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this page looks more like an advertisment than a real article. especially the characteristics section. alomsot like assembler? i would like to see some serious data before i believe this. --80.140.173.115 00:24, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
- What can you see as advertising in this material? All characteristics are almost correct! It is a compiled language (not interpreted), its programs don't need external RTL (actually, a very small RTL is packed in any PowerBASIC program, its size depends on used WIN32 API functions and so on, it is not an all-pupose RTL). It produces programs that are REALLY compact and rather fast. It is NOT an assembler of couse, but one can use inline asm to improve programs speed. And PowerBASIC is really able to give free access to the third party DLL; a good example you can see provided with distribution of RMChart DLL. (Sorry for my bad English). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.19.226.194 (talk • contribs) 07:33, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
Unambiguous expressions?
>>"The compilers' parsing of mathematical expressions is very unambiguous, while in other languages it can involve some guess-work to determine how formulas will be interpreted by the compiler."
That's just nonsense. If you have to guess, then it's because you don't know the language. Properly formed expressions aren't ambiguous. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Molar999 (talk • contribs) 04:37, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
...
someone please fix the article with NPOV relevent info? since when did wikipedia become a soapbox for advertising —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.134.248.200 (talk • contribs) 07:06, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
- The concerns raised previously have been addressed and checked for a NPOV. Comments are welcomed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.17.204.214 (talk • contribs) 13:00, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
I find it valuable
I find the article valuable. I'm not a PowerBasic customer but I rely on WikiPedia to provide straight information on a variety of technologies such as Microsoft's Windows, Microsoft's Visual Basic, PowerBasic, RealBasic, Java and so on. The value of Wikipedia would be diminished greatly if you rejected an informative article like this one. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.103.41.146 (talk) 17:40, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
COI
Note that User:67.17.204.214, a major contributor to the article, is an IP address that traces back to PowerBasic -Halo (talk) 18:18, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
- I agree that some of the recent edits Halo reverted were fluffy; so, thanks. Pete St.John (talk) 17:23, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
- man Halo you have your work cut out for you. Pete St.John (talk) 17:18, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
- Meanwhile I've been putting notes on the (new) talk pages of IPs contributing. If they are aware that there is a discussion they may participate, and together we may post good information in a neutral way. Pete St.John (talk) 19:22, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
- Note that 67.17.204.214 identified himself (diff) as "Tim Robbins PowerBASIC Inc." — Athaenara ✉ 00:39, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
Factual Information
1- Are you saying it's "fluffy" to mention a "peer-to-peer" user forum? If so, why is this standard only applied to PowerBASIC? Virtually every vendor of programming languages has a link to their user forums on their Wikipedia page. Why is it that you only destroy PowerBASIC links, and not the others? Why is it done over and over? [posted by 71.100.238.224 18:48, 9 March 2008 (UTC)]
- I'm here, and not everywhere, because of the self-promotion notification. What we hope is that the hostilities subsume as the promoters of a subject/product, who are often honest fans, come to respect the wiki's standards for NPOV and no-self-promotion and no-advertising. I'm not against PowerBasic; Borland provided historic alternatives. The issue is saying too much, too broadly; keeping to dry facts with a neutral tone. We want the article to be neutral and balanced and not read like an advertisement for a commercial product; much of that is merely stylistic. If you keep to single ammendations of dry fact supported by references we'll all be happy; but if you copy in too much of the product's website, or equivalent, people will react as I did. It's simply easier to revert a paragraph if the tone is promotional, than to re-edit it for you, picking out the acceptable parts. You will be more effective improving this article if you do one definite supportable point at a time. Pete St.John (talk) 20:19, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
