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PowerBASIC (talk | contribs) Corrected many fabrications by "Real World Experience". |
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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.
==Statement of Fact==
"Real World Experience" is a single purpose account, created to attack PowerBASIC, Inc. It appears he has no "edits" other than those which are antagonistic towards PowerBASIC. The actions of "Real World Experience" are plain and simple vandalism.
On Jan 30, 2008, a PowerBASIC Forum Administrator realized that this user was posting under a false identity, which was not allowed under forum policies in place for 12 years. The Admin asked this user to restrict posts to his real name in the future, just as done by thousands of other members.
In retaliation, the user began a vendetta against PowerBASIC, Inc. On Feb 3, 2008, be began a campaign of misinformation on the Free Basic BBS. When that received little support, he took the same misinformation to the VB Wire BBS. Now, he's brought the same tired arguments here, to Wikipedia.
1- "Real World Experience" said, "PowerBASIC currently has no clearly stated Privacy policy."
This is a fabrication. PowerBASIC has published a very definitive [http://www.powerbasic.com/privacy.asp privacy policy] for over eleven years.
2- "Real World Experience" then said, "Leaving aside the recent changes to the Powerbasic privacy policy in light of this dispute..."
This is another fabrication. The PowerBASIC Privacy Statement today has the same text as the Privacy Statement of August 23, 2000. Eight years ago. This fact can be verified [http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.powerbasic.com/privacy.asp here].
3- "Real World Experience" said, "There are currently no full time staff offering support."
That is a false, reckless, and slanderous statement with no validation of any kind. PowerBASIC has highly qualified, full time technicians who provide excellent technical support.
4- "Real World Experience" said, "Little, if any, official support is provided".
This is a fabrication. For many years, PowerBASIC has offered absolutely free, one-on-one, technical support by email. Paid support is only required when it involves custom programming, debugging of user programming errors, or custom research outside the bounds of the PowerBASIC compiler. This policy is virtually unmatched in the industry.
5- "Real World Experience" then said, "Little, if any, official support is provided in these forums."
This is a fabrication. A quick review of the active forums show that PowerBASIC employees have actually posted 18,771 messages in support of PowerBASIC customers. If archived forums were included, the total would be much higher. Of course, for serious support issues, PowerBASIC recommends that customers use free, one-on-one technical support instead.
6- "Real World Experience" said, "This situation is especially relevant for new users who may suddenly find themselves without access to any real support."
This is wild speculation intended to inflame and agitate the casual reader. It has no basis in fact, and is without merit. He is saying that some future circumstances might arise where PowerBASIC might decide to withhold support. It is nothing more than the writer's imagination about what might occur in the worst possible scenario at some undetermined future date. One might just as easily say '''"The moon might explode today"'''. They have about an equal chance of occurring. The truth: "No licensed PowerBASIC customer has ever been refused support in the entire history of the company." The worst that might be said is that the very occasional abusive customer is delayed just a bit, at least until he regains composure.
7- "Real World Experience" said, "[sic] user's may also find their personal information disseminated".
This, too, is wild speculation and very reckless. Never, in the history of the company, has PowerBASIC ever released a customer's contact information. No mailing address. No email. No residence address. No telephone number. Not once. Of course, when you register for the PowerBASIC Forums, you authorize the use of your full real name, since it's a published item. And, in the case of "Real World Experience", he voluntarily and personally published his city of residence in every forum message.
8- "Real World Experience" said, "String functions MCase$ UCase$ LCase$ UCode$ ACode$ only handle the English alphabet".
This is a fabrication. Many years ago, it was true, as was very common in the era of DOS programming. However, the last five (5) versions of PowerBASIC for Windows and PowerBASIC Console Compiler have offered excellent support for international character sets.
9- "Real World Experience" said, "MCASE$ UCASE$...are slow compared to ASM routines commonly applied to these tasks".
We dispute this claim in its entirety, and respectfully note that he has provided absolutely no substantiation for his allegation. Frankly, we chuckled at the notion that an experienced programmer would believe assembler routines are commonly applied to these tasks. Visual Basic, his latest compiler of choice, does not even offer an assembler.
10- "Real World Experience" said, "I assert PowerBASIC staff are very sensitive to criticism".
This is a distasteful personal attack on the employees of PowerBASIC, Inc. It clearly has no place on Wikipedia.
11- "Real World Experience" said, "users are frequently banned."
This is false, reckless, and slanderous. Did he provide a count of banned users? Did he provide a list of banned users? What is his definition of the word "frequently"? Once again, he's using charged words in a distasteful attempt to denigrate a company with high ethical standards. Yes, we occasionally find it necessary to suspend a forum member. Yes, sometimes we find it necessary to delete a thread. Sometimes for piracy. Sometimes for abusive behavior. Sometimes for flooding posts. Sometimes for other valid reasons. With close to 300,000 messages posted, there will always be a few bad apples. But, that does not equate to "users are frequently banned". This has no place on Wikipedia.
It should be noted: Even after the egregious fabrications presented here by "Real World Experience", he is not banned from the PowerBASIC Forums.
12- "Real World Experience" said, "[sic] Becuase you link your forum to the Wikipedia entry and declare it the "official" forum, and because it is the offical repository of fact relative to the powerbasic product..."
