just saw the worrying Poseidon news

[AmiGR]

They had a verbal agreement, not something remotely as bining as a contract. DCE offered him
a contract to do something under payment and he
accepted it.

If they were to market the Spider card as- A USB2 card - it wouldn't sell many because it doesn't mention any benefits.

That's Elbox's problem, not Chris Hodges'.

By marketing the card with the featurelist of the available USB stack it seems much more attractive.

Uh-huh, but by marketing the card with the featurelist of the available USB stack you're deceiving potential customers as to the benefits they get by buying the card.

If I told you that you could buy my car and that it had a V8 engine and certain bhp, 6-CD changer, and certain add-ons like a chrome gear stick handle and bucket seats: BUT ONLY IF YOU FIT THEM YOURSELF AFTERWARDS ON YOUR OWN TIME AND MONEY, you wouldn't buy it, would you?

Elbox refrain to mention it, so you could expect purchasers to do so in good faith and expect to receive said features. As it stands, they do not, and they had to spend more money on Poseidon.

So why would you want Elbox to sell fewer Spider cards? It would mean you get less registrations.

Sometimes the money received from registrations does not adequately cover the stress and hassle of dealing with companies like Elbox. Sometimes it just plain isn't worth it.

=Neko=

[Rassilon]

@Neko

If CH wants to make any money from Elbox Spider registrations then it is in his interests to let them use the poseidon feature list.

As it was CH who approached Elbox to use the Posiedon stack, and they produced the drivers, and indeed he would also benefit from sales of Spider cards through Poseidon registration he's done pretty well so far.

If I told you that you could buy my car and that it had a V8 engine and certain bhp, 6-CD changer, and certain add-ons like a chrome gear stick handle and bucket seats: BUT ONLY IF YOU FIT THEM YOURSELF AFTERWARDS ON YOUR OWN TIME AND MONEY, you wouldn't buy it, would you?

Uh-huh, if I told you that you could buy a DVD from me and I told you that you can skip between the different sections of a film, BUT ONLY IF YOU BUY A DVD PLAYER, you wouldn't buy it, would you? - Oh yeah thats how it works in real life.

Sometimes things are quite as clear cut as we would all like to believe!

Rassilon

[Targhan]

I believe, if you read the soap opra, that the initial idea was that the spider was to include the cost for the poseidon stack.  If Elbox/C.H. could have come to terms on that, all of this would have been avoided.

However, they couldn't come to terms on such.  Right now, no one wins--Not Elbox, not Chris, and certainly not the users.  At this point, I don't know if there is a way to mediate the situation (no pun intended).  This is worsened by pirates posting "how to crack poseidon" and some of the other dubious activites floating around.  

[Jupp3]

They are not really happy with Pegasos having only USB 1.1 support while Spider is a USB 2.0 controller.

Well, I'm happy, I bought Zorro2 board to my A1200 instead of Mediator, mainly becouse Z2 isn't Elbox product, which means that developers can support it...

Everyone surely knows, what would likely happen, if someone wanted to support Mediator by, for example, adding Mediator support to OpenPCI...

(Or we don't know, as it wasn't added, due to legal threats...)

I wonder, if I could have been able to use even MorphOS with Mediator... Well, no use thinking such things, as I chose better solution back then...

And I needed to add only Ethernet and I/O card (X-Surf and A2232, had HyperCom3 for a while, but it didn't suit my needs)

But now I'm happy Pegasos user, with USB _with_ drivers "built-in" the OS itself.

-EDIT-

About the illegal RDB trashing code, I didn't really have problems with that...

But the way they handled it, ("It's not there", "ok, it's there, but it's not illegal", "We updated our drivers (The RDB trasher was still there)")

All that instead of "the right way", that would have been "We're terribly sorry, the code has been removed now."

That made me really proud unprivileged user :-)

[Doobrey]

platon42 wrote:
These bunch of [insert your favourite word here] did not stop selling the Spider or deliver their own product, but actively continued to promote it, intentionally not mentioning that registrations have ceased. They just don't care what happens to the user, as long as they can sell their stuff.

 Have a look at Elbox`s Spider II page
 When it comes to software, they say...
 

The software support for particular USB device is provided by appropriate Poseidon class driver.

 Still Elbox fail to mention that for the last 3 1/2 months ,their customers will only get a USB stack that works in demo mode only !

 And back when the RDB killer news came out, Elbox first denied it.. then a couple of days later said it was removed, then called everyone who hadn`t bought a Mediator "underpriviledged"...........
Who the hell do they think they are? Anyone would think they didn`t want any new customers.

