Comments

1. Taylor Ripley says:

   5 September 2008 at 23:50

   You’re doing more harm than good, Greg, and not for us. You should rethink your slander.

   Reply
2. joe says:

   6 September 2008 at 03:47

   what a bunch of mor­ons, call­ing out ran­dom people to make an example of when they have no fac­tual basis to sup­port their claims.… Slander? I think not.

   Reply
3. cciepursuit says:

   6 September 2008 at 13:02

   @Taylor

   So CertGuard did NOT falsely accuse Ethan Banks of cheat­ing? That whole NetworkWorld retrac­tion and apo­logy was just a dream?

   Also, the word you’re search­ing for is “libel”, not “slander”. Either way you’re abso­lutely out of your mind if you think that this con­sti­tutes libel.

   I won’t even touch the irony of you accus­ing someone of doing “more harm than good”.

   Reply
4. Robert Williams says:

   6 September 2008 at 13:08

   Excuse me Joe, but YOU and the rest of the blood­hound gang here need to get YOUR facts straight. It was ONE moron (me), the facts were all there, and they were con­firmed with a phonecall to the indi­vidual. So all this BS that Greg Ferro is feed­ing you is exactly that…BS.

   Greg, what you’re doing here, as Taylor has said, is doing oth­ers more harm than it is us, but it’s up to you to do whatever you feel is best.

   Have a great day, and good luck on your certs!

   Reply
5. Robert Williams says:

   6 September 2008 at 18:44

   @cciepursuit

   I’m not going to debate semantics with you. But I do feel like ‘drum­ming up busi­ness’ so, here it is. The simple fact is that I didn’t *falsely* accuse any­one. If you don’t believe me, (which I know you don’t), con­tact the per­son we’re talk­ing about and ask him. Now, if you’ll go back to that blog post (I do believe it is still on your site), you’ll see his state­ment. Trying to BS me or any­one else about it by say­ing isn’t him is false on your part, because I have talked to him per­son­ally and I know for a FACT that it was him that pos­ted it. So yes, Greg’s com­ments are libelous, mine were not.

   I under­stand he made a mis­take, people do that. But it was mis­take he made by pub­li­ciz­ing the fact that he reviewed TK, not me. My only mis­take was giv­ing in and apo­lo­giz­ing when I did abso­lutely no wrong to begin with. Believe me when I tell you that will never hap­pen again.

   We all agreed at the time of the phone call that this was over. So, any­thing else pos­ted about this topic is doing noth­ing but dam­aging his name and drum­ming up more busi­ness for CertGuard. That’s on YOU, not me. From what I under­stand, he’s also asked every one of you to stop, this just proves that you can’t even honor the wishes of one of your sup­posed ‘best friends’.

   Oh, BTW, this may or may not be Robert Williams.

   Have a great day and good luck on your certs!

   Reply
6. cciepursuit says:

   7 September 2008 at 04:29

   @ Robert Williams

   1) Where is the libel in this statement?

   “Certguard have been men­tioned in a Computerworld art­icle about exam cheats. Please go and leave a com­ment to show how dis­gust­ing that Certguard, who falsely accuse people of cheat­ing, have been used for comment.”

   2) I’ve never ques­tioned whether it was Ethan who left the com­ment (not a blog post) on my blog. I know who left the com­ment. I think that it was Darby Weaver who brought up the whole “was it really Ethan who left the com­ment?” issue — which was silly since Ethan veri­fied that he made the com­ment. Your sar­casm (such that it is) is mis­placed. Your abil­ity to main­tain facts is as sharp as ever though.

   3) I did com­mu­nic­ate with Ethan and he cer­tainly never gave me any impres­sion other than that you falsely accused him of cheat­ing and advoc­at­ing the use of brain­dumps. Are you now say­ing that Ethan agrees with your accus­a­tions? If so, then I will advoc­ate on your behalf with twice as much fer­vor as I ever did for Ethan.

   4) “My only mis­take was giv­ing in and apo­lo­giz­ing when I did abso­lutely no wrong to begin with. Believe me when I tell you that will never hap­pen again.” Priceless. I never put much stock in your apo­logy because it only came after the back­lash by the CCIE com­munity, BUT I still thought that it was a classy — and prob­ably very dif­fi­cult — move on your part. It looks like I was wrong. Congratulations on your com­mit­ment to never again apo­lo­gize regard­less of the facts. You walk in that rar­efied air reserved only for the greatest of douchenug­gets*. I salute you.

   If you ser­i­ously want to pub­licly recant your apo­logy, then post it on NetworkWorld.

   5) “We all agreed at the time of the phone call that this was over. So, any­thing else pos­ted about this topic is doing noth­ing but dam­aging his name and drum­ming up more busi­ness for CertGuard. That’s on YOU, not me. From what I under­stand, he’s also asked every one of you to stop, this just proves that you can’t even honor the wishes of one of your sup­posed ‘best friends’.”

