Ziff Davis Teeters 309
Longtime Reader writes: "It is a short article with links all over the place, but Linux and Main is running a story that says Ziff Davis might file for bankruptcy this week. The company plans to stay in business by expanding its focus on computer games, the story says." To get you started, reader idiotnot contributes this link to coverage in the NYT.
I remember the days... (Score:4, Funny)
When ZD published PC Magazine, you could read Machrone and Dvoraks ramblings, read a round up of 50-60 PC's on the market, and there was a real tech section.
Computer Shopper, the 'Hard Edge' with Bill and Alice, PAGES UPON PAGES OF ADS....
The Internet has ruined magazines.
Re:I remember the days... (Score:2, Funny)
Need to hire a 'geek' in Michigan? Hire me [mailto]!
And IT careers, apparently...
Re: The Internet has ruined magazines. (Score:2, Interesting)
SysAdmin [sysadminmag.com], and Server-Workstation Expert [swexpert.com]
The latter is free, and really worth a read, but they lie about not selling your name to advertising agencies.
Re: The Internet has ruined magazines. (Score:2)
Re:Server-Workstation Expert is dead (Score:3, Interesting)
sPh
Re:Server-Workstation Expert is dead (Score:2)
Re:Server-Workstation Expert is dead (Score:2)
www.swexpert.com [swexpert.com]
sPh
Re:Server-Workstation Expert is dead (Score:2)
Re:I remember the days... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I remember the days... (Score:2)
Re:I remember the days... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I remember the days... (Score:2, Interesting)
Forget it (Score:4, Interesting)
Personally, though they seem an amazing resource, I only use their website when I encounter software thats not popularly reviewed such as obscure mp3 creation or audio ripping programs, and scanner programs, and web site creation software that I have never heard of. Best they stick to what they do but focus their attention at serving their customer base and not catering to the OEMs. Cultivate a relationship with groups like slashdot, anandtech, HardOCP, etc...
Re:Forget it (Score:3, Insightful)
Huh? They have owned Computer Gaming World [gamers.com] for quite a while.
>> Best they stick to what they do but focus their attention at serving their customer base and not catering to the OEMs.
News flash: Their customer base is the OEMs, not the readers. Your paltry few bucks per issue barely covers the cost of postage or distribution. The advertisers pay most of the costs.
Re:Forget it (Score:4, Insightful)
Except for the few million people that already do through subscriptions or rack purchases of "Official US Playstation Magazine", "Xbox Nation", "Electronic Gaming Monthly", "GameNow", or "Computer Gaming World".
At least nobody will be willing to accept that they are impartial.
Anyone that accepts that any game rag is impartial is fooling themself.
Good riddance! (Score:3, Interesting)
Their magazines don't offer any straight journalism; they're just pure advertising, page-for-page. All their product reviews and reports read just like the ads that follow on the next page!
Maybe if they fold and these awful rags go away, the CIO-types of the world will actually get some literate, technical information instead of marketing BS!
Goodbye, ZD. And good riddance.
--NBVB
Re:Good riddance! (Score:2, Insightful)
You should buy wired then, it takes some skill to find the articles!
Re:Good riddance! (Score:4, Interesting)
they're just pure advertising, page-for-page Isn't that how a magazine makes money?
People will also buy magazines which contain *useful information*.
Unfortunately, most of those magazines were
long ago "Ziffed" - bought out, and the useful
content replaced with vendor-supported 'product
reviews'. All of which have the same theme:
"they gave us this stuff, and bought a full
page ad, and maybe threw in some cash on the side, so we'll say it's great stuff."
Irv
Re:Good riddance! (Score:3, Interesting)
This whole pattern of corporate america dictating was is news worthy needs to swing back towards objective reporting. I think many people are sick and tired of the drivel on the news stands today.
Re:Good riddance! (Score:2)
This could only be true if
a) Consumers were literate enought to appreciate well-written stories
and
b) Consumers had enough reading comprehension to understand and remember the solid content of the articles.
Re:Good riddance! (Score:2)
Basically, expect less real reporting, more ads, more fluff, and more money for ZD. In this situation, the market supports the fluff (because its what those with money want) more than it supports actual knowledge (since those people rarely want to sit through ads).
Re:Good riddance! (Score:2)
Extreme Tech [extremetech.com] actually has some juice. It's certainly less troll-ified than this site... Dvorak is often not pure advertising. Pure whatremains unkown...
