Pandora Price Increase!

[Trip]

What I care about is people being used by a company and then being told that they can sod off if they don't like it. After supporting a company for more than 2 years don't you think people deserve a little more respect than that?

"As for the comments about now CC being the slower one: consider if they hadn't more than doubled production speed, they'd have a HUGE backlog of boards to assemble still. I don't think they've been idle that many days that it negates the speed up they got from hiring extra people?"
I might be tired at the moment but this doesn't read right to me so I'm not too sure how to respond at the moment.
We were told that all first batch cases etc. had been done. Without a steady stream of boards from CC they couldn't speed up anything.

 

[htl2001]

What I care about is people being used by a company and then being told that they can sod off if they don't like it. After supporting a company for more than 2 years don't you think people deserve a little more respect than that?

I don't see them telling me to 'sod off' - I'm still getting my order, and with the premiums, I'm getting it faster. I consider taking the option that gets the Pandora to me faster to be the most respectful of my 2 year wait.

"As for the comments about now CC being the slower one: consider if they hadn't more than doubled production speed, they'd have a HUGE backlog of boards to assemble still. I don't think they've been idle that many days that it negates the speed up they got from hiring extra people?"
I might be tired at the moment but this doesn't read right to me so I'm not too sure how to respond at the moment.
We were told that all first batch cases etc. had been done. Without a steady stream of boards from CC they couldn't speed up anything.

What I was saying is that they had gotten a pretty large shipment from CC, were building, and (I think?) got another shipment while they still had units waiting to be assembled from the last shipment of boards, prior to adding the new assembly workers. So the bottleneck was in assembly before and boards from CC were piling up in the queue. Now, the bottleneck is CC, but the bottleneck is not so bad that the assembly workers are sitting idle half the time (which would negate an assembly speedup of 2x)

 

[rv6502]

What I care about is people being used by a company and then being told that they can sod off if they don't like it. After supporting a company for more than 2 years don't you think people deserve a little more respect than that?

I'm one of those "people", thanks but I don't need you to defend me, and I'm pretty sure a lot of other happy customers think the same.
if you are not happy get a refund and GTFO.

we don't need you defending us oh mighty internet knight.

I think you're the one lacking respect in thinking we, the other people/customers, need to be cared for by you.

talk for yourself and leave us out of it.

 

[Linux-SWAT]

What is obvious is the fact the OP is not produced by a big company so stop treating the team as liars and thieves.
It's a rock'n roll project, so be cool.

So that's a good enough reason to break the law and to be disrespectful to their customers is it?

Be careful not to be put in court yourself. You're currently defaming.

As a customer, i never felt disrespected. I felt OP team do all they can to satisfy me (us).

 

[Grench]

So, can you assure us that NO one will cancel anymore once production slows down?
Or are you ready to lend us the money if that happens?

Something that might help quell the discontent would be to add some meat to the status updates.

Maybe instead of saying, 'we're producing,' maybe actually state how many got produced and shipped in the previous week? Number of pre-orders fulfilled and number of premium orders fulfilled broken out would be better still.

Since the premium orders started, it has been hard to tell if any pre-orders are even going out.

Yes, we're all invested in time and emotion on this project - which in some cases goes well beyond the $$$ involved. We want to feel included and informed. We're all being asked to be very very very patient. Please give us a reason to?

Some weeks will be better than others. We understand that - but knowing that the queue really is getting addressed would go a long ways.

The premium units were not supposed to delay the pre-orders. Whether they have or haven't isn't nearly as much issue if it -feels- like they have. If we could be told that XXX units went out and XX of them were pre-orders in a week, at least we would know that there was -some- progress on the queue.

Where so many, 'I got my 7 day Pandora,' threads are popping up and there hasn't been hardly any postings from, 'I ordered my Pandora on 9-30-2008 at XX:XX:XXGMT,' threads, many of us are getting concerned. Give us something real - a real set of production numbers - a real idea of progression on CraigIX's queue. I specify CraigIX's queue because that is where the bulk of us are. Just knowing that we're a few units/orders closer to the front of our line would go a long ways.

Just my $0.02.

 

[benji_stein]

1. Because the nubs disaster did cost a lot money and some people are cancelling, the project could go bust when running out of money because the slower we produce, the more people will probably cancel. That could lead OpenPandora to go bust and therefore, nobody would be getting any money back and no Pandoras, so the worst case scenario.

But getting more money from some premium units doesn't help prevent CC from being slow at production (like they've been) and people still canceling, anyway.

