Topic: advertising first, product second

[Scyphi]

Scyphi,

what would you do if nobody gave you an opportunity here to show how mature you are?

Karx, with all due respect, I don't believe that's the case here.

Don't take this post the wrong way.  It's all constructive. (cont'd)...

You said exactly what I've been thinking.

My point had nothing to do with Intel or Nvidia or any other company, it was more directed to Crashes comment on IHateHackers comment.

Wait, wait, wait, you mean to say that this all started because you thought Crash needed to support his argument with his first post? Willy, everyone one of us does that all the time on here. Almost nobody is going to present a detailed argument about what they think about something in derailed discussions like this with their first post, because nobody here is going to be thinking that far ahead. It'll almost always be the second or third post when that stuff starts popping up if it's requested by others, so surely we shouldn't have to tack on bibliographies with our posts. These aren't exactly supposed to be professional research papers here that we post, y'know. Furthermore, Crash did more or less get what you were saying, and did exactly as I just described above. With his next post, he provided the details you thought were missing, so really, what's left to argue?

But that said, the big important thing I think we really need to be walking away with from this is that maybe what was posted was presumptuous and could've been done better (but what posts aren't? Personally, WillyP, I think that if this was all you were trying to point out, there could've been a whole heck of a lot better way to do it) but it's too late now to really make that big a deal about it. So rather than trying to continue this futile argument, let's stop trying to sort out what has clearly been a mere misunderstanding and just set it aside, not go to war over it. 

[Matthew]

Don't take this post the wrong way.  It's all constructive.

Anything from IHateHackers.

Could you please keep your thoughts to yourself?  You don't *need* to post every insulting comment that comes to mind.  You may think you have a right to defend yourself from Karx but you are always the one who starts attacking him without any provocation.  If one thing happened in one thread that made you angry, just let it go.  Trust me, that's more satisfying than attacking him -- because it's the one of thing that angry trolls the world over don't understand.  If you want to be better than them that's all you need to do.

You may not intend it, but trust me that the majority of us see you as an angry troll.  If you don't want to be seen that way it's *you* who has to change, not us.  And in the meantime you're ruining this board for the rest of us.

I am not attacking you, only informing you that whatever it is you think you're doing, you're only succeeding in showing yourself in a bad light to the rest of us.  I don't think this is your intent, and if it is... then you seriously need some psychological help.

That's all well and good, but I was having a legitimate conversation here before he started talking about how nothing I say should be taken seriously. How is that me attacking first? It'd be one thing if I had started it, but in this case I didn't!

[Kaiaatzl]

I'm not talking about this thread in specific, this thread gave me an opportunity to say it.

Why do you think Karx said you shouldn't be taken seriously?

And my advice to let it go still stands.

[TechPro]

IHateHackers and Wazzazzle, you two are perpetuating a divisive argument. Let's not do that.  Move it to private messages if you must continue it.

I sense the ban-hammer and/or lock switch are getting warmed up.

----------
On topic "advertising first, product second" ...

That is normal practice when releasing new products.

There is always advertising BEFORE the product goes out, regardless how pathetic the product may be. An example would be the huge media blitz Disney did to try to sell 'direct to disc' collection of Christmas stories by "Bell" (from Beauty and the Beast) months before the very forgettable product came out.

Sure, video is not the same as computer products, but the practice applies.

Apple just announced "iCloud" which won't be actually available for a while, regardless how good or bad it is, and will be free at first, but a pay service later.

It's just advertising.

[Matthew]

Develop product first, advertise second, release product third.

[-<WillyP>-]

Wait, wait, wait, you mean to say that this all started because you thought Crash needed to support his argument with his first post?

Wrong...

Willy, everyone one of us does that all the time on here.

...and Right! There is a big difference between casual commenting and serious debate. No need for Crash to support the claim he made in his first post... at that time! But when he jumped IHateHackers for doing essentially the same thing... making a casual, off the cuff remark... and came back with a longer post, then the conversation took a different turn.

[Matthew]

I think this needs to be locked as well, if even the admin is in on the arguing.

[Crash]

I now see where WillyP is coming from but I surely meant that it was "perfunctory" compared to the my points in my same post, not my original one.
If saying that is unreasonable then I'm effectively being held to a different standard to what I've seen elsewhere here, like Scyphi says.