Re:Good riddance! (Score:2)
The management gospel (Score:2)
about time... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:about time... (Score:3, Interesting)
Ever since then PC Mag (along with every other ZD publication) has transitioned from serious tech journalism to serious whoring.
These days I read Maximum PC for a similar level of info to what I used to get in PC Mag, but as good as it is it's still a magazine aimed at hobbyists. Hopefully the fall of ZD will give someone else a chance to launch some magazines for the markets ZD currently dominates that contain useful content rather than whoring.
Re:about time... (Score:3, Funny)
PC Magazine has been, since 95ish, Microsoft's perpetual-upgrade propaganda rag.
Re:about time..The Day Z-D Journalism Died (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:about time..The Day Z-D Journalism Died (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:about time... (Score:2)
In other news (Score:5, Funny)
Older Magazines were good (Score:3, Interesting)
Did they do Computer Shopper too? That was great way back when, before they shrunk it to normal size and all. You could find some damned good deals in there (and I think there were some good articles at times too, but that wasn't what I bought it for...).
I hope they come back to a technical crowd at least. There's too much crap about the business of the internet and computers - I want more technical information available to the masses.
-N
The internet killed computer shopper. (Score:2, Interesting)
However the internet killed it. What value does Computer Shopper have when you can go to places like pricewatcher and do a quick search and get the lowest price. In addition the internet provides quicker access to new equipment.
Re:Older Magazines were good (Score:2)
NEXT! (Score:2, Insightful)
Enjoy the smirk while you can!
Good riddance! (Score:5, Interesting)
I try to avoid dealing with companies that use unethical advertising. Latest example that comes to mind is VeriSign.
Interesting Numbers (Score:5, Interesting)
* Willis Stein & Partners paid $780 million for the company during the bull market.
* The company's earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization are projected to be $6.5 million in 2002
Translation: At the current rate of profit, it will take over a hundred years to make up the initial investment. Ouch.
* (Earnings) are expected to rise to $34.4 million in 2003 if the restructuring goes as planned.
* Savings will be gained from the closing of money-losing magazines and the layoff of 700 of the company's 1,150 employees the last year.
Translation: We plan on making close to six times as much money as we were before, primarily by firing over 70% of our workforce, cutting our costs drastically.
Now, here's what bothers me to some extent, and by no means do you have to agree with me on this issue. But according to those numbers, this company is profitable. Granted, its not profitable enough to justify the high price it was bought back in April of 2000, but its in the positive, and appears to be staying there for awhile. However, it seems that being profitable isn't good enough these days. Not only does a company have to be profitable, but it doesn't appear to have any room to do anything that is 'extra-profitable', that is, things that are not done solely for profit.
For example, the article makes mention that the company in question had discontinued its Yahoo! Internet Life Magazina, which had a distribution of over a million. So clearly, some people liked the product. However, it wasn't discontinued due to declining interest, but rather because the number of ad pages had decreased by 50% over the past 2 years. My translation: "If you aren't in a good demographic, you don't get anything published for you."
That's not to say that ZD is under any obligation to operate at a loss for the benefit of the masses. My issue is that ZD is not operating at a loss, but they still plan on putting 700 people out of work, and discontinuing publications that have readership. If there ever was a place where the mythical 'invisible hand' of the market were giving lots of people the finger to enrich the few, this were it. After all, the only people who have to gain from this restructuring are the share holders, while hundreds of workers go unemployed and millions of readers lose their reading material.
So much for the market automatically doing what's best for everyone, eh?
Re:Interesting Numbers (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Interesting Numbers (Score:2, Insightful)
* The company's earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization are projected to be $6.5 million in 2002
Translation: At the current rate of profit, it will take over a hundred years to make up the initial investment. Ouch.
I'd just like to point out that it doesn't really work like that. When you buy a company, you don't sit around waiting for the checks to come in so you can get your money back. Well, not just that, anyway.
The key to making your money back is in market capitalization. If I spent $100 million to buy a publicly traded company, then I'm going to hope that the market capitalization (the total value of all outstanding shares of the company's stock, more or less) is equal to or greater than $100 million. Of course, if it were, I couldn't have bought it for $100 million; the owners would have held out for more money.
