[ben6]

It's been a while and after some discussion with Brian it's clear that I do owe him an apology. I messed up in publishing some things and thought I better clear it up a bit

So I publicly apologize to Brian Burke and Nvidia for making the following statements and to clear it up a bit.

1. I was mistaken on the "pulling of support comment". He never made it.So I apologize for making it.
2. The exchange of emails, was not complete. Therefore I didn't get all of the information and misunderstood it. I apologize for some of the comments on his asking to get me fired as he made the opposite comment in fact.

The reply and the review stands but I thought I better clear up a few things. And I haven't changed my mind on the cards, but the misunderstanding exists because I had only 1/2 of the story which is why this happened in the first place.

[CorwinB]

I just wish BB and DP themselves had the guts to do the same thing and apologize to all the various webmasters they bullied and lied to.

[PaulS]

This should remind you not to rush headlong into making threads based on (apparent) anger, since you could well end up with egg on your face.

Well done for being man enough to admit you made some mistakes though.

[see colon]

"This should remind you not to rush headlong into making threads based on (apparent) anger, since you could well end up with egg on your face."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
don't go telling people that. threads started in anger keep me entertained! seriously, though. it is true that the nVidia have behaved badly in the past. it is true that they have been on roudy movie sets and have done things that they had, at the time, thought were playful.... oh wait...

anyway, point being, with the track history of the company in question, the information provided to ben6, and the situation in general, it's very acceptable hot him (ben6) to react the way he did. and even better that he (assuming he is a he) is man enough to admit he made a misake is even better.
c:

[Reverend]

BB had always had nice things to say about you, Ben. He even recommended you.

[ben6]

Which is why I was so ticked off. I thought I always had a good personal relationship with Nvidia PR no matter who the PR person was and BB in particular.

The comments hurt me a lot, and the fact that Nvidia didn't respond to my response (email problems) meant that I was sitting simmering .

In retrospect, i was way more ticked than I would normally be. And the whole matter could have been easily resolved had I been CCed the email from in the first place.

[Sxotty]

Originally Posted by see colon

" it is true that the nVidia have behaved badly in the past. it is true that they have been on roudy movie sets and have done things that they had, at the time, thought were playful.... oh wait...

WOW that was sooooooooooo funny, I fell out of my chair almost, even the mispelling was like arnie saying it...

[Hellbinder]

Im sorry but NO ONE needs to appologize to that guy for ANYTHING.

He is one of the biggest low life unethical marketing *beeps* I have ever seen.. if not *the* worst.

HE is the one that should be appologizing for intentionally lying is ass off daily, intentionally trying to undrmine other people and Businesses daily and all the other things we dont even get wind of. I find it personally detestable that someone of your stature Ben should be publically appologizing for anything that involves that guy.

He Simply does not Deserve it or anything close to it.

"Its my Job" Is not an excuse for any conduct you can get away with.

[Geo]

So, now I'm left thinking your site boss is the villian here for giving you selective information, slanted against NV.

[Tahir2]

Hmmm there is no bad guy.
Misunderstandings happen.
All ben6 is apologising for is the fact that he thought BB was trying to get him sacked. At that time it is possible that BB was trying to do this but as both parties have cooled down they probably kissed and made up.

ben6 is a nice guy from what little I know of him. It is easy to let your pride get in the way and ben6 didnt let that happen. What NV and BB did do though (which is to tell PNY et al to blacklist ben6 IIAC) is standard practise for companies with too much 'ego'.

Anyways.. dont blame ben6's boss now.... it's over, NVGATE is at a closure.

[K.I.L.E.R]

For now.

Originally Posted by Tahir

Hmmm there is no bad guy.
Misunderstandings happen.
All ben6 is apologising for is the fact that he thought BB was trying to get him sacked. At that time it is possible that BB was trying to do this but as both parties have cooled down they probably kissed and made up.

ben6 is a nice guy from what little I know of him. It is easy to let your pride get in the way and ben6 didnt let that happen. What NV and BB did do though (which is to tell PNY et al to blacklist ben6 IIAC) is standard practise for companies with too much 'ego'.

Anyways.. dont blame ben6's boss now.... it's over, NVGATE is at a closure.

[ByteMe]

What good does posting it here do? I would think an email would be better.

[micron]

Originally Posted by ByteMe

What good does posting it here do? I would think an email would be better.

I'm sure he's emailed his apology...