2- Are you saying it's inappropriate to provide compatibility information? At one point, PowerBASIC had a succinct and accurate list of the operating systems supported. That information has been repeatedly destroyed, and replaced with obvious misinformation. Why do you demean the person who corrects the error? The correct terms "Win95, Win98, WinME..." were replaced with a wholly incorrect single term "95 onward". At a minimum, it should have said "Windows 95" or "Win95". However, even more egregious is the suggestion that PowerBASIC does not support WinNT (which it does). WinNT preceded Win95 by years, so the erroneous line is blatantly wrong. WinME is a common problem to many vendors, because of the well-known stability issues. Even further, why was WinVista and Win2008 removed? Many software products are still, to this day, incompatible with these latest OS's, but one may not realize it because their data sheets were constructed before the coming of this latest event. How is a reader to understand compatibility if it is not listed? [posted by 71.100.238.224 18:48, 9 March 2008 (UTC)]
- It's just bloat to replace "Win95 onward" with "Win 95, Win 98, Win NT 1, Win NT 2, ..." If people want compatibility specifics they can go to the product's website (which is why linking in wiki can be beneficial to an enterprise, without overstepping advertising). The article is not a spec-sheet. I agree that "95" should be "Win95". You might consider "Win 95 onwards, excepting Win ME, and MS Vista is in beta" or something like that. We want a sentence, not a spec sheet. PowerBASIC isn't that big. Pete St.John (talk) 20:19, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
3- Why is it necessary to use the word "commercial" repeatedly. Isn't a single use, in the first sentence, more than enough? I understand you may be a proponent of open-source software, and that's perfectly acceptable. But such repetition helps nobody. It just pounds the reader. over and over, with what some people feel is a negative term. [posted by 71.100.238.224 18:48, 9 March 2008 (UTC)]
- I'd agree. My revert may have been too wholesale; but you can beat that, by making one change at a time, and rebut any disagreement one topic at a time. Pete St.John (talk) 20:19, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
4- Why is it necessary to characterize PowerBASIC FORMS negatively because it's an add-on product? There are 2 possible reasons it's an add-on:
4A- It's an attempt by the publisher to maximize revenue by overcharging the customer.
4B- It's an attempt by the publisher to only charge the customer for the features they choose to purchase.
The answer can only be determined by an in-depth study of the value provided for the purchase price. However, since PowerBASIC gives free advertising space to competitors of PowerBASIC FORMS, I lean very strongly towards 4B. Yes, that's correct, they give absolutely FREE advertising space to visual designer competitors on their web site. [posted by 71.100.238.224 18:48, 9 March 2008 (UTC)]
- Every product has deals and features. We just don't want to advertise. The article on Wendy's doesn't mention the current sale item. But again, it's mostly a matter of tone. Pete St.John (talk) 20:19, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
I could ask many more tough questions about the treatment PowerBASIC has received here, but I'll try very hard to keep it at a businesslike level. I'll just look forward to hearing your response to the above questions?
By the way, I notice you consider yourself an "Expert C Programmer". You should certainly be very proud of that accomplishment -- but do you suppose it's had an affect on your attitude towards a lowly BASIC compiler which outperforms most C products? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.100.238.224 (talk) 18:48, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
- Most of my work currently is in MSVB-- a fine product for slapping together UIs quickly on the MS platform. I despise MS for it's monopolism, however. I'm told by some beowulf programmers that various versions of FORTRAN are competitively efficient, but it's not a very expressive medium for me. Java is very expressive and I'm told that the overhead of the VM is much reduced. LISP has fixed some efficiency issues (mainly on account of past reliance on special hardware) and is definitely more expressive than C for many important things. No version of BASIC is where I would think to look for max efficiency, but it's certainly good that new versions are more efficient for the people who are using it (usually for other reasons, e.g. installed code-base). People who use emacs instead of vi are, in fact, putrid scum, but I'm definitely not religious about languages :-) Incidentally, please consider creating an account, it facilitates dialog and as a practical matter you'l tend to be taken more seriously. Pete St.John (talk) 20:19, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
Edit Verification
To meet the requirements of the Wikipedia verification policy, I am quoting the sources for the edits made to the Powebasic page.