So what you want to do is lose a little money on the initial sale of the company, then keep the company profitable long enough to increase its market capitalization to a point where the company is worth more than you paid for it. This isn't directly related to the amount of money the company makes each quarter, although that's a factor. It's directly related to the open market share price of the publicly traded shares of company stock.
For instance (I'm too lazy to go digging up numbers, so I'll invent them instead) if ZD has 10 million outstanding shares, and the per-share price today for ZD stock is $50 per share, then the company has a market capitalization of $500 million. (Grossly oversimplified business math, there.) If I tried to sell it today, I'd lose a lot of money, because I paid over $700 million for it.
But if the company continues to make a profit, the stock price will (hopefully) gradually climb to $60, $70, $80 per share. Poof! I've made money, because the company I own (rather, that I own majority shares of) is worth more than I paid for it. I could sell it and make my money back, and then some.
Re:Interesting Numbers (Score:3, Interesting)
If the efficient market hypothesis is correct, the market valuation should be based on the present value of all future earnings of the firm. Over the long term these earnings can only be profit, plus some allowance for the possibility of R&D coming up with a breakthrough development.
If the market cap is higher than the simple PV of current profits, then the market expects that the company will change or grow in some way to increase profits from their current level. However, see Yahoo, Nortel, and Worldcom for examples of what happens when these expectations turn out to be wrong.
sPh
PS Yes, I am familiar with the technical terms such as EBITDA, "free cash flow", "operating earnings", etc. To simplify this discussion I used the word "profit", which over the long term means essentially what you think it means.
Re:Interesting Numbers (Score:2)
I can remember when my company -- an aerospace company yet -- and others would actually build value by improving their competitive position, doing R&D, letting their employees learn, and improving the company's inherent capabilities & knowledge. They'd use the down time when the economy was in a slump to get ready for the next upturn.
What a concept, actually prepare for the inevitable market slump and improve revenues/profits.
Would that happen today? Naw, that'd mean looking beyond the next quarter! Even if a company wanted too, their managment would be crusified by the Wall St. analysts & their investors.
Re:Interesting Numbers (Score:5, Interesting)
> looking beyond the next quarter! Even if a
> company wanted too, their managment would be
> crusified by the Wall St. analysts & their
> investors.
I just worked as a consultant (via a 3rd party company) for a client that has a hiring freeze on programming & technical staff. This is so that, to Wall Street's eyes, the client is keeping its core expenses (employee salaries) lower in relation to revenue.
Of course, there are still project deadlines to meet, so they hire consultants to fill those technical roles.
Sole benefit: payment for consultants can apparently be written off as "one-time" expenses.
Two problems:
1) Consultants cost more per hour than employees. 2) There is high turnover with consultants (for example, I don't work for that client any more) and the client has problems meeting targets for key projects, etc.
Duh! How is this good for the company long term? They avoid hiring permanent employees to have a nicer-looking balance sheet, but sacrifice the benefit of stable, productive, long-term employees?
Ridiculous, if you ask me. Hooray for market forces!
Re:Interesting Numbers (Score:2)
Re:Interesting Numbers (Score:2)
Closing units that are below your arbitrary profit margin is how business is meant to work. If those units served markets that someone else can serve profitably, they'd be stupid not to poach the laid off workforce. If the market isn't there, then nobody should be forced to create a product for it.
Yes, hooray for market forces (Score:2)
If the market notices that companies that use a lot of consultants end up underperforming in the long run, then a company's stock will be penalized at the first rumor of an influx of consultants, and the hand of the market will push companies into using full time employees instead.
On the other hand, if you are wrong about the economics of using consultants, the market will continue to reward such behavior. Perhaps you understand the economics of business success better than the market, but that's not how I'd bet my own money.
Re:Interesting Numbers (Score:2)
Re:Interesting Numbers (Score:3, Insightful)
My issue is that ZD is not operating at a loss, but they still plan on putting 700 people out of work, and discontinuing publications that have readership.
To be honest, I'm somewhat astounded at your post. You start off with a set of facts, and then go off the deep end with your conclusion contradicting your facts!
Their not cutting profitable parts of their company, they're cutting the unprofitable parts. Do you really think that they should continue paying 700 employees that are losing money for them?
Now, if you want to make the argument that somehow they should give these losing parts of the company more time to become profitable, that's a different argument, and I (or probably you) don't have enough facts to render a judgment on that.
