• (cs) in reply to Alex Papadimoulis
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    ....; I actually had to cut out a lot out of the material I had.

     

    Don't hold valuable information out on us!

  • (cs) in reply to HitScan

    HitScan:
    You can't copywrite names. You copywrite works and trademark names.

     Copyright. Copywrite isn't a word.
     

    </grammar nazi> 

  • Richard hubbard (unregistered) in reply to DigitalDjigit
    Anonymous:

    After reading the comments...

     You actually cut out stuff from this?  WHY???  There's barely any information in this whole story.  We want juicy bits dammit.  Our attention spans last longer than two minutes!
     

     

    yea, I have a good attention span.  Tell us all the .... wooooo .... shiny! 

  • Donger (unregistered) in reply to You are all missing it
    Anonymous:

    Simdesk has over 90,000 Google hits.  Its software is all over the world and in some of your computers and you don't even know it.  They work with governments and with that will always come controversy.  I'd like to know why you are all spending so much time libeling a company for its employees not working when you are just doing the same.  A friend told me to read this, I've never been here before and I will not waste more time with a bunch of losers / disgruntled programmers that obviously are not worth 6 figures! I'm going back to work and looking forward to my paycheck tomorrow, not this c**p!

    I would have gone with current S1mD3sk developer doing the old FC rebuttal... but since they managed to work in a whinge about loser programmers, I'm going to revise my conclusion to useless 5imDe5k marketing drone.

    It's absolutely company we're all pointing at and maybe it's not 100% factual, but stories writ this large usually have more than a bit of truth to them. Where there's smoke there's fire.

    As far as "how can they still be around?", when companies tank, a lot of times if they have enough investors and burn, they keep getting repurposed into smaller and more viable entities. The original company was Internet Access Technologies. Note the Valujet style name change. Note the lack of a detailed company history on their site. Most likely, the corporate provenance has had a number of post bubble additions.

    Ultimately, if they kept trying to solve the same problem for their target market, the law of large numbers says they'd probably get closer to succeeding as they went along. With the changes in the market environment today (and available technologies), their idea was obviously ahead of its time (and their execution/largesse sounds ridic.). If you just hang on long enough, sometimes you can make it out the other side of the tunnel.

  • risk (unregistered) in reply to EvanED
    EvanED:

    HitScan:
    You can't copywrite names. You copywrite works and trademark names.

     Copyright. Copywrite isn't a word.
     

    </grammar nazi> 

    Actually, it is. Copywriting means writing marketing texts, slogans, that sort of thing. IT doesn't have anything to do with copyright, though.

    Regarding the origin of the dyne postfix, I'm guessing Alex borrowed that from cyberdyne, the company from the Terminator movies, that developed skynet.

     

  • LSD (unregistered) in reply to Mike D
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    Searches revealed the true name to me.
    I remembered that the city is my home town.
    Millions were wasted on the project.
    Don't know if our corrupt mayor was in on the scam.
    Everyone was excited by it at the time.
    Should have realized that the numbers didn't add up.
    Keep looking, you'll find the answer.

    Captcha = wtf

    Just posting to let you know at least one person got this post.

     

    rofl, make that 2

  • CodeStain (unregistered) in reply to Donger

    Every sinister conspiracy to lie is always gift wrapped with the truth. Most people assume to know whats in the box, forgetting to unravel the truth to get to insidious lies in the box. We do owe it to the current fellow employees at Simdesk, no matter how good or bad, to investigate the truth. I have followed BinaryFather's advice (which is reasonable) and downloaded the product. While I am not jumping out of my seat screaming the 2nd coming has arrived, I see nothing in Simdesk's current offering that would lead me to believe that this is the company the article is talking about. If it is, then I would suggest to Alex that IMHO  you had best lawyer up because there is enough information here to at least take legal heat whether actionable or not. If Simdesk, does not take action, they are being more benevolent than most companies would be. I love this site to much, for a great story teller (it is a great story) to dupe Alex into publishing something that might harm him or this community.

