Red Queen ATI turns into Green Eyed AMD Bug Monster

THE LAST DAY in Old Tunis started off like a pleasant dream and ended up being a living and shallowly breathing PR nightmare.

The assembled mass of hacks were split into two at AMD/ATI's event - those who would receive the channelling from the Powers and those who would dive deeply into realms where only the most geeky would dare to go.

Said geeks continued to be chained to a non disclosure agreement the like of which we'd never seen the like of before, as we didn't sign anything.

Gentlemen journos Charlie Demerjian and Theo Valich were beginning to get twitchy after two full days of wall-to-wall technical briefings. They don't sign NDAs either. They are gentlemen journos.

We were beginning to get way less paranoid about the Ministry of the Interior and more confident about the use of our schoolboy French. All was beginning to be well in the world. The lovely staff at the hotel, by and large, were charmed by our Olde Worlde naivete with many greeting us as an old friend following our pre-emptive use of big tips to ensure subsequent good service.

We'd figured out how to overclock the lifts and effectively use the wi-fi, so were able to continue our job of editing without bar or hindrance.

A room with a vista

All was well with the world. The weather was temperate, the ducks were all lined up. Even David Ross of hexus.net had started to relax and loosen up, as this picture below shows.

David Ross (right) next to a board partner
who we cannot name for reasons of insecurity

All of this proved to be a lull before a lunchtime storm.

After a fruitful morning listening to an extraordinarily lucid channel briefing by John Byrne, we filed our copy and edited others', convinced that we would now survive to live yet another day and get home safe and sound at the end of our so far rather gruelling X86 World Tour.

Goodbye Ruby Tuesday

The lightning started crackling at lunch time. A very nice ATI chap just began to start digging into his tucker at a very nice buffet lunch complete with Theo Valich and six or seven other IT hacks including David Ross of Hexus.net.

Theo decided to make the food curdle in the ATI spinner's tummy, DAMMIT! He said: "You know, ocworkbench has published stuff from the conference which means the NDAs are null and void."

The table suddenly looked like the Wreck of the Hesperides as the very nice ATI chap put down his knife and fork and appeared to run like billy-o or as if all the NDAs were null and void. Before we knew what was happening, PRs appeared to start running around like headless chickens and then one AMD guy called Giuseppe Amato (for it was he) materialised as if in the pantomime transformation scene of Aladdin realising that the genie had got out of the bottle and embracing Theo Valich as if he was an old pal.

We quietly finished our lunch and proceeded in a westerly direction to see if we could find out from top spinner Chris Evenden what the hell was going on. We arrived during an interesting and Byzantine conversation about NDAs.

Now look, Mike

A Byzantine conversation went along the following lines.

Mike Ji to Chris Ji: "Have the NDAs been busted?"
Chris Ji to Mike Ji: "It depends whether it's in the public domain."
Mike Ji to Chris Ji: "What is in the public domain?"
Chris Ji to Mike Ji: "It's in the NDA."
Mike Ji to Chris Ji: "We don't sign NDAs, we're gentlemen."
Chris Ji to Mike Ji: "I can't tell you what's in the public domain unless you sign an NDA."

We said we would use our best and finest editorial judgement as this appeared to be a grey area at best, made our excuses and went to work filing copy and that.

The doodoo hit the fan four hours later. We were quietly sitting in the bar minding our own business and working when we got an urgent SMS from ATI, DAMMIT! Next thing we knew a gentleman approached from an easterly direction accompanied by noted INQ hacks Charlie Demerjian and Theo Valich asking us if we'd change our story - which wasn't really a story anyway, merely reportage.

The guy got pickier and pickier about the details of Theo's reportage to the point where, as someone relayed to us later, we gave our Panasonic PC to the spinner and said: "For god's sake why don't you write the **(@*((@$*)*@ story yourself."

It got worse. Hyderabadi techie Raj Ji approached us later in the day and said in the most exquisite suddh Hindi: "You have stabbed us in the back. My boss Rod [who he, Ed?] is livid."

The thing is, we were totally innocent, guv. Which leads us in this penultimate paragraph and pic to inquire gently in the nicest possible way, has ATI's rather gentle culture been consumed by a Green Eyed Monster called AMD?

We made our excuses and left with the distinct feeling that the fine people from ATI are being borged into AMD people with little subtelty and perhaps the clippity-clop of a shire horse over roughshod roadmaps. µ

* UWE SEMPTNER did the most wonderful job organising everything at this ATI AMD event. Everything worked like clockwork because the logistics of such an event are far from trivial. Thanks also to Her Most Graceful Empress of AMD PR, and WaggEd which helped to make the fact we got home safe and sound not only feasible, but actual.

** WE FORGOT to mention that top chap Richard Huddy showed benchmarks to loads of hacks who met them with indifference. It was almost as if we heard Richard Huddy scream at the hacks: "GoDAMMIT, this is exciting stuff, clap, damn you." The assembled geek hacks applauded like seals at this, almost as if they were not journalists but were being led round by the nose, little lambs.