Dean Kent wrote:
> John Corse was the 'trigger', but there were several regulars here who
used
> him as an excuse to demonize every visitor here who dared to express a
> contrarian view - particularly when it was not in praise of AMD. It
> certainly drove me away, and I know of many others who expressed the
same
> feeling. The ones who remained, of course, were of a like mind, and
> defended that behavior - but it is obvious that they essentially killed
the
> group.
I feel a need to comment. I left because of losing ready access to a
newsserver. The one at work was discontinued, and the one at home was
"migrated" several times, and I lost interest in trying to keep up with
my ISPs attempts to obfuscate.
I'll confess to being pro-AMD, but I will deny being an AMDroid. My
position is simple: The marketplace is healthier with competition.
Intel is in no danger whatsoever of going away. AMD is. In as much as
AMD has had quite a good streak with the execution, on K7 and K8, I put
my $$ where my mouth is. Any processor decision where the technical
merits are a tie or near tie, I'll vote with my $$ to keep competition
alive.
Along those philosophical lines, but translated into graphics cards,
there's also pragmatism. I bought a Matrox G400 when it was a
reasonably competitive card, when it got Utah-GLX sup****t under Linux.
I bought a Radeon 8500LE on the strength of the R200 open source radeon
driver for Linux, and a pretty good price. After that, and up until
recently, there's been nothing really competitive with open source
drivers, so I've been buying nVidia because they've had the best quality
closed source drivers.
But now AMD/ATI has released do***entation, and open source drivers are
available, and getting usable, if not the fastest. Still, it's enough
to swing my purchasing decisions, also knowing the drivers will only get
better. But from a marketplace perspective, nVidia is now on the ropes
with significant thermal problems hurting them, and they're the last
major isolated graphics solution. It leaves one wondering whether to
sup****t AMD/ATI for OSS drivers, or nVidia for competition. Though of
course I need to wait for nVidia to get their thermal act together, but
then again I'm not buying at the moment.
>
> Even though I was one of those who helped drive out John Corse - who, by
the
> way I ended up figuring out who he *really* was (last name was
Evangelou)
> and after outing him privately caused him to stop posting here - I was
> eventually demonized as well because I wouldn't toe the 'party line'.
>
> I am quite sure that there will be those who will disagree - and this
may,
> in fact, start a somewhat lively thread. But, since I had some
measure of
> control over my website's forum, I opted to spend my time there instead
and
> try to push civil behavior down people's throats. It has worked
remarkably
> well, and that accursed web forum (to steal from another's post here)
has
> excellent dialog without the vitriol. Linus Torvalds regularly posts
> there, as do a number of other well-known, and well-informed, people.
I'll
> admit, however, that it isn't a place for doing any rah-rah for any
> particular company or product. It's just a discussion of technical
> issues - just the way I like it. :-).
I will agree that the technical merit of the discussions at your site
are top-notch. But I will say that to some extent, it's as "fair and
balanced" as Fox News. I tried participating there for a while, and
felt chased away because I was not toeing the "IA64 will take over the
WORLD!!!" party line. When I brought up issues of competition in the
marketplace, or I.P. concerns over IA64, I was essentially called
immature, and told that a competitive market doesn't really matter,
Intel will keep driving things ever onward.
I do occasionally stop by to see good technical discussion, but I keep
in mind that it's a primarily Intel site with occasional glimpses at
other architectures. That classification may now be unfair, but when I
left, it certainly wasn't.
Calling people AMDroids is only one side of the flame war.
>
> I just happened to stop by to see if things were still the same here.
Glad
> to see that most of the ***holes are gone, but sorry to see that the
> discussion has become much less interesting (with a few exceptions).
I recently stopped back, because I found access to another newsserver.
DP
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