Once again I have to say: Employees are not 'owed' employment.
Re:Interesting Numbers (Score:2)
Sometimes the profitable parts depend on the other parts to work properly. This might not apply here. The logic isn't as clear. But all too often these "re-structurings", and "efficiency measures" only end up killing what had been a working organization.
The bus companies may never recover from the assualt on them by GM. Will the publishing companies ever recover? Or will we end up with an impoverished publishing industry that only survives on trickles of government support?
Re:Interesting Numbers (Score:2)
Translation: At the current rate of profit, it will take over a hundred years to make up the initial investment. Ouch.
This isn't profit. This is EBITDA. Profit comes once you account for interest, taxes, deprication and amortization.
But according to those numbers, this company is profitable.
No, the company is losing money. When a company files for bankruptcy protection, it means it cannot pay interest to its creditors. It doesn't have enough cash to cover its financial obligations.
Yahoo! Internet Life Magazina (Score:2)
They sent me a years worth of copies, free, without any instigation on my part. So I was probably one of the million at one point, even though the damn thing went straight from the mailbox to the recycle bin.
Re:Interesting Numbers (Score:2)
The problem with the argument here is in the blind acceptance of the statement that ZD is truly profitable. As everybody should be quite thoroughly aware of these days, GAAP can be used to play with earnings to a disturbing extent even before you get to outright Enron/Worldom style fraud. If you read the whole NYT article, you can see that they are currently in a cash crunch, which is what will force the filing. Yes it might seem weird that a company could "produce" a profit up until the point it files for chapter 11, but it does happen (I think it used to be normal for this to happen with banks that failed). For that matter, they *aren't* profitable now. You write:
First off, that isn't earnings, but EBITDA, which is wildly significant because their interest expense is absolutely huge. Further, the trends for future business here have to be strongly negative. I severely doubt, for example, that year-over-year ad revenue is up or will be up in the foreseeable future. I cannot believe that subscriptions to the flagship (PC Magazine) are going anywhere but down (unless they have expanded some of the "loss-leader" deals they used to offer).
And, for that matter, I'm very skeptical about the breath-taking turnaround they suggest is going to happen after the pre-packaged chapter 11 filing. Note that they are pretty much *forced* to paint a rosy scenario here because they are trying to get their bondholders to accept equity in lieu of cash. For that matter, chapter 11 does give them some leverage here over the bondholders who already rejected a similar deal (again, this is clear from the NYT piece). When push comes to shove in bankruptcy court, I wouldn't be surprised to see monthly operating reports deep in the red if they stay there for long, and the bondholders (and any banks) are going to get heart pretty badly even if they take the equity. OK, so that's my opinion based on the expected current value of any enterprise purchased in April 2000.
I have no current interest in the equity or debt of ZD or any of its partners or subsidiaries.
Re:Byte (Score:2)
What you said. I started programming by typing in listings from BYTE.
The nicest part was that unlike the other magazines I read, there weren't many program listings - BYTE was really about new tech, or about new ways to solve problems (whether in software or in build-it-yourself hardware). And the listings that did show up weren't necessarily for my platform, so I had to think about whether or not it could be ported/implemented on my hardware, rather than just jump in and blindly start typing.
For most of the 10+ years I was a subscriber, BYTE rocked. It was a sad day whan I realized I wasn't gonna renew.
Focus on gaming? My wish list (Score:4, Interesting)
So if ZDNet is focusing on their gaming coverage, here's my own little wish list:
- For the love of god, hire some more women. How many women are on the gamespot.com staff? I'm looking at today's Gamespotting [gamespot.com], and it's all XY chromosomed folks. No wonder games like DOA Vollyball [gamespot.com] are coming out - there isn't someone to stop that jiggle fest from going out of control. (Not that I don't like good looking girls running round, but if they made it fair and featured guys in speedos, I wouldn't feel like it's being marketed only to 14 year old masturbating teenagers who don't have a like).
- Stop it with the positive previews. I have yet to see a preview of a game that says "You know, we're working with an early build of a game - and it sucks. I mean, you thought Daikatana was bad - this game takes the cake." I don't even read reviews anymore - I just check out the synopsys of a game, download the demo, and that's it, because I know I can't rely on what game journalists say about the game before its released. I know it's hard, especially when a game in beta might be better in final version. But if you only have something nice to say (when it isn't deserved), don't say anything at all.
