I think Omid could use a cup of herbal tea and a long vacation. Normally I at least halfway agree with his columns/rants. This time though, reality seems to be a little beyond him. A 40 point rant at that... Yikes! The only thing worse is a 40 point response, so suffer or ignore.

And here I was thinking that the purpose of THG and other hardware sites was to just give us the truth and say it as it is. You don't have to 'challenge' the establishment to do that. In fact, if 'the establishment' happens to be <i>right</i> in the first place, then you should be <i>agreeing</i> with 'the establishment'.

Um, yeah. Short of the early 80s and earlier when people hobbled together PCs from kits, that pretty much describes what the PC industry has always been and probably will always be. Well, except that it wasn't always Microsoft. (Especially in the early years when Commodore, Apple, and IBM were all trying to flog each other with wet noodles while Atari pretended to be something that it wasn't.)

I'm not sure that I'm even following the logic here. Is Omid trying to say that forums like at AMDMB.com are 'the estabilshment' and not just the loony-bins that we all know they are? Or is he trying to say that actual good forums are being over-run by fanboys? Either way, I'm having problems believing in <i>either</i> as 'the establishment'.

What about PC vs. Apple, injek vs. laser, USB vs. Firewire, Creative Labs vs. every other sound card manu, CRT vs. LCD, or even IDE vs. SCSI? Honestly, has Omid been oblivious through all of these years, even before AMD made their first Athlon? Or is he just trying to say that anyone who actually likes to compare ideologies is by default an ideologue and therefore a sinner? Again, neither speaks very well for him.

1) What's over?
2) Uh, duh. When was it ever not?
3) Lowered expectations imply that we had higher expectations in the first place, which is pretty silly if you ask me.

We all <i>should</i> know by now that the PC industry itself as a whole is nothing special. If we want special, it is up to the enthusiast to build their PC from specific hand-picked parts and <i>not</i> rely upon the PC industry to get them there.

PC enthusiasts have <i>always</i> been an incredibly small minority. They always will be. The average person doesn't care any more about the insides of their computer than they do the insides of their car, their furnace, their clothes washer, their TV, etc. ad infinitum. The only thing that's changed is Omid's perceptions. (Or not. Maybe he's just always been worried.)

Prepare for the future? Replace 'decadent folly' with 'self-indulgent excess' (which is hardly a stretch to do so) and you're describing the past and present with stunning accuracy. Why should the future be any different? I'd really like to know in what world Omid lives in...

This could be the first point of his that I actually agreed with.

Well, yeah. I have to agree again.

Microsoft is pissing everyone off. The only closest competition (if you can even call if that) comes in the form of Linux. Yet Linux enthusiasts don't want their precious OS 'dumbed down' to a level that most people would need to use it so that it can <i>be</i> competitive. The CPU race war is long over and AMD lost. nVidia flubbed their latest product launch. Creative Labs has yet to convince audiophiles that it can meet their needs. DVD burners are <i>still</i> overly expensive. An actually decent RAM type to solve all of our woes has yet to rise from the ashes of the chaos and bedlam that is the current memory industry. Yeah. The PC industry has seen better days, and short of the economy, it's pretty much purely the PC industry's fault.

Short of buying out companies like Microsoft, Red Hat, Intel, AMD, nVidia, and Creative Labs, I don't think there <b>IS</b> anything that either tech people in publishing <i>or</i> PC enthusiasts can do. The PC industry dug most of its own grave, and unless the economy suddenly bursts with excess money only the PC industry can dig itself back out. Sorry Omid, but I don't see what articles can possibly do to change <i>that</i>.

Well, I'm so glad to see that we're no longer allowed to do competetive shopping. No more researching and comparing products folks. From now on tech reviews will no longer involve benchmarks for comparison. Anyone who dares to compare, research, and competetively shop for their technology is now officially branded as someone who "opposes technical or technological change".

Sorry, but either Omid needs to re-examine his statement, or he's <i>really</i> lost touch with reality. What else is a tech-review site to do but compare products and give us the truth on how they really stack up?