2. With the Premium Pandoras, production can be sped up by having a bigger team, less people are going to cancel (and if they do, their unit could be sold at a higher price as Premium unit as well to compensate that), which will make the whole thing continue. Only IF someone sues us because of that, the company goes bust and nobody would get anything anymore.

And you can only sell the canceled units at a higher price if your batch 2 is all full. Which you've told us it isn't, so a cancellation is just as damaging.

So, well, yeah... I also don't like that, I'd rather have it that we still had the ressources to pay the people to help out with the Pandora production ourselves.
I'd also rather had it that the nubs never were broken from the beginning or CC would be more accurate and faster with shipping the units and give us some proper schedule.
Because those were the issues that cost us a lot of money.

I thought the nub companies didn't charge you for the repair of the broken nubs? How is there a large cost associated with it, other than the loss of time-to-market, which was down the tubes, anyway?

In fact, production of each unit in Batch 1 was approx. 400 USD as cost. Just calculate how much of our private money we put into that to get the units out... sales price was 250 USD at the beginning, so a loss of 150 USD per unit. With 3000 units, you can see how much that is...

No. The original US price was $330, bumped up to $350 for the second batch. So that's a loss of at most $70 per unit.
And does that include R&D costs? Because if so, that means the costs for all the batch 2 units are significantly less than $400 each, which means the $350 (now $500) is a lot of profit.

So would you rather like us saying "Geez, it's too much for us to handle, we give up", stop the whole thing, file insolvency and no one would get any Pandora anymore (and most no money back)?
Or do you rather want that we continue to try our best and get the units to everyone as soon as possible?

No, I personally wouldn't want that. But I do have to agree with Tripmonkey. I would have greatly appreciated any kind of mention, apology, or anything about the fact that you were doing this. It didn't even get an official blog post. I definitely don't agree with the recent attitude of "willing to wait through anything, or GTFO". Heck, I don't even understand why the "get a refund" and "GTFO" need to be interconnected.

@Tripmonkey. I agree with your sentiments. Unfortunately, I'm guessing it would be possible to wriggle out of it, legally, if they claim that the product is somehow different. Like, say, having a different label underneath. Speaking of which - did those ever get made? Can we see some pictures of these "Red Premium Stickers"?

 

[aq21]

@Tripmonkey. I agree with your sentiments. Unfortunately, I'm guessing it would be possible to wriggle out of it, legally, if they claim that the product is somehow different. Like, say, having a different label underneath. Speaking of which - did those ever get made? Can we see some pictures of these "Red Premium Stickers"?

You would not expect such arguments from a reputable company such as OP. This is the kind of argument you would expect from a shoddy company. For example, a company that tries to circumvent credit card companies' rules by selling you an empty CD for 350$ and promising a 350$ device as a present to anyone who buys the CD.

 

[Exophase]

Be careful not to be put in court yourself. You're currently defaming.

As a customer, i never felt disrespected. I felt OP team do all they can to satisfy me (us).

Contrary to what many an internet fanboy would like to believe, complaining about someone on a forum is not usually grounds for a trial.

 

[htl2001]

Be careful not to be put in court yourself. You're currently defaming.

As a customer, i never felt disrespected. I felt OP team do all they can to satisfy me (us).

Contrary to what many an internet fanboy would like to believe, complaining about someone on a forum is not usually grounds for a trial.

I was actually going to advise similarly... complaining is fine sure, but he keeps asserting that what they did was illegal, which different. I still don't think it'd land him in court (I doubt OPT would waste the time, and its not on some publication but just a forum).


And re: OP able to "wriggle out, legally": Are any of you going to try to take them to court? The wriggling can be done on both sides, claiming a different decal on the device should not be some magic bullet to make it a 'different device'. I'd think an argument like that would get laughed out of court but then again I'm not a lawyer. They MAY be able to argue something similar due to the big price difference though... but have they actually claimed any of this, or is it just "well they WOULD claim this since they are being so shady now" talk?

 

[Linux-SWAT]

Be careful not to be put in court yourself. You're currently defaming.

As a customer, i never felt disrespected. I felt OP team do all they can to satisfy me (us).

Contrary to what many an internet fanboy would like to believe, complaining about someone on a forum is not usually grounds for a trial.

Free speech in USA is quite different from other countries, but you're probably right.

