Re: Oh how the might have fallen...
C64? Lucky bugger....all I had was a VIC-20..
Atari accuses El Reg of professional trolling and making stuff up. Welp, here's the interview tape for you to decide...
Legendary games company Atari has accused a Register reporter of making stuff up and acting unprofessionally following an interview earlier this year in San Francisco at the launch of its new games console, the Atari VCS. In that article, we were critical of the fact that the machine did not work, and that its chief operating …
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Thursday 21st June 2018 13:11 GMT GIRZiM
Re: Luxury!
A Timex Sinclair 1000!
The best we could afford was a 1K ZX81 and no cassette recorder; we had to type in all the code from the magazine every time we wanted to run a program, squash all the bugs and add all the missing code the magazine managed not to print.
But if you tell that to the young people today, they won't believe you!
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Friday 22nd June 2018 07:03 GMT TonyJ
Re: Oh how the might have fallen...
"...Bit late to the party you lot were. Us Speccy/Amstrad/Comodore 64 kids were well versed in trolling - I can assure you! (Those rich BBC kids never got involved)..."
My very first computer was a Christmas present from my mum and dad - it was an Atari (800XL? had a tape recorder as well as a cartridge slot). Alas, there were issues with the tape recorder so he took it back and swapped it for an Acorn Electron. My dad chose it because it was "BBC Compatible" and therefore educational.
Oh I envied those kids with a Speccy, Commodore or BBC.
I did manage to save up my pocket money though and buy a BBC B+ a few years later.
Wasn't ever very good at programming the thing but I knew what every component on the motherboard did.
You're right though...in the who-has-which-home-computer wars, I was never dragged in once the other kids knew what I had. :)
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Thursday 21st June 2018 09:58 GMT Dan 55
Re: Oh how the might have fallen...
The Falcon finally got there and could be considered better than the Amiga 1200 (although the Amiga's OS was still 1000 times better than GEM/TOS/Whatever that thing was), but only because Commodore then had the worst CEO in history of everything who sat on follow-up to the Amiga 1200 for years like it was the Iron Throne or something, until he ran the business into the ground.
However software was scarce for the Falcon, it lasted a year, and Atari imploded too.
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Thursday 21st June 2018 11:05 GMT Anonymous Coward
There had been 3 ATARI companies!
1) ATARI (the original company) died in the early 1990s.
2) Then another completely different company Infograms (France) named itself ATARI in early 2000s and died in the early 2010s.
3) Then another different (chinese) company named itself ATARI in the late 2010s. And releases cheap re-hashes of old ATARI games from the 1980s.
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Thursday 21st June 2018 11:07 GMT ForthIsNotDead
Re: Oh how the might have fallen...
That's very true. Jack Tramiel, as controversial as he was, definitely rescued the company and brought some of the innovation and potential back. However, even under the Tramiels, a lot of the mojo and pure fun-factor that made Atari what it fundamentally was gone.
After the Tramiels, Atari was nothing but a name. A husk. Nothing of the "true" Atari, originally under Bushnell, and latterly the Tramiels, remains. It's a corpse.
The name Atari has changed hands a bunch of times since then, it's nothing more than a brand now, a recognisable name to be used as a marketing vehicle, with no one even remotely associated with the Atari of old being involved, none of that Mojo. Just bullshit, hype, vapour, and lies. Consequently, I feel no guilt whatsoever in declaring: "Fuck "Atari" and the fake hype-machine that they rolled in on.".
The whole company can do one as far as I'm concerned. Even if they do release a working machine, I'm not interested.
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Thursday 21st June 2018 07:42 GMT Hans 1
Poor Mike
Mike does not appear to be a seasoned vaporware or snake oil purveyor, just a marketing guy turned exec ? He has absolutely no clue about what he is selling, no clue about what he is talking about and of course, bringing a piece of plastic to a press conf is, well, not helping him.
What did he expect ?
How hard can it be to put a pi with retropie in the plastic, have an intern design a new ui (so journos don't notice it is in fact retropie) - job done.
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Thursday 21st June 2018 09:15 GMT Hans 1
Re: Poor Mike
Is there a difference?
Yes, marketing guyz dream up press releases and do PR, they basically come up with nice stories for sales guyz to tell. They are safe in the office, hardly ever see questions that need immediate responses, they need time to think of a way to squeeze as many buzzwords into a sentence as possible.
Sales guyz are usually the snake oil purveyors, with whom you can expect a minimum of product knowledge, they know what to say and know how to make something up when they are caught off guard.
Noting that with that piece of plastic, I could get it up and running a customized retropie in less than 40 minutes ... most time spent fitting extension cables for network, usb, hdmi, and power as well as fitting the pie firmly in the casing so it looks "professional".
Do also note that VCSAtari are on twatter but have not worked out how to tweet, yet ;-).
Icon: For poor Mike, with love and compassion!
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Thursday 21st June 2018 09:35 GMT Pascal Monett
Re: with love and compassion
Nope.
I have no compassion for a marketing guy who invites a technical journal to an interview without bringing any functional items, instead bringing mock-ups, not being able to answer technical questions and then pretending to be hurt when the ensuing article is not written like a Vogue-magazine fanpiece.
Flaming idiot. And now he's Streisanded himself.
No sympathy.
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Thursday 21st June 2018 10:45 GMT Rob D.
Re: Poor Mike
Yes, the sympathy gene was resonating a teensy bit with Mike there - not too much though. Listening to the audio you can hear the resignation in his voice and I could just picture the pre-meeting with Mike's management:
Mike: I've nothing to show. It's just bits of plastic and cables.
Management: Go on, Mike, we have every faith that you can spin this and make it look like gold.
Mike: But really I'm just the project lead. You've given me a fancy title and responsibility for the budget but I have no power and nothing to offer. We really should call it off.
Management: Look, Mike, it's like this. Either you go and sell this turd as if it's solid gold so we can get some more funding to polish the turd properly, or we fire you, you lose your health benefits and that nice house you live in.
Mike. Fine. Can I swing by the marketing office and take some Atari baseball caps with me - at least they work?
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Thursday 21st June 2018 12:09 GMT Dan 55
Re: Poor Mike
If you want to fake Tempest 4000, you need squeeze a NUC into that pretty box.
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Thursday 21st June 2018 07:53 GMT Pen-y-gors
Re: You Just Need to Have Faith
Oh no, no. Faith is so essential and powerful. The sun only rises every morning because I believe it will. My laptop only boots because I have faith that it will. Those BSODs are a sign of a lack of faith - I am a worthless sinner. The daily sacrifice of a virgin also helps (getting harder to find these days)
And for a wonderful example of the power of Faith, <insert Brexit reference here>
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Thursday 21st June 2018 07:52 GMT Lee D
Rule #1:
Always keep a record.
Your boss wants you to do something stupid? Keep a record. Get their name on it. Make a fuss if they won't do it. Keep records even if they won't sign off. Who said what, when, how, and where? Get to the point where they just scribble a sign-off or fire off the email which says "Yes, dammit, I said do it!".
You're getting complaints? Keep a record. Record what the complaint was. What the stats and systems said about the claims in that complaint. Keep the email logs. Keep recordings. Keep all available context.
You're making a complaint? Keep a record. Record everything. Their response. Check if they have fixed it regularly.
Certainly if you are reporting publicly and therefore likely to run into situations like this.
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Thursday 21st June 2018 08:37 GMT paulf
Isn't CYA* a good life lesson at all times anyway? Quietly apply it to your every day life; you never know when you may need it, but when you do you'll be glad you have it. Many a time it has got me out of a sticky situation and adversaries really hate it when you hit back with facts and evidence!
*Cover Your Arse for the uninitiated
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Thursday 21st June 2018 09:31 GMT Lee D
In the modern age, it's really easy.
Make sure all your stuff is electronic.
Then just keep all your emails.
I signed my last lease agreement, my mortgage, my divorce, etc. all electronically. Employment contracts - If they aren't already electronic, I scan them in and email to myself.
My email account goes back to about 2000. I have the email accounts before that in a file somewhere (it's only about 1Gb). In work, I have policies that basically all result in "if you want this, file a ticket, fill out a form, put it in an email" and then helpdesk tracking of everything and EVERY EMAIL ever sent or received from my account since I started there.
It's really not that hard, in the modern era.
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Thursday 21st June 2018 11:07 GMT DropBear
There seem to be more caveats to this than trees in the forest, honestly. Yes, record keeping can be invaluable protection in certain situations, but... not if you ever wavered or caved to the pressure from above to do something you shouldn't have agreed to do. Not if you were ever in the situation of not being able to afford to test how far you can stretch your rope before it snaps. Not if you ever made a mistake in the "how to get other people do what I want" game which is definitely manglement's home turf, and very likely not yours. Not if "they" were savvy enough to invent a plausible excuse to keep communication out of the sphere that would allow you any meaningful record keeping beyond "I assert that this is what he told me but I have zero proof".
And while you're at it, you better have the unerring judgement of a God each and every single time even under the fuzzy conditions of real life, because if you vigorously object to something that turns out to not be a problem they'll burn you to ashes, and if you fail to object to something that does end up being a problem you'll burn again. Record keeping: good advice? Sure, but also incredibly overrated...
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Thursday 21st June 2018 08:04 GMT Wellyboot
Management style
Excellent – a quality rebuttal.
Their statement say a lot about the mindset of upper management running Atari if they think modern journalists don't keep everything that might one day be required to defend a defamation case and that casual libel is ok.
As this blog has been made available in the UK you can probably take Atari to the cleaners in court here (settle for a grovelling live apology at the next big CES).
Finally the trump like 'sad' at the end, please no!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