    To the author of this story, the company in question, probably already knows who it is through the analysis of<font face="Trebuchet MS"> prosody, syntax, and information structure. In fact, most careful readers will spot the comments of a particular poster. Hint: is good with making ham-handed metaphorical </font>non sequitur statements and then grinning at how cute he was. We all have seen this kind of guy and if you like that, then it is you.

    I wonder if Simdesk is hiring, would love to help. First Suggestion: Take the black man running from a whip as its logo away  

     

     

  • (cs) in reply to EvanED
    EvanED:

    HitScan:
    You can't copywrite names. You copywrite works and trademark names.

     Copyright. Copywrite isn't a word.
     

    </grammar nazi> 


    Copywrite certainly is a word! It just doesn't mean the same thing as copyright, that's all.

    (It means to draft text for advertisements and similar).
  • (cs) in reply to EvanED
    EvanED:

    HitScan:
    You can't copywrite names. You copywrite works and trademark names.

     Copyright. Copywrite isn't a word.
     

    </grammar nazi> 


    Copywrite certainly is a word! It just doesn't mean the same thing as copyright, that's all.

    (It means to draft text for advertisements and similar).
  • (cs) in reply to kuroshin
    kuroshin:

    From the article: "It lacks many sophisticated features of Office, such as the ability to customize spreadsheets, do slide presentations or work databases."

     Uhm so what DOES it do? Allow you to customize text files?

  • (cs) in reply to rsynnott

    Unfortunately SimDesk have plans that include more than just India and Houston:

    http://pixelcarnage.net/Garbage/SimAmerica.png

  • pacman (unregistered) in reply to CodeStain

    Did some research via phone calls on Ray Davis and he now runs this company http://brslabs.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=18&Itemid=27 . Perfect company for his paranoid camera fetish according to the article. He also has invested in a company called Techical Operations Inc. Both companies are full of the people that we are making fun of. Let me get this straight...ahem... they wanted to build a scalable VB6 application server and now they want to build a Visual Identification Intelligence system. This is too rich! Wonder if they need any javascripters to get their prototype out.

  • hark, anon (unregistered) in reply to PumaCub

    Yeaaaahhhh, I bet you would love to work for a company with ethics to match yours!  Nothing like fraud to increase ye olde profit levels, scumbag.

  • hark, anon (unregistered) in reply to PumaCub
    Anonymous:

    I would absolutely love to work for this company... stupid people with money are easily manipulated.

    First I would claim I discovered some new way of storing data that would allow us to make a database (pick a number) times faster than Access. Then I'd tell some story about how a white van has been following me, "they're on to me" I'd say. I'll claim I'm in fear for my life, but hint that I could be convinced to stay for, I dunno, a half a mil bonus and a 2x pay raise. Lead them along the same way they do their clients client.

     

    Yeaaaahhhh, I bet you would love to work for a company with ethics to match yours!
    Nothing like fraud to increase ye olde profit levels, scumbag.

     

  • CodeStain (unregistered) in reply to Donger

    Have you downloaded the applications and tried them? Just wondering. I am trying to be as reasonable in this conversation as possible but sometimes reason is the first casualty in every war. He may be a Simdesk employee but I would also suspect the same of you adding former. You haven't had any mention of using the product so thats why my radar is peaking. Try it out. Explain the strengths and weaknesses. Maybe you could suggest something that may help them out. I just sent a list as a trial customer. Find BinaryFather's post which explain how to get Started

  • well paid and still working with folks like the ones in this sto (unregistered) in reply to LongTimeListener
    Anonymous:

    So far I have to say that the "Crowning turd in the water closet" of this whole WTF is me...

     I am easily as incompetent as anyone in this story and I've never managed to get a 6 digit salary...

    After 25 years at programming, I am an expert at a few things, reasonably competant at many, know when to beg off on things I know not, make well over six figures, and still put up with some of the most incompetant buffoons you can imagine. The salary comes in many modest bumps over a lot of years.

