[S/A]How Nvidia blacklists sites like Hardware Secrets

[Solus Corvus]

I basically agree with a little bit of what everyone is saying, but mostly Movieman is right.

All of the involved parties should learn about the power of the free flow of information and how they aren't going to stop it. Hardware secrets should learn that trying to hide information isn't a good way to gain readership. I learned about PhysX, Cuda, Etc from a dozen biased/unbiased reviews before I even got to hardware secrets. I glanced through their review so quick I don't even remember it. Hiding information (or even just laziness) doesn't often work and it doesn't end up helping you when it doesn't - but creating new information does, and people are going to learn about that too. And as with Charlie's "new information" people will soon learn if it is true or not as well, lol.

And I'm sure you guys know why I think Nvidia should realize they can't stop the flow of information .

[stinkas]

That's coming from your experience I guess ?

Because the truth is most manufacturers try to "step on the small websites toes", sometimes try to "hard on" the big ones ( softly & gently and then backing up if the website insists like they should ).

They can afford to lose a small site ( that's gonna bite them in the a*s if they grow up and go big afterward though ), but with the big names they just toss the not so hungry dog a bone that usually comes back like a boomerang.

Unethical tactics ? For sure.
But that's life unfortunately, the big fish eats the small fish.

Please get real, I can't believe you are trying to defend corruption here!

Does this mean we should pardon any immoral act Nv imposes on other companies and general public, simply because someone else has also committed such infringements? Why not name and shame the other culprits also!

[BenchZowner]

If that's what you understood then I guess you're just here to troll and start the flame-baiting.

[stinkas]

Says who? Charlie?

Gabriel Torres, editor-in-chief of Clube do Hardware, the largest website about computers in Brazil, with 20 million pageviews and 7.5 million visitors per month.

Oh and Kyle Bennett at HardOCP.com

http://www.hardocp.com/news/2009/02/...stock_plummets

Looks like it's not just Charlie any more! Others are now beginning to back up what what Charlie been saying about Nv for years/months...

I think defending such a company like Nv (again a list of what Nv has done to deserve this is too long) is causing you more harm than good and you may want to re-think your stance maybe?

[stinkas]

If that's what you understood then I guess you're just here to troll and start the flame-baiting.

So you wasn't trying to use the fact that other companies in the history of commerce have committed sleazy act's as well so we should therefore excuse Nv because 'thats life'?

If I'v got that wrong then please fill me in on what you actually meant...

[Eastcoasthandle]

Gabriel Torres, editor-in-chief of Clube do Hardware, the largest website about computers in Brazil, with 20 million pageviews and 7.5 million visitors per month.

Oh and Kyle Bennett at HardOCP.com

http://www.hardocp.com/news/2009/02/...stock_plummets

Looks like it's not just Charlie any more! Others are now beginning to back up what what Charlie been saying about Nv for years/months...

I think defending such a company like Nv (again a list of what Nv has done to deserve this is too long) is causing you more harm than good and you may want to re-think your stance maybe?

I recall this article over at Anandtech (towards the bottom). Interesting we are seeing something similar at Hardware Secrets.

[stinkas]

Wow thanks for the link!

Do you still call BS on all this SKYMTL, or are you having second thoughts yet?

"For What it's Worth
Early last week Charlie over at The Inquirer posted a story saying that a number of reviewers were cut out of the GeForce GTS 250 launch. We felt a bit hurt, by the time the story launched we weren't even asked to be briefed about the GTS 250. Cards had already gone out to other reviewers but we weren't on any lists. Oh, pout.

Magically, a couple of days after Charlie's article we got invited to a NVIDIA briefing and we had a GTS 250 to test. Perhaps NVIDIA was simply uncharacteristically late in briefing us about a new GPU launch. Perhaps NVIDIA was afraid we'd point out that it was nothing more than a 9800 GTX+ that ran a little cooler. Or perhaps we haven't been positive enough about CUDA and PhysX and NVIDIA was trying to punish us.

Who knows what went on at NVIDIA prior to the launch, we're here to review the card, but for what it's worth - thank you Charlie "

[Necetra]

Heh. Gotta love nVidia.

[cegras]

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/blog/...re-Secrets/174

In effect, SKYMTL, you are implying Gabriel is a liar. Forget Charlie, he's a middleman. Are you saying Gabriel has outright lied? Yes or no. Either what he posted was wrong, or right.

[stinkas]

"Checkmate"

[Russian]

Gabriel Torres, editor-in-chief of Clube do Hardware, the largest website about computers in Brazil, with 20 million pageviews and 7.5 million visitors per month.

