Andrzej Bania wrote:
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However, he has conveniently left off the actual reason - which he and I have discussed at length in various emails. I am not talkning about a snatched comment - these were full blown conversations - going back and forth - that clearly detail the logic behind the decision.

Not inviting him to this Tech Day is a direct result of his response to the last invitation that I sent him

I am not going in to detail here - but it was that categorical refusal to engage that led to his being left off of this list. He knows exactly what I am talking about.

Remember, he would still have been briefed before the NDA lifted - just not at our Tech Day.

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CONCLUSION: If you choose NOT to work with a vendor - don't cry 'foul' when they decide NOT to work with you

I’ve been invited to a CrossFire briefing in London on the 25th of May of this year, see this email (May 11th). Unfortunately on that date me and my girlfriend celebrated our 10th anniversary. I however suggested it to her and went to great lengths to convince her to come along with me as the briefing wouldn’t take all day and we could certainly celebrate in London.

Unfortunately she had a more private setting in mind, hence I was not able to attend that briefing. However I asked for all the details to be forwarded and said I’d be happy to sign the NDA. I never got those details, nor was offered an NDA. Apparantly my understandable inability to attend didn’t go down too well as I was not served an NDA or provided with more information about the platform.

Going forward, on August 15 Andrzej Bania wrote me this email (August 15th) asking whether I’d be interested in an interview with one of ATI’s ASIC engineers for mainboard technology. I replied with the in the email quoted replies, which clearly states that an interview with an ASIC engineer isn’t exactly what our readers like to read, they’d rather have information about the R520 instead.

We then started fooling around a bit, as we normally did. This is the incident he refers to in his post and I quote He knows exactly what I am talking about. I frankly don’t see the harm in this, as he’s also more than happy to joke around, even about the competition, as Adam & co he refers to in his reply is none other than NVIDIA corporation. But apparantly my landfill joke was not appreciated and would be used as a leverage later on.

Clearly this is not a categorical refusal as he categorized it, but rather a question of whether an interview would result in an interesting article for our readers, and I decided it wouldn’t. Honestly this is not a refusal to work with ATI, but a decision on my part to not accept this particular offer, instead I suggested I would like to be informed about the R520 architecture.

Some journalists will happily accept anything you throw at them whilst others will only be interested in specific products. Does that make the latter lesser journalists? I think not, they’re just more selective on what topics that they write about. Clearly ATI has no say in what topics I chose to write about, but apparantly there are repercussions if I don’t.

Afterall it is Andrzej Bania offering me something that doesn’t interest me and when I don’t want to accept his offer he decided to cut me off. He phrased it as, and I’ll quote Press who have a willingness to work with us across every roadmap will get priority when sampling the fastest product in the world or rather, write about everything we have on offer or there’ll be repercussions, of which this email thread (August 15th), combined with his motivation in his post is clear proof.

But there’s more, Andrzej Bania stated I would still be briefed before the NDA lifted, this is a blatant lie, as he writes something completely different in two separate emails, here (September 14th) and here (September 15th), and I’ll quote form both these emails below. Basically from that point on I will not be given access to information or products for at least the next six months. So his post here dated a month later claiming I would be briefed is simply a lie. This obviously all predates the disclosure of the R520 benchmarks still.

I will tell you now that I have no intention of working with you on anything for the next 6 months at least

i.e. I will look at the situation again around the CeBIT timeframe and let you know if I feel that we can have a positive/productive relationship

I am going to blow it all off - forget about it - and try starting again with you at CeBIT

You can write what you like on your site

Andrzej Bania also mentioned in both of these emails, and this is the reason why I did go forward with the posting of the preliminary R520 benchmarks, that he didn’t care what I wrote.

Conclusion: ATI only works with publications it can control and that it can trust to publish the information in proper form for them.