  • Catherder (unregistered) in reply to Daniel Schlößer

    <drool>Didn't you read the disclaimer?! Key details have been anonymized!</drool>

    <post:[email protected]>

  • Anon (unregistered)

    "World Wide Server" is an actual trademark of "Virtuadyne"... I actually found this out while curious about who was the mystery company that supplied the $350,000 server.

  • Catherder (unregistered) in reply to Catherder

    <more coffee> 

    Anonymous:
    Naa, I know ithe top clock speed of the PII is at least 550 mhz, because that was the the clock in a really old Dell floating around in my basement.

     

    Anonymous:

    <drool>Didn't you read the disclaimer?! Key details have been anonymized!</drool>

    <post:[email protected]>

     

    </more coffee>

  • http://bubbler.net/outlaw/blog (unregistered) in reply to Mike D

    Lol, funny sh*t indeed.

    Sadly I'm sure there are several similar .com stories.

  • (cs) in reply to BinaryFather
    Anonymous:

    Like I said, "You protest way to much"

    You offer no valid criticism of the actual product as if you(I actually took the time):

    a) Either you have some inside knowledge that you may want to share with the rest of us to be fair and honest. Hence the Rob Graves reference

    b) You easily become a shill for the original thought process of an apparent disgruntled (ex)employee

    The fact that you would vest $20 into the inevitable trainwreck shows that you have some personal interest in seeing that happen, which shows a level of narcissism that does not add to the dialog here, and shows that you are not interested in being fair nor honest. Then you worry about this being libel, come on, be a man, tell the truth, if you can

     

    This has to be one of the more moronic flames I've seen here in a while. And here I was starting to think DailyWTF was climbing out of its Usenet period, but every one of your points is paranoid, distorted raving, with each having a more likely innocuous reason.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous

    << One of Junior's first acts as operations chief was to partner up with a major hardware vendor peddling another completely unsalable product. It was a massively-parallel server that featured a proprietary operating system with an integrated database. >>

    That second server was HP Nonstop http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2004/040707b.html

    "The Savior" wasn't Knowling, it was Lou Waters, Sr. co-founder of BFI.  http://www.zoominfo.com/Search/PersonDetail.aspx?PersonID=5987214.  His son, Lou Waters Jr., (Junior) was initially hired as COO, but has since been promoted to CEO.

  • kfx (unregistered) in reply to You are all missing it
    Anonymous:

    Simdesk has over 90,000 Google hits. 

     

    So does "pedophelia."
    Anonymous:

    They work with governments and with that will always come controversy. 

     

    Especially when it works with governments in this manner: http://www.gcn.com/print/21_20/19374-1.html
    Anonymous:

    I'd like to know why you are all spending so much time libeling a company for its employees not working when you are just doing the same. 

     

    I have not committed libel; that's a false accusation. Also, I'm done with work for today -- what kind of person assumes everyone accesses the internet only during business hours?
    Anonymous:

    I've never been here before and I will not waste more time with a bunch of losers / disgruntled programmers that obviously are not worth 6 figures!

     

    So you just came by to shill for your team? Good work. As for "six figures," nothing short of a certified copy of your tax return information will suffice for proof.
    Anonymous:

    not this c**p!

     

    Coop? Carp? Clap? I can't understand you.
  • (cs) in reply to rsynnott
    rsynnott:
    EvanED:

    HitScan:
    You can't copywrite names. You copywrite works and trademark names.

     Copyright. Copywrite isn't a word.
     

    </grammar nazi> 


    Copywrite certainly is a word! It just doesn't mean the same thing as copyright, that's all.

    (It means to draft text for advertisements and similar).

    I thought it looked funny when I wrote it, and my day was not proceeding well at that point, but I knew that copywrite was a word, so I let it slide. By the time I realized it was the wrong right (hah) the edit timer was way past. 