Perhaps 'He's just selling tin.' wasn't the best explanation, but it sounds pretty reasonable to me. If you want a server you can go to any number of resellers, and a LOT of them offer similar x86 platforms. There's hardly any originality among <i>them</i>. Only if you're going for a 64-bit system do you even have to consider specific hardware vendors. The software on the other hand is what is original and unique. Without the software, whether $6 million or $6 hundred, your hardware is nothing more than a conversational piece of modern art or a door stop. For the most part, software provides the means and hardware just provides the performance of that means. Yes, the hardware is necessary, but so long as it's good hardware, the hardware is hardly the important part of the sales pitch.

Or we can accede the simple fact that the two factors for the way that things are go as follows:
1) The economy is in a slump.
2) The PC industry is making a mockery of itself. For example:
Microsoft is ignorning and pissing off its own customers. The Linux community is as much of a joke as a savior. Intel and AMD are no longer racing, as AMD hasn't been able to really compete for top-end performance in a good while, and has proclaimed that they're not even going to try to. AMD has delayed their ClawHammer five too many times. nVidia made a notable error. ATI is finally catching up to (and surpassing) nVidia in performance, but still has to catch market share to positively impact the PC industry. Creative Labs just doesn't know how to sell to anyone but mainstream, whom they already own anyway. The hard drive sector just lowered everyone's confidence in them by drastically cutting their waranties. (And by releasing a TON of bad hard disks and then not taking responsability for them.) Buying a v.92 modem is useless since ISPs aren't. Buying broadband access is still too expensive for a lot of people <i>and</i> still not available nearly as broadly as broadband enthusiasts would have you believe. Memory manufacturers haven't really come up with anything new in forever. The DDR market is overflooded. The RDRAM is underwhelmed thanks to the behaivor of Rambus and a lack of motherboards to use it.

So what <i>we</i> can do to help the PC industry pick up again remains to be seen. Should we hold a charity ball? Maybe we could hold a telathon? What the heck <i>can</i> anyone but the dolts who have screwed their own industry do? As for me, I intend to sit idly by wait for things to pick up again, as they undoubtedly eventually will, simply because there is <i>nothing</i> else that I <i>can</i> do. Worrying or trying to change anything at this point is nothing more than a waste of time and effort. And if I'm going to waste time and effort, I at least want to do it on something that I can enjoy.

I can't argue with any of these. I completely agree. I however see it as a rather short list. I would also add:
* It is not our job to hock cheesy wares without a proper evaluation and especially without a comparison against similar products just because some company's PR department wants us to.
* It is not our job to fix the PC industry, because only the PC industry can do that.
* It is not our job to pick favorites amongst manufacturers.

Again, I wouldn't argue with any of these. (Even if I don't fully comprehend just what exactly Omid meant in number 21.) I would however add to that list.
* It is our job to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Misdirection, obfuscation, and not-completely-untruths are not our bag, baby.
* It is our job to <i>fully</i> compare products of equal nature without bias and to the best of our abilities so that enthusiasts and consumers may go forth and purchase with wisdom.
* It is our job to report the <i>truth</i> on the PC industry, even if that means occasionally putting a company in the PC industry down.
* It is our job to at least occasionally spark enthusiasm in the enthusiasts.

Omid says rant as though Op Ed pieces ever were anything else. :-p Seriously though, yeah. But one must keep in mind that just because we <i>disagree</i> with something does not mean that we didn't enjoy reading it. (Or that we didn't enjoy debating it, talking about it, whining about it, or whatever.)

Because, you know, the last people that are important to any publisher are the <b>readers</b>. Yeah Omid, way to aim that insult... as if you aren't skimming the clouds on your own sanctimonious high-horse. Ever hear of 'Let he who is without sin cast the first stone' or 'judge not lest ye be judged'? How about 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you'?

You want others not to be on their soapboxes, yet you stand proud and tall on yours. You don't want to have to dish out only warm fuzzies, yet you whine that others aren't playing nicely by your warm fuzzy rules.

Unforgiveable is a strong word, but whatever. Your opinions are yours. I'm not going to argue there, even if I think you could have included a lot more information in your attack so that it could have made any sense at all.

That's nice. I support changing the way that technology is reported for the better.

I have yet to see how any of the Ziff Davis stuff in any way equates to having 'someone jump on you with stiletto heels', but whatever floats your boat Omid.