 

[benji_stein]

And re: OP able to "wriggle out, legally": Are any of you going to try to take them to court? The wriggling can be done on both sides, claiming a different decal on the device should not be some magic bullet to make it a 'different device'. I'd think an argument like that would get laughed out of court but then again I'm not a lawyer. They MAY be able to argue something similar due to the big price difference though... but have they actually claimed any of this, or is it just "well they WOULD claim this since they are being so shady now" talk?

I'm referring to the back and forth between Tripmonkey's "selling non-preorder units before all the preorders are filled" and ED's "If it's that big a deal, threaten Craig you'll take him to court". I know wriggling can be done on both sides. Is why I think such a lawsuit wouldn't work. It's not like a book or DVD where it's clearly the *exactly* same item. I'm sure selling a limited edition game in a different box/case/label-picture would qualify as being different.

 

[007jaws]

Craig, ED abd OP team have done there best and will continue to do there best i support them 100 percent, if it was'nt for them this project would have been dead ages ago, like ed said extra money is going towards more workmen for building and support and support, i believe the pandora will provail and will be in all online stores and shops in the near future

carry on craig with your hard work

 

[Exophase]

Free speech in USA is quite different from other countries, but you're probably right.

Why would a comment made by someone in the UK against someone in the UK be taken to court in the USA?

Not that it'd hold up in USA court either. That's silly.

It's correct that libel/slander involves publication, but more than that it has to involve deliberately fraudulent defamation of character. Saying that OP is doing something illegal doesn't constitute as that, at worst it's a demonstration of ignorance of law (but I'm not a lawyer and I'm not familiar with the legality of every last thing OP is doing.. I do know OP should be under legal consult with everything they do as a company and wouldn't be very smart not to be)... But it's very different from say, saying that they committed a specific crime they hadn't.

This all sorta reminds me of when Noisome said that he would sue someone if a "stampede" of cancellations was caused due to badmouthing OP.

 

[EvilDragon]

Well, okay, so we've got to choices...

1. Because the nubs disaster did cost a lot money and some people are cancelling, the project could go bust when running out of money because the slower we produce, the more people will probably cancel. That could lead OpenPandora to go bust and therefore, nobody would be getting any money back and no Pandoras, so the worst case scenario.

But you and Craig said that Openpandora had the money for the first batch and that the money made from the premium units would just go to speed up the project. How come that's now change to you needing the money to keep the project going?

Read again: IF people cancel.
The money has been spent on the parts, so if many people cancel, it cannot be paid back, which would lead to having to file insolvency.
Additionally, when we started, we had no idea that the nub company will cost us 30.000 USD because they will go bust and another 50.000 USD because they produced crappy nubs, as well as about another 60.000 USD from people cancelling because of the nubs issue, it took so long.

We were able to cover all those costs with our own money, yes, but if there are further slowdowns and more users cancel, we won't have any left.

How many people do you think have cancelled because of this? How many people do you think were waiting on the sidelines before ordering because they thought it might be a scam and didn't want to loose money. You think those people will still buy from you after something like this?

Well, I had 6 cancellations in my shop since then, no one of them claimed it was because of that. I had a lot more cancellation because of the long stallment period while the nubs were being fixed.

2. With the Premium Pandoras, production can be sped up by having a bigger team, less people are going to cancel (and if they do, their unit could be sold at a higher price as Premium unit as well to compensate that), which will make the whole thing continue. Only IF someone sues us because of that, the company goes bust and nobody would get anything anymore.

This only works if CC deliver you boards on time every time and that hasn't happened so far has it?
[/quote]

They had a slight slowdown two weeks ago where they didn't seem to have produced anything, but so far, they delivered faster than we could build. That was the reason for that.

Also, there are also quite a few boards that arrived broken - they need to be sorted out and labelled what's broken and shipped back to CC.
This takes time. Thanks to the bigger team, Craig could send those boards back for repair. The faster that happens, the faster we'll get them back.
The bottleneck at CC is the population machine, as they don't have too many. Fixing broken boards is done manually, so this happens in parallel to the production.

There's not one thing in that entire post that even tries to explain why you couldn't put up a simple blog or forum post apologising to the people who have been waiting and supporting you for so long. Instead Craig made a blog post for his sob story, as if that was supposed to excuse what had happened; I've seen a lot of bullying from people on the forum as soon as anyone tries to bring up a valid point against the Premium Pandoras; and all you seem to have to say is if people don't like it they can cancel.

First, Craig made a post about that a few days before he did it, asking the community what they think about it.
It was never my idea nor did I really like it, but as it seems it was the only thing to work on that huge pile of boards Craig saw in front of him, what could've been done?