- Ziff Davis also owns gamers.com, Official US Playstation Magazine, etc, etc, etc. I almost hope they go under, mainly because a good chunk of the paper gaming magazines are owned by one company, and you can tell. They're all pretty much the same (much like there's no reason to go to zdnet.com if you've already scanned the headlines for cnet.net). Anyone remember the Gamefan magazine? Great rag, and I was hoping GameGo would take off, but with a near monopoly on gaming magazines, Ziff-Davis has made sure everything is covered in a macho bullshit shell.
- No booth babe pictures. Ever. Again. Look, maybe it's because I get laid on a regular basis, but I don't feel the need for computer gaming news to feature silicon injected flesh peddlers. I want to know about the game. Is it fun. Is it entertaining. I was annoyed after visiting E3 to see the high level of insults to women depicted there, and even more so after checking out a gaming magazine to see they focused the first section to pictures of the girls. Stop it. Please.
That's my little wish list, and I'm sure I'm forgetting other things.Re:Focus on gaming? My wish list (Score:2)
Amen. Game magazine / website "journalism" is below the level of the Weekly World News. I think I saw that Gamespot is starting to charge for downloads of demos now, so maybe they've caught on to this as well.
Back before I had broadband, I used to subscribe to PC Gamer. I'd pitch the rag and try the stuff that looked interesting on the CD.
Re:Focus on gaming? My wish list (Score:5, Funny)
No booth babe pictures. Ever. Again. Look, maybe it's because I get laid on a regular basis, but I don't feel the need for computer gaming news to feature silicon injected flesh peddlers.
This guy's chick is *so* watching him post over his shoulder...
One quick thing (Score:3, Informative)
Guys, take down the "Girls not allowed" signs off the treehouse and lower the rope ladder, for pete's sake.
Re:One quick thing (Score:2)
That doesn't mean much without giving it some context. 90% of the games I owned (until I graduated from H.S. and got a real job anyway) were purchased by my Mother or my Grandmother. Now how does that skew those statistics?
Re:One quick thing (Score:2)
E3 was pathetic. The few women in the gaming profession who weren't booth-bimbos seem to be surviving on a diet of low-grade mortification. Video games have the potential to be the defining medium for the 21st century, but only when they stop be exclusively marketed towards young men's most insipid fantasies
I'm not someone who thinks that the numbers have to be equal, either - I, like Henry Jenkins of MIT, think that there are reasons why boys are more interested in video games than girls, the most important one being the loss of public space for boys' unsupervised play. Video games answer a call for a need that young (10 to 15 year old) boys have particularly strongly in the US. In the most literal sense, it's OK for adolescent males to have a 'treehouse' that's boys-only - girls do the same, and it's an important part of social development to have gendered playspaces. At that stage, I can understand the gap.
However, at a place like E3 that fact is irrelevant. That the industry talks to itself with depictions of T&A is pathetic. It feels deeply unprofessional, and the attitude, I think, is stunting the potential of videogames. The average PS2 owner, for example, is 25 years old - the industry should be getting smarter.
As far as Ziff-Davis goes, their gaming magazines are weak. The best general magazine for gaming I've ever read is Edge [edge-online.com], from the UK. No US magazine comes close to such intelligence, production values, actually useful reviews (yes, lots of pans - in fact, more pans than praise), and good, literary-quality writing.
Re:Focus on gaming? My wish list (Score:3, Insightful)
I quit EQ when they redesigned the boobs to be lethal weapons. I'm 33 years old, married, the mother of three kids, and buy WAY more games a year than your average 14 year old gamer. Why? Cause I have a job, and cash to buy them. I buy pretty much whatever catches my fancy. I don't have to save my paper route money, nor do I have to beg my parents for the money.
Attracting new customers should be the goal of every new game. Instead of all those companies catering to the same, tired, cliched gamer, perhaps they should start looking at the gamers everyone forgets.. women. Oh, damn, you know, I forgot, someone already did that... The Sims. And wouldn't you know, its the best selling PC game... EVER.
Catch a clue guys. We're here. We just don't talk to you all cause you are so damn RUDE. You treat us as if we aren't anything more than a pair of breasts and a pussy and that we're on this planet only to provide you with masturabatory material.
