LAVA Under New Management

[klessm1]

You had me hook line and sinker!

[colinchristofferson]

For a minute there I thought people were going to really get on me for poking my head around as the big brother. . . and by the way Michael - good work to use NI participation against us...

[i2dx]

April Fools.

You can exhale now...

ok, 3 days later, my blood preasure is coming to a normal level, I can turn the pacemaker off and inform the romanian human-rights specialists, that I don't need the 3 pairs of concrete boots ...

Holy Sh*t ... Michael!

[peteski]

ok, 3 days later, my blood preasure is coming to a normal level, I can turn the pacemaker off and inform the romanian human-rights specialists, that I don't need the 3 pairs of concrete boots ...

Holy Sh*t ... Michael!

I have to agree... I seem to remember going over this in a university "liberal arts" course (you know, one of those non-technical courses they forced us to take in college - Philography Science or something like that ). Its that age old question:

Is it OK to cry "Corporate Take-Over" in a crowd at the LAVA Forum.

Just think if it weren't the weekend? The stamped alone might have hurt someone!

:headbang:

-Pete Liiva

[Michael Aivaliotis]

Well, I think the interesting part is to see how believable this is. I'm surprised that many of you would think that I would agree to something that let's NI shutdown some of the most popular sections of the site. I thought that the biggest give-away that this was not real was this line here: "Also any postings regarding LabVIEW 8 and its deficiencies will also be deleted" C'mon, you really think any corporation would allow this to be publicly announced? I mean this screams "big brother". Perhaps I haven't made my views obvious enough. I mean this post here should say it all. Why would I make a post like that just two days before announcing the deal? Also, why would I announce it on a Saturday, not Monday? Perhaps it's believable because NI is known for corporate take-overs? That's not a very good image now is it?

One thing that this April Fools joke has accomplished is to make us all aware, and especially me, of how powerful a force LAVA has become in the hearts and minds of all of you. I appreciate the sentiment and I'm sorry that this caused some grief. On the other hand, if you really feel that strong about keeping LAVA free and independent then you can help solidify our future by donating anything you can here or you can purchase a Premium Membership... LAVA is still running in the red.

[Yair]

It's quite possible that I'm not the only one who tends to believe people, especially when they bring bad news.

You need to remember that we (at least some of us) don't know you personally, we don't know the exact nature of the relationship between you and Jim (for instance, why do you post a question instead of asking around the office first?), we don't know exactly how much of an effort it is to maintain this site or how much it costs and we do know that NI does have a tendency to take over competitors. Just remember how Ben Bailey explained his views here and then did come to a compromise with NI. I don't know how the MCC situation turned out, but these things do happen. You're right that there were some dead give-aways, but as I said, people tend to believe bad news.

Also, people don't always "think". Sometime they just react as they hear something. I can say that my first reaction was "O.K., that's bad. How do I get the most out of this?". Only later came thoughts about the other meanings. I will just say again: "That's not funny!".

The use of NI personnel participance was a good point, though.

[peteski]

I'm surprised that many of you would think that I would agree to something that let's NI shutdown some of the most popular sections of the site.

Michael,

I wouldn't take it too personally, the first thought that came into my mind was "what must have happened to force this", immediately followed by "what kind of evil lawyers must have been behind this" (I should report the disclaimer that my wife happens to be a lawyer, and yes, we are still happily married! ) I started wondering if some former Enron business execs had found there way to NI and had their eyes on California, again... (I had just seen the movie "Smartest Guys in the Room" a few weeks back, you see...)

Luckily for me, I didn't have to stew for to long. I saw the posting after the first "April Fools" comment was posted, so although I started from the beginning and felt the blood pressure rising, once I saw the posting by "mec" I realized, and my immenent coranary by-pass was shelved once again. :whew: I wasn't looking forward to downloading all thouse sections of those forums on a Saturday at home.

BTW, Orson Wells would have been proud. You know, Michael, there might be a slight resemblance to the young Orson Wells in you! Coincidence?!? :laugh:

-Pete Liiva

[Grampa_of_Oliva_n_Eden]

It's quite possible that I'm not the only one who tends to believe people, especially when they bring bad news.

You need to remember that we (at least some of us) don't know you personally, we don't know the exact nature of the relationship between you and Jim (for instance, why do you post a question instead of asking around the office first?), we don't know exactly how much of an effort it is to maintain this site or how much it costs and we do know that NI does have a tendency to take over competitors. Just remember how Ben Bailey explained his views here and then did come to a compromise with NI. I don't know how the MCC situation turned out, but these things do happen. You're right that there were some dead give-aways, but as I said, people tend to believe bad news.