  • dsfgsddsfgsdfgdsffg (unregistered) in reply to HitScan
    90000 Google hits?  What does that mean?  Is that like when Kevin Federline "hits" Britney Spears?
  • Richard L. Byrd (unregistered) in reply to pacman
    Anonymous:

    Did some research via phone calls on Ray Davis and he now runs this company http://brslabs.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=18&Itemid=27 . Perfect company for his paranoid camera fetish according to the article. He also has invested in a company called Techical Operations Inc. Both companies are full of the people that we are making fun of. Let me get this straight...ahem... they wanted to build a scalable VB6 application server and now they want to build a Visual Identification Intelligence system. This is too rich! Wonder if they need any javascripters to get their prototype out.

    I would heartily recommend that you at *least* get your facts straight before posting. 

    Technical Operations, Inc., is privately held, and does not have any outside investors other than its employees.  Therefore, your statement above is, in fact, a lie.  Feel free to check our facts at the Texas Secretary of State website if you wish, as you probably should have done before posting a deliberate untruth.

    Also, it's "Technical," not "Techical." 

     

    Unanonymously,

    Richard

     

  • SomeGuy (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous

    Anonymizing indeed then.  The HP Non-Stop platform certainly isn't unsalable.  I know Mastercard uses it a ton internally to manage their financial stuff; the platform and OS running on it are top notch; you can swap any hardware components with failover and whatnot...

  • (cs) in reply to foxyshadis
    foxyshadis:
    Anonymous:

    Like I said, "You protest way to much"

    You offer no valid criticism of the actual product as if you(I actually took the time):

    a) Either you have some inside knowledge that you may want to share with the rest of us to be fair and honest. Hence the Rob Graves reference

    b) You easily become a shill for the original thought process of an apparent disgruntled (ex)employee

    The fact that you would vest $20 into the inevitable trainwreck shows that you have some personal interest in seeing that happen, which shows a level of narcissism that does not add to the dialog here, and shows that you are not interested in being fair nor honest. Then you worry about this being libel, come on, be a man, tell the truth, if you can

     

    This has to be one of the more moronic flames I've seen here in a while. And here I was starting to think DailyWTF was climbing out of its Usenet period, but every one of your points is paranoid, distorted raving, with each having a more likely innocuous reason.

    Anyone can dream.

    But I didn't notice much change in the comments lately (though I find them ok on the whole), and this anonymous guy seems just like the occasional troll. There's more anonymous trolling/shilling than usual going on in this thread, so maybe it's just one really motivated troll.

  • anonymous (unregistered) in reply to CodeStain

    Anonymous:
    Have you downloaded the applications and tried them?

     

    Why the fuck would the current state of their product have any impact on an expose on the company's corrupt past? Presumably part four will be all about how they got new management that turned the company around but that doesn't change what happened.
  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to NN

    Anonymous:
    After thinking about SimDesk I found that Sim (sounds like simulator) somehow also fits to Virtu (virtual, not real, simulated). But I have no idea what dyne means (english is just foreign language for me). Maybe one of you guys can help out.

    NN

    It doesn't mean anything in this case.  It's one of those joke buzzword-like names, like Initech.  If you do a Google search for "dyne company" you'll find a whole bunch of Something-Dyne companies, where Dyne doesn't really mean anything.  (I think marketers liked "dyne" because it sounds like "dynamic".)

    Dyne is also a last name, so in some cases it comes from there.

    But Virtudyne is just a joke name.  Don't read too much into it.
     

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Richard L. Byrd

    The same Richard Byrd that was the System Manager at Simdesk? So how did you ever find this post? Wow now I am thinking that you had something to do with this story. That would disappoint me because I thought your were better than this.

  • Bolgani (unregistered) in reply to Donger

    Anonymous:
    As far as "how can they still be around?", when companies tank, a lot of times if they have enough investors and burn, they keep getting repurposed into smaller and more viable entities. The original company was Internet Access Technologies. Note the Valujet style name change. Note the lack of a detailed company history on their site. Most likely, the corporate provenance has had a number of post bubble additions.

    Yeah, and note how there's only a small tiny mention of a "Simdesk Office Suite" and the company product focus is on file sharing and groupware. My guess is that something worthwhile was created in the chaos and the company deciced to continue with that instead of an "Office Killer".  Good for them.

    I have been in one company crashdown where the rights for all the good products were bought by a couple of employees who then continued running the company themselves with the same name and without the original idiotic founders/managers.

  • Metaspace (unregistered) in reply to CodeClarity
    Anonymous:

    The VB team? What does the VB team do as opposed to everybody else since the entire product is written in Visual Basic?

    Isn't that obvious? Everybody else was tuning their Magic decks :-)

  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous

    Anonymous:
    The same Richard Byrd that was the System Manager at Simdesk? So how did you ever find this post? Wow now I am thinking that you had something to do with this story. That would disappoint me because I thought your were better than this.

    My guess is an email's circulating around the company, and we'll probably be seeing more comments tomorrow. Same thing happens all the time on gripe sites without this kind of anonymization, though managers usually tell employees not to post (and bigger companies have policies against it), especially if it's going to be hotheaded like that earlier guy. Getting into an online slugfest over defending your company's honor isn't a great way to set an image.

    Setting wildly incorrect facts straight is something different, though.

    I don't really understand why people usually want to find the real company - there's very little chance that you'll be able to just google up more juicy insider drama, and if you want that you can always hit up fuckedcompany.com. It makes it more personal and meaner, too, besides the legal implications. But I guess since this week's is like an extended Off The Record, it's somewhat to be expected.

  • QuoteReader (unregistered) in reply to bullseye

    "If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?<!-- End: CommunityServer.Discussions.Controls.PostDisplay.TextPost --> "

    --> Humanables duh...

  • (cs) in reply to Richard L. Byrd
    Anonymous:
    Therefore, your statement above is, in fact, a lie.

    Now here's a non sequitur (see below).

    Anonymous:
    Feel free to check our facts at the Texas Secretary of State website if you wish, as you probably should have done before posting a deliberate untruth.

    Even under the assumption that your claims regarding the ownership of Technical Operations Inc. are correct - how do you know it was a deliberate untruth (in other words a lie)? In fact, you are seriously contradicting yourself - why should anyone "get his facts straight" before deliberately telling an untruth anyway? What would be the point?

    Anonymous:
    The same Richard Byrd that was the System Manager at Simdesk?

    Ok, I guess that explains much of Richard's illogical rant... 

  • TMLC (unregistered) in reply to Alexis de Torquemada

    Egyptian references?

    Ray Ozzie must be the man behind it.
    Think Lotus Notes. It has lots of hieroglyphs and its very enterpricy.
    He is the founder of Groove Virtual Office...

  • Richard L. Byrd (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous

    Anonymous:
    The same Richard Byrd that was the System Manager at Simdesk? So how did you ever find this post? Wow now I am thinking that you had something to do with this story. That would disappoint me because I thought your were better than this.

    Yep, that's me.  The one here, posting using his actual name.  I posted here to correct a glaring error about where I work *now*.  And no, I had nothing to do with this story, although, like many current and former Virtudyne employees, I'm reading it with a mixture of humor and sadness. 

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to foxyshadis

    foxyshadis:
    Getting into an online slugfest over defending your company's horror isn't a great way to set an image.

    Fix'd. 

  • Richard L. Byrd (unregistered) in reply to Alexis de Torquemada
    Alexis de Torquemada:
    Anonymous:
    Therefore, your statement above is, in fact, a lie.

    Now here's a non sequitur (see below).

    Anonymous:
    Feel free to check our facts at the Texas Secretary of State website if you wish, as you probably should have done before posting a deliberate untruth.

    Even under the assumption that your claims regarding the ownership of Technical Operations Inc. are correct - how do you know it was a deliberate untruth (in other words a lie)? In fact, you are seriously contradicting yourself - why should anyone "get his facts straight" before deliberately telling an untruth anyway? What would be the point?

