Re: Banned from the PowerBASIC forum

Judson McClendon wrote:
> "Anonymous Coward" <me@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>> I refuse to ask for help from PB because I am afraid that I will be
blacklisted.
>> I need PB to do my job and cannot risk not being allowed to upgrade. I
am a geek.
>> Bob Zale is a geek. We may end up butting heads. This is normal among
geeks. The
>> problem is when one of the geeks has the power to destroy the
livelihood of the
>> other geek.  At that point disputes are "resolved" based on fear or
retribution
>> rather than technical merits.
> 
> ??? Why would PowerBASIC, or any other company wanting to make a
> profit from customers, "blacklist" a customer merely because they asked
> for help? Any merits or deficiencies of PowerBASIC and Bob Zale aside,
> that does not make sense. Any company must have satisfied customers to
> keep making a profit.
> 
No company would want to intentionally "blacklist" legitimate customers. 
But many people who own companies, like myself included, have very 
'strong' personalities. We make a snap decision, sometimes in the heat 
of the moment, and put our customer's, and our own, backs up against the 
wall. I have to reign myself very tightly when dealing with an upset or 
irate customer so as not to do this. From what I have seen over the 
years in these threads, I believe Bob is very much like me in this regard.


> I don't necessarily like everything PowerBASIC does, but if they were as
> nefarious as you suggest, they would have alienated so many customers
they
> would have been out of business long ago.

I don't know about Bob, but I WORK for someone else for a living, I work 
for myself for FUN and a small profit. I could never make a living off 
the business, and the three years I tried I burned my entire retirement 
savings and an additional amount of money that could have paid for my 
house in full.
> 
> Anyway, how could PowerBASIC "destroy your livelihood?" Are you
> dependent on them for business? If PowerBASIC ceased doing business
> with you, you would still have the compiler(s) you have already
purchased.
> I still use a COBOL compiler that is several years old, because the
vendor
> changed their licensing policy to one I couldn't accept. But the old
compiler
> still works as well as it ever did. I'm sure many programmers are still
using
> Visual Studio 6, or earlier versions, and I'm also sure many PowerBASIC
> programmers are still using older versions. The compiler vendors who can
> "destroy your livelihood" are the ones who have to approve any time you
> install the compiler. They have you by the throat, for sure, and I hate
that.
> But once you have your serial number, you can reinstall PowerBASIC
> without approval from them. Even Microsoft hasn't gone that far yet,
with
> development tools.

But will your old COBOL compiler still compile programs that will run on 
Windows Vista? And XP? 2K? Maybe even 98SE? If your livelihood is 
programming, you need to keep your tools up to date. So I completely 
understand 'Anonymous Coward''s desire to stay anonymous, if I depended 
on POWERbasic for writing programs for my income, I wouldn't say 
anything period, after all, an ip can be traced. But, as I responded 
earlier this evening in the Gohel part of the thread, I haven't used PB 
since 3.2 for DOS.

Matt Good