NationMaster - Encyclopedia: The Inquirer

The Inquirer is a British technology tabloid website founded by Mike Magee after his departure from The Register (of which he was one of the founding members) in 2001. Image File history File links Broom_icon. ... Inquirer or The Inquirer may refer to: The Inquirer, a British technology news website. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... A Tech Tabloid is a type of news media that mainly concentrates on technology news: science, IT, semiconductors, telecoms and related issues, but also takes on a less formal and more humorous approach than traditional technology publications such as EE Times or EDN. They are professional in nature, though, rather... Mike Magee (born December 7, 1949) is a British journalist. ... Current logo of The Register. ...

The magazine is entirely Internet based with its journalists living all over the world and filing copy online,^[1] and with Mike Magee as the overall editor. In addition to the English site, as of 19 June 2006 following its acquisition by VNU Business Publication Europe, The Inquirer has editions localized for Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, and Spain.^[2] For other uses, see Netherlands (disambiguation). ...

Writing style

The site hews to The Register's slogan, "Biting the hand that feeds IT", and is known for its early access to industry news based on insider sources. When served with "cease and desist" orders, the website sometimes publishes them in full, with commentary.^[3] It has also recently started publishing information regarding hardware available in the UK, USA, France and other countries.^[4] Current logo of The Register. ... Cease-and-desist is a legal term meaning essentially stop: It is used in demands for a person or organization to stop doing something (to cease and desist from doing it). ...

The Inquirer's articles are written in a subjective and opinionated tone, with much the same style of reporting common in British tabloid newspapers.^[5] In the English version of the site, slang terms, particularly those common to Great Britain, are used. On each visit to the main page of the website, The Inquirer shows a random comment or quote (usually sarcastic) at the top of the page. Slang is the use of highly informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speakers dialect or language. ...

The Inquirer has a diverse writing staff coming from many different countries, with Paul Hales being the news editor and Mike Magee the overall editor. Some people^[6] suggest that several of The Inquirer's writers are actually pseudonyms. Among these are "Adamson Rust is an anagram of Nostradamus - Eva Glass" and "Eva Glass is an anagram of Las Vegas - Adamson Rust" suggesting that these names are really pseudonyms of other staff members. Inquirer writer Charlie Demerjian, who uses the nickname Groo_ on the Ace's Hardware messageboard, more or less confirms this in one of his posts there.[1] A pseudonym (Greek: , pseudo + -onym: false name) is an artificial, fictitious name, also known as an alias, used by an individual as an alternative to a persons legal name. ... For the game, see Anagrams. ... Nostradamus: original portrait by his son Cesar Michel de Nostredame (December 14, 1503 â€“ July 2, 1566), usually Latinized to Nostradamus, was a French apothecary and reputed seer who published collections of prophecies that have since become famous world-wide. ... For further information, see Las Vegas metropolitan area and Las Vegas Strip. ... A typical Internet forum discussion, with common elements such as quotes and spoiler brackets A page from a forum showcasing emoticons and Internet slang An Internet forum is a web application for holding discussions and posting user generated content. ...

'Everywhere Girl'

The Inquirer has run a series of stories about the "Everywhere Girl", a model thus referred to by the publication due to stock photos of her appearing in a large number of different advertisements, particularly advertisements of technology companies.^[7] Stock photography is photography or other imagery of common landmarks, concepts, and events that can be used and reused for commercial design purposes. ...

Scoops

Despite getting scoops, some of the reporters for The Inquirer have a policy against signing non-disclosure agreements.^[8] The publication has various connections with the industry; Intel in particular has acknowledged that its staff have a tendency to send details of meetings to The Inquirer.^[9]

Some of The Inquirer's articles include information unconfirmed by official sources within the companies they report on. When dealing with such information, they typically preface the article with a statement such as the following, "We've heard an odd, but strong whisper on the grapevine . . ."^[10] As such articles lack official confirmation, some consider them rumor or speculation. Look up rumour in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Speculation involves the buying, holding, and selling of stocks, bonds, commodities, currencies, collectibles, real estate, derivatives or any valuable financial instrument to profit from fluctuations in its price as opposed to buying it for use or for income via methods such as dividends or interest. ...

