Question about Amir - the Blu-ray side

[MerrickG]

I would like to know why Amir is so disliked around here and why he is considered a polarizing figure. I know that most of you dont like him, but try and be honest and more importantly be SPECIFIC. I just cant totally see why he is so disliked. Sure, the guy has promoted HD-DVD like no other, but Ive never really found him to be unreasonable.


I have asked this same question to the HD-DVD supporters over on AVS.

[krinkle]

Originally Posted by merrick97

I would like to know why Amir is so disliked around here and why he is considered a polarizing figure. I know that most of you dont like him, but try and be honest and more importantly be SPECIFIC. I just cant totally see why he is so disliked. Sure, the guy has promoted HD-DVD like no other, but Ive never really found him to be unreasonable.


I have asked this same question to the HD-DVD supporters over on AVS.

Simple, he spent much more time trash talking Blu-ray than he did speaking positively about HD DVD.

A member wrote a pearl script to analyze all of his postings and the findings showed that Amir spent most of his time talking about Blu-ray, not HD DVD.

If he had stuck to prognosticating about HD DVD, and did not spend most of his time in a negative campaign against Blu-ray, many people would have found him less polarizing.

Stating that he knew that BD-50 mass replication was "impossible" and "science fiction" are excellent examples.

[Sonny]

Originally Posted by merrick97

I would like to know why Amir is so disliked around here and why he is considered a polarizing figure. I know that most of you dont like him, but try and be honest and more importantly be SPECIFIC. I just cant totally see why he is so disliked. Sure, the guy has promoted HD-DVD like no other, but Ive never really found him to be unreasonable.


I have asked this same question to the HD-DVD supporters over on AVS.

Thats a very interesting question, Im not to familiar with "him" why do you ask exactly?

[MerrickG]

Originally Posted by Sonny

Thats a very interesting question, Im not to familiar with "him" why do you ask exactly?

He is (or was rather) the media director over at Microsoft and has gotten the scorn of many bluray fans for reasons that arent clear to me and I wanted to see if I can actually try and put two and two together by hearing both sides of the coin.

[Sonny]

Originally Posted by merrick97

He is (or was rather) the media director over at Microsoft and has gotten the scorn of many bluray fans for reasons that arent clear to me and I wanted to see if I can actually try and put two and two together by hearing both sides of the coin.

The post below your first post states only a couple of many things that he said and maid people believe, over at that friendly Form . Why is he no longer at MS?

[Rob Zuber]

Look, I spent almost two years wrangling with him at AVS. He's a pompous, dishonest, disengenuous liar. He more than anyone else dragged down the entire quality of the AVS forum. As just one example, he pumped out lies about BD50's being impossible to manufacture. For months and months and months and months, every single god damned HD-DVD supporter crapped in every single thread pushing that same lie. And the AVS mods loved it.

Amir was flat out lying and he purposely spread uncertainty about his competition in order to try to gain an advantage. Highly unprofessional behavior.

"The classic example is Microsoft, where hiring smart people fresh from school and working them 60 hours or more per week -- in an environment where they don't even leave the building to eat -- leads to a state of corporate delusion, where lying and cheating suddenly begin to make sense." - Robert X. Cringely

[davidPS3]

Originally Posted by merrick97

I would like to know why Amir is so disliked around here and why he is considered a polarizing figure. I know that most of you dont like him, but try and be honest and more importantly be SPECIFIC. I just cant totally see why he is so disliked. Sure, the guy has promoted HD-DVD like no other, but Ive never really found him to be unreasonable.


I have asked this same question to the HD-DVD supporters over on AVS.

Have you ever looked at any of his posts? Before asking for comments and feedback from this side, just take some time to read up on what he has had to say about HD-DVD vs. Blu.

You won't have to ask the question again.

[darinp2]

Originally Posted by merrick97

I would like to know why Amir is so disliked around here and why he is considered a polarizing figure. I know that most of you dont like him, but try and be honest and more importantly be SPECIFIC. I just cant totally see why he is so disliked. Sure, the guy has promoted HD-DVD like no other, but Ive never really found him to be unreasonable.

I didn't have a problem with him trashing Blu-ray, just as long as it was true. I can't think of many people in the world who can deceive people as well as Amir can, and are willing to do it. Some people are smart enough, but let morals and things get in their way more. Amir had said before that he would probably write a book after this is over. Maybe somebody else will and then more of the story about Amir will get out. There is a reason that somebody who used to work with Amir at Microsoft told us about how slick he is, quite a while ago.

I see the situation with Amir on the avsforum as a little bit like an adult who gives candy to children. In general, those children will love that adult and defend them. In this case the candy is inside information and when Amir gave it to people, that got him a lot of fans. I can understand that. And he is a good talker. I also realize that a lot of people there didn't know he was deceiving them when he was. One sad thing I see is when somebody says that they learned a lot from him. In that case I think they did, but unfortunately some of the things they learned were true and some were false. And Amir showed me that once he had people deceived, one approach for him was to try to keep them that way.

One thing I don't get is people who think that since Amir is pretty calm in what he posts, that when another person gets emotional Amir must be right. I wonder how much these people understand about humans. As an example, if they saw a con-man con a person, who would they expect to be calm and who would they expect to be emotional? Doesn't seem that hard to figure out to me that being calm doesn't mean that a person is in the right. Many people are calm as they deceive.

At this point it will be interesting to see what happens with Amir. Despite what some people on the avsforum seem to believe, the reality looks like it is that Amir has been demoted twice in the last 16 months, as he went from being responsible for about 1000 people to about 350 people in 2006 and now to about zero people (although from what he said it sounds like he could have chosen to continue managing the HD DVD group, even if it would have been another drop in his responsibilities, since the ~350 compromised more than that). Looks like he is now in the kind of position that companies sometimes put executives in where the person can work on their resume and then leave. I will be surprised if Amir is at Microsoft 6 months from now and it will be interesting to see where he ends up if I'm right. I don't think Amir will have trouble finding companies that want him. In the end Amir may have accomplished splitting enthusiasts enough to keep one format (especially Blu-ray) from winning or at least winning quickly, and that may help Microsoft compete with them in other areas. But given what has happened with his career at Microsoft it doesn't look like he'll get rewarded for it, even if he does end up accomplishing that.

--Darin