Also, people don't always "think". Sometime they just react as they hear something. I can say that my first reaction was "O.K., that's bad. How do I get the most out of this?". Only later came thoughts about the other meanings. I will just say again: "That's not funny!".

The use of NI personnel participance was a good point, though.

Not to justify my reaction but to explain it...

Within the last year or so I completed reading Shirer's (sp?) The Rise and Fall of the Third Riech (sp?).

I read it because I took to heart what I think Benjamin Franklin siad "Those who fail to study history or doomed to repeat it" (or was that "We can only peer into the future by standing on the shoulders of the past." Whatever!).

I came away from that study with the leason "The US did NOT defeat the Nazi's (actually it was Rusia, and the US was just a diversion) the US became the Nazi's"

I had also decided to become a Premium LAVA member and start participating here after being censored one too many time on the "other forum".

So I am paranoid.

It will be the scientist and engineers of our age that will be the first to be shut down. We (the scientist/engineers) have filled the niche that had previously been occupied by the "priestly class". Just stop and think about what is "good" or "bad" to eat. In the US it is the scientist and engineers tha decide what is "good" food and what is "bad".

As such we (the engineers and scientists) have a unique power that is not weilded by others. The US tried to outlaw alcohol and that failed, but just try to find a nice bag of "Pork Rinds" or Wonder bread.

So from my paranoid point of view, it is only a matter of time before we WILL be shutdown.

So...

When I read the orignal "joke" it not so much a shock, but a signal that history is indeed repeating itself.

Ben

[crelf]

Well, I think the interesting part is to see how believable this is.

I reckon that it was an excellent April Fool's Day joke - it's was very believable and certainly got a lot of people and that's the whole point of the modern April Fool's Day - feeling silly that you fell for something on the only day of the year when you should be looking out for it - it's called humility I admit to "going off" when I read Michael's original post (one or two expletives echoed around my apartment), but after I realized the date I began to appreciate Michael's sense of humor - and I say "well done!"

One thing that this April Fools joke has accomplished is to make us all aware ... of how powerful a force LAVA has become in the hearts and minds of all of you.

I second Michael's membership drive - hypothetically speaking, how much would you pay to stop NI from taking over LAVA? A donation or premium membership may well be the difference of keeping LAVA alive in the future (and the I beleive that the benefits of premium membership are well worth the price!)

We all benefit from LAVA - it shouldn't be up to Michael to shoulder the lion's share of the costs of keeping it up and running.

[Darren]

Uh oh, Ben mentioned Nazis. I am officially invoking Godwin's Law and declaring this debate over. Since Ben was arguing that the April Fool's joke was not funny, it is officially deemed funny.

Oh, and all of us Big Brothers over in LabVIEW R&D think Michael's April Fool's joke was hilarious...

-D

[Yair]

The US did NOT defeat the Nazi's (actually it was Rusia...

being censored...

So I am paranoid...

In the US it is the scientist and engineers tha decide what is "good" food and what is "bad"...

You're starting to sound like Alfa.

BTW, what specifically are you refering to in "being censored one too many times"?

Michael, yes, it was a very clever hoax and I see the humor in it, it's just that I wouldn't have found it funny in real time even if I had figured it out - some things are no laughing matter.

[i2dx]

Perhaps it's believable because NI is known for corporate take-overs? That's not a very good image now is it?

That's excactly the point. I experienced NI business tactics twice and was personally affected.

As you maybe know, I was an employee at National Instruments Services, which is in basic a mix of the former Datalog (the company, which invented DASYLab) and GfS (the company, which invented DIADem).

what kind of evil lawyers must have been behind this

that's exactly the way NI prepared the take-over of the Datalog and GfS. The managers (and owners) got mail from the NI lawyers, and after some time, in which they got to realize their hopeless position, they got an offer they could not resist. My first thought was: poor Michael, I'd rather like to fight with an mad hellhound than cross the way of the NI lawyer squad (as my last boss said: "... ther lawyers were better then ours ... as you see ... well ...")

So I am paranoid.

me, too, of course! I am Software Developer!

...or you can purchase a Premium Membership... LAVA is still running in the red.

hmmm ... ok, got me ... now I am premium member ...