Disclaimer: I do not mean all of you. I mean some of you who also replied to this thread. Shouldn't take much brainpower to figure out to whom I am referring.
Re:Focus on gaming? My wish list (Score:2, Funny)
(He says, anonymously, with girlfriend still asleep so that she'll never know.. Ahaha.)
And if you don't mind me asking... (Score:2)
Re:Focus on gaming? My wish list (Score:2)
Case in point: a few months ago Dragon had the gall to put a scantily clad male on their cover. The next month the fan mail apparently was replaced by hate mail from homophobes who claimed they couldn't even bring themselves to buy that issue because of the cover. In subsequent months they got plenty of mail in support of that cover, but the fact remains that the ltest issue is dutifully decorated by a pair of Dark Elf females dressed for a night out at the local S+M club.
My point is that they are selling to a particular market, and that market, right or wrong, as a deep-seated fascination with breasts. Gaming magazines focus on E3 booth babes for the same reason Sports Illustrated has a swimsuit issue; because it grabs the attention of their target audience and sell magazines.
Personally, I agree with you. I would love to see the maturity level of the PC gaming community raised a few notches, but the sad fact is that the industry will continue to put out what sells. For the record, I know a lot more women who are interested in Sports Illustrated than [random PC Gaming mag], and I only know one woman who reads Dragon.
I guess what it comes down to is you aren't their target market. You should let them know that by not buying their magazines.
Re:Focus on gaming? My wish list (Score:2)
Re:Focus on gaming? My wish list (Score:2)
In a few more words...
Back in the 'good days' of gamesdomain.com, there was a column called, "The Pink Aisle," discussing women in computer games. It was very insightful (and occasionally inciteful
Personally, I don't have a lot of problems with women who want to take off their clothes for my entertainment, assuming they get paid and treated fairly for it. However, it doesn't belong in the computer gaming industry, it shouldn't be aimed at teenagers, and it certainly shouldn't be done as a projection of reality (which it currently is).
If I want to see scantily clad women, I'll pick up Playboy, etc. If I want to see game info, I'd like to be able to pick up a game magazine.
Game previews should be factual, rather than hypeful. Tell us what the game is going to be about and how it's going to work. Tell us about the tech behind it, if it's known. Don't waste breathless prose telling us about how it'll be the best game ever created!!! (again)
On a side note, does ZD have anything to do with the current incarnation of Gamesdomain? They certainly stink like a ZD site these days.
Gamefan, alas... (Score:2)
I agree with you on the sugar coated reviews. Like you said, sometimes it's painfully obvious what company pays the bills or who the magazine can't afford to piss off. And rich game fans out there who would like to produce an independent mag without whoring it out to a 3rd party income producer? THAT would be a mag to remember. "What? You gotta be kidding me?! This is Sony's worst effort to date!? It deserves to be sacrified on an alter dedicated to the gods of Shit and Flaming Anal Sores respectively!" Maybe not that rough, but you get the idea.
Booth Babes? Lara Croft? Horny teenage guys = $$$? What!? I want telephone book thick Japanese gaming mags... That's all I want here... Please?
Re:Focus on gaming? My wish list (Score:2, Interesting)
I've been playing games for 15 years now, and I have to say, the industry has become a lot more sexified (is that a word?). Before it was just a lot of side scrollers and a boy or a girl could be good at that finger-twitching. Now it's just "take your Sims and go to the corner, m'kay?" while the guys drool over polygonal boobs bouncing on the screen.
Oh but there're the excuses. Let's see,
"the industry is geared toward men"
"more men can afford to get games so they buy more"
"more men are programmers so they program what they want"
"women don't like games!"
"women don't understand games"
"women think it's a waste of time (maybe pouring $$ down an industry that consistently abases women is a waste)"
It's funny how some guys can recite them with religious fervor and believe in them like a zealot. That's the only way to believe the industry is right as it is now.
Accounting (Score:4, Funny)
Jesse Berst (Score:2, Funny)
I can only hope this guy gets the axe. Then again, I giggle at the thought of his Duke Nukem Forever review.
Re:Jesse Berst (Score:2)
http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/stories/story/0
hahaha (Score:2)
So why am I leaving? Because I've started a new company called IZ Inc. -- a next-generation digital publishing firm that creates email newsletters and Web communities around affinity topics. This type of targeted email is an explosive market. Jupiter Research expects revenues to soar to $7.3 billion by 2005. I want to be part of that boom.