Oh and Kyle Bennett at HardOCP.com

http://www.hardocp.com/news/2009/02/...stock_plummets

Looks like it's not just Charlie any more! Others are now beginning to back up what what Charlie been saying about Nv for years/months...

I think defending such a company like Nv (again a list of what Nv has done to deserve this is too long) is causing you more harm than good and you may want to re-think your stance maybe?

While i see that nvidia occasionally leaves certain review sites out of certain product launches, for reasons which usually leave me dumbfounded, the majority of sites that are "blacklisted" still end up getting hardware for other launches and a single product launch such as the GTS 250 was not the end of [H] getting nvidia hardware, I highly doubt that they're paying for the Nvidia hardware they do get and that nvidia isn't inviting them anywhere or sampling them. I mean cmon guys... Its really frustrating to see stuff like this happen to sites but once you've had it happen to you before you learn to just not care and move on. This entire thing has been, yet again, blown out of proportion.

Also, regarding that article on hardocp... how in the heck does Nvidia's stock price have anything to do with the GTS 250???

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/blog/...re-Secrets/174

In effect, SKYMTL, you are implying Gabriel is a liar. Forget Charlie, he's a middleman. Are you saying Gabriel has outright lied? Yes or no. Either what he posted was wrong, or right.

I don't think he's saying that... i rather believe that maybe Gabriel jumped the gun on saying he was blacklisted... the term blacklisted is a fairly strong word and to use it means you know almost indefinitely. or that you're simply being sensationalist. I hope that he wasn't blacklisted and that it was a simple case of some employee being a to him and that management can sort out the solution. But i mean, there have been cases that i've seen where nvidia has told someone to take down an article about something that is NDA *cough* us and then forgot that they decided NOT to include us in the events... so we weren't bound by any NDAs whatsoever. There's a difference between trying to be unbiased and being spiteful and i feel like some people have grown spiteful of certain companies. Nvidia has definitely managed to do that with some people in the past.

[BenchZowner]

So you wasn't trying to use the fact that other companies in the history of commerce have committed sleazy act's as well so we should therefore excuse Nv because 'thats life'?

If I'v got that wrong then please fill me in on what you actually meant...

Basically all you need to do is what you should've done from the beginning.
It's quite obvious that you didn't read the whole thread.

[stinkas]

^^^
No I have, I just like to cut through the BS...

@Russian

Just sounds like excuses to me. Sometimes people can't see things even when it's staring them in the face.

[radaja]

man you guys are cracking me up.so many different arguments that change from page to page.
i feel a new one coming on

[hurleybird]

Yeah, I don't think Nvidia or Charlie can be taken as gospel. Charlie has been getting the better of Nvidia as of late obviously, but while he tends to do well with fact he tends to exaggerate in his commentary.

As far as people claiming that SKYMTL is pro-Nvidia, you guys seriously haven't read any of his posts in the numerous physX threads? While he isn't an Nvidia fanboy, I find his argument about needing to pay lip service to CUDA and physX as ridiculous. If a reviewer wants to spend more time actually benchmarking than talking about features we all know about, then that's fine. We also can't seriously expect reviewers to touch on every feature. The only problem I can see is if the feature coverage becomes one sided. For example, if a reviewer spends pages talking about Cuda and PhysX without mentioning Eyefinity or SSAA (it may just be me, but SSAA is more important to me than any of those other features combines) on the AMD side that would seem to be betraying a bias. Ditto if the reviewer hypes AMD specific features with little regards for the Nvidia ones.

In terms of whether or not hardware-secrets was blacklisted, I guess time will tell. EDIT: NM, seems confirmed by H-S themselves now.

[stinkas]

My prediction is HS suddenly find themselves un-blacklisted...

[MpG]

^^^
No I have, I just like to cut through the BS...

Yes. Selectively.

Feel free to address "The List", which SKYMTL admitted to scoring quite poorly on. Nevermind those ATI links, where he not only praises ATI, but actually says (regarding OpenCL) "Considering these are three of the most popular physics engines on the market, ATI is well placed to make PhysX a thing of the past." And if you've seen his posting, he's had no qualms about criticising Nvidia's shortcomings over the years. So feel free to offer more than trite one-liners.

Now, as for your willingness to accept Charlie at face value, to say nothing of both offering an [H] article as evidence, but also stating that they pandering to Nvidia following a poor review? Nevermind,

I think defending such a company like Nv (again a list of what Nv has done to deserve this is too long) is causing you more harm than good and you may want to re-think your stance maybe?

You mean, pander to the masses? With an attitude like this, thank goodness you're not a hardware reviewer.

[Russian]

^^^
No I have, I just like to cut through the BS...

@Russian

Just sounds like excuses to me. Sometimes people can't see things even when it's staring them in the face.