I won't argue any with that. What I want to know is what this has to do with anything. I guess that's why they call it a rant.

<b>Chunky peanut butter doesn't help you overclock very well!</b>

Wow. I know that I feel better for having stated the obvious.

Again, see number 28. That aside, I have to say that I still think the writing style of the books <i>is</i> pretty dry. The story is good, but the writing style is just as boring as all hell. Heck if it weren't for Gimli, Sam, and Golum I'd have given up entirely on reading them.

If Omid means the movies though, well, it'd be pretty sad if he did since I don't think you'll ever find a much better fantasy moviemade, but whatever. To each their own.

A few years before? I don't know. I pretty much thought that DX9 was supposed to make the implications and impact pretty obvious. I give it a year to a year and a half, tops. That aside, how they affect <i>current</i> software in terms of quality and performance is incredibly easy to judge and quantify. Leave the future debates for the future and concentrate on the present now. I know that it's just such a hard concept to fathom and all...

Not until nVidia can't prove that they're not all suddenly incompetent they won't. Even then, I'm not sure anyone really cares all <i>that</i> much about the battles anymore.

Welcome to journalism. If you don't like your job, try getting your own 'right wing chat show on Fox News'.

Too bad there isn't any of that love for your readers.

As a software engineer with over 7 years of on-the-job experience who has had to put up with and lost out on jobs to some of these no-talent java hacks that flooded the tech industry ever since the dot-com era came to a crashing stabalization in reality, I have very little sympathy for the way in which many barely-skilled people flooded and consequently ruined what had been a good work market. Does it anger or distress me though? Why should I waste my time being angry or distressed? Life moves on. It's the way that things have always been and likely always will be. IT jobs today, factory jobs yesterday, laboratory chemist jobs tomorrow, etc.

And I'd like for ISPs to allow you to magically keep your same email address whenever you move. Since we live in reality, the first thing that I learned serving my country in the military was to get on board with that 'free email crap' so that my friends and family could always reach me at the same email address. But Omid, if you want to live in fantasy then you can just always go to AOL chat rooms and pretend that we all pay for access through annoying and overly-priced ISPs that cover the whole US, and then pretend that the whole US <i>is</i> the whole world.

The reality simply is that many people sign up for 'free email crap' because they move around a lot (or previously have moved), change their ISPs, or access their email through libraries, malls, cafes, etc. ad nausium. <b>That's</b> reality. Your idealism here is the fantasy. And if you want my real identity, then just go to my web page and find out.

Congrats Omid for finally saying something else that I can actually agree with. It's the way that it always <i>should</i> have been, but fads <i>do</i> tend to come and go.

1) Their impetus is the same as everyone else's. I don't see that <i>anything</i> has changed. I can remember a teacher that thought that <i>he</i> knew everything just because he learned to program on punch cards. Yet he still thought that deleting an icon in Windows 3.0 deleted the whole program because that's how it worked on a Mac. Nothing changes. There are always more possabilities. Anyone who can't see them just isn't looking. Anyone who doesn't think that they're there shouldn't even be in the business.

2) I <i>really</i> wish that supposed 'experts' would get off of this mobility and miniaturization crap. Let the <b>mobile</b> IT sector worry about size and mobility, and leave the mainstream PC sector to doing what they've always done: make things more powerful.

The day that I have special memory handling built into my CPU for accessing doubly-linked lists exceedingly rapidly, the day that I can do a real-time render of a complete forrest scene <i>without</i> using texture maps, the day that I can edit, compile, and run my code all simultaniously in real time, the day that my upgradability isn't limited to just one or two additional cards just so that I can be mobile or have a small PC, the day that my CPU can configure portions of it's own silicon on the fly (and without any latency delays) specifically for processing certain functions so that it's always 100% in use, <i>that's</i> the day that I'll saw we can divert more attention to mobile and miniaturized PCs.

Of course. It's just convenient that all of what you think and believe in happens to be controversial. Yeah. Right. And all hunters only kill animals to feed their families. And all doctors are only in it to help people. And all politicians are only running so that they can make a difference in our lives. Right. No shady little ulterior movites or fringe benefits at work at all.