I'm sure it's right on track to $7.5 billion!
Re:Jesse Berst (Score:2)
No excrement...It's almost embarrassing to read a David Coursey column because the craven, slobbering, bootlicking groveling to and worship of Bill Gates is laid on so thick. The best example of this has to be his "My Lunch With Bill" two-column sequence. It's positively antiperistaltogenic.
I personally think thier problem started when... (Score:2)
I never forgave 'em for killing Creative Computing (Score:2)
To my mind, this is roughly equivalent to USA Today buying out, then folding, the New York Times.
Re:I never forgave 'em for killing Creative Comput (Score:2)
Re:I never forgave 'em for killing Creative Comput (Score:2)
How the hell did I get a free subscription? (Score:2)
The end was obvious ... (Score:2, Insightful)
This from a magazine that pulled the plug on advertisements for pr0n sites a few years back. With the pictures they're using now, what's the difference.
Me and ZD go back a ways (Score:2)
I subscribed to PC Magazine for over 10 years and its cousin, PC/Computing, for almost as long. I finally dropped PC/C after they changed their name and slant to a business emphasis that didn't interest me. PC Magazine followed soon after when I came to the realization that I was paying good money for a stack of paper that contained information I could get for free on the 'net.
The World Won't Miss You, ZD (Score:5, Interesting)
In the late 80s I actually read PC Magazine. I thought it was a half-decent way to keep abreast of things happening one particular platform -- "IBM PC Compatable" type machines. Of course, if you relied on it, you would end up with a very narrow and distorted view of Personal Computers.
In the early 90s, it seemed to get progressively worse. It kept its focus on only one hardware platform (which is almost, though not quite, justifiable today, but ten years ago, no way), but also focused almost exclusively on a single OS vendor -- you can guess who.
The last straw came in 1995 when they gave their "technical excellence" award for OSes, to Windows 95. Compared to some of the other things around at the time, such as OS/2 Warp, this was a complete joke. You can talk about market realities or whatever, but when it comes to pure technique, Windows 95 is to Warp, as a Model T is to a modern car.
Up to then, I knew I was getting distorted information from them, but just how distorted it was, I guess I just hadn't fully realized it. I took a look around at some other ZD publications then, just to make sure I wasn't jumping to any unjustified conclusions, and then safely concluded: ZD was just Microsoft's PR arm. They were not journalists.
I stopped reading anything published by Ziff-Davis. The words "Ziff-Davis" actually became a negative-value trademark, a badge for unusually poor quality. Worse than random noise. This is a company who can put goodwill on the liabilities side of their balance sheet.
They could even have reformed in the last few years, and I wouldn't know. They established a such horrible reputation and it would take a miracle to bring them back. I can't imagine that anyone reads them anymore.
Wait a minute.. (Score:2)
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/07/19/113
Does this mean CNet is going belly-up?
One thing I miss (Score:2)
I may be in the minority but whatever it was they replaced him with -- I think it was some kind of lame top 10 list -- I didn't think it was nearly as good, useful or entertaining.
Dadgummest subscription process I've ever seen (Score:3, Interesting)
You must be present to win.
Can Magazines Be Fresh? (Score:2, Interesting)
If you are a hardcore gamer, you've usually purchased, hacked, and beaten the game weeks before the review appears in a magazine. With the ability to access demos, previews, reviews, and walkthru's with just a few clicks (and usually avoiding having to wade through pages and pages of ads), I just don't see how the print medium can keep up.
Dr. Wu
Thirty-five years of Ziff-Davis (Score:2, Interesting)
However, "poignant" != "too bad, I'll miss them," by any means. Cranks (such as Dvorak and Berst) posing as journalists really soured my opinion of their latter-day efforts.
must be all my fault (Score:2)
Funny that CNet Community Manager blamed the lower use of ZDnet on Microsoft critics rather than the company violating the law.
I know that is pure bunk. But, that is what he claimed. Check out my web site for the email from the CNet guy.
I do not believe him for a second.
Gone for good... (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, seeing how Jesse Berst crawled far into BillGs ass it is not at all surprising that the odeur drove the customers away.
Good Riddance! And (no) good look for Berst at the employment agency...
