Hell, no! These jerks should be in jail for their deceptive practices of selling unfinished software, then having the gall to ask for more money for bug fixes. Fixes that claim to enable basic functionality you paid for in the first place.

Please don't lend these cretins and credibility.

Go! Brainstorm with Gwen. Give a scintillating session. You'll be the most popular thing there. People might even throw fancy chickens.

Trevor

I say go. Perfect opportunity to expose R***B**** to the world for the farce that it is. Take pictures, make photcopies, send e-mails, frag some bots....well, the last can be done for leisure rather than work. Just remember to taunt anyone and everyone who speaks to you about RB in a positive light.

enough people use realbasic that they need a conference? whoa....

Make sure you get lots of photos! :D

Go ahead, then you can review the conference.

I think you should go.

And I don't in any way think it's a clever trap designed to capture you and send you to the spice mines of... uh... Rurapente...

No, wait, that was Star Trek.

Kessel.

Yeah. You're not going to be hit in the head with a sock full of nickels and sent to Kessel to dig spice for the rest of your life. And I vehemently deny there were secret emails between me and the fine folks at REAL Software.

Say, what spice was that anyway? Cumin? Cinnamon?

I didn't know they mined cinnamon.

You should go, and present the session. Sure, crappy RB programs give you fodder for this site, but it's painful to have so much of it. Take a bite out of crap! (Not literally. Just to let you know.)

go
gog
o
og
go
go
og
ogo
go
g
og
go
og
ogo
ooggooo!!!

Hold on just a second. Suppose you really are successful and talk some sense into R***B**** developers. All those pointless apps would suddenly disappear. PvT would no longer have a reason to exist. RUN!!!! RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!

On the other hand, Gwen might have seen your picture on the site and think you're really hot. She might make it worth your while to go. (wink, wink, nudge, nudge)

I say go. Texans aren't lazy, if they were going to shoot you, they'd already of done it. On the other hand, maybe they're finally serious about improving their product.

Hahahahahahaha! Hohohohohohohoho! Heeheeheeheehee!

Hmmmmph! Sorry ... sorry ...

Ooooooh! Fwahahahahahahahahahahaha! Oh, oh ...

I'll be OK ... in a ... second ...

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! Heeheeheeheeheeeeeeee!

Seriously ... seriously ... I'll be OK in a ... in a ...

Oh! Oh! Haaaaaaaaaaahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

Too much! Too much! Stop it!

Did somebody call my name?

— Fodder Winky Jenkins IIIV MD, esq.

Old Norm suggests you pack the nipple clamps and grease the wood chipper and go to the conference. Hey, they will pay you a stipend which you can directly use for cheap booze and an ugly hooker which just happens to look like the oak tree behind the hotel where you will be staying if you know what I mean.

I say go. Teach all those who use R***B**** how to not use crap.

It's tempting to say "Go!", but Real Victim has a point. If you go there, no matter what you'll say, you'll just serve to further the purposes of the decidedly evil Real Corporation. Ladd of PvT, REALposterboy.. the laughing stock of developers worldwide and, more importantly, the now lesser sibling of the three.

Also, never trust Texans, ever. The instant you break this rule you'll find yourself waking up bucknaked in the desert with Cheney's minions tossing coins over who gets to "do the ol' woowoo wit'chu"* first, dogcow style.

I say screw 'em.


*Texan proverb

Please go.
Think of the children!
Somebody has to think of the children.

Oh, you must go. It could be a new apogee in Mac reporting. But hey, they should pay for your air fare.

(Hey, Ladd, what's with this malicious comment thing?)

Hmmm,

A 45-minute session on good software design techniques...

Why oh why would they want to ladd to participate is such a thing??? I would think that a 4 - 5 second speech of "don't use Real Software" would suffice. Maybe they spend the rest of the time wondering why they couldn't think of that on their own???

Did I hear my name?

~ Apogee Williamson, Jr.

Re: the malicious comments:

Someone thought it would be funny to use Fl**dMT against us using multiple open proxies (thus concealing their IP address). I suspect a software developer got worked into a froth over one of our reviews.

Fortunately, using our custom MT-HandyWipe plug-in, we were able to speedily clean up the mess.

You should go and give them anti-tips, tell them to do all the things you hate them doing - that way the number of awful programs actually INCREASES. More comedy.

I just want to point out that it is possible to write shitty apps in Cocoa MUCH faster than in R***B****.

Dirty hackers ... I thought we'd set a new record for posts on the weekend, but it was only some less than gruntled farkweet exercising his right to remain stupid.

*Grumble, grumble, grumble!*

I am surprised by their civility. I think this was "Put up or shut up!" You must go, I say, go!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

accept.

Tell them what a real honor it is to be invited to participate in MTVs The Real World, how you are looking forward to meeting Carson Daley or at least Moby. Suggest that they move it from Austin to Hobart, Tasmania.

I agree with Moltz, except for the part where you DON'T go to the spice mines. And, of course, the excruciating torture thingie before you get to the mines.

On the upside, this kind of endeavor usually is advertised as having 'virgins in paradise' as a payoff.

As a serious comment, I see a couple of real problems.

One, your problem is not so much with bad software design, as with pointless software design. It turns out that a lot of pointless apps are also badly designed, but the design itself isn't the main issue with this site as I perceive it.

Two, this really smells of an opportunity to co-opt you and "kill you with kindness". I agree that it is a bribe to get you to back off on RB in general - or else simply a setup to make you look like a fool.

On the plus side of it, if you really feel you have some important things to say about proper software development, then by all means go and have fun. RB doesn't mean inherenly bad apps, it just makes it easy to write them.

You must go, get trashed, deliver the word of God unto those poor bastards, and then torch the place.

On the other hand, you might not end up in a spice mine, you might end up on Lusyanka in the reverse gravity ferrocrete processing plant. That Ysanne Isard is a righteous bitch. But Moltz makes a valid point.

Uncertain Future, I feel, hit the ball out of the park with his/her summation that it is an "opportunity to co-opt you and “kill you with kindness”." You should avoid letting that befall. Although, I also feel that you Van Tol's are a bright enough bunch that you would not let them fool you.

You wanna hang out with some Real Basic folk? Well come on back to ma Momma and Poppa's trailer. Don't come much more basic'n that!

Heh heh heh!

I think it's a good idea to go. You'll get publicity! And what's wrong with that?

badger

That's a huge set of hairy balls the folks at REAL have. It's astounding, in fact. I think this would be a perfect opportunity to get your message across to all those peanut-brained developers out there and maybe get them to stop the insanity already. Sure it's less entertainment for us... but you'd be doing the world a favor. You'd be heroes! Think of all the groupies you'd get!

Oh, but if they shanghai you... be sure to pray they don't send you to Hobo 13 to train R***B**** cadets. That wouldn't be cool.

Cadets? This is vaguely reminiscent of the GMC... hmm... I wonder if I should dust off my bolter? We'll see how things play out, no need to be hasty.

this reminds me... Nobody ever wrote a version of RealCrap for OS X... In case your wondering, RealCrap was a system extension that prevented anything written with RealBasic from executing on your computer.

Would this be fair game for a perverse panning?