[Grampa_of_Oliva_n_Eden]

Uh oh, Ben mentioned Nazis. I am officially invoking Godwin's Law and declaring this debate over. Since Ben was arguing that the April Fool's joke was not funny, it is officially deemed funny.

Oh, and all of us Big Brothers over in LabVIEW R&D think Michael's April Fool's joke was hilarious...

-D

Well I can't say I knew about that rule!

Does it apply to Premium Members as well?

Ben

[Rolf Kalbermatter]

Well, I think the interesting part is to see how believable this is. I'm surprised that many of you would think that I would agree to something that let's NI shutdown some of the most popular sections of the site. I thought that the biggest give-away that this was not real was this line here: "Also any postings regarding LabVIEW 8 and its deficiencies will also be deleted"

I have to admit that my first reaction when reading this post was, shit this can't be! But above mentioned statement about deleting any posts about deficiencies in LabVIEW 8 made me lough and check for the date of the post

Still I think it is quite a good April fools joke and without that statement about deficiencies I could have probably went through the entire post and still believed it at the end.

BTW, what specifically are you refering to in "being censored one too many times"?

NI having total control of the Developer Forums can remove any post they feel is not appropriate and they do sometimes do this not just for totally out of context posts or spam but also some posts about things NI does not feel the general user group should know about.

I think I'm missing a post or two as well somewhere on those forums. Well, maybe it just got accidentially lost when porting the forums over from one software to another. The last porting two years or so ago, made searching in older posts really sometimes impossible.

Rolf Kalbermatter

[Yair]

NI having total control of the Developer Forums can remove any post they feel is not appropriate and they do sometimes do this not just for totally out of context posts or spam but also some posts about things NI does not feel the general user group should know about.

I know of NI's control and their TOU. Ben made it sound as if there were specific fairly recent instances where he was censored and I'm wondering what those were.

[Rolf Kalbermatter]

I know of NI's control and their TOU. Ben made it sound as if there were specific fairly recent instances where he was censored and I'm wondering what those were.

I wouldn't really know and if it was me I wouldn't probably discuss it. It can be harsh to feel censored but discussing this on some unrelated place does usually not help.

Rolf Kalbermatter

[Aitor Solar]

I found it funny. The problem is, you know, 1st April is not Fool's Day in all the world. Can we have fun of you in OUR Fool's Day?

Saludos,

Aitor

[jpdrolet]

I have to admit that my first reaction when reading this post was, shit this can't be! But above mentioned statement about deleting any posts about deficiencies in LabVIEW 8 made me lough and check for the date of the post

Still I think it is quite a good April fools joke and without that statement about deficiencies I could have probably went through the entire post and still believed it at the end.

Sounds like you still have the blue eagle tatooed on your chest, Rolf... :laugh: or for sure the yellow adder.

[Rolf Kalbermatter]

Sounds like you still have the blue eagle tatooed on your chest, Rolf... :laugh: or for sure the yellow adder.

It's not so much that I wouldn't think NI may like to do that, than that I don't think they would even dare to try

Back when I was there they probably wouldn't even have thought about it, or at least if someone thougt it he never would have spoken it out, yes. Nowadays they are so big they have to watch a bit what they are doing, otherwise they may get hit on their fingers for being a naughty boy.

Rolf Kalbermatter

[PeterB]

QUOTE(crelf @ Apr 2 2006, 08:58 AM)

.....I, for one, am elated that NI, LAVA and Michael are taking this step! LAVA has, for too long, been stagnating, and I look forward to more NI-driven topics in the near future. I also think it's a great idea that NI is taking control over the content here - weeding out all of the forum topics that detract from the main thrust of what this site should be all about: LabVIEW and how awesomely great it is, and how awesomely great NI is for giving it to us!

Remember: if you're not with us, you're against us...

Chris, does this mean you would really appreciate NI taking over LAVA ? (you gotta remember that you assumed Michael was serious at the time, so you need a pretty good excuse to change you views on this one !)

Personally I think that NI needs to be confronted with more independent outfits like LAVA to keep them on their toes. Additionally, if there was a viable 3rd party (or even open source) version of G, then NI would be bending over backwards to make sure LabVIEW was a competitive product in as many ways possible.

Your reply to Michael's post makes it sound like you are on NI's payroll

cheers from downunder.

Peter

[LAVA 1.0 Content]

CITATION(crelf @ Apr 1 2006, 11:58 PM)

Remember: if you're not with us, you're against us...