You're right. I just made a passing comment originally and I didn't back it up. I doubt it would have matted if I had. It was just a throw-away thing. But later I think I argued the point pretty well and it seemed as though you were looking at all of that and saying "Well, where are your facts in this whole discussion?", (when the facts were there), rather than saying "Where are the facts in your original post?", which you're right, they weren't.
I thought you were getting at the former, which is what exasperated me totally and I think it would exasperate most people.

But I didn't accuse IHatehackers of doing anything.
It was reasonable to say to IHateHackers "well, you've made your points and I don't think they're very strong in comparison to what I'm saying right now in this current message, not my former one". I don't see how I could have made that clearer. Looks like Scyphi sees it that way too.

That's not how WillyP took it and I understand that. It just seemed like a peculiar way to interpret it. And there were a few things that WillyP said in his arguments that encouraged that view (such as effectively saying that a settlement over corruption charges didn't mean that a company was corrupt, which is counter-intuitive).
Now, I'm willing to accept the explanation but looking back at the course of WillyP's posts, I couldn't have reasonably inferred that from what he was posting.

The discussion started as soon as IHateHackers started overturning my statement with evidence. After that ... I think criticising that evidence on the basis of your returning argument is perfectly reasonable. I mean, if that's how legal proceedings work, which they do ...

The point is that they weren't just off-the-cuff remarks, I took those as chosen examples that just didn't really support the intended argument.

[Kaiaatzl]

...such as effectively saying that a settlement over corruption charges didn't mean that a company was corrupt, which is counter-intuitive...

...Well... in an ideal world.  The settlement certainly makes it more likely.  I wouldn't say it proves it though.  The only thing it directly means is they got charged and lost the case...
So I can see where WillyP is coming from there.  But maybe he came off too strong?  When someone is found guilty they usually are guilty... but just like anything else it's never absolute.  There are plenty of examples of people who are wrongly found guilty (recently I've been reading about some in the news here).

In an ideal world, I could be a particle physicist or a chemist, because all gases would obey the ideal gas laws and the universe would be perfectly understandable and calculus would be easy.

[Crash]

Well, Intel didn't allow it to go to judgment because, given the evidence, they knew which way it would fall and so a settlement was reached instead.
Looking at the evidence presented, had the court found Intel guilty, it would have been a clear and obvious correct decision. Intel knew where they were headed.

I mean, I don't know how it works in the US but here they might probably have been sued for something similar to deceit in Tort and in cases like that there are no forseeability limitations on damages. So any damage that AMD could prove would be claimable irrespective of how unforseeable it might have been.
So, Intel might have ended up paying a lot more than the $1.25 BN settlement, had the train gone all the way to the buffers.

And I suppose the other thing is that the obvious bias that happens when a large company attacks a small one or an individual wasn't present here either. There wasn't an economic imbalance against Intel, infact probably quite the reverse.
Intel being larger than AMD should have had an advantage in a marginal case because of greater funding and therefore, presumably, better legal representation.

But it was abundently clear that even companies like Dell were being pressured by Intel into not buying AMD stuff. The threat from Intel went along the lines of "if you buy any more AMD, we'll either stop supplying you or we'll charge you far more than our other customers. And without our stuff, you'll go bust."
That was the thrust of it and they tried it with everyone. It was absolutely rife and everyone knew about it but weren't necessarily in a position to speak out.

[Matthew]

That doesn't necessarily mean that Intel is "Advertising first, product second". And just ebcause Intel was caught being corrupt doesn't mean NVidia is.

[Crash]

Absolutely, you're right, it doesn't. It addresses the corruption aspect only. That much is clear.
If you'd like me to enter into discussion on points of advertising I can.

AMD has a long history of allowing its userbase to advocate for them on the strength of their products. I have never actually seen and AMD advert ever in print or on television and I can't remember when I last saw one on a website either. (I don't pay a lot of attention to those, I must admit) (although I have seen them).

In comparison, Intel frequently advertises its new processors on television here in the UK, claiming that sound and music quality will be improved, that games will appear more impressive, that networking will run faster and more smoothly.
These are borderline false claims that really have nothing to do with the processor.
Certainly the soundcard is controlled as a subsidiary of the operating system and the CPU and so the CPU is involved in making sound in much the same way as it issues command packets to a graphics card for execution in the GPU but that doesn't make them responsible (wholly or even substantially) for any increase in graphics or sound quality. And the same holds true for networking.

