If lie to your customer with a straight face is dust for you, godspeed.
But if you want current shenanigans, there's a lot more, like the "improvements" in Richland that in some games weren't improvements at all, performance got worse, the 125W Derpdozer that throttle downs in 125W MSI and AsRock boards, the hidden Derpdozer thermal specs, their OpenCL marketing campaign that started *before* they had working OpenCL drivers, you name it.
It's far from an ethical company, and it is one that lies with a straight face to their customers. It's ok if you like them, but don't put ethics and AMD in the same phrase because they do not mix.
My favourite one was when they fooled people to replace 890 series boards with "enhanced" Bulldozer performing 990 series. Yet the chips was exactly the same and performance as well.
I don't get you people, that was several years ago and those guys got fired and they are no longer working for AMD. Did you guys missed the new CEO, restructuring, changing. Its not the same old AMD that you guys know.
I don't get you people, that was several years ago and those guys got fired and they are no longer working for AMD. Did you guys missed the new CEO, restructuring, changing. Its not the same old AMD that you guys know.
The AMD A-Series Test Drive program targets AMDs most vocal fans who are active in the component community. AMD provides the components and software (OS, apps) necessary to build an A-Series-based system and asks in turn that participants build a system, then comment/post their experiences (videos, photos, comments, etc.), ultimately helping to guide other enthusiasts to become advocates of AMD.
Can't the same be said of Intel as well?
All that bad stuff they did, that was old Intel, several years ago.
But AMD's latest covert program to infiltrate forums and convert enthusiasts intoAMD fanboysAMD advocates is very much a program that is alive and well now.
Can't the same be said of Intel as well?
All that bad stuff they did, that was old Intel, several years ago.
But AMD's latest covert program to infiltrate forums and convert enthusiasts intoAMD fanboysAMD advocates is very much a program that is alive and well now.
http://www.wired.com/business/2009/10/ftc-bloggers/First let me introduce myself: My name is Robert, and I’m the product marketing manager for enthusiast graphics at AMD: desktop gaming GPUs, AMD CrossFire, and AMD Eyefinity.
I was reading around the Internet and saw that you’d posted an article regarding a comment I made in a Reddit thread concerning the AMD Advocacy Program. It seems I didn’t adequately capture what I intended, so I hope I can make myself more clear on email. J
The Advocacy Program is an extension of AMD’s preexisting New Product Review Program (NPRP), which sends hardware samples to established websites (like ABT) for the purposes of independent third-party analysis. We hope to make these same inroads with new communication channels, like bloggers, YouTube reviewers and Twitter users, all of whom provide a unique and knowledgeable perspective that could add to the audience of independent reviewers already looking at our products in traditional press outlets. There are dozens of users with extremely large networks, an interest in technology, and no mechanism by which they might have access to open and honestly review a product in the same way that you might be able to as an established journalist.
We demand complete transparency in disclosing product sources, which is an FCC requirement in the US, the jurisdiction of our corporation. That is the same standard to which we hold all reviewers, advocacy program or otherwise.
More personally, I have a zero-tolerance policy for shilling as a 10-year forum moderation vet at another hardware review site. I’ve disclosed my affiliation there. I also disclosed my affiliation on the Reddit thread, as you saw. And I haunt the Overclock.net forums where again my affiliation is public. And on Twitter, where my affiliation is again disclosed. The same is also true for Google+, and Facebook, and any other location in which I might make product recommendations.
I expect the same from everyone in our marketing departments, and so does our legal team. J
Thanks for your time,
Robert
Robert Hallock
Product Marketing Manager
AMD Radeon™ Graphics
FTC Tells Amateur Bloggers to Disclose Freebies or Be Fined
- By Ryan Singel
- 10.05.09
- 8:58 PM
Gadget bloggers and Amazon.com reviewers now must disclose freebies and financial interests or face fines up to $11,000, according to rules announced by federal regulators Monday in an attempt to make word-of-mouth endorsements on the net easier to believe.
The Federal Trade Commission introduced the rules to prevent the net from being flooded with paid-for reviews which appear to be the work of everyday netizens, but are actually paid for with free products. But the new rules (.pdf) are confusing, ambiguous and likely unenforceable in the real world, given the size of the net, the sheer number of blogs and reviewers, and the difficulty of making distinctions between media professionals and amateurs — and between sponsored posts and pure reviews.
Under the new rules, a hiking enthusiast with a personal blog who got a free backpack would have to tell her readers about the gift and also disclose it in any online review. By contrast, established review sites such as Consumer Reports or Wired.com’s Gadget Lab do not need to disclose whether they get freebies or what they do with them. (For the record Wired.com returns most anything of value that can be returned.)
The FTC’s logic is that people trust established sites. They can’t do the same for a blog or reviewer, so disclosures are a must.The Commission acknowledges that bloggers may be subject to different disclosure requirements than reviewers in traditional media. In general, under usual circumstances, the Commission does not consider reviews published in traditional media to be sponsored advertising messages. [K]nowing whether the media entity that published the review paid for the item in question would not affect the weight consumers give to the reviewer’s statements….The rules break down roughly like this:
In contrast, if a blogger’s statement on his personal blog or elsewhere (e.g., the site of an online retailer of electronic products) qualifies as an “endorsement” – i.e., as a sponsored message – due to the blogger’s relationship with the advertiser or the value of the merchandise he has received and has been asked to review by that advertiser, knowing these facts might affect the weight consumers give to his review.
If a well-known dog blogger reviews dog food they bought, no disclosure is necessary. If they review free dog food acquired through a coupon spit out by the supermarket’s computer, no disclosure is necessary. But if the dog food company sends the blogger a free sample based on their review, both the company and the blogger are on the hook if any subsequent review doesn’t include that info.
