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Tim Robbins
PowerBASIC, Inc. <small>—Preceding [[Wikipedia:Signatures|unsigned]] comment added by [[Special:Contributions/67.17.204.214|67.17.204.214]] ([[User talk:67.17.204.214|talk]]) 15:37, 18 April 2008 (UTC)</small><!-- Template:UnsignedIP --> <!--Autosigned by SineBot-->
== Verifiability ==
I noticed you deleted all of my contribution yet again. It would be more helpful, not to mention a show of good faith, if you would participate in the process and edit my contributions instead of completely deleting them!
Now that you have removed the link to the powerbasic forums, and elected to not sanction the description of "official" Powerbasic forum, perhaps some other relevant links would be appropriate. I agree with you that they are in fact "user to user" forums and will reword my contribution accordingly. I also agree with your wording "this forum is not a source of official support." Additionally, Your own website states: "Should your request goes beyond the intent of the technical support and resources we offer for free you will be advised there will be a $49 per incident charge if you would like us to proceed with your request." So I am not sure why you deleted that too?
As I indicated, the last remnants of company support suddenly left the powerbasic forums with Lance in July 2004 as confirmed in the thread you [http://www.powerbasic.com/support/pbforums/showthread.php?t=30928 quoted.] As another member put it "you may indeed be correct. lance's last post was july 5, 2004 and the last post that indicated he was powerbasic support was june 25... also, between march 6 and march 7 of this year lance changed his title from "administrator" to "member". if he is indeed gone i wish him a lot of luck!" It seems pretty clear that no one at the time had any idea what happened. But this is irrelevant and I only mention it because Lance provided technical support via the forums (as can be seen by any casual search of his posts). The current levels of participation in the forum by powerbasic staff cannot under any stretch of the imagination be considered support.
Because 30 support posts of any real value in SIX MONTHS cannot be considered support, and there is no eveidence of alleged "email support", my statement that "little if any real support is offered" is valid. Support is a key issue to novice developers and should be clearly represented in the wikipedia entry.
Thank you for helping with the wording of "there were 8508 total posts, not 8508 requests for help". This is perhaps a more accurate statement and as I have said all along I welcome your input. Since we agree on this number, perhaps you can justify your statement of "18,771 messages in support of PowerBASIC customers"?
The numbers I quoted are easily verifyable from your [http://www.powerbasic.com/support/pbforums/search.php search engine.] simply type in any of the historical support staff names like "Steve Rossell" or "Bob Zale" under "User Name:", highlight the five forums in which users confine thier posts for help:
PowerBasic Console Compiler
PowerBasic for DOS
PowerBasic for Windows
Programming
Programming the Internet
then hit search. If you look at page two you will see that posts in the last six months immediatly dry up.
A grand total of 32 posts from Mr Rossel and 48 posts from Mr Zale.
A quick review of these posts shows that in fact Mr Rossel contributed 18 posts of any significant help and Mr Zale only 12 (leaving aside Mr Zale's recent spurt of enthusaism).
This is a verifyable FACT. Anyone can verify these numbers. This is not my opinion. Even if we include every post made in that timeframe as real "support" we are still only talking about 80 out of 8500, thats still less than one percent! This is a relevant verifyable fact.
Your point 5 contains no references or even vague offers of proof. You mention Microsoft Visual Basic, seem to assert that Visual Basic users should be entitled to support from powerbasic staff etc etc. I am unclear how any of this is relevant?
It is interesting to note that you use an internet archive to support your arguments about historical posts when is suits you, yet have so far to acknowledge that the post relating to the incompatability of unsigned integers was targeted and deleted. If you statement "The truth is, we welcome criticism, as it's a key element in the evolution of our products" is true, then cite an example from your forums of criticism that has been embraced.
In fact powerbasic would like to dodge all accountability as clearly demonstrated when this [thread was deleted.]
The user claims: "This entire issue started when Bob challenged me to prove that PowerBASIC/Linux had ever been announced as "coming real soon" and accused me of lying.
I provided the proof. ([http://web.archive.org/web/20030602170609/http://powerbasic.com/aboutpb.asp Linux is coming soon, and other platforms will follow.])
He deleted my post, banned me from the forum and has now apparently [http://www.powerbasic.com/support/forums/Archives/Archive-000003/HTML/20020806-5-000273.html deleted] the actual [http://web.archive.org/web/20030522082708/http://www.powerbasic.com/support/forums/Archives/Archive-000003/HTML/20020806-5-000273.html evidence] that I cited as well.
While I agree that these comments do not meet the standard of verifiabilty for inclusion in a Wikipedia entry, clearly a thread has been deleted, and clearly it was critical of Powerbasic's false announcement of a linux compiler. This IS verifiable evidence of sensitivity to criticism and thread deletion. At a minimum this should be included in a wikipedia entry.
Your unwillingness here to acknowledge that Powerbasic is incompatible with mainstream compilers in that it uses the FPU for unsigned integer calculations and returns 64bit signed quad integer values st(0) of the FPU (unlike C that returns quads using the EDX:EAX registers) or even allow any mention of it in this entry, clearly indicates that you are seeking to suppress this information. You assert that a thread dealiung with this subject in clear and precise language (quoted earlier) has expired due to its "age".
These two things are simply incompatible with your assertion that "we welcome criticism". Obviously you do not.
Once again, I have proved threads are deleted and powerbasic is sensitive to criticism.
The facts that 64bit signed quad integer values are [http://www.jose.it-berater.org/smfforum/index.php?topic=1473.msg4619#msg4619 returned in the st(0) register of the FPU] also [http://www.powerbasic.com/support/forums/Forum6/HTML/005431.html here] and [http://www.powerbasic.com/support/forums/Forum4/HTML/001862.html here], and that the FPU is used for signed 32 bit Integer calculations is not only relevant, but important. I agree that the distinction between a C compiler and Basic compiler is also relevant. The implications of this inconsitency are directly provable as pointed out earlier: "The value does not necessarily wrap beyond zero; instead, it's often truncated at zero."
x??? = &hE1DDA73Cx2??? = (x??? * x???) This operation leaves x2??? = 0.
This is verifiable by any owner of the Powerbasic compiler in seconds and very relevant to the product in particular, and development in general. Since this pertains to the bahaviour of the compiler, as do all the features listed by the powerbasic company, it must meet the same burdon of proof, meaning the expression above is verifiable in exactly the same way as any of the claims made in the "Notable language features of 32-bit compilers"
How do you verify, for example, that "PowerBASIC programs are self-contained and do not require runtime files to execute."?
I submit that all these facts are verified in the same way, and that it is simply company vanity to include some but not others.
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