   Are you a 12-​​year old girl? “Supposed best friend”? Really? By point­ing out your uneth­ical beha­vior I’m really just stabbing my BFF in the back? Oh, well I will def­in­itely stop then.

   Do you hon­estly think that it’s Ethan’s name that’s being dam­aged by point­ing out how uneth­ical (and obvi­ously unre­pent­ant) you (and by exten­sion, CertGuard) are? Drumming up busi­ness for Certguard? I’m highly doubt­ful that any com­pan­ies that have reviewed your beha­vior are whip­ping out their checkbooks.

   Your best course of action would have been to put this behind you and move on. At the end of the day I don’t think that there are many folks who don’t sup­port what your com­pany strives to accom­plish. You’ll have to accept that there are going to be folks who were so turned off by your actions that it will be very dif­fi­cult for them to ever take you ser­i­ously. Accusing someone of cheat­ing, then apo­lo­giz­ing for that accus­a­tion, THEN recant­ing your apo­logy doesn’t seem like a par­tic­u­larly good busi­ness plan. But you’re the CEO and I’m just a blog­ger, so what do I know?

   I wish you good luck with your com­pany with exactly as much sin­cer­ity as you wish me luck with my certifications.

   * The term “douchenug­get” is copy­righted by Greg Ferro, CEO of Etherealmind Industries. Any use of this term without his express writ­ten con­sent is pro­hib­ited as that would make you.…well, a douchenugget.

   Reply
7. Robert Williams says:

   9 September 2008 at 19:37

   @cciepursuit

   1) You answered your own ques­tion. His state­ment clearly said “who **falsely** accuse people of cheat­ing”. As i stated before, I never *falsely* accused any­one of doing any­thing they didn’t do, which makes that state­ment false, and there­fore libelous.

   2) You’re cor­rect, it was Darby; but other’s have also taken on that same pos­i­tion. If you didn’t, then I apo­lo­gize for pre­sum­ing so and also apo­lo­gize for my mis­placed sar­casm.

   3) Ethan made state­ments which I and many oth­ers saw as advoc­at­ing the use of TK. What I didn’t under­stand at the time is how any­one with that amount of “time in rate” would not know that TK is con­sidered illegal. Even before I star­ted CertGuard that inform­a­tion was plastered all over the inter­net. That’s where my accus­a­tion of cheat­ing came in. Although my word­ing could have been improved, I knew from read­ing his com­ments and his blog that he was above that. It was the fact that he men­tioned ref­er­en­cing them, and the other com­ments on the blog which got my attention.

   4) My apo­logy was sin­cere, and very dif­fi­cult. It actu­ally took me 3 days to write that. I didn’t even spend 3 days writ­ing my mar­riage vows. If that isn’t sin­cer­ity, I don’t know what is.

   I will never have any prob­lems apo­lo­giz­ing when I’m in the wrong. At the time of the apo­logy I did feel like I was in the wrong; largely due to the CCIE com­munity point­ing that out to me. But once it all “blew over” and I had a chance to sit back and actu­ally review the facts without the CCIE com­munit­ies biased opin­ions, I saw that I could have done a few things bet­ter, but I cer­tainly didn’t do any­thing illegal or immoral.

   5) a. How was my beha­vior uneth­ical? A CCIE stated he used TK in the course of tak­ing an exam and I’M being uneth­ical? Had it been some CCIE from China, would this have all played out the same way?

   b. Not you, Greg. Everytime Greg picks up the cane and beats the dead horse, it brings Ethan’s name right to the top of our search res­ults again. Believe it or not, there may be 200+ of you that are against me and what I have cre­ated, but for every one of you that feel I was in the wrong, there are 100+ oth­ers that feel I was right and jus­ti­fied in doing so (includ­ing many ‘elites’). So yes, everytime he raises his cane, it hurts Ethan. And yes, our stats have tripled since that day. So thanks Greg!

   You’re prob­ably right, I’m sure it would have been; unfor­tu­nately for me, that’s not in my nature. As you can see, I’m not much of a busi­ness man, I’m simply a douchenug­get with a dream.

   Best Regards (seriously),

   Robert Williams

   Reply
8. Anon says:

   26 September 2008 at 12:49

   I found myself chuck­ling as I read the com­ments. Wasn’t this over months ago? CertGuard vil­i­fied Ethan. The com­pany apo­lo­gized, after pres­sure was put on them by many net­work­ing pro­fes­sion­als. In the apo­logy, CertGuard never changed their pos­i­tion about his com­ments that sparked this; they just apo­lo­gized for pick­ing on him spe­cific­ally. Some of your are upset that CertGuard, even after the apo­logy, still holds the line that he cheated. Did you expect any­thing else? A pub­lic admis­sion that what they said was fac­tu­ally incor­rect would be like beg­ging for a law suit. My guess is that legal coun­sel reviewed that let­ter carefully.

   Let’s be real­