So, I find such claims, which are repeated every time Intel rebadges its CPUs (it was said for the Pentiums, Core(2)Duo etc and now for the i3/5/7), to be false because the CPUs are clearly not responsible for the improvements that they claim (which should nevertheless still be present in a newly purchased machine with new GPU, sound and networking subsystems).
And I also find it disingenuous to claim that these improvements often yielded chiefly by other manufacturers' components are a result of their own CPU.

That addresses Intel and as to Nvidia, I've seen Nvidia badmouth ATI/AMD to libelous proportions even in their press releases. But I've never seen ATI/AMD do the same to Nvidia.
I've also never purchased an ATI product that failed to do what it claimed and I can't say the same about Nvidia.
So yes my personal opinion based on little more than personal experience there but I suppose it entitles me to my view.

What I really meant by "advertising first, product second" (and I should have said that instead, and you're right to pick me up on it) is that their advertising is not always representative of their products and I think that's true.

I probably shouldn't have lumped Nvidia in the same bandwagon as Intel in terms of sleaze and corruption, you're right. They can be dodgy (and I think I've hinted at that before now) but not in the same league or order of magnitude as Intel. But it was originally just a very quick remark.

[Kaiaatzl]

Well, Intel didn't allow it to go to judgment because, given the evidence, they knew which way it would fall and so a settlement was reached instead.

This is exactly what I mean by making assumptions.  True, you're very probably right.  But don't present something as definite unless it is definite.  Can you read the minds of those people at Intel and know with absolute certainty which way they were thinking?  I doubt they'd say in a press release 'Yeah, well, we actually are corrupt'.  So that's probably not where you're getting this - but it could be.  That's what I mean.  Where are you getting your information about what Intel's execs were thinking?  If it's personal reasoning... well, reasoning can be flawed.  And court cases can't really prove anything.

My point is, if there is always doubt, don't present something as an incontrivertible fact.  I think that's what was getting to WillyP.

[Crash]

This is going to be good but hold on for the end ...

Settlement in a court case is always seen as admission of guilt and blameworthiness though. That's why people don't like doing it on principle if they have a clear conscience.
When I've been sued, even when I could have made the whole matter disappear quickly and cheaply (and would have been wise to do so) by settling I never have because I knew I was right and to settle always suggests otherwise. It's just a negative inference made by society. That's the risk of doing it, which Intel must surely have weighed in their minds.
That's legal theory.

This widespread illegal anti-competion practice was so well-known and documented that it can only be described as fact. That was the evidence that Intel knew without-a-doubt they couldn't disprove.
AMD's case was unanswerable and so no other motivation was needed for Intel to back down. Any other remotely-possible considerations in the minds of Intel execs would be completely inconsequential and immaterial compared to their main motivation, which was to protect their profits from an inescapable judgment and even larger damages.

If you stop a ball from rolling off a table by grabbing it, if it was clearly about to fall, given its momentum and the absence of obstructions, you don't make its falling (without intervention) any less of a certainty by intervening. That seems a fitting analogy from my reading of the case.
That's the whole principle of decision-making.

If the court had been ruled against them, it would become legal fact but Intel pre-empted it so we don't have that.
Even so, the conclusion is inescapable. To conclude otherwise would be irrational and naiive because I can find no counter-evidence.

That substances are made up of atoms is regarded as fact according to our current understanding because the evidence far outweighs the counter-evidence but, like everything else, we don't know 100%.
How do you know that your whole perception is 'real'? Nobody can know. You always have to take some things at face-value because otherwise nothing would work and people would go insane. A degree of 'uncertainty-tolerance' is necessary for the world to proceed and that's what I'm asking for here.

The point is though, there is always doubt about everything; even things that are seen as incontrivertible facts. There is nothing that can be presented as incontrivertible fact that isn't still uncertain in some way.
You present me with any 'incontrivertible fact'. There is always an unlikely explanation that seeks to disprove any statement.
Infact, linguistically, once you start closely examining the phrase 'incontrivertible fact' you see that it is infact a misnomer. If anything, that is an incontrivertible fact.

[Kaiaatzl]

I concede.
I don't think I've ever met anyone who was sued.  But that's the risk in being an activist, right?

Anyway
What if the court ruled that atoms cannot exist, found the tomato guilty and then abolished all laws of physics, and calculus?