This is a fabrication. The notation of an "official" forum was added by 63.157.90.231 on May 1, 2006. It has since been removed. The PowerBASIC Forums are Peer Support Forums, frequented by thousands of folks with widely varying needs and agendas. The vast majority of them are wonderful friends and customers, but your suggestion that PowerBASIC has deemed them to have created the "official repository of fact relative to the PowerBASIC product" is not correct. Even further, at this time, there isn't even a link to the PowerBASIC Forums on Wikipedia.
13- "Real World Experience" said, "Lance Edmonds, Administrator - 0 posts (This [sic] aministrator suddenly [sic] dissapeared in July 2004 with no explanation).
This is another fabrication. On Aug 18, 2004, the following message was posted on the PowerBASIC forums by Lance:
"Hi folks!"
"Thanks all for the kind words! It was a real pleasure working for PowerBASIC and I do miss it, however life will continue in a different (and hopefully equally fulfilling) direction for me now! Anyway, I'm going to embark on some of my own software projects for the short term, and we'll see what develops from there. In any case, I'm still an avid PowerBASIC programmer and supporter, so I will still be dropping by from time to time to put my 2-cents in."
14- "Real World Experience" said, "When you consider that there were 8508 posts asking for help..."
This is yet another fabrication. By his own words, earlier in the message, there were 8508 total posts, not 8508 requests for help. The number of requests for help would obviously be much lower than the total. It's clear this was re-phrased in order to twist his mathematical calculation to fit a result which matched his agenda. The result of that calculation was then posted to the PowerBASIC page without regard for the misinformation.
15- "Real World Experience" said, "it is quite clear from this post that support is an additional cost promoted via the forums"
This is yet one more fabrication. "Real World Experience" knows it is false, because he is the one who asked the original question on the PowerBASIC Forums. Our employees are experts on the PowerBASIC compiler. Our employees provide absolutely free technical support for questions about how to use the PowerBASIC compiler. But he asked a question about Microsoft Visual Basic, not PowerBASIC. He had a program written in Visual Basic, and he wanted to recreate its functionality in a PowerBASIC program. He did not understand some of the statements and functions used in Visual Basic, and he wanted us to provide that information, or perhaps even write the PowerBASIC program for him. If our representative knew the quick answer to his Visual Basic problem, he would have certainly shared it. We do that every day. But, we are not Visual Basic experts. In order to answer his questions about Visual Basic, or to write his program for him, we would have to do some fairly lengthy research on that product and his specific problem. That is very clear. It's also very clear that such research and custom programming is well beyond the scope of technical support from any company. Mr. Zale wrote him a very polite, businesslike message to explain it fully.
PowerBASIC is a programming tool. It is used by programmers to create an application program. We sell the tool to create a program. We will help you by answering questions about the tool, but we can't create your programs for you, and we can't answer technical questions about other programming tools. That would be a lifetime consulting service. If one were to follow the somewhat twisted logic of "Real World Experience", you could:
A- Visit your Sears store and buy a hammer.
B- Expect them to teach you to build a house or build a house for you.
C- Expect them to teach you to use an air-hammer you bought elsewhere.
Of course, then Wikipedia Editors would have to go to the Sears page and:
A- Add an entry that Sears won't build you a house, even if you buy a hammer.
B- Add an entry that Sears won't teach you to use tools bought elsewhere.
C- Then move on to appliances, televisions, etc.
16- "Real World Experience" said, "little (less than 0.5 percent) official help is provided in the forums".
This is yet another fabricated claim. As explained earlier, the numbers used in the mathematical calculations were manipulated by "Real World Experience" in order to provide a result that matches his agenda. However, even if his mathematics were truthful, the entire statement is immaterial. The PowerBASIC Forums Registration Agreement advises each customer that: "This forum has been created for "Peer-to-Peer" questions and discussions. While PowerBASIC employees may contribute, this forum is not a source of official support.". At PowerBASIC, we believe that free, one-on-one, technical support provides a much better result for most programming issues. Of course, it's still nice to know that PowerBASIC employees have contributed 18,771 forum posts in support of our valued customers.
17- "Real World Experience" said, "threads are targeted and deleted by Powerbasic staff".
This is a fabrication. It is not verified, it is not true, and it is not sourced. Original content is not allowed on Wikipedia pages.
18- "Real World Experience" said, "PowerBASIC differs from mainstream languages like C in a few respects, most notably in its use of the FPU for DWORD unsigned integer calculations. Since overloading an integer is fundamental to Encryption [sic]algorithm's in most languages, this presents a unique problem in PowerBASIC."
PowerBASIC is not a C compiler, and it does not attempt to emulate any one particular C Compiler the writer has in mind. PowerBASIC is a PowerBASIC Compiler, a proprietary compiler built to the PowerBASIC specification. It is not built to a C specification, any more than a Chevrolet is built to a Nissan specification.
A- We dispute that BASIC is not a mainstream language. BASIC has more users than C.
B- We dispute that any alleged "differences" listed here, even if they were true, are most notable.
C- We dispute that overloading an integer is fundamental.
D- We dispute "...in most languages...".
E- We dispute that the FPU is never used in an integer calculation in any C compiler.
F- We dispute the notion that use of the FPU in never appropriate in an integer calculation.
G- We dispute the erroneous claim that PowerBASIC always uses the FPU in integer calculations.
H- We dispute that "...this presents a unique problem in PowerBASIC."
I- We dispute that this entire paragraph is pertinent.
None of these claims are verifiable, true, or sourced. Original content is not allowed on Wikipedia.
[[User:PowerBASIC|PowerBASIC]] ([[User talk:PowerBASIC|talk]]) 10:40, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
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