Craig is the business-guy. He does things when he thinks they need to be done, even though he knows there will be some that don't like it.
I'm the complete opposite - always trying to be helpful and trying to please everyone.

To be honest, I don't think the project would've been possible with any of us missing.
There were times where Craig HAD to react in his business style (something I could've never done!) and thinking about it, I also think it was the only thing that did work.

It might be the same here: I would've never done that, but it might actually be the reason we can continue and finish everything.

This is your idea of trying to achieve something together with the community? You've shown nothing but complete disregard for this community over the past month or two.

Oh, I did? Well, give me some proper examples then.
Except for your rant about the Premium Pandoras, as we already know you don't like them.

Maybe instead of saying, 'we're producing,' maybe actually state how many got produced and shipped in the previous week? Number of pre-orders fulfilled and number of premium orders fulfilled broken out would be better still.

I'd love to do so, but we don't really get any updates from CC and Craig also doesn't tell me how many he shipped, how many RMAs there are, etc.
I only know that for my shop.

Since the premium orders started, it has been hard to tell if any pre-orders are even going out.

Well, less than 100 Premium Pandoras sold, more than 500 shipped since then.
I've some normal guys posting they got their shipping notice for a normal preorder Pandora every now and then during the last weeks.

Yes, we're all invested in time and emotion on this project - which in some cases goes well beyond the $$$ involved. We want to feel included and informed. We're all being asked to be very very very patient. Please give us a reason to?

Because we don't know ourselves.
CC was supposed to call Michael today for a discussion about the production schedule, etc. It never happened.
They never tell us WHEN they will ship or WHAT they will ship.
It simply happens sometime. It worked out pretty good until now, they always shipped about 200 - 300 per week, with the exception of one week where nothing happened.
But we never know.

The premium units were not supposed to delay the pre-orders. Whether they have or haven't isn't nearly as much issue if it -feels- like they have. If we could be told that XXX units went out and XX of them were pre-orders in a week, at least we would know that there was -some- progress on the queue.

As much as I love to do so, I only know the details for my shop.

 

[EvilDragon]

Where so many, 'I got my 7 day Pandora,' threads are popping up and there hasn't been hardly any postings from, 'I ordered my Pandora on 9-30-2008 at XX:XX:XXGMT,' threads, many of us are getting concerned. Give us something real - a real set of production numbers - a real idea of progression on CraigIX's queue. I specify CraigIX's queue because that is where the bulk of us are. Just knowing that we're a few units/orders closer to the front of our line would go a long ways.

There's something I realized on the German boards:
During the last week, I shipped 4 Premium Pandoras and 40 normal Pandoras.
3 of those 4 Premium users posted they got it, whereas only 3 or 4 of the 40 normal Pandora users did.

I guess the Premium buyers are more active, some just got here and are enthusiastic while quite a few of the others have become inactive right now.

1. Because the nubs disaster did cost a lot money and some people are cancelling, the project could go bust when running out of money because the slower we produce, the more people will probably cancel. That could lead OpenPandora to go bust and therefore, nobody would be getting any money back and no Pandoras, so the worst case scenario.

But getting more money from some premium units doesn't help prevent CC from being slow at production (like they've been) and people still canceling, anyway.

No, but CC was faster than Craigs team in January, and if 5 people cancel for 250 USD and 5 people reorder a premium unit instead, it's a win of 250 USD.
Yes, it's harsh, and I also don't like it, but that's the case.

2. With the Premium Pandoras, production can be sped up by having a bigger team, less people are going to cancel (and if they do, their unit could be sold at a higher price as Premium unit as well to compensate that), which will make the whole thing continue. Only IF someone sues us because of that, the company goes bust and nobody would get anything anymore.

And you can only sell the canceled units at a higher price if your batch 2 is all full. Which you've told us it isn't, so a cancellation is just as damaging.
[/quote]

No, they can go out as Premium units right away.
Additionally, some of the money from the Premium units has also been used to pay the parts for the 2nd batch. If those aren't paid, the batch wouldn't be ready to start after the first batch was over.
As Batch 2 is not sold out, but we need to pay for the full amount of parts, this was the only way speeding up Batch 2 as well.

So, well, yeah... I also don't like that, I'd rather have it that we still had the ressources to pay the people to help out with the Pandora production ourselves.
I'd also rather had it that the nubs never were broken from the beginning or CC would be more accurate and faster with shipping the units and give us some proper schedule.
Because those were the issues that cost us a lot of money.