[tjaoz]

@xeron

1. Tjaoz bought Poseidon, but has been denied updates. This is not illegal, most products are sold that way by default. I am a registered AmIRC 2.x user. I would have to pay again to get AmIRC 3.x. This is legal. The fact that other Poseidon users are granted free updates is a matter of courtesy, NOT law.

You are wrong.

Hodges invalidated my keyfile in the publicly available update of the Poseidon stack, for which I paid him 6 months earlier.

Even if he has written in the licence that he is not obliged to make bugfixes, if he is making such bugfixes in public, he must not ban access to them to selected clients according to his whims.

What Hodges has done is discrimination, illegal in European law.

[tjaoz]

@platon42

As long as nobody has these "new" drivers, I consider everything Rat says as FUD.

How can you know who has them and who has not? Want to get them from some 'friendly user'?
I have them, and I know that I'm not the only one who received them.

BTW. FUD is exacly what you spread about Elbox.
You are a master in FUD.

[tjaoz]

@T_Bone

Oh, you mean instead of just apologising to the customers, which would have fixed everything. Way to go Elbox.

I do not expect apology from Elbox.
I want apology from Chris Hodges.

I'm sure that many Mediator users feel the same.

But you probably are not a Mediator user, so you need apology from Elbox...
For what? Lack of USB 2.0 support for your platform?
 

Elbox broke the agreement, when they broke the law.

Sorry, the law does not work in this way that it is you who decides who broke and who did not break the law. The only place where breaking of the law may be found out is the court.

Public accusing of someone running commercial business of breaking law, in order to harm his reputation, is slander.

You have just done that.

According to your own theory, you are already guilty!

Repeat after me...
"What Elbox did is ILLEGAL"
"What Elbox did is ILLEGAL"
"What Elbox did is ILLEGAL"

Replace Elbox with T_Bone and repeat many times.

[tjaoz]

T_Bone

> Elbox removed the code and things were ok for a while,
> then CH decided out of the blue that he didn't want to
> support Elbox any more.

Out of the blue? No, he gave Elbox a choice, either

The choice?
All terrorist go this way. They give someone a chance to meet their demand. When someone accepts this, they offer new demands.

Hodges behaves like a terrorist who always wants something new. Read Hodges' 'soap opera' carefully and you will see it.

I wrote about this Hodges-terrorist behaviour in the Mediator ML here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Amiga-Mediator/message/16577

[tjaoz]

@xeron

I think he just wanted them to admit they were wrong.

Are you sure that's all?

Here is the original public set of 'requests' placed by Hodges:

a) admit, that the code was in their driver,
b) admit, that they have constantly lied to the users,
d) have placed a public apology for the first time in their life,
c) and have removed any malicious code.

Please note that Hodges publicly release these 'requests' AFTER Elbox sent out new driver versions.

I wrote about this timing here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Amiga-Mediator/message/16577

[tjaoz]

@AmiGR

They had NO contract with VFD...

:-)
So, what is this press release about?

in the VFD site: http://www.vgr.com/mediator/pressrelease1.txt  
in the Elbox site: http://elbox.com/news_00_07_24.html

[tjaoz]

@platon42

Actually, if you have truely read the soap opera, the stop of registrations was NOT an issue about apologies for the RDB issue (except for implicitely calling me a liar), but their denial to clearly state on their websites and advertisments that the software necessary to use the Spider card (Poseidon USB Stack) is NOT shipped with the Spider and is NOT registered, thus potential buyers being maliciously deceived (and me getting mails from angry users).

Yes, a real terrorist like you, always has new demands!

Now you want to say that Elbox does not inform that a user has to buy Poseidon to use Spider in Amiga.

You are of course well aware that your accusation that Elbox does not inform about it is untrue.

With your lies you are trying to mislead those who do not care about visiting the Elbox website to check the facts.
You lied similarly in this discussion in amiga.org.

Elbox informs very precisely in the Spider II page about what you need to use Spider:
--
Requirements:
- One free PCI slot
- Mediator Multimedia CD (for Mediator based systems)
- Poseidon stack (for Amithlon and Mediator based systems)
- Windows 2000 or Windows XP (for PC systems)
- Mac X OS (for Mac systems)
--
From this it is clear that apart from one free PCI slot you have to have a Poseidon to work with Amiga or Amithlon, Windows 2000 (or XP) for work with PC, and MacX OS for work with Mac. Neither a free PCI slot nor any of USB stacks or operating systems with a USB stack are not bundled with Spider. And Amiga computer and AmigaOS are not bundled, either.