Playstation 3 Graphics Processor

As is the case with most publications, some stories published by The Inquirer cause controversy, such as a 31 August 2005 story about a claim that PlayStation 3's GPU is less powerful than the GeForce 7800.^[11] NVIDIA, manufacturer of GeForce, responded to this claim^[12] by stating that the Playstation 3's RSX (which NVIDIA worked on) is more powerful than the GeForce 7800. The PlayStation 3 , trademarked PLAYSTATIONÂ®3,[3] commonly abbreviated PS3) is the third home video game console produced by Sony Computer Entertainment; successor to the PlayStation 2. ... GPU may stand for: Graphics processing unit, a special stream processor used in computer graphics hardware Gosudarstvennoye Politicheskoye Upravlenie (Ð“Ð»Ð°Ð²Ð½Ð¾Ðµ ÐŸÐ¾Ð»Ð¸Ñ‚Ð¸Ñ‡ÐµÑÐºÐ¾Ðµ Ð£Ð¿Ñ€Ð°Ð²Ð»ÐµÐ½Ð¸Ðµ, or Main Political Directorate) of the Red Army, responsible for troops morale and propaganda. ... The GeForce 7 Series is the seventh generation of NVIDIAs GeForce graphics cards. ... NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ: NVDA) (pronounced IPA: ) is a U.S. corporation specializing in the manufacture of graphics processors (graphics processing units, GPUs) technologies for workstations, desktop computers, and handhelds. ... The RSX Reality Synthesizer graphics processing unit is a graphics chip design co-developed by NVIDIA and Sony for the PlayStation 3 computer console. ...

Sony Laptop Battery Scandal

One of The Inquirer's greatest scoops has been its reporting during 2006 of laptop battery problems that affected Dell, Sony and Apple as of September 2006, with rumours of problems at Toshiba and Lenovo. In June 2006, The Inquirer's report^[13] and dramatic photographs of a Dell notebook PC exploding in flames at a conference in Japan attracted global media attention. Many renowned publications, such as The New York Times, reprinted The Inquirer's photographs.[2] The Inquirer was also the first publication to report Dell's subsequent decision to recall all 4.1 million of the faulty batteries, according to BusinessWeek. This article is about the corporation Dell, Inc. ... Sony Corporation ) is a Japanese multinational corporation and one of the worlds largest media conglomerates with revenue of $66. ... Apple Inc. ... Toshiba Corporations headquarters (Center) in Hamamatsucho, Tokyo Toshiba Corporation sales by division for year ending March 31, 2005 Toshiba Corporation ) (TYO: 6502 ) is a Japanese multinational conglomerate manufacturing company, headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. ... Lenovo Group Limited, (SEHK: 0992) is today the fourth largest personal computer manufacturer in the world, and the largest in the Asia-Pacific region as of 2006. ... The New York Times is a daily newspaper published in New York City and distributed internationally. ... BusinessWeek is a business magazine published by McGraw-Hill. ...

The Inquirer's successful reporting of the story relied on information supplied by readers and later by a confidential source at Dell. "I attribute being on top of the story to old-fashioned print journalism standards — cultivating, and, if you'll excuse the pun, not burning such contacts," The Inquirer's founder, Mike Magee, told BusinessWeek.^[14]

Rydermark

In July 2006, The Inquirer posted images to show cheating by NVIDIA Windows device drivers in Rydermark 2006.^[15] The images were alleged to be fake by a number of sources.^[16] The Inquirer denied any wrongdoing and quoted the maker of Rydermark calling the allegations against them "irresponsible".^[17] About 8 months after the original Rydermark article, The Inquirer ran another article claiming that Rydermark was still being developed, but was near release.^[18] In response, one of its critics offered $1,000 to a charity of the Rydermark articles author's choosing if he could produce (breaching his NDA) a version of Rydermark that showed the alleged screenshots in full-motion video before a set deadline (which gave the author 10 and a half hours, beginning at 6:30PM UK time). No one produced the program before the deadline passed.^[19] NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ: NVDA) (pronounced IPA: ) is a U.S. corporation specializing in the manufacture of graphics processors (graphics processing units, GPUs) technologies for workstations, desktop computers, and handhelds. ... A non-disclosure agreement (NDA), also called a confidential disclosure agreement (CDA), confidentiality agreement or secrecy agreement, is a legal contract between at least two parties which outlines confidential materials or knowledge the parties wish to share with one another for certain purposes, but wish to restrict from generalized use. ...