    Anonymous:
    The same Richard Byrd that was the System Manager at Simdesk?

    Ok, I guess that explains much of Richard's illogical rant... 

    What a cute post, Alexis.  Congratulaltions on completely avoiding the point of my post, which was, more or less, "please don't make up stuff and post it in a public forum."  How silly of me to expect such high standards!

    If someone went to the trouble to post it, it was deliberate.

    Anyway, it's apparent that truth and reason have been the first casualties here.  I'll be going now.
     

  • (cs) in reply to Keloran
    Keloran:

     so i recon ive a good chance of getting hired, and try and claim a 5-6 figure wage, hehe

     

    What, like $10 000 per year? 

  • anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    From the USA Today article: 
    "It's very cool technology," says retired software analyst Peter Lowber, who led the Gartner research firm's review of SimDesk last fall. "It works."

     I wonder if Peter Lowber's resume includes reviewing SimDesk? 

    Everyone knows Gartner doesn't actually review anything; they get paid and make up a story depending on how much you paid them.

    Want to be in the magic quadrant?  That will be X dollars.

  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:

    << One of Junior's first acts as operations chief was to partner up with a major hardware vendor peddling another completely unsalable product. It was a massively-parallel server that featured a proprietary operating system with an integrated database. >>

    That second server was HP Nonstop http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2004/040707b.html


    Ah, Itanium-tastic.

    That said, the Tandem/HP NonStop is certainly still a very respectable platform. Just probably not suitable for this application, and almost certainly not suitable to be programmed by people who normally write VB desktop applications.

    For those of you who enjoy this sort of thing (I know I do; the decline and fall of dubious companies gives me great pleasure) the wonderful Verity Stob lampoons noted cretin Michael Saylor here: http://www.ddj.com/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=RZR12C0HFBJBAQSNDLRSKHSCJUNN2JVN?articleID=184405114

    The trick is to make the libel so silly it falls over into parody.

  • (cs) in reply to DigitalDjigit

    Speaking of lawsuits ... have the folks from the real Virtudyne called yet? Or is that just one of us?

     

    http://virtudyne.com/ 

  • kfx (unregistered) in reply to Stan James
    Stan James:

    Speaking of lawsuits ... have the folks from the real Virtudyne called yet? Or is that just one of us?

     

    http://virtudyne.com/ 

    seeing as how the image on that website is hosted from img.thedailywtf.com, I'd guess it's from around here. :)

  • (cs) in reply to CodeStain

    Why do I smell artificial grass here?

     

  • obnoxious grammar police asshole (unregistered)
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    Virtudyne first three years



    The real WTF is that ONE WORD IN there's already a typo.  Usely eye goe won sentins inn bee4 ay start slakking of.
  • Ma (unregistered)
  • zork (unregistered) in reply to Richard L. Byrd
    [image] Technical Operations, Inc., is privately held, and does not have any outside investors other than its employees.  Therefore, your statement above is, in fact, a lie.  Feel free to check our facts at the Texas Secretary of State website if you wish, as you probably should have done before posting a deliberate untruth.

     

    Also, it's "Technical," not "Techical." 

    Why would I check the  Texas Secretary of State for a business that is in New York City? New York City? (imagine Pace commercial)

  • (cs) in reply to kfx
    Anonymous:
    Stan James:

    Speaking of lawsuits ... have the folks from the real Virtudyne called yet? Or is that just one of us?

     

    http://virtudyne.com/ 

    seeing as how the image on that website is hosted from img.thedailywtf.com, I'd guess it's from around here. :)

    Either that's changed, or I'm missing something. This is what I see as the URL for the graphic:

    http://virtudyne.com/virtudyne_logo_full.gif

     EDIT: FIST! (on the 4th page)

Leave a comment on “Virtudyne: The Savior Cometh”

Log In or post as a guest

Replying to comment #:

Log Out

« Return to Article