Moreover, they were promoting their product with the features that it does not have per se, but only with Poseidon installed. In fact, they copy & pasted the poseidon feature list. I told them to remove it (copyright violation).

You are really funny.

You are all the time writing about the same text:

'Note: The Poseidon USB Stack is a software solution that unleashes the possibilities of the Universal Serial Bus (USB) and the devices with USB interface, ranging from mice, keyboards, tablets, joysticks, printers, scanners, webcams, digicams, flash card readers, zip drives, floppy disk drives, harddisks, memory sticks, ethernet adapters, scanners and audio adapters to less common things like power supplies, GPS location devices or finger print readers. '

I do not know who first wrote this text, you or Elbox Press Dept, but it was included in your bilateral Press Announcement: http://www.elbox.com/news_02_09_11B.html.

It means that this note is the official information about Poseidon, which you agreed with Elbox. It must be clear that they use a text agreed with you and are not writing their own stories about Poseidon. No copyright restrictions apply here, obviously. This type of texts are not covered by copyright law.

By the way, this text details more USB standard features than the features of your stack. I have not heard that Poseidon offers support for
power supplies, GPS location devices or finger print readers.

Or maybe you are so mad that you think you have copyright on the USB standard features?

They treated me like sh*t.  

Maybe in that sense only that they try to keep distans from you :-)

They even claimed that they did not need a registered copy of Poseidon to develop their drivers,

In the 'soap opera' you yourself are stating in one of the messages to Elbox that the keys are not necessary for developement of new drivers only, but even to their tests!

thus never registered it.

You have given free developer keys to them, right?

 

Stopping the registration process was my only way to attract attention to this issue.

You behave like a child.

[tjaoz]

@AmiGR

DCE offered him a contract to do something under payment and he accepted it.

Let's call a spade a spade:
DCE bribed Mariak to not support Mediator.

[tjaoz]

@bhoggett

The person who posted the how-to-crack guide is not an Amithlon "fun" and is most likely not a user either. His name is certainly not Dan Gaines and he is not in the UK either, despite the e-mail address used.

The person in question joined the mailing list less than a week before posting the crack, and that was the only post he ever made. It was cross posted to the amithlonopen, amithlon and Mediator mailing lists. The purpose was simply to damage Chris Hodges and nothing else.

So, considering that you tell lies about what happened and try to blame genuine users, and considering that "Dan Gaines" posted in bad English which showed it was not his native laguage,

You do not have any problems to meet all the above conditions. What is the problem for a native English speaker in writing a message with language mistakes? Your explanations show more and more that you could have been involved in the 'how-to-crack-poseidon' guide.

As for Hodges making Poseidon available with ArakAttack, this was always going to happen in good time, as was posted by the ArakAttack author when he released the driver.

ArakAttack has been available for some time in the VMC website, and the possibility of registering Poseidon for ArakAttack users is still nonexistent. What was the sense of making ArrakAttack available before the possibility of registering Poseidon? Is Poseidon not necessary for ArakAttack operation. Maybe you wanted to force Hodges to stop delaying the Poseidon registration? Or maybe you even wanted to force him to provide OEM licences for ArakAttak?

As far as I'm concerned Elbox are a bunch of virus writers, no different at all from the scum who write all those Outlook worms. It doesn't matter why they did it, only that they did.

You think Elbox is sending you viruses?
You should see a doctor. :-)

You do not have entitlement to Poseidon 2. End of story. You paid for Poseidon v1 and that's what you got. Hodges never "switched off" your key, he just removed it from the list of keys supported by the updates. Unless you have a written guarantee that you are entitled to free updates for life, you have no case.
(..)
Now Elbox using their updated drivers to disable competitors' hardware from existing users is another matter. That is unquestionably an abuse of consumer rights, and if I was an affected customer I would definitely make an official complaint against them.

:-)

You change your viewpoint very fast!
Changed position for writing this message? Where is your head now?

Maybe you should write:

Now Elbox just removed E3B users from the list of users supported by the updates of their software. Unless you have a written guarantee that you are entitled to free updates for life.

[Damion]

So, what is this press release about?

in the VFD site: http://www.vgr.com/mediator/pressrelease1.txt
in the Elbox site: http://elbox.com/news_00_07_24.html

So, where's the mention of a contract? :lol: