You guys need to remember that we are adults, and we should act like them. It isn't my intention to report people in this thread, but I do ask that we keep level headed for the sake of discussion.
Again, I asked permission to post this thread (knowing the bad blood and chances are just pure flame wars) because to me this is an issue and a subject I wanted discussed.
For starters, ABT totally approached this wrong - I've stated that from the beginning, and I continue to do so. Instead of constructing a solid case he through accussations every where - the fact that he (and his supporters) don't openly acknowledge this is rather sad. Regardless of the outcome, the end's don't always justify the means. Calling people out, at at that a whole forum - it's administrators/posters, in some crusade to redeem your broken lines of communication isn't the proper way. And at the end of the road it was still actions he took, whether he wants to admit it - the actions were his, that got him black listed, not the actions of harbored shills at their "home" over at ATF VC&G.
I wanted people to be cleared of false accusations and wrong do-ers to be executed by public opinion. AMD had the ball in their court (from the start) and it's just unfortunate that this got to a point where the message of trying to get AMD to play fair was lost on petty accussations with no actual merit outside of disdain for a person's posting style and preference.
I'm sure this isn't over, and I'll be reading everything I can find on it until the end.
If anyone thinks AMD is different than nVidia, they are wrong. If AMD is practicing unethical practices that needs to stop. I never argued against that, however, I will still defend that not everyone affiliated with a company needs to disclose that (regardless of how a social policy is interpretted) unless forums start mandating we disclose that at the sign-up process.
EDIT: I'd also like to point out, ATF was the only forum that actually discussed the new buried Blog. The author and it's site did nothing to actually encourage people to read it. It was the actions here (though possibly aggrevating and it shows in Apoppin's responses) that caused him to send out the blog to more people than he originally had done so.
Kudos ATF!