[ben6]

Um I guess I have another statement to retract, Nvidia didn't blacklist me. And I have no first hand knowledge of any such thing as them blacklisting anyone for sure. They can and do control what reference samples go out to various websites otherwise they'd go in financial trouble .

[Hellbinder]

Originally Posted by ben6

Um I guess I have another statement to retract, Nvidia didn't blacklist me. And I have no first hand knowledge of any such thing as them blacklisting anyone for sure. They can and do control what reference samples go out to various websites otherwise they'd go in financial trouble .

I honestly cant believe i am reading this. :?

For anyone else out there who cant figure out whats going on here this is a case of Grab your ankles and no.. you dont get any lube.

I feel for you ben that rat bastard gets away with this kind of crap and blatant abuse of people every hour of the day and its sickening.

[digitalwanderer]

Originally Posted by Hellbinder

I honestly cant believe i am reading this. :?

For anyone else out there who cant figure out whats going on here this is a case of Grab your ankles and no.. you dont get any lube.

I feel for you ben that rat bastard gets away with this kind of crap and blatant abuse of people every hour of the day and its sickening.

I was gonna say something, but I was afraid I'd get blasted as paranoid.

It does rather sound like someone is pointing a gun at Ben's head to write out a rather legalistic sounding point-by-point apology.

My heart goes out to ya Ben, and it turns cold thinking of nVidia and their tactics.

[ben6]

Hellbinder,

I think I need to be clearer

I'm not apologizing for my review. Nor for posting the email as written by Brian Burke or my response . I'm apologizing for making something public which didn't happen.

I really shouldn't have put Nancy and black listing in the same post. As neither event had anything to do with the other (that happened a week or two prior) . It did happen (she called the editor), but not as part of what happened with my review.

It's hard to unring a bell, and in retrospect I should have left it at the posting of the email and my response.

Ben

[ByteMe]

Originally Posted by digitalwanderer

I was gonna say something, but I was afraid I'd get blasted as paranoid.

It does rather sound like someone is pointing a gun at Ben's head to write out a rather legalistic sounding point-by-point apology.

My heart goes out to ya Ben, and it turns cold thinking of nVidia and their tactics.

If ben is doing this to cover his ass then it is sickening. And then if that was true why the hell would you feel for someone being a chicken shit?

But then I have not been paying enough attention to be able to tell what is happening.

If ben did acuse BB (or nvidia in general) without some facts (or massive circumstantial evidence) then he does owe an apology. If he has evidence to support his initial claims then it looks like he is a big chicken and should be ashamed of himself.

Is anyone following this situation extremely close?

[WaltC]

Originally Posted by ben6

...They can and do control what reference samples go out to various websites otherwise they'd go in financial trouble .

Oh, no, don't tell me he hit you with the old, "We're really as poor as church mice, and you have no idea what it does to our budget to send out a dozen review cards!" line, did he?

I can see the headlines now:

NVIDIA Files for Protection under Chapter 13

ALCATRAZ--nVidia Corp. HQ, Dec 25 2003. A shaken (not stirred) and disheveled James T. Kirk, Science Officer for the NVIDIA Corporation, looked out from behind bars today and delivered a bombshell:

"I am James T. Kirk," he said, "and as I am the Captain of the NVIDIA PR department, I declare that although I was ready to negotiate, and had been living in a 6x10-foot hole in the ground without even a cell phone until today, our creditors would not cooperate, and so we are now in bankruptcy."

At this point Kirk paused and looked to the ceiling, shook his fists and screamed, "Ra-a-a-a-a-a-a-adeo-o-o-o-on! Ra-de-on!!!" in front of several television cameras and a stunned crowd of network news anchormen and reporters from around the world.

Dan Rather was seen to crumple to the ground and collapse in a heap of wracking sobs, muttering, "What am I going to do with Doom 3?", interspersed with colorful wailing while ripping off his suit lapels, a mini-drama that lasted for several minutes while Kirk continued to bellow and shake his fists at the heavens.

The last words heard from Kirk prior to his lapsing into what doctors say is an irreversible coma, were these as this reporter heard them:

"It was that [expletive deleted] last review card we sent out that did it! Mother[expletive deleted]! How could I have known that it would be the proverbial straw! I could not have known! They didn't tell me! No!" It was immediately after those remarks that Kirk began banging his head against the bars of his cell prior to collapsing to lay beside the twitching form of Dan Rather on the cold concrete floor.

