[rampancy]

I stumbled my way in here from a thread on AppleInsider...there were hints that some people from the AI boards dropped out from AI and started up this board, which was something I'd never ever heard of -- matter of fact, when I poked around the forums, I saw a lot of familiar people who I remembered not seeing on AI for quite some time. So is there a story behind this forum? Was there some sort of nasty falling out with some of the mods or something?

PS: I have to commend who ever was responsible for the site design. I never really noticed how harsh the lighter colours of AI were on my eyes until I came here. Or maybe it's just my eyes.

[alcimedes]

see the "la revolution" forum here. long story short, some of us were unhappy with the inability to fix problems in the forums as the arose. the ads were another problem. it also seemed as if they had basically been abandoned, but were still of utmost important when it came to ad impressions.

then there was a bit of an incident, and here we are.

oh, and welcome!

[Brad]

Welcome, rampancy!

Well, you can get a lot of the story from the Viva La Revolucion forum here, but most of that were hearsay from various members.

Here's the short of it:

One day while I was out of town for surgery, Kasper went ballistic and deleted myself and several other staff members from the forums. Why?

There had been some heated discussions in the private moderators forum before about how the site was run (the ads and such as mentioned by alcimedes). LoCash had brought up the possibility of running the forums on another server for *free* so we wouldn't have to use the ads (Kasper had mentioned before that the banners brought in next to nothing for the forums and that was why some of them were so bad). As discussed in the mod forum, the forums would have remain exactly as they were, still affiliated with AppleInsider and still run by the same staff. I created a poll to gauge user feedback to see how badly people wanted an ad-free AppleInsider and the subject came up that LoCash could run it for free on his friend's server. Kasper found this discussion and somehow misinterpreted it as a hostile act, we assume, and proceeded by "cleansing" the site of anything related to us.

Not a single communication was made to us by Kasper that we were being cut out or why we were being cut out. Not a single attempt was made by him or the remaining staff at AppleInsider at finding some kind of middle ground.

Anyhow, when I attempted to log back in and found that I couldn't, I used AppleInsider's administrator "back door" to reactivate my account. Shortly after posting a few times trying to figure out what was going on (I didn't know if there was a hacking break-in or what), Kasper deleted me again and shut down the back door. I then logged in once with Kasper's account (so he couldn't delete me) and asked him directly what was going on, but that just made him angrier. He then proceeded to have me chased down and interrogated by the cops, trying to scare me with fraudulent charges of corporate conspiracy and fraud. The cops dismissed the matter completely.

On a related note, when Kasper deleted the back door, he also managed to delete all of the site's graphics! That's why some of the icons and buttons are still the ugly default purple vB ones; I had made all the graphics for the site and only I had all the original templates.

So, LoCash here (also booted out along with murbot and alcimedes and others) acted quickly and started up a server at the address appleinsider.org for the people on Kasper's blacklist to meet and try to figure out what was going on. The site here was literally just one forum and was very bare-bones. LoCash had been working on this new site, but it was only in the early planning stage and was months from being ready for prime time.

Meanwhile at AppleInsider.com, Kasper was still going McCarthy on people, censoring and deleting any post that made mention of myself, the missing staff members, or appleinsider.org. At one point, the private messaging system was compromised and even shut down to prevent members from discussing the matter.

That's the last I know about what happened at AppleInsider.com. I haven't been back since.

AppleInsider.org's member base continued to grow, including some of the friendly faces at AppleInsider.com. We expanded the forums to what you see now and eventually became affiliated with ThinkSecret (ironically, once rival of AppleInsider). We got a couple of great scoops (we were the first to know about the new iPod and the Newsweek article) and have been working with Nick dePlume about sharing article rights.

That's everything up to today in summary. It was an ugly battle with Kasper at first with lots of baseless accusations flying at us, but now we're very happily flying solo as AppleNova. We don't really care about the whole matter any more. As you can see, we locked the Revolucion forum because we consider the transition complete and the hostility among the member bases has long-since abided.

