Tom's Hardware guide: Matrox G450

[rubank]

Gurm,
no problem.

However, I do not agree with your anwer to Rimfaxe regarding Tom´s responsibility.
As chief editor and owner he is not responsible for the opinions of his contributing editors or staff, as long as they do not infringe on the boundarys of the legislation. For example, if he (or any of his associates) were to say "G450 is pure shit" (which he doesn´t) or "nVidia products are godsent" (which he doesn´t) he may very well do so. If he (or any of his ass.) on the other hand would state that "G450 is manufactured in chinese sweatshops with 10-yearolds working 14 hrs. a day" he would be in serious trouble (if this proved to be wrong). But as for common opinions (and there are hundreds of sites making the same factual claims), no, he´s not responsible for the views of the author.
And do you think a journalist with any integrity would accept to write for his site if those were the conditions?

rubank

ps. Let it be perfectly clear that I don´t underwrite to everything said on THG, I´m just defending his right to publish the stuff. And I don´t buy the assumption that "I´m in the know and anyone who disagrees is an ****ole". ds.

[This message has been edited by rubank (edited 10 December 2000).]

[Heed]

Rubank:

Editors are responsible for _all_ the content of the publication-- period, end of story.

No one is making this up-- it's the way it is-- the editor's _job_ is to analyze and review the content of the publication before it goes to "press". Note the word-- "editor". It's his job to _edit_ (i.e. review and analyze, pick and choose, affirm or deny) the content of the publication _before_ it goes to press.

He is the final arbiter of what gets printed and what does not; therefore, the final content is his resposibility no matter who wrote it.

Heed.

[rubank]

Heed,
of course editors are responsible (although legal responsibility could lie elsewhere, as it does in my country), but that´s in legal terms. It does NOT mean the editor have to agree with the opinions of the author.
If you write editorials you´re by definition stating opinions, if you report news you should (try to) avoid making a personal comment. If testing and other consumer related articles is your bag, you should voice an opinion. If the chief editor tries to override your opinion, you most certainly should tell him to do the testing, evaluating and writing himself.
Have you read a paper, any paper, lately? Are there any controversial opinions? Well then, call the editor and ask his/hers take on the subject.

rubank

[Rimfaxe]

Well now...

Gurm: What is your point? Do you have one? Do my homework? What are you talking about? What do you know of that? Do you know how many of the articles of THG I have read? Do you know how long I have been here @ MURC? Do you know how long I have read about hardware @ THG? What is your point? This time, make no guesses. Ok?
Have you any clue on what taxes you have to pay to get computer parts from any other country than you own? Yes, you will surely get it but at what cost?

Thanks Rubank. I belive we are thinking about the same stuff.

[rubank]

Well Barbarella, I don´t know where you got your math skills,
but it´s an increase of 144% and 133% respectively.

And THG used the old version. Trust me, I know.

[Buuri]

So basically it comes down to that Tom is very biased towards nVIDIA in his reviews. Being biased here means, that he didn't find Matrox product the best.

:
B

[Gurm]

Rimfaxe:

I can guarantee with a certainty that you haven't been reading Tom's Hardware Guide for much longer than a year and a half. Two years at the outside. Because that's when nVidia paid him off. Everyone who read it at the time knows about it. EVERYONE.

And don't start on MURC seniority. Just don't start. Every time some clueless semi-newbie starts on that it gets ugly. Ok? Sheesh.

And I stand by my previous assertions - if Tom allows someone to post an article on his site that makes factual errors, use entirely the wrong drivers (note that it is the habit of THG staffers to get the best and fastest Detonator drivers for TNT boards but to use the release drivers for all other boards), or claim that an SDR board is a DDR board, then Tom's own integrity is called into question. Period.

And as for the SDR vs. DDR - if Kruzin says that the memory markings on the board indicate that it's an SDR board and NOT a DDR board... well that's good enough for me. Unless you can show that those memory markings can also correlate to a DDR board, I suggest you BACK OFF on that claim, ok?

- Gurm

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Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

[Heed]

Originally posted by rubank:
Heed,
of course editors are responsible (although legal responsibility could lie elsewhere, as it does in my country), but that´s in legal terms. It does NOT mean the editor have to agree with the opinions of the author.

True, the editor may not necessarily agree with every little point made by the author, but you can bet that he agrees that the content is appropriate for the publication. That is, he finds the content "in line" with the aims of the publication. For example, a newspaper with a decidedly "liberal" slant would never publish an article that undermined that position (i.e an article with a decidedly "conservative" slant).

If you write editorials you´re by definition stating opinions, if you report news you should (try to) avoid making a personal comment.

Agreed.

If testing and other consumer related articles is your bag, you should voice an opinion.

I don't necessarily agree: an opinion can be proffered by someone who hasn't done any testing/evaluating at all. If testing and evaluating are involved I want an _argument_ to support a conclusion; not a simple opinion-- I can take a poll if I want opinions.

If the chief editor tries to override your opinion, you most certainly should tell him to do the testing, evaluating and writing himself.

Or show him the data and ask him to provide a basis for contradicting you.

Have you read a paper, any paper, lately? Are there any controversial opinions? Well then, call the editor and ask his/hers take on the subject.

As I pointed out, he may not agree with every little point, but I'll bet that he agrees with the "direction" the article was going (i.e it was the "right" kind of controversial opinion).


Heed.



[This message has been edited by Heed (edited 10 December 2000).]

[Pace]

Heed: Can you please put your reply outside the quote please . Makes reading it easier, thanks!

Paul.

[rubank]

Heed,
I agree to making a bad choice of word.
But unlike you I have to translate my thoughts into a foreign language - and shit happens.

rubank

[Ant]

Rimfaxe I have never said anything of the sort about Tom either in these forums or on the MURC pages that you said was the opinion of the MURC. If you are referring to comments on these forums them attribute them to whoever said them and not to the MURC. Anything that is posted in a forum is the opinion of the person that posted it and not of the site hosting the forum, unless of course it is me that posts it. Yes a lot of people in here have criticised Tom now and in the past but you cannot attribute that to the MURC in the way that you did.

[Rags]

I stand corrected.

I just read his article again, and the numbers on his benches in the graphs he shows are in line.

I could have sworn the charts had different labeling the first go-round, but I was wrong.

Rags

[Kruzin]

At this point, I'll retract my assertion that the board tested was equipped with SDR. I'm still not 100% convinced, as I think the benchmark scores seem low...but it is entirely possible that it is in fact a DDR board.
I thought the DDR used on the boards was 5ns, not the 6ns stated on the o/c page of the review. After looking up the part numbers of my DDR board, I see it is in fact 6ns.

If this is in fact a DDR board (I wish we could read the ram numbers on his pic), I apologise for my mistake...

[Greebe]

That might be entirely true Ken/Matt, but with the lack of info and irregularities in the review, I am left with a feeling of which one is he actually using?! That in itself disqualifies it as being a factful and straight forward review.

Especially when my tests do not concur with his.

[Gurm]

Fine, my objections to the DDR/SDR thing may also be retracted. However, my objections to Tom's methods will not.

- Gurm

------------------
Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.