Common sense NDA

User14

Newcomer
I am in a position that I know something interesting that was not specifically on an NDA. I choose to keep it to myself! I'm so sick of people who think they are so hot for leaking something. Corporations are not evil entities.

Can't we leave the stupid gossiping to the much stupider people who cover famous "celebrities"?

Thanks all.
 
If B3D quit gossiping and discussing "leaked" info, amd, nvidia and intel would be very unhappy. Publicity is good for corporations, evil or not.
 
I am in a position that I know something interesting that was not specifically on an NDA. I choose to keep it to myself! I'm so sick of people who think they are so hot for leaking something. Corporations are not evil entities.

Can't we leave the stupid gossiping to the much stupider people who cover famous "celebrities"?

Thanks all.


You know what i'm sick of? People who think they're privileged and feel the need to make it known just to satisfy their ego!
 
If B3D quit gossiping and discussing "leaked" info, amd, nvidia and intel would be very unhappy. Publicity is good for corporations, evil or not.

No it isn't. I don't need to name names to let you all know that trade secrets are extremely important. It may not be the Department of Defense, but it is all taken very seriously.

All these companies would be quite happy if they could stop the flow of this gossip. Leave it to the celebrities--they are the ones who benefit from this type of "news".
 
Just spill the beans User 14. What is it? Lemme guess - you work for Intel's graphics group and you are upset that they are trying to bring in outsiders to lead new and important projects (Larabee Devleopmetn Group) rather than tapping people such as yourself? Or something like that? What else could explain such bizarrely paradoxical pro/anti corporate ranting?
 
Just spill the beans User 14. What is it? Lemme guess - you work for Intel's graphics group and you are upset that they are trying to bring in outsiders to lead new and important projects (Larabee Devleopmetn Group) rather than tapping people such as yourself? Or something like that? What else could explain such bizarrely paradoxical pro/anti corporate ranting?

Just someone who sees both sides. Is that so strange? Do we all have to be partisans?

A voice of reason, I guess. Don't take everything so seriously, people. It's not about me.

Ah, whatever. All this is the reason why information security is so annoying in large technology corporations. Everyone can be bought, but people don't always act with rational self-interest. The graphics technology being developed today will power some enormous revolutions in life itself soon enough. AI, automated cars, training. Games is just the start. Maybe all this tabloid stuff comes from the current focus on gaming. If it's all just a game, then let's spill the plot!
 
All these companies would be quite happy if they could stop the flow of this gossip. Leave it to the celebrities--they are the ones who benefit from this type of "news".
The talk of NV30 made a lot of people not buy R300s. The talk of R600 is making a lot of people not buy G80. Companies benefit from rumors.
 
The talk of NV30 made a lot of people not buy R300s. The talk of R600 is making a lot of people not buy G80. Companies benefit from rumors.

To an extent. Ideally, a person (or corporation) wants control of knowledge. That's why they have public relations. Didn't you hear about the huge spat at HP? Leaks can be a big deal.

Don't think that corporations are not purposely leaking some stuff. Also, don't think that there have not been some unapproved leaks (like the Apple G5, for example).
 
To an extent. Ideally, a person (or corporation) wants control of knowledge. That's why they have public relations. Didn't you hear about the huge spat at HP? Leaks can be a big deal.

Don't think that corporations are not purposely leaking some stuff. Also, don't think that there have not been some unapproved leaks (like the Apple G5, for example).

We know this, and you're simply having a bloated ego about things that all of us know. If we were going to change it'd have happened LONG ago.
 
To an extent. Ideally, a person (or corporation) wants control of knowledge. That's why they have public relations. Didn't you hear about the huge spat at HP? Leaks can be a big deal.

Don't think that corporations are not purposely leaking some stuff. Also, don't think that there have not been some unapproved leaks (like the Apple G5, for example).
As far as HP goes, the leaks themselves weren't really a big deal except in the minds of Patricia Dunn. And of course, both kinds of leaks happen all the time. But why should we really care what the source of this information is? "Oh, the company leaked this, so we can talk about that, but since this could have been leaked by a bitter employee, that's a no-no?" Then we're no better than PR mouthpieces. Of course, you've also clearly forgotten about leaks from a competitor...

Given your behavior in this thread, I'm forced to conclude that you're an Intel employee, specifically part of LDG. All you're really doing is making this far more interesting (but wait, that might be the point--viral marketing and all that).

Even so, I'm baffled at what you seem to want. You want people to stop leaking things? Great. It happens anyway.
 
Except the initial leak that he took issue with appears to have appeared in a publicised job posting!
 
The majority of the discussions here are intellectual exercises anyway, it doesn't really matter if they're based on speculation, leaks or someone's random vision of reality. Look at the G80 discussions pre-launch, when the leaks happened, and notice how far from reality some of us were :) That's part of the fun, of course. As noted by someone in the other thread, no public information was leaked on G80 before early October. And I wouldn't be surprised if the guys who leaked that shit got owned badly, considering the information was signed... (some of the numbers were very slightly off, most likely on purpose!)