[Moogs]

...and thusly was Aldo born of humble roots, yet growing greater in number and legend by the day. All hail Aldo... supreme ruler of all Macdom.

[Wickers]

Originally Posted by Brad . . .At one point, the private messaging system was compromised and even shut down to prevent members from discussing the matter. . . .

*takes a bow*



Looking back at it. . . it was really funny. . . .sad but funny.

[rampancy]

Thanks for the welcome, guys! I had the impression there was something that went on, since it was spoken of in a hush-hush kind of way. That being said, I hope to post more here than when I was lurking on AI...

I remember the bit about the surgery, Brad. It was for a nasal-related matter right? I think I recall it was pretty serious...I hope everything went well. Oh, and how's the protein folding going, Alcimedes? I haven't been to the Team MacOS X Forums in a while...

[DMBand0026]

Originally Posted by rampancy I remember the bit about the surgery, Brad. It was for a nasal-related matter right? I think I recall it was pretty serious...I hope everything went well. Oh, and how's the protein folding going, Alcimedes? I haven't been to the Team MacOS X Forums in a while...

Nope, it was for an ovarian tumor. Lucky they got it out in time too. It coulda gotten real ugly, real fast.



Yeah, IIRC it was for some sort of a sinus polyp thing. But I'll await the official word from the man himself.

Glad you're back on top Brad

[Brad]

Originally Posted by DMBand0026 Nope, it was for an ovarian tumor. Lucky they got it out in time too. It coulda gotten real ugly, real fast.

Yeah, it was to surgically remove polyps, my whole ethmoid sinus, trim the lower of the maxillary sinuses, and widen the passages between all five major sinus areas. I was under the knife for over four hours. Major surgery, IMO.

I've luckily recovered well, though. The downside, though, is that this it may not be a permanent fix for my condition. Samter's Triad sufferers often have polyps grow back after surgical removal. For some it's as short as 6 months, for some years, for some they never grow back. I tried as experimental aspirin desensitization therapy, but it didn't yield any widespread improvement.

When the whole split took place just days after my surgery and I was harassed by police for a couple weeks, well, THAT racked up my stress level a few notches. In fact, I still have an outstanding ticket with the Student Conduct office (bunch'a idiots) that should be settled shortly.

But, yeah. Life is better now.

[onlyafterdark]

I have the same sinus problem as you Brad but not nearly as bad. I was considering going under the knife but too many people have told me that it isnt worth it unless your problem is really serious. The only problem I had with it was during basketball season where I wouldnt be able to breathe through my nose at all. That added with the problem of not being able to clear out my sinuses lead to many lung congestion problems. But I dont play bball a whole lot anymore as I have discovered the wonderful sport of freeriding mountain biking. Anyway good to hear your operation went well for you and thanks again to everyone for making this forum possible. All your hard work is greatly appreciated.

[Brad]

Originally Posted by onlyafterdark I was considering going under the knife but too many people have told me that it isnt worth it unless your problem is really serious.

Well, for me, the polyps had grown so much that they actually had extended into the lower part of my nose and had completely blocked the air passages. On one side, if I took a Q-tip, I could sometimes manage to actually push a polyp to one side to allow myself a short breath through a nostril. The pressure and inability to breathe at all through my nose was altogether so bad that most nights I was lucky to get two to three consecutive hours of sleep. Eating and drinking at meals even became a chore. Bite. Chew. Push food to cheek. Short breath. Chew. Swallow. Breathe. Repeat.

That bad.

If you have polyps too, a carefully-administered prescription of prednisone may help you greatly. Regular courses of prednisone made my polyps go away, but I had to take 60 mg a day to get the effect. That's an outrageously high dosage. Using more than about 7.5 mg/day for extended periods can quickly lead to bone fractures and osteoporosis among other very serious health conditions. So, surgery was my only option.