I thought the nub companies didn't charge you for the repair of the broken nubs? How is there a large cost associated with it, other than the loss of time-to-market, which was down the tubes, anyway?

RMAs. About 300 - 400 broken nub boards going back to Craig, from somewhere in the world.
Depending on where you are, shipping costs are 50 USD one-way, so two-way is 100 USD. With 400 broken nubs, that's 40.000 USD
Then six months were lost, we all have expenses to keep the business running, Craig also has employees, etc., so every delay adds a lot of costs.

Then these boards need to be shipped to CC for repairs as well. And quite a few cancelled, as mentioned.

In fact, production of each unit in Batch 1 was approx. 400 USD as cost. Just calculate how much of our private money we put into that to get the units out... sales price was 250 USD at the beginning, so a loss of 150 USD per unit. With 3000 units, you can see how much that is...

No. The original US price was $330, bumped up to $350 for the second batch. So that's a loss of at most $70 per unit.
And does that include R&D costs? Because if so, that means the costs for all the batch 2 units are significantly less than $400 each, which means the $350 (now $500) is a lot of profit.

No, R&D has been paid by us.

No, I personally wouldn't want that. But I do have to agree with Tripmonkey. I would have greatly appreciated any kind of mention, apology, or anything about the fact that you were doing this. It didn't even get an official blog post. I definitely don't agree with the recent attitude of "willing to wait through anything, or GTFO". Heck, I don't even understand why the "get a refund" and "GTFO" need to be interconnected.

Craig posted that at the official boards and got a pile of responses (about 5 pages in one or two days), and most were fine with that.
I can check bury out the thread for you if you want.

 

[benji_stein]

Read again: IF people cancel.
The money has been spent on the parts, so if many people cancel, it cannot be paid back, which would lead to having to file insolvency.
Additionally, when we started, we had no idea that the nub company will cost us 30.000 USD because they will go bust and another 50.000 USD because they produced crappy nubs, as well as about another 60.000 USD from people cancelling because of the nubs issue, it took so long.

There was extra money spent because of the failed nubs? Why? You told us several times that they were being great, and not charging you for what was their mistake.

They had a slight slowdown two weeks ago where they didn't seem to have produced anything, but so far, they delivered faster than we could build. That was the reason for that.

Nothing in two weeks? That's quite a slowdown. Particularly when they were supposed to be more upfront about everything - which they clearly haven't been, as you've mentioned. But it's good that they're continuing to do production. No need to switch to another company, since they're stepping up their game, right?

First, Craig made a post about that a few days before he did it, asking the community what they think about it.
It was never my idea nor did I really like it, but as it seems it was the only thing to work on that huge pile of boards Craig saw in front of him, what could've been done?

That's not the blog. It's the forums. And it wasn't "several days". I saw it happen, and it was closer to half a day (if that) before he told us he'd gone and done it. And it seemed mostly because some people had already found the link. I have no idea how long it had already been up. My biggest problem was that he asked for an opinion, and while many people did say "yes, it's a good idea", there were lots of questions that weren't answered at the time - some of which never were.

It might be the same here: I would've never done that, but it might actually be the reason we can continue and finish everything.

Interesting. So he went ahead and did it without the approval of the rest of the team? Sounds like there's a pretty big lack of communication if even you can't get hard numbers about how many have been produced, shipped, RMAed, whatever.

No, but CC was faster than Craigs team in January, and if 5 people cancel for 250 USD and 5 people reorder a premium unit instead, it's a win of 250 USD.
Yes, it's harsh, and I also don't like it, but that's the case.

Please, please stop saying 250. The original units sold for 350. That's 150 difference, not 250.
Either way, you're comparing apples and oranges.

If 5 people make new premium orders, you've made $2500, which is great, and $750 more than you'd make if they were $350 a pop. And you get that money whether or not there are any cancellations. But that's only *if* you get those 5 new orders, and you've said yourself that there haven't been too many premium orders.

On the other hand, 5 cancellations is a loss of 1750, no matter what. And those are likely to happen when people reach their personal deadlines, or because they feel CC is being too slow. CC's being slow, and unhelpful, and are the bottle neck right now. The fact that there are premium orders doesn't mean you're going to produce any faster in that scenario. So if someone's going to cancel, they still will.

