H^H
How often does this happen in the /. comments? (Score:5)
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:rotfl, eh? (Score:1)
Re:ArtX won't be seeing any of my money (Score:1)
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.
Not Just Consumer Hardware (Score:4)
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:Tell the CEO (Score:5)
OT: monospace (Score:1)
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?
Some Dirt on a Former Company (Score:2)
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...
This is not very good... For him... (Score:1)
Cheap... (Score:1)
Re:OT: monospace (Score:2)
As an example, I'm using them right now.
Jedi Hacker (Apprentice) and Code Poet
Re: (Score:1)
Contact info (Score:5)
From ArtX Press Announcements [artxinc.com]:
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 [artxinc.com]:
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 [artxinc.com]:
For further information, please contact David Orton, President:
deo@artxinc.com
Hardly unique... (Score:1)
Slime does this kind of thing.
Down with Marketing! (Score:2)
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:To be expected (Score:1)
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:How often does this happen in the /. comments? (Score:3)
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:To be expected (Score:2)
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:Uh, I don't get it. (Score:2)
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:ArtX won't be seeing any of my money (Score:1)
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:Off topic, Humor (Score:1)
Re:Broken article? (Score:2)
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
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
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? (Score:1)
M$ (Score:1)
Re:Funny, if a little old, one-liner, but... (Score:1)
One guy? (Score:1)
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. (Score:1)
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? (Score:1)
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 (Score:2)
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.
Re:Some Dirt on a Former Company (Score:2)
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:Broken article? (Score:1)
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:To be expected (Score:1)
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.
Quotes are Quotes, Whether Claims are True or Not (Score:2)
It's what Henry Spencer [lysator.liu.se] said.
It's widely known.
There may be merit to your contention that not understanding Lisp results in reinventing it badly; Erik Naggum [naggum.no] commonly makes that contention about Scheme, [mit.edu] and I have no problem with the assertion that anyone building new systems that ignores the Common Lisp HyperSpec [harlequin.com] is likely doomed to reinvent parts of it less well than CLTL2.
That may mean that a more valid claim would be more like
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 [sonic.net] or SilkOS [intellimarket.com] or NASOS [demon.co.uk] or the rendition of DrScheme [rice.edu] atop FluxOS, [utah.edu] or, if you're a Common Lisp [elwoodcorp.com] partisan, perhaps Genera. [elwoodcorp.com]
Quotes are Quotes, Whether Claims are True or Not (Score:2)
It's what Henry Spencer [lysator.liu.se] said.
It's widely known.
There may be merit to your contention that not understanding Lisp results in reinventing it badly; Erik Naggum [naggum.no] commonly makes that contention about Scheme, [mit.edu] and I have no problem with the assertion that anyone building new systems that ignores the Common Lisp HyperSpec [harlequin.com] is likely doomed to reinvent parts of it less well than CLTL2.
That may mean that a more valid claim would be more like
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 [sonic.net] or SilkOS [intellimarket.com] or NASOS [demon.co.uk] or the rendition of DrScheme [rice.edu] atop FluxOS, [utah.edu] or, if you're a Common Lisp [elwoodcorp.com] partisan, perhaps Genera. [elwoodcorp.com]
Re:Broken article? (Score:2)
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
Re:Uh, I don't get it. (Score:1)
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:Off topic, Humor (Score:1)
Re:Off topic, Humor (Score:1)
:)
Re:Tell the CEO (Score:1)
It wasn't a product review. (Score:3)
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.
---
Look to law enforcement. (Score:1)
Re:ArtX won't be seeing any of my money (Score:1)
link for the lazy (Score:2)
Re:To be expected (Score:1)
Re:Some Dirt on a Former Company (Score:1)
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.
1999 - The Year We Got Hyped (Score:2)
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.
Re:Funny, if a little old, one-liner, but... (Score:2)
>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?
Wasn't the Mrktng dept of Sirius Cybernetics (Score:2)
Chuck
Re:Uh, I don't get it. (Score:3)
The corollary to this is that freedom of speech gives you the right to speak, but not the right to be heard.
-B
Re:How often does this happen in the /. comments? (Score:2)
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:GILLIAN ANDERSON (Score:2)
marketing agencies and guerilla marketing (Score:4)
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:Funny, if a little old, one-liner, but... (Score:2)
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
Fake posters on Slashdot. (Score:2)
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 [thehungersite.com]
Devils Advocates... (Score:2)
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, [gnucash.org] 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 (Score:2)
An ArtX employee's thoughts... (Score:2)
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 [mailto]
That's not the point. (Score:2)
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.
------------------
Some useful links - ALI's comdex press releases (Score:3)
ALI press release on their comdex booth [ali.com.tw]
ALI/Artx press release on the Aladdin 7 [ali.com.tw]
ALI/nVidia press release on the Aladdin TNT [ali.com.tw]
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?)
Great if you already know their .sig (Score:2)
Unless you already know their PGP signature, what is the use of them posting one?
--Donate food by clicking: www.thehungersite.com [thehungersite.com]
Re:Back up your claims, please? (Score:2)
See
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/11/24/013
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
Re:That's not the point. (Score:3)
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 [mailto]).
Re:How often does this happen in the /. comments? (Score:3)
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? (Score:2)
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.
Be anon, stay anon (Score:2)
Set your proxy to nrl.onion-router.net:9200.
Read about AT&T Crowds [att.com], about TAZ-WWW [berkeley.edu], see the Proxy Mate [lpwa.com], see the COTSE [cotse.com] anonymizer or look what fravia [instinct.org] has to say about anonymity.
© Copyright 1999 Kristian Köhntopp
Uh, and who are you, "es"? (Score:2)
--
Re:That's not the point. (Score:2)
> the *actual matter*. And you've
> heard it.
Yip. And I'd like to thank you for the straightforward answer. Kudos.
------------------
Re:Off topic, Humor (Score:2)
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.
--
Re:GILLIAN ANDERSON (Score:2)