My editorial is finally out.

[Pete]

You were linked at TechReport, too, BTW.

 

[Eolirin]

Vince, question, why does a company that understands that its image in the public eye has an impact on its market share continually pull underhanded pr stunts and obvious driver hacks? Especially when they've been caught at it repeatedly?

If you can demonstratably show how nVidia's recent actions are compatible with the idea that their management is in touch with reality I'd be very surprised.

If you can demonstratably show that nVidia thought that it had anything to fear from ATi until after they smacked them down with the r300, I'd be equally surprised.

If you can explain Jen Hsun Huang's repeated comments about how fast nVidia grew and that anyone who thought they could outperform them was "smoking something hallucenigenic" as being anything other than sheer blind arrogance I'd be very impressed.

And if you can somehow unravel the mess that is nVidia's PR and form a coherant picture of a company that has any sense of what's going on around it I'll worship your rethorical skills.

 

[StealthHawk]

History will always be full of lies. I guess that just means the ones who did have an insider perspective can rest in peace, knowing they've not been misled by this so-called "common sense".


Uttar

That's generally true of history about [insert topic here]. History is written by the victors, as they say.

 

[Dio]

Ah well we could get really philosophical on this. The key thing with history - as in fact with most information - is to try to understand the inherent bias.

An increasing separation from events tends to lead to better history. This separation can be in terms of time, or in terms of interest. Note that separation in terms of time doesn't necessarily make for good history because there can still be strong 'modern' interests that mask the ability to get at real facts, because the writer has a fascination with the subject that taints interpretation (Gibbon is the obvious example here, although there is a lot of good history in Decline of the Roman Empire), or because there is a lack of 'unbiased' evidence - my attempts to find a secularly written history of the early Christian church, for example, have so far failed.

An interesting sideline is something I call 'metahistory' - the history of the history . Wars make for great metahistory; the evolution of opinions is particularly interesting and it tends to happen fairly quickly, over a single lifetime. My personal favourite example is "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" written before the release of the existence of Ultra - where with the benefit of hindsight there are clear gaping holes in the history of "Just how the hell did they beat the U-boats?". I've not yet found any books discussing this concept though; probably I would need to do a History degree or something for that!

I do feel that more people should read and study history because it's the best way I've found to learn about perspective, objectivity, and bias, and of course because those who fail to learn the mistakes of the past are condemmed to repeat them (that's a famous quote, but can't remember who it was).

 

[WaltC]

So, now we need to listen to you talk about 3dfx? Most of which is wrong BTW. Although the "Manifest Destiny" line was cute - especially when used to talk about 3dfx. Because, let me tell you, if there was ever an expansionist/imperialistic company... it was good old 3dfx and their legacy 1996 core which just happened to be in the right place, at the right time, with the right market and component prices.

It's amusing how you state that what I said about 3dfx is "mostly wrong," but you agree with the "manifest destiny" viewpoint, which is all that I said in that post about 3dfx... It seems we agree here, oddly enough.

I'd consider 3dfx much more akin to ATI's preformance groups prior to the R300 than anything else.

What does "prior R300" ATi have to do with "post R300" ATi? The current subject at hand is nVidia, btw (not 3dfx or ATi.)

For some reason, I'm strangly picturing my little, 7 year old, cousin trying to read a history book. Oh well, I'll probably have my post deleted anyways for not towing the "nVidia kills babies" line around here. God forbid we have to read a post that's doesn't blame nVidia for instigating the great flood because of its sins.

Delusions are a common enough human condition, and certainly don't affect only companies like nVidia. As you can see your post wasn't deleted, and I have yet to read a single "nVidia kills babies" or "nVidia instigated the great flood" post by anyone, here or elsewhere... Generally, we find that restricting ourselves to what nVidia actually does is entertaining enough...

 

[WaltC]

Get a grip. I'm not defending "my IHV"... how polar is the thinking around here. I don't give a shit what happens to nVidia in the grand scheme of things. My laptop uses an Intel chipset, I don't own nVidia as an investment. They can slide into the Pacific for all I care. I'm merely questioning Walt on his utter BS that nobody else seems to do.

It's one thing to simply say that an opinion is "utter BS," quite another to explain why you think it is what you think it is. You've done the former, perhaps you might try the latter?...

Seriously, since you think my opinion is utter BS, perhaps you'd care to explain your own opinion on nVidia's descent into self-destruction as we've all witnessed it over the last year...? (And please, try very hard not to insist that nVidia is somehow on an ascension path at present...)

 

[Tahir2]

Get a grip. I'm not defending "my IHV"... how polar is the thinking around here. I don't give a shit what happens to nVidia in the grand scheme of things. My laptop uses an Intel chipset, I don't own nVidia as an investment. They can slide into the Pacific for all I care. I'm merely questioning Walt on his utter BS that nobody else seems to do.

It's one thing to simply say that an opinion is "utter BS," quite another to explain why you think it is what you think it is. You've done the former, perhaps you might try the latter?...

Seriously, since you think my opinion is utter BS, perhaps you'd care to explain your own opinion on nVidia's descent into self-destruction as we've all witnessed it over the last year...? (And please, try very hard not to insist that nVidia is somehow on an ascension path at present...)

They are on a path to ascension WaltC, you should be able to see this. NVIDIA could have been stuck at the level of 5800U but look what they did? They learnt from the mistakes of that architecture and improved upon it. They also covered all segments of the market (successfully or not).

Forget the PR mess, just look at the products instead. That's all that matters, products and sales to NVIDIA.

 

[cthellis42]

The PR mess comes about DIRECTLY from sales concerns, however, and is certainly very headache-causing. -_-

 

[WaltC]

They are on a path to ascension WaltC, you should be able to see this. NVIDIA could have been stuck at the level of 5800U but look what they did? They learnt from the mistakes of that architecture and improved upon it. They also covered all segments of the market (successfully or not).

Forget the PR mess, just look at the products instead. That's all that matters, products and sales to NVIDIA.

I think particular emphasis has to be paid to the word "successfully" in this case as I think it is of fundamental importance. I confess it's difficult to discern from your text whether you're being tongue-'n-cheek, though, as to nVidia's present "ascension"...

On the chance that you weren't being satirical, I agree with you that nV35/8 represent improvement over nV30. But as nV30 was officially cancelled prior to mass production (assuming such production might ever have happened with nV30), that stands to reason, right? I'll see nVidia again in ascension when its products can play in the same API playground as its competitors, and nVidia PR stops talking about how unfair it is to suggest that products advertised to actually support particular API versions should *really* to have to support such functionality...