Independent verification that RyderMark was genuine, first appeared in TweakTown in May 2007.^[20] RyderMark developer Ajith Ram denied ever sending the Inquirer NVIDIA cheating allegations. ^[21]

ATI Intel front side bus license revocation

On 24 July 2006, The Inquirer wrote that, in response to AMD's announced intent to purchase ATI, "ATI had its chipset license pulled, or at least not renewed by Intel."^[22] ATI responded by stating that its license had not been revoked and that they continue to ship Intel chipsets under license.^[23] On 23 August 2006, ATI showed its chipset roadmap to motherboard vendors which showed that next-generation chipsets for the Intel platform are cancelled as X-bit Labs reported. On March 1 2007, AMD said that they will continue developing chipsets for Intel platforms.^[24]

Nicknames and terminology

Following the standards Mike Magee set at his previous publications, The Inquirer uses nicknames for many IT firms and persons:

In talking about Wikipedia, The Inquirer once referred to it as an "Internet comic". ^[30] Wikipedia (IPA: , or ( ) is a multilingual, web-based, free content encyclopedia project, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization. ...

References

^ The Inquirer, 2 August 2006: All journalism will be Indian journalism one day (cited 23 August 2006)
^ The Inquirer, 19 June 2006: Euro INQUIRERS burst forth (cited 23 August 2006)
^ The Inquirer, 10 September 2003: US Republican Party threatens to sue the INQUIRER (cited 23 August 2006)
^ The Inquirer, 25 June 2006: Mio C710 will tell you where you are (cited 23 August 2006)
^ The Inquirer, 7 December 2003: Last week's top INQUIRER stories (cited 23 August 2006)
^ For example 2CPU.com forum, 11 April 2003: Serverworks and Supermicro to Support AMD Opteron! (cited 5 February 2007)
^ The Inquirer, 10 August 2004: Everywhere Dell girl appears in Germany (cited 29 January 2007)
^ The Inquirer, 5 March 2002: The INQUIRER, Intel, embargoes and NDAs (cited 23 August 2006)
^ The Inquirer, 2 December 2004: Intel wonders how INQUIRER gets leaks so fast (cited 23 August 2006)
^ The Inquirer, 12 July 2006: New iPods to use OLED displays (cited 23 August 2006)
^ The Inquirer, 31 August 2005: Playstation 3 GPU "slightly less powerful than GeForce 7800" (cited 23 August 2006)
^ Team Xbox, 31 August 2005: PlayStation 3 GPU More Powerful than GeForce 7800! (cited 23 August 2006)
^ The Inquirer, 21 June 2006: Dell laptop explodes at Japanese conference (cited 2 September 2006)
^ BusinessWeek, 30 August 2006: The Battery Recall: A Win for the Web (cited 2 September 2006)
^ The Inquirer, 18 July 2006: Rydermark screenshots back California graphics fudge (cited 4 February 2007)
^ Such as DailyTech, 19 July 2006: "Rydermark" Cheating Allegations Discredited (cited 23 August 2006), or BeHardware, 19 July 2006: The Inquirer accuses Nvidia of cheating (cited 23 August 2006)
^ The Inquirer, 19 July 2006: Rydermark maker labels hoax allegations 'irresponsible' (cited 23 August 2006)
^ The Inquirer, 19 February 2007: Rydermark benchmark lives. It's almost done (cited 28 February 2007)
^ Kubicki, Kristopher. "DailyTech Digest: RyderMark, My take on RyderMark's newest incarnation".
^ 16 May 2007: TweakTown: RyderMark Beta 2 Preview - Emerging competition for Futuremark? (cited 17 May 2007)
^ Kubicki, Kristopher. "RyderMark Developer: We Never Said NVIDIA Cheated", DailyTech. Retrieved on 2007-06-11.
^ The Inquirer, 24 July 2006: Intel pulls ATI bus licence (cited 23 August 2006)
^ H Enthusiast, 26 July 2006: AMD & ATI Answers to Rumormongering (cited 23 August 2006)
^ DigiTimes, 1 March 2007: AMD keeping open platform strategy: Q&A with sales and marketing vice president Jochen Polster (cited 3 March 2007)
^ The Register: Chipzilla becomes Gorgonzilla
^ The Inquirer, 31 July 2006: ATI/AMD monster dubbed DAAMIT (cited 4 February 2007)
^ The Inquirer, 15 October 2006: Voodoo HP nickname coined (cited 4 February 2007)
^ The Inquirer, 7 September 2007: Possible explanation for The Vole terminology
^ The Inquirer, 2 March 2003: The INQUIRER guide to INQUIRER jargon (cited 23 August 2006)
^ "Anonymous Wikipedia editors caught red handed", The Inquirer, 2007-08-15.

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