Deleted Thread I've now spent some time tracking down the source of the inconsistency between PB's DWORDs and the unsigned long integers stipulated in much C code. It centers on PB's DWORDs and their behavior when their value exceeds DWORD maximum (0FFFFFFFFh). Their value does not necessarily wrap beyond zero; instead, it's often truncated at zero. Although I suspected that something like this was occurring, actually spotting this behavior took some time because simply incrementing a DWORD to maximum, and then beyond maximum, causes its value to wrap as expected (to zero, then one, then two, and so on). However, the following code shows the truncation occurring:
x??? = &hE1DDA73Cx2??? = (x??? * x???) This operation leaves x2??? = 0.
Such behavior becomes a problem when an algorithm relies on values wrapping, and that's exactly what's expected in many cryptographic and hashing algorithms. This is how I stumbled across the behavior. It's also why most programmers probably never have a problem with PB's DWORDs: They want to avoid overloading a variable and thus rely on the DWORD's big capacity. I also must stress that I've never noted anything odd about PB's DWORDs when used for other purposes. PowerBASIC itself maintains that the result of any operation will be correct within the limits of the data types stipulated by the programmer, and I've never even heard of anyone with an experience that might cast doubt on the credibility of this claim.
The central point is this. An inconsistency exists between the output of at least some C compilers and PowerBASIC compilers. I can offer my own experience as evidence that in certain circumstances, the inconsistency can have practical consequences. I've also found a simple way to resolve this issue. Use PB's long integers in cryptographic and hashing algorithms where DWORDs are expected. The algorithms then return the expected results, bit for bit--which of course is the only correct way to judge the accuracy of the output.
In this thread, contributors wrote a function to convert a string to a number. A simple version using pointers yeilded 370 clock cycles compared to 5200 for the built in PB version. Using ASM that was reduced further to 90 Clks.
A deleted thread powerbasic Staff member, Dave Navvaro states: "we will have a compiler for Linux some time this year"
The original thread It should be noted that despite the alleged "No Vaporware" Policy, a Linux compiler has never materialized.
Offending user's may also find their personal information disseminated as PowerBASIC has no Privacy policy. Personal information disseminated
My assertion: "PowerBASIC COM integration is limited" is discussed fully here "PB returns DISP_E_EXCEPTION. This highlights a very serious shortcoming with PB-automation, and is why PB-automation can be a nightmare to work it."
I state: "Little, if any, official support is provided". This can be easily verified by looking at any category of the user forum for posts by powerbasic staff going back at least 5 years. Mr Zale also states: "It's not possible to include a free lifetime consulting service.... This is simply not something we can do free of charge based upon upgrade prices under $100. We'd like you to get the assistance as inexpensively as possible, and I really hope you can make a connection here. However, if all else fails, we have always offered paid technical assistance for "in-depth" problems of this nature. Feel free to contact us at your convenience if that is of interest to you."
"PowerBASIC strictly enforces a policy requiring forum users to use their full real name when posting" As stated directly on the User Forum signup: "Forum Rules To post, you must register with your full, real name (both first and last names). No handles or abbreviations are allowed. ... Profanity, rude, or disparaging comments (about PowerBASIC or others) is strictly prohibited... The owners of PowerBASIC Peer Support Forums reserve the right to remove, edit, move or close any thread for any reason."
I assert PowerBASIC staff are very sensitive to criticism and users are frequently banned.
From Mr Zale himself:
'posted June 11, 2004 04:21 AM Actually, suspension was for a very short period of time... enough to "cool off"... certainly not permanent. Long ago, he was offered reinstatement upon agreement to follow forum rules. Regards, Bob Zale PowerBASIC Inc.
Another example
This thread was also deleted, because it pointed out the unsigned integer inconsitency in the compiler. "I've had more than one experience while converting C to PB in which PB's DWORDs have created results that don't match the results of the same operations employing unsigned integers when coded in C. " The thread is still available here Any casual developer can verify this in seconds, but if you do not know it's there you are likely to waste hours looking for a non-existent bug.
As I suggested a month ago in my post on the COI page these facts are being deliberatly withheld by powerbasic staff who would see this infomation as counter to their marketing aims. I would appreciate help with these edits to provide the most wikipedia compatible wording.
RealWorldExperience (talk) 03:02, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
I noticed you deleted the most recent edits. Perhaps we should discuss the facts presented here and try and agree on some neutral wording? RealWorldExperience (talk) 23:29, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
Rebuttal
"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.