Although doctors say that it isn't likely that Kirk will recover, there was some good news: Dan Rather will most likely make a full recovery aside from somehow having bitten off his own tongue and swallowing it shortly after his own collapse. Despite doing an emergency procedure later in the hospital to retrieve Rather's tongue, doctors indicated that Rather had digested much of it before they could recover it, and so they were able to reattach only the small portion of Rather's tongue which remained. This reporter visited a cheerful and upbeat Rather several hours later in his hospital room, where Rather told me:

"Nnnn-nhnhnh uh-nnnunundi innubiirnadi uh---nnnnnn!," after which Rather attempted to laugh heartily and I found his laughter contagious and had no problem in joining in, even though I wasn't sure what Rather had just told me. I provided Rather with a pen and notebook, with which he informed me:

"I am retiring and moving to El Paso!," a sentiment which both of us found extremely funny for the next several minutes in which there was much back-slapping, chortling, guffawing and elbow punching between us. This reporter left a smiling Dan Rather that day, wiping tears of joy from his face, not having laughed so much since watching the latest rerun of the Honeymooners.

All's well that ends well...

[chavvdarrr]

http://www.petitiononline.com/nvh4x/petition.html
seen that? LOL

[3dilettante]

Originally Posted by chavvdarrr

http://www.petitiononline.com/nvh4x/petition.html
seen that? LOL

There was a thread dealing with it earlier, but it went bye-bye.

I think this petition is a poorly conceived attempt at a net-lynching that completely misses the point, and should it ever be successful, it will only create the illusion of change at the expense of two people's careers.

[ben6]

I don't want to be unequivocal ok? There's no pressure from Nvidia on my back in this manner.

Let me be clear. Had I all the facts, there wouldn't have been a post. on the email. I would have simply left it as a "Do you think I was unfair with this review" post? There would be no controversy, because I didn't understand what was going on very clearly.

Certain statements were made by me that were wrong that were made because of the email and a misunderstanding of what the situation was. That's what I'm apologizing for. And there is no equivocation here. I'm in the wrong on what I'm apologizing for .

I take every one of my reviews seriously, maybe too seriously. I think it's time for me to take a vacation or leave reviewing. Not because of anything BB or anyone else said but because I take criticism of my reviews too hard.

[Reverend]

Ben, is this thread a public display of apology to Brian... or is this an apology for others that cannot quite grasp the reason you started this thread?

[ben6]

It's a public apology, as I made the other thread public I thought it was fitting to apologize publicly.

[Reverend]

Ben, I was merely being cheeky as well as expressing my exasperation at the fact that some in this thread do not appear to understand the reason you started this thread, nor understand what a general sample of a PR guy Brian is.

To wit, in an interview with me a long time ago, Brian wrote this (note : it's a published interview, available to all with an Internet connection to view) :

Originally Posted by A long time ago, in an interview with Reverend, Brian Burke

The PR department acts as the gatekeeper of information. They help decide what information gets out, how the information is presented and when it is released. We maximize the publicity for the good things a company does and try to control the damage caused by any mistakes a company makes. We control FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) and create FUD for our competition.

A chip company like NVIDIA has to leverage the partnerships it has (with board vendors, system OEMs, software developers, industry partners, etc.) to highlight the role we play to the end user. We interface with websites, magazines (trade, consumer, and financial) other hardware venders (Intel and AMD), software developers (game developers and tools developers), industry partners (Microsoft) and board and system OEMs. As the company enters new markets (mobile computing, X Box, etc.), those tasks, messages and publics multiply.

I am sure certain members of the public do not approve of what has been written about Brian (in forums, in official articles, etc) or what Brian may have said/written to them in private correspondences. I don't like some of the things Brian writes about to me in emails (that's why I argue like hell with him, with no care for what it may do to a NVIDIA/B3D relationship). But I know how the industry works, I know why Brian feels compelled to write some of the things he writes to me and I know how to separate things.

I'm not "defending" Brian. I know just why he sent me four Voodoo5 5500 boards while he was at 3dfx and while I was running my own 3DPulpit site (where many call a 3dfx fansite), all just because I asked for it. It's not because he likes me. It's because he thinks he's doing a good job.

PR personnels will lie. Very frequently, in fact. The better their lie, the better they're doing their job.

The trick is to know when they're lying. And how to handle it. The public very frequently don't know how to handle this, thus the emotionally-influenced comments that follow. Worse still, is that they don't know if a PR personnel is lying to their face.