RMAs. About 300 - 400 broken nub boards going back to Craig, from somewhere in the world.
Depending on where you are, shipping costs are 50 USD one-way, so two-way is 100 USD. With 400 broken nubs, that's 40.000 USD
Then six months were lost, we all have expenses to keep the business running, Craig also has employees, etc., so every delay adds a lot of costs.

Then these boards need to be shipped to CC for repairs as well. And quite a few cancelled, as mentioned.

I was under the distinct impression that the Pandora owner covered return shipping to the UK. I'm also very surprised by the $50 USD each way, since the most I'd heard of was $25. Express shipping is perhaps more, but I don't think RMAs need to get that treatment, unless the Pandora owner forks over the extra for it. At 400 broken nubs, that 200 Pandoras, and so on the outside 20,000 USD, but is probably a lot less, since I can't believe that *every* Pandora that was RMAed cost the full $50 of shipping each way.

 

[Mjlink]

Uninsured I sent my Pandora back to the UK via US Mail, it was $20. Insured for $500 it was $40 for my RMA'd Premium. Seems like the UPS 2 Day from the UK is between $40-50 depending on the currency fluctuation.

 

[Schnatterplatsch]

Reading such posts as above makes me feel quite sad about this whole community thing.

*shakes head*

 

[htl2001]

First, Craig made a post about that a few days before he did it, asking the community what they think about it.
It was never my idea nor did I really like it, but as it seems it was the only thing to work on that huge pile of boards Craig saw in front of him, what could've been done?

That's not the blog. It's the forums. And it wasn't "several days". I saw it happen, and it was closer to half a day (if that) before he told us he'd gone and done it. And it seemed mostly because some people had already found the link. I have no idea how long it had already been up. My biggest problem was that he asked for an opinion, and while many people did say "yes, it's a good idea", there were lots of questions that weren't answered at the time - some of which never were.

I have to agree with this... it was up for a very short time before it came out. While it did seam that craig had given this quite a bit of thought on the matter and had a good plan, he didn't wait too long between announcement and implementation

Sounds like there's a pretty big lack of communication if even you can't get hard numbers about how many have been produced, shipped, RMAed, whatever.

I think this has been covered before... basically they have all the tracking info and stuff that they CAN get a count, but they'd have to go in and... well... count them all, which is time consuming and boring

If 5 people make new premium orders, you've made $2500, which is great, and $750 more than you'd make if they were $350 a pop. And you get that money whether or not there are any cancellations. But that's only *if* you get those 5 new orders, and you've said yourself that there haven't been too many premium orders.

On the other hand, 5 cancellations is a loss of 1750, no matter what. And those are likely to happen when people reach their personal deadlines, or because they feel CC is being too slow. CC's being slow, and unhelpful, and are the bottle neck right now. The fact that there are premium orders doesn't mean you're going to produce any faster in that scenario. So if someone's going to cancel, they still will.

Two interesting points here, of course how the gains/losses are viewed can be changed with accounting wizardry. Also, I know someone [you?] was talking about Premiums causing a perceived delay, which would not effect 'personal deadlines'



Also I feel like adding this again: if the additional workers hadn't been added, they we wouldn't even notice CC being slow, since the old compliment of workers would have to be working full tilt and there'd STILL be plenty of produced boards waiting to be assembled.


Also also: regarding the 'troll' comments... I don't know how some people have acted in the past (the name benji_stein does seem familiar though...) but here, while it may be a bit of an angry discussion, it is at least progressing and it at least seems that the points are being read and understood. I hesitate to pull out the troll brand until someone just keeps repeating themselves despite legitimate explanations or similar 'tactics'

 

[gruso]

The problem I guess (regarding the troll accusation) is that ED is being asked to spend hours on the forums answering a point-for-point dissection of his previous posts and the whole history of the project. It's not productive at the end of the day. It may be satisfying someone's need for answers answers answers but it's of no benefit to the project. It's not making units ship faster. And more than anything, it's unfair to ED, who could be spending time (i) doing productive Pandora stuff, (ii) relaxing with his better half or (iii) getting one of his two hours sleep per day.

Sometimes I think people know the answers to most of the things they're asking, but enjoy the spectacle of asking the questions anyway. We know communication between team members isn't always perfect, it's just the way it is. We know the project has been a lumbering klutz at times. We know Craig is a loose cannon who makes decisions when he needs/wants to. His bullish personality is why the project exists. Do we have to make ED pay for it? Can we just take him at face value for once (a value which he has never let us down on) and let him work?

This is the reason we don't see MWeston in the forums any more. Walls and walls of repetitive text that cause stress and eat up time.