The sun will come up tomorrow. So too will the moon. Gravity will still be here. Politicians will still be shady. The world will still turn. I'd say that's a pretty accurate prediction of the future.

To be more specific however, if Omid means that he hasn't met an actual psychic, that's only because he hasn't actually looked. There are plenty of people who can answer specific questions about the future with at least an 80% accuracy. You just won't find them advertised on TV because they take their skills seriously.

And Omid can complain about people who use free email services living in a fantasy world? <i>Sheesh!</i>

To conclude, I admit that I may have plenty of spelling mistaks, typos, and Chaos only knows what else wrong in my post. That's life. It's imperfect. <i>Everything</i> is fallable to some extent. Anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is selling you something. Anyone who believes otherwise is a fool.

Of course, I'm a fool and I don't believe otherwise, so that tells you something about just how foolish of a fool it makes one.

In conclusion, live, dance, cavort, and be full of joy, for tomorrow may never come and yesterday is too late to fix. Omid, unless you're a rant junkey, maybe it's time you just chilled. Even for you, you're going off the deep end.

<font color=blue><pre>If you don't give me accurate and complete system specs
then I can't give you an accurate and complete answer.</pre><p></font color=blue>

dude, youve lost it, so you dont agree with a published writing, get over it.

my computer is so fast, it completes an endless loop in less than 4 seconds!

What a waste of time. Atleast he was PAID for his rant.

There's a poll asking if he should be fired. I personally think you all are crazy. Let him say whatever he wants. He's not hurting anybody. He's just ranting. I don't understand why people are all over him.

Get over it. All of you.

<font color=red>
<A HREF="http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?dhlucke" target="_new">The French are being described as cheese-eating surrender monkeys.</A></font color=red>

Like DH said, one of the reason for his rant, was that someone actually made a poll whether he should be fired, AND someone in the OTHER forum went all crazy on Omid for attack ZDNet.
I suppose Omid just got angry at how some forum people really can't see the reality, and once again we see the whole fanboy thing.
But while you raise some points, I still think he had a rant that I agreed with, and don't need to criticize it, because, it's a rant, a personal opinion thrown out.

--
This post is brought to you by Eden, on a Via Eden, in the garden of Eden.

OK So now you both have posted your Rant. Feel Better????

I aint signing nothing!!!

Go to my poll about Omid:- <A HREF="http://forumz.tomshardware.com/community/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=28537#28537" target="_new"> Should Tom Fire Omid? </A>

<b> "You can put lipstick on a pig, but hey, it's still a pig!" - RobD </b>

d00d, are you taking on a long winded tirade to prove yourself the superior in long winded tirades?

<font color=blue>Watts mean squat if you don't have quality!</font color=blue>

d00d, are you taking on a long winded tirade to prove yourself the superior in long winded tirades?

<font color=blue>Watts mean squat if you don't have quality!</font color=blue>

It's only diagnosed in kids, but I detect some signs of <A HREF="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/03/04/eveningnews/main542774.shtml" target="_new">ODD</A>. Kidding, but seriously when did all the HW techs start wearing panties and why are they bunching up so much? Kidding Kidding. Seriously nice rant. You are the Anakin Skywalker of rants and you are starting to draw some power from the dark side.

Dichromatic for your viewing plesure...

[Yawn]

<font color=blue>My sig, not yours</font color=blue>

Gee, and I thought that techies were supposed to be smart...

Obviously you're missing a couple of key points here:

One, I have no problems with Omid ranting. I do think that he could use a vacation though. Normally his rants are enjoyable. This time though, they were really more just stupid and insulting than anything. That doesn't mean that I want him fired. It just means that I think he could use some rest and relaxation, away from the stress of his job.

Two, while we're on the stress of his job, if he can't take it without going nuts like he did, then maybe he should be looking for a different one. There are plenty of less stressful jobs out there.

Three, if you all haven't figured this out about me yet, it's that on occasion I actually enjoy debating, and long debates especially. Call me crazy, but after spending half of a day tracing down a software bug that turns out to have just been a glitch during compiling that a Rebuild All fixes, sometimes I like taking time to de-stress and relax by debating.

Four, in case you didn't notice, the words "so suffer or ignore" were right in my first paragraph. The simple fact that y