CompuServe Messages

Was Jim Plant's editorial aimed at you, or was it just a coincidence? (Let me point out that all I've ever heard about this story is what you've said here.) You didn't expect to get flamed? Are you kidding? Whether you're ready to admit it or not, you and your company came very close to crashing and burning in the classic computer-company scam: You ran ads for a product that didn't exist, you cashed the checks, and you (almost) didn't produce anything. You screwed up the perfect ending, though – you didn't disappear with the cash. Instead, you came here to say you're sorry. And you didn't expect to get flamed? I can't imagine how you can distance yourself from Gun For Hire. How many video-savvy people are in this company? How many were directly involved in this project? It couldn't be that many – after all, you hadn't finished the project, all you'd been doing is running ads and cashing checks. If the advance cashing really bothered you, and you were *not* closely linked to these people, you could have dropped the project and left them holding the bag. You can't have it both ways. I know you mentioned Gun For Hire when you called Syndesis to get free product, and although I don't remember specifics, you would have been a rare exception among freebie-seeking writers if you didn't describe yourself as a major player at the company. 🙂 As far as "slipperiness" in your columns… let me get this straight: You think it was OK to talk about your tapes on a regular basis (although they hadn't shipped and for which some people had already paid) but it wouldn't be OK for you to talk about other people's tapes, except to say you bought them and you were so disappointed you decided to make your own. Yeah. How much cash are we talking about here? And did you pay full rates for your ads in VTU? I've had a number of complaints with Video Toaster User since its inception. I think it has a serious lack of ethical writers. From issue one, almost all the writers have their own products and projects to plug. (Meanwhile, the rest of us are asked to buy ads to plug our products.) When they're not plugging their own efforts, they're plugging the efforts of another columnist. When they're not plugging each other's products, they're overlooking serious flaws in products. Both Duberman and Plant have said to me, "Gee, we don't ever like to say anything negative about a product, that doesn't do anyone any good." In other words, the bugs don't matter, the manual doesn't matter, the interface doesn't matter, the support doesn't matter. And now, apparently, it doesn't matter if a company runs ads and cashes checks before the product ships, or that this company is clearly associated with one of the magazine's columnists. If Syndesis ran ads and cashed checks for a non-existent product, and your money was involved, would your column say "Let's send them more money and wait and see, I'm sure they don't have any malicious intent."?