I strongly disagree with that statement... Well... In fact it depends on how you understand it... In a certain way I strongly agree !

CITATION(PeterB @ Apr 2 2006, 9:32 AM)

Additionally, if there was a viable 3rd party (or even open source) version of G, then NI would be bending over backwards to make sure LabVIEW was a competitive product in as many ways possible.

In my opinion, pointing out LabVIEW's -- and more generally NI products' -- weakness hopping that NI is going to improve them is not the best way to do. I do think that NI needs to be challenged with new ideas. In such a competitive world, the best way to improve LabVIEW would be to have an open source G environement -- the equivalent of Linux for Windows -- that keeps challenging NI to improve LabVIEW.

Chris, do you consider this as "being against" ? Think twice before you answer !

If anyone does not agree with this, then please tell me why ?

[crelf]

QUOTE(PeterB @ Apr 5 2007, 05:32 PM)

(you gotta remember that you assumed Michael was serious at the time, so you need a pretty good excuse to change you views on this one !)

That's a balst from the past I did assume that Mike was serious when I first read the post, and I'd drafted a pretty lengthy response (ask Ruth - I was pretty damn vocal that morning ), but, luckily, I'd realised the date before I clicked "Add Reply". After I'd laughed for a while (mostly as myself) I wrote the post that you saw with my tounge firmly in my cheek

PS: (read this only if you work for NI) I think he's on to us!

QUOTE(TiT @ Apr 5 2007, 06:08 PM)

I strongly disagree with that statement... Well... In fact it depends on how you understand it... In a certain way I strongly agree !

I also strongly disagree with it TiT - it was said in jest as an April Fool's Day joke last year.

[LAVA 1.0 Content]

CITATION(crelf @ Apr 5 2007, 02:33 PM)

I also strongly disagree with it TiT - it was said in jest as an April Fool's Day joke last year.

I indeed saw the "april's fool" after posting my message...

But still... I mean what I said :

CITATION(TiT)

In my opinion, pointing out LabVIEW's -- and more generally NI products' -- weakness hopping that NI is going to improve them

is not

the best way to do. I do think that NI needs to be challenged with new ideas. In such a competitive world, the best way to improve LabVIEW would be to have an open source G environement -- the equivalent of Linux for Windows -- that keeps challenging NI to improve LabVIEW.

and I'd like to know if anybody disagrees and why

[PeterB]

QUOTE(crelf @ Apr 5 2007, 10:33 PM)

That's a balst from the past I did assume that Mike was serious when I first read the post, and I'd drafted a pretty lengthy response (ask Ruth - I was pretty damn vocal that morning ), but, luckily, I'd realised the date before I clicked "Add Reply". After I'd laughed for a while (mostly as myself) I wrote the post that you saw with my tounge firmly in my cheek

But you sounded so convincing Chris. In fact when you later wrote that the experience endowed one with humility, I thought you were publically pointing to the egg on your face. Yet it seems that you'd like us to believe you were joking. So now that you've come up with a good excuse perhaps I should call your bluff and check with Ruth

For another reason though, I still think with all that egg on your face that the yolk really is on you [1].

cheers

Peter

[1] "In some countries, including the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, the April 1 tradition requires jokes to be played before midday: if somebody pulls an April Fools' Trick after midday, then the person pulling the trick is actually considered the fool." ref http://tinyurl.com/38y59q' target="_blank">Wikipedia

And the timestamp on your post in Australia is Apr 2 2006, 07:58 AM :laugh:

[crelf]

QUOTE(PeterB @ Apr 6 2007, 07:54 PM)

But you sounded so convincing

C'mon Pete - you know from personal experience that I can bullsh*t with the best of 'em

QUOTE(PeterB @ Apr 6 2007, 07:54 PM)

...perhaps I should call your bluff and check with Ruth

Bring it on!

QUOTE(PeterB @ Apr 6 2007, 07:54 PM)

...the timestamp on your post in Australia is

Apr 2 2006, 07:58 AM

I moved to the USA in the September of 2005, so whilst it may have been April the 2nd over there[1], the timestamp converts to 04:58:00 p.m. Saturday April 1, 2006 USEST (they don't observe the afternoon thingy over here - I'm just trying to fit it! ). Also, I'm not sure how you got the time from my post, as the time listed certainly isn't my local time. I am positive that I sent it in the morning - I remember ranting in my pyjamas at the dining room table - and so does Ruth!

[1] This Outback Steakhouse ad explains the rip in the time-space continuum:

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