That rule will strike the wine-blogging community hard, according to Joel Vincent, a tech consultant who runs OpenWineConsortium, a social networking site for the wine community.
One of the perennial, hot topics among wine bloggers is the ethics of accepting and disclosing samples, which are given out widely by the nation’s wine industry — composed of 6,000 mostly family-owned operations that are looking for cheap ways to market their product.
That debate just got a lot simpler — disclosure is now required by the FTC rules — at least if you are not a “professional.”
“The vast majority of wine bloggers are citizen bloggers,” Vincent said. “You are going to want to disclose just to make sure you never get called on by the FTC.”
But the rules leave much to interpretation.
For instance, is it enough to disclose on an “About Me” page that one accepts samples or does each review need to have that disclosure?
What’s the short code for disclosing that information in 140-character tweet?
What responsibility do review aggregation sites, such as those run by Google or Microsoft, have if they display posts that are ‘sponsored’?
The FTC also failed to clarify much about the grey area surrounding affiliate links — links to purchase sites that have special codes to reward the site that drove the traffic to Amazon, or Wine.com or website-hosting provider.
Do sites need to disclose that their links to a product within a review will profit the site owner, even if the product was something the person bought or paid for?
Are the rules different for an establishment site different from those for a site run by a wine connoisseur with a writing habit?
And perhaps, the hardest question of all in an age where everyone has access to an online printing press, how can you distinguish a professional site from an amateur one?
For a concrete example, take BoingBoing.net, one of the net’s top blogs that is published inside the United States. Cory Doctorow, one of the site’s principal writers, occasionally reviews books there, but he’s not a professional book reviewer.
Still, readers of his reviews bought 25,000 books through Amazon.com last year, and his affiliate links to those books earned him a commission — which, assuming a $10 average price likely netted Doctorow about $20,000 a year.
But, he’s a professional writer, among other things, and Boing Boing as a blog has a larger readership than many mainstream publications who escape the FCC’s rules. Doctorow also seems to reside mostly in the U.K., complicating jurisdiction. And no one seems to have accused Doctorow of being on the take.
But do the rules apply to him? It’s very unclear.
UPDATE: Doctorow responds in the comments that he always discloses and disposes.
“For the record, I always disclose when a book review was generated from a free galley, ARC or finished book (if the book is a printed manuscript or an ebook, I sometimes skip it, since I tear off and discard sheets from the former and generally delete the latter once I’m through with it),” Doctorow wrote. “Though, to be honest, “free” books are a substantial liability, since I get sent about 20 dumb, off-topic or not-quite-right books for every one I review, and I have to pay for a PO Box and a monthly taxi to get them all to the local charity shop.”
That’s far more stringent than any policy I’ve ever heard of from a mainstream publication, including Wired.com.
It’s also unclear just how enforcement will actually work, given the FTC doesn’t have the manpower to go after many offenders, since it’s also in charge of policing spamming, telemarketers, infomercials and business fraud of all kinds, electronic and real-world.
And by the way, this post was brought to you by Twinings English Breakfast tea, but I think Wired.com is established enough that I don’t have to tell you if we paid for it or not. Though then again, we are using WordPress to publish this blog.
So? Intel does the same thing, hey neighbour?! Look at my hot stuff, want it? Go buy one.
Ah, so two wrongs would make it right then? Its only evil if Intel is the only one doing it, but if AMD joins in then its ok. And it doesn't count if it happened more than 2yrs ago too. Am I getting this correct so far?
Ah, so two wrongs would make it right then? Its only evil if Intel is the only one doing it, but if AMD joins in then its ok. And it doesn't count if it happened more than 2yrs ago too. Am I getting this correct so far?
That's an absolutely delusional way of phrasing it. AMD sending free samples to reviewers is the same as Intel bribing retailers/OEMs to stop using AMD products?
Did you miss all the other shenanigans? AMD is extremely unethical with their customers.
What, speculative results about performance of a future product that turns out to be wrong? That sucks, but it kind of happens if you're the sort of sucker to believe PR talk - just like anyone who was told Haswell would be great for overclocking by an Intel engineer. Do I care about either? No, not really. But if you care, then please stop treating the issues like they are different.
Anyway,any new news on the Steamroller cores??
If you want to get over it and still trust this company's marketing department, I'm not the one that will be between you two. But don't pretend we are talking about an ethical company here, because we aren't.
Btw, where's the thermal sheet for the 15h family? Why does AMD refuse to provide specs they always provide for previous processor lines?
If you want to get over it and still trust this company's marketing department, I'm not the one that will be between you two. But don't pretend we are talking about an ethical company here, because we aren't.
Can't the same be said of Intel as well?
All that bad stuff they did, that was old Intel, several years ago.
But AMD's latest covert program to infiltrate forums and convert enthusiasts intoAMD fanboysAMD advocates is very much a program that is alive and well now.
The source of the propaganda program:
http://community.amd.com/community/...3/06/04/experience-the-amd-test-drive-program
Can't the same be said of Intel as well?
All that bad stuff they did, that was old Intel, several years ago.
But AMD's latest covert program to infiltrate forums and convert enthusiasts intoAMD fanboysAMD advocates is very much a program that is alive and well now.
But if you want current shenanigans, there's a lot more, like the "improvements" in Richland that in some games weren't improvements at all, performance got worse,
This chip looks like it s roughly 250mm2 , if it was fabbed
with the same process as Trinity it would be 325mm2 ,
that s 33% bigger , yet Kaveri GPU is only 33% bigger
than Trinitys so it s possible that everything was beefed by 33%
although it makes no doubts that some parts were more
inflated than others.