I'll be celebrating... (Score:4, Funny)
Not suprising, no sign of them (Score:2, Informative)
Million dollar idea (Score:2)
P.S. All of these mags go over the same thing every month...Ever wonder why they are dead?
As much as I still love Computer Shopper... (Score:2)
ZD owns some really good properties, and they're aren't as biased as some other publications, but I'm sure the problem is the high cost of print publishing and the move toward internet sales. Something like Price Watch [pricewatch.com] must be killing Computer Shopper.
Still, I suspect people are going to want to read computer magazines for a while. Like most businesses right now, they might just need to merge their way out of this mess. Don't you just love the business cycle?
Missing Ziff-Davis filing in SEC archives (Score:2)
The missing filing is
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1055131/000 0950130-01-000889.txt [sec.gov]
returns a "file not found". But that file was indexed in the daily index file for Feburary 14, 2001,
ftp://ftp.sec.gov/edgar/daily-index/2001/QTR1/comp any.20010214.idx [sec.gov]
and thus should be present.
If you try to find this filing via the SEC's search engine [sec.gov], it doesn't show up there, either.
I don't like this. History has been erased. Unclear whether this a bug, or tampering.
Re:Missing Ziff-Davis filing in SEC archives (Score:2)
ZD-Day (Score:3, Interesting)
Another case of MS (Score:2)
Is this the death of advertising? (Score:2)
TechTV (Score:2)
Does anybody know if this possible bankruptsy would have an impact on the TechTV channel?
Re:Wow (Score:2)
Before the Web, back when Computer Shopper ran near a thousand pages, it was worthwhile (actually, it was worthwhile even longer ago, when Stan Veit owned it and you could still read something about computers other than IBM clones)...now, with the magazine running at barely two hundred pages and shrinking, I'd be surprised if Computer Shopper lasts another year in dead tree format.
Re:former ZD staffer on product reviews (Score:2)
Are you telling me that you cocksuckers couldn't muster up journalistic integrity because everything Microsoft and DELL sent you was just so shiny and had so many flashing lights you were constantly distracted from the fact that your JOB was to evaluate computer shit in the most objective manner possible??
Bullshit.
The problem with tech product 'reviews' .... (Score:2)
You have more tolerance for product faults when it's
AND
What's worse are consumer magazines that recommend tech products, often without testing them at all, just because they look cool.
That's the problem with most so-called 'reviews' you see in the technology press. They aren't real reviews at all. Using a gadget for a few hours over a couple of weeks doesn't tell you anything about the product's performance over an extended period of time. Neither does focusing on how pretty something looks.
Long-term testing is a critical part of our review philosophy at Geartest.com [geartest.com]: Real gear. Real world. Real reviews. What does that mean? We don't write reviews about products in a pre-release stage or based on press releases. We use the products for an extended period in real conditions. Then we tell readers what we found, with updates as warranted. That results in a fair review. That means that good, bad or mediocre, products will get the reviews that they deserve.
We won't publish even a preliminary look at something until it's consistently been in use for at least 30 days.
As for ZD's staff skewing the 'cool' products, it's up to the reviewer to demonstrate some necessary professionalism and not skew a product evaluation based on its 'coolness' or just because they haven't paid for it. And it's up to the editor to enforce a policy that prevents reviewers from skewing their reviews.
When people evaluate and assess products for an enterprise, they often haven't paid for those products either but it seems that full and fair assessments are made without too much difficulty, even if those reviews are only for private consumption.
And that is the same idea that drives Geartest.com [geartest.com].
Re:former ZD staffer on product reviews (Score:2)
I'm still working on a six year-old Power Mac. It does everything I want it to do, and then some, but won't run OS X as quickly as I'd like. So it is soon to be replaced by a brand new G4, which will give me another 6 or 7 years of trouble-free operation, where I'll open it 3 or 4 times a year to blow out any accumulating dust. This while the Windows tinkerers are furiously swapping out video cards, mobos, processors, and cooling equipment, and don't even bother to put the case back together most of the time.
Yes, Macs cost more. But the higher initial cost buys you longer-lasting equipment that does not need as much support attention as a comparable Windows PC. Study after study has borne out that Macs win on TCO. But hey there, little soldier, you keep right on going with your eyes shut and your hands over your ears, chanting "Windows is always better, Windows is always better, Windows is always better..." if that's what makes you happy!
~Philly