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, "Little, if any, official support is provided". This is not truthful. 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.
2- "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.
3- "Real World Experience" said, "Little, if any, official support is provided in these forums." That is false. 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 support instead.
4- "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. It is nothing more than the writer's imagination about what might occur in the worst possible scenario at some future date. One might just as easily say "The moon may 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.
5- "Real World Experience" said, "PowerBASIC currently has no clearly stated Privacy policy." That, too, is absolutely false. PowerBASIC has published a very definitive privacy policy for over eleven years. We're proud to note that we've improved it from time to time, in favor of our valued customers. Please feel free to view it.
6- "Real World Experience" said, "[sic] user's may also find their personal information disseminated". That, 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.
7- "Real World Experience" said, "String functions MCase$ UCase$ LCase$ UCode$ ACode$ only handle the English alphabet". That is absolutely false. 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.
8- "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.
9- "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.
10- "Real World Experience" said, "This thread was also deleted, because it pointed out the unsigned integer [sic]inconsitency...". This is nothing more than wild speculation, using charged words in order to inflame an issue which does not exist. If this thread was actually deleted by a PowerBASIC Admin, the writer could not possibly have any knowledge of the reason. Obviously, that's why he failed to provide any substantiation. There was no reason to follow this up, but the archive tag in the URL leads me to suspect it's simply age.
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". He's entitled to his personal opinion, but it has no place on Wikipedia.
We should note that this user is still welcome as an active member of the PowerBASIC Forums. He is not barred from entry, as long as he uses his real full name as stated in the PowerBASIC Forum Rules and Policies.
There's much more, but I think I'll stop here. In my opinion, "Real World Experience" has made a mockery of the Wikipedia concept. That's really a shame. If anyone has a question about PowerBASIC or the truth presented here, I'll be happy to offer any assistance needed.
Tim Robbins PowerBASIC, Inc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.17.204.214 (talk) 15:33, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
Third opinion
User forums and newsgroups are most certainly not reliable sources. Criticisms and other information must be verifiable in reputable references. Concerns about improper conflicts of interest can be addressed at WP:COI/N. Concerns about reliable sourcing can be raised at WP:RS/N. Concerns about disruptive and uncooperative behavior can be raised at WP:AN/I. Vassyana (talk) 03:34, 18 April 2008 (UTC) You can help too by providing a third opinion. RfC and editor review could also always use a few extra voices!
Thank you for those links. Please see my post about relaible sources as it pertains to this entry RealWorldExperience (talk) 08:19, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Response
Hello Tim, Thank you for responding. It would be helpfull if you registered as suggest last month by an administrator, so that we could be clear who you are.
I think you raise some valid points and I welcome the opportunity to work with you to create some more accurate and fair wording for this entry. I think I should make it perfectly clear that my intention is to present ALL the facts about powerbasic not just the ones that are convenient to your marketing aims. I also recognize that this is not a forum for personal experiences or opinion so we should just stick to the verifiable facts.
Like most developers I use up to twenty different software products designed for development every day. Powerbasic was simply one of those elements. I intend to edit many entries at Wikipedia that I have detailed information about, this just happens to be the first one. I recognize that Mr Zale describes Powerbasic as his life's work, but I suggest that this is providing a conflict of interest for any of your submissions and you should probably let the wikipedia process of multiple editors prevail rather than reverting any edits that you don't like.
My personal opinion, not that it is relevant here, is that powerbasic is a perfectly fine product, for what it is, but like all software, has limitiations and differences that are relevant to any comprehensive description. I feel that the full truth of the product, however inconvenient to the marketing aims of the company, should be presented here. This should not be a hinderence to Powerbasic as I think it is pretty much understood that no software product is perfect. Even Powerbasic has to occasionally acknowledge a mistake was made, even if it means that all existing code be changed. My hope is that we can find some wording to agree on.