Leaks nowadays aren't so frequent in terms of new architectures. They're much more frequent in terms of simplistic numbers, and that's true for a ton of reasons I won't get into. For example, it was known for months that G70 was a NV4x derivative with 24 pipelines; I don't think it was reliably leaked that the first MUL became a MADD, though, iirc. And in certain cases, it's obviously the companies themselves regulating the leaks (although that's not true in the vast majority of cases, some are definitely very real... And can be about more than the company leaking the information! heh)

Anyway, I honestly think the amount of leaking in the GPU business is pretty low nowadays, and it isn't working in disfavor of either of the IHVs, so I really don't think there's a problem and I don't really see your point. I'm not experienced enough in Intel/AMD rumours to know if the leakage is more problematic there, though. I'd say that nowadays, it's often not the actual employees leaking stuff though, and rather partners. Or press, when it's nearer the launch. I'm sure you saw those early pics of the G80 with a chinese guy in the mirror. In case you didn't know, he was breaking NDA, and everyone who went at the press event knew who he was, including NVIDIA. Talk about not giving a fuck... meh. So yeah, unless you got some new revolutionary arguement you're going to present now (errr :p), I'm not sure the problem (except once partners/press got the info) is that dramatic... The companies (at least NVIDIA/ATI) seem to be doing just fine at keeping the really sensitive information to themselves, and it's been a while since I saw anything (but the G80 specs in october) getting publicly leaked that they truly cared about. So, uhm, WTF?


Uttar
 
No it isn't. I don't need to name names to let you all know that trade secrets are extremely important. It may not be the Department of Defense, but it is all taken very seriously.

All these companies would be quite happy if they could stop the flow of this gossip. Leave it to the celebrities--they are the ones who benefit from this type of "news".

Then the people who work for these companies shouldn't leak this info - after all, that's where this info starts.

As for your "bitter employees" tirade , that's usually because big corporations treat people badly. If big corps didn't have such a bad attitude towards their employees, their employees would be more loyal. Companies treat people just like another resource, and so people treat companies as just another job.
 
User14, you could be classified aswell as trying to be "hot" or trying to get ego boost because you said that you _know_ things which others may not know. Why didn't you just start conversation about leaking and breaking NDA's without saying you know something? Hypocritical? Maybe.

As for corporations, they're not good by default either. Corporations exist _to make money_ - it's their duty for their shareholders (mostly not for employers and not for you (if you're not a shareholder). If you think that making money is the most important thing then they obviously are very good indeed, but if you don't think so then they might be the exact opposite.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Beyond3D has a history of being, in my opinion, too restrictive with information that is public but not official. Tiptoeing around the benchmark cheating, and completely forbidding discussion about the leaked DOOM3 build comes to mind.

Once the information is out, it's out, and there is nothing immoral in discussing it for those who find it interesting. And in fact quite a lot of information, corporate - scientific - political, is never spread using formal channels. They are just too cumbersome or plain inappropriate for some types of information or target audiences.

To what extent it was an immoral act by the original source to spread the information is of course situational, but that question doesn't really concern anyone else. Spreading false information/rumors is a more clearcut case as then the intention and purpose is to mislead others.

It is the desire of some corporate entities to control all information flow, and in the eyes of these, all non-autorized information reaching the public is "bad". That does not mean that even these extremes see all such incidents as "harmful". The badness is rather in the lack of control.

There are industries that are MUCH more sensitive to NDAs than graphics IHVs. Try medical companies for instance. They achive only one or two products per decade, each worth several billion dollars, and the products take almost the entire patent period to bring to market making it crucial to keep it under wraps as long as possible in order to have a little more time on the market to establish your brand name before the patent runs out. In the case of graphics on the other hand, my feeling is that the issues are typically more about boardrooms and marketing feeling in control rather than any real damage being caused by leaks.

At the end of the day, if you are not bound by an NDA, you're perfectly free to talk. At Beyond3D nobody is speculating or discussing Dave Ortons or Jen-hsuns infidelities or some such, nobodys personal integrity is being trampled under foot. And discussing actual leaks is a lot more interesting (I wouldn't go so far as say constructive :)) than endless speculation and wishful thinking.
 
Beyond3D has a history of being, in my opinion, too restrictive with information that is public but not official. Tiptoeing around the benchmark cheating, and completely forbidding discussion about the leaked DOOM3 build comes to mind.
Yup, that was my first thought reading this thread too. B3D ain't exactly a loose-lipped gossip column, I've been smacked down more than a few times for posting up publicly available info that was just deemed inappropriate because the info wasn't supposed to be out in the public domain.

B3D falls on the side of privacy/respect, it always has.

To be honest I just about barely get what the Larabee Group or their importance to Intel, but now I want to frontpage it in about 28 point fonts. Sometimes trying to stifle the story is the story.
 
Back
Top