What do you mean by excuses dude? Have you ever dealt with these companies on a reviewer's level? As a customer? As a supplier? As a contractor?

Then you'd know that companies are made up of people and that people are not perfect. People screw up and sometimes it reflects upon the company... and usually the company as a whole finds a way to deal with it. Thats how corporations work.

As for the "confirmation" tidbit... how did they "confirm" that they were indeed black listed. It hasn't even been 2 weeks since that review...

My prediction is HS suddenly find themselves un-blacklisted...

Unless they were never "blacklisted" from the beginning...

[SKYMTL]

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/blog/...re-Secrets/174

In effect, SKYMTL, you are implying Gabriel is a liar. Forget Charlie, he's a middleman. Are you saying Gabriel has outright lied? Yes or no. Either what he posted was wrong, or right.

I'm not saying he lied at all. I am just saying he doesn't have enough information to publish a story claiming that NVIDIA cut him off BECAUSE OF his lack of coverage regarding certain topics. It's called jumping to conclusions. Which is wrong when you publish said assumptions under the public's watchful eye.

[Russian]

I'm not saying he lied at all. I am just saying he doesn't have enough information to publish a story claiming that NVIDIA cut him off BECAUSE OF his lack of coverage regarding certain topics. It's called jumping to conclusions.

[stinkas]

Unless they were never "blacklisted" from the beginning...

Well no, I was actually thinking because of the below.

"For What it's Worth
Early last week Charlie over at The Inquirer posted a story saying that a number of reviewers were cut out of the GeForce GTS 250 launch. We felt a bit hurt, by the time the story launched we weren't even asked to be briefed about the GTS 250. Cards had already gone out to other reviewers but we weren't on any lists. Oh, pout.

Magically, a couple of days after Charlie's article we got invited to a NVIDIA briefing and we had a GTS 250 to test. Perhaps NVIDIA was simply uncharacteristically late in briefing us about a new GPU launch. Perhaps NVIDIA was afraid we'd point out that it was nothing more than a 9800 GTX+ that ran a little cooler. Or perhaps we haven't been positive enough about CUDA and PhysX and NVIDIA was trying to punish us.

Who knows what went on at NVIDIA prior to the launch, we're here to review the card, but for what it's worth - thank you Charlie "

[ElSel10]

Basically, that is a list of things a reviewer has to talk about if they want Nvidia to send them free review samples. Why would Nvidia send people free samples of their cards that don't talk about the positives Nvida outlined? It's not like that's all they can talk about. Nvidia is not obligated to give out free cards to reviewers. I would bet my life AMD has a list of things reviewers have to talk about in a review in order to receive free cards.

The guy from Hardware Secrets is just upset about no more free cards. And Charlie's uncanny ability to spin something that is not unusual or bad and turn it into a scathing negative and create masses of lynch mobs and burnings of Jen-Hsun Huang in effigy is just scary, and puts them in a very poor light.

[SKYMTL]

Do you still call BS on all this SKYMTL, or are you having second thoughts yet?

I will continue to call BS. Why? Because from what I see HardOCP, Anandtech, etc. has CONTINUED to receive NVIDIA pre-release samples to this date.

At the time, NVIDIA made it quite obvious that they weren't releasing samples of certain renamed cards like the GTS 250 and GT 240 due to their similarity to the past generation. Rather, they were relying on their partners to sample sites. I have this IN WRITING. Whether or not certain sites got butthurt isn't my problem.

[stinkas]

I'm not saying he lied at all. I am just saying he doesn't have enough information to publish a story claiming that NVIDIA cut him off BECAUSE OF his lack of coverage regarding certain topics. It's called jumping to conclusions. Which is wrong when you publish said assumptions under the public's watchful eye.

I would agree if it was an isolated incident, but it isn't, it seems to 'keep' happening.

And when you factor in all the other BS Nv have pulled recently, I think you have your answer...

[Russian]

Well no, I was actually thinking because of the below.

I recall that situation, and it really had a lot to do with the fact that nvidia knew that they were releasing a re-badged product and that they only wanted to sample those who would not say that it was basically a 9800GTX that really has NOTHING to do with being blacklisted.

For those who forget the definition of the term...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacklist

When i hear someone say that they're blacklisted... I don't think they're getting excluded from one product cycle or one review. I read that as saying that they're being completely cut out from all current and future events/samples from that company. Nevertheless, my opinion on this topic is that using the term blacklisted is very strong and should only be reserved for when someone has concrete evidence of that fact. Not circumstantial things that are based on some inkling of the fact that nvidia was unhappy with a review that is not even 2 weeks old. I mean, how many nvidia events could occur within a 2 week span that HS could have been invited to. And how many product launches?