Starting with your rebuttal for my Support contribution, I agree that the language could be improved. I post on many many internet forums devoted to a wide range of products and subjects. Most are general purpose and probably do not warrent comment. 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, you introduce it as valid element for inclusion in a well rounded wikipedia entry. I don't disagree with that. For no,w I shall confine myself to this and leave out supporting evidence from third party forums.
The Powerbasic forum has five categories of product support. A quick count oreveals that Since Oct 1st 2008 (six months ago) there were 8505 posts in these forums as reported by the search engine.
PowerBasic Console Compiler - 6 pages - 1134 posts
PowerBasic for DOS - 1 page - 253 posts
PowerBasic for Windows - 22 pages - 4602 posts
Programming - 8 pages - 1958 posts
Programming the Internet - 3 pages - 561 posts
In those six months the count of posts from Powerbasic personel was:
Tom Hanlin, PowerBASIC Staff - 0 posts
Borje Hagsten, PowerBASIC Staff - 0 posts
Neil Bertz, PowerBASIC Staff - 0 posts
Tim Robbins, Administrator - 0 posts
Bob Gee, Administrator - 0 posts
Lance Edmonds, Administrator - 0 posts
(This aministrator suddenly dissapeared in July 2004 with no explanation)
Steve Rossell, Administrator - 32 posts (12 in the last few weeks, 2 contained no support, leaving 18 actual support posts of which most are a line or two like: "The REG statement and function can be used to communicate via a register array in both directions with a TSR. This is outlined in chapter 14 of the PowerBASIC For DOS Reference Guide.")
Bob Zale, Administrator - 48 posts (6 contained no support or a sugestion to email support@powerbasic.com 22 are within the last few weeks (since lack of support was first cited) so cannot be taken at face value. I suspect these are the product of an effort to jumpstart perception like this
A very different tone from just a few months ago in posts like this "It's called a negative number. You've heard of those???" and "Someone please tell me that in the 21st century it's possible to phrase this question without reminding me of an attack dog?" and "Well, I'm not sure now we can communicate with you. We've actually spent hours trying to explain it privately, but without success." and outright sales posts like this and this and leaving out 7 which are trivial one or two line responses, hardly worthy of the title "support" we are left with 12 actual posts from Mr Zale and 18 from Mr Rossell for a grand total of 30 support posts of any real value in SIX MONTHS.
When you consider that there were 8508 posts asking for help in that time, a contribution of 30 official replies accounts for less than 0.5% of support offered by the Powebasic company.
By Comparison, just three members of the support team for another popular compiler, PureBasic, (Fred, Freak and Beriko) managed to contribute to 780 threads, and an average of six posts per thread. That's over 4600 posts of official support in the same time frame. There are many more members of their support team also contributing.
In light of this I suggest that the phrase "Little, if any, official support is provided in these forums" is accurate, but I conceed a more accurate wording could be found in the phrase: "little (less than 0.5 percent) official help is provided in the forums"
Your claim that: "PowerBASIC has offered absolutely free, one-on-one, technical support by email" to be accepted, you should have to meet the same standard of proof required on Wikipedia that everyone else does. On face, this statement is not verifiable. Further, it is quite clear from this post that support is an additional cost promoted via the forums. "It's not possible to include a free lifetime consulting service.... This is simply not something we can do free of charge based upon upgrade prices under $100. We'd like you to get the assistance as inexpensively as possible, and I really hope you can make a connection here. However, if all else fails, we have always offered paid technical assistance for "in-depth" problems of this nature. Feel free to contact us at your convenience if that is of interest to you."
In fact your current website makes it clear that "free" support includes little more that pointers to the manual that comes with the product adding "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." In a balanced entry, this distinction should be covered.
Leaving aside the recent changes to the Powerbasic privacy policy in light of this dispute, and concrete evidence of flagrant abuse of personal information that do not belong here, I will move next to the subject of banning or "suspending" customers that conduct "abusive behaviour". Given the context of the wikipedia verification policy it would be impossible to represent this here even with a stack of sworn afadvits. I also recognize that a group of individuals experience does not rise to the level of relevance untill it is covered in print. Until then this will remain out of my contribution here at Wikipedia.
Since, as you point out, I cannot know why a thread is mysteriously deleted, perhaps you can offer an explanation for the sudden disapearance of this thread (available here) relating to the unsigned integer incompatabilities recently? If, as you hilariously suggest, this threads "age" is responsible for its deletion then it would seem logical that all the other threads of the same or earlier "age" would have been deleted also, yet they have not.
The deletion of this specific thread, written after many hours of detective work, by a very well respected developer, proves not only that threads are targeted and deleted by Powerbasic staff, but that there is a direct attempt to suppress the fact that unsigned Integers are incompatible with mainstream languages like C. This is proof of "sensitivity".
As the author concluded "The central point is this. An inconsistency exists between the output of at least some C compilers and PowerBASIC compilers... in certain circumstances, the inconsistency can have practical consequences". I think we could probably go a little further and qualify what thos circumstances are specifically, but this is fact is indisputable as covered extensively in my last post here.
Since you challenge the statement "String functions MCase$ UCase$ LCase$ UCode$ ACode$ only handle the English alphabet" I will prepare and cover this in a later post.
Finally, you acknowledge that users are required to use their full real name when registering and posting on the powerbasic forums, why not simply edit my submission instead of deleting it? Surely there can be no dispute about this fact, it is clearly stated in the signup procedure of the forum.
In this post, at a minimum, I have proved the following statements and will post them to the entry. I would respectfully ask you not to delete them.
"little (less than 0.5 percent) official help is provided in the forums"
"Help beyond the intent of the technical support and resources we offer for free will be charged $49 per incident"
"threads are targeted and deleted by Powerbasic staff"
"staff are sensitive to criticism"
"An inconsistency exists between the output of at least some C compilers and PowerBASIC compilers"
"users are required to use their full real name when registering and posting on the powerbasic forums"
I hope that we can work together to create a fair and balanced entry for Powerbasic.
RealWorldExperience (talk) 08:20, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Rebuttal
The actions of "Real World Experience" are plain and simple vandalism. His most recent paragraph of inappropriate antagonism was added to the PowerBASIC page twice.
1- "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.
2- "Real World Experience" said, "Lance Edmonds, Administrator - 0 posts (This [sic] aministrator suddenly [sic] dissapeared in July 2004 with no explanation).
This is another false statement. 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."
3- "Real World Experience" 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 here.
4- "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.
5- "Real World Experience" said, "it is quite clear from this post that support is an additional cost promoted via the forums"
This is yet another false statement. "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 it 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 your house 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.
6- "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 he desires. 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.
7- "Real World Experience" said, "staff are sensitive to criticism"
The truth is, we welcome criticism, as it's a key element in the evolution of our products. Of course, false statements about us and our products must be addressed with facts.
8- "Real World Experience" said, "threads are targeted and deleted by Powerbasic staff".
This is a false statement. It is not verifiable, but is obviously just the personal opinion of the author. Original content is not allowed on Wikipedia pages.
9- "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 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 only to the PowerBASIC specification. It is not built to a C specification, any more than a Chevrolet is built to a Nissan specification. The conclusion "...this presents a unique problem in PowerBASIC." is not verifiable, but just the personal opinion of the author. Original content is not allowed on Wikipedia.
10- Admins and Editors of Wikipedia with far more experience than either myself or "Real World Experience" have previously determined that all reference to the PowerBASIC Forums should be removed. These editors ("Halo", "62.172.143.205", "PeterStJohn", "Flowanda") are unanimous in
their opinion that even a forum link should not appear on the page. Given their level of experience, I feel compelled to accede to their judgement. I am removing all references to the PowerBASIC Forums.
11- An Editor of Wikipedia (Flowanda) with far more experience than either myself or "Real World Experience" has previously determined that all references to PowerBASIC Support should be removed. Given the level of experience, I feel compelled to accede to that judgement. I am removing all references to PowerBASIC Support.
If anyone has a question about PowerBASIC or the facts presented here, I'll be happy to offer any assistance needed.
Tim Robbins
PowerBASIC, Inc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.17.204.214 (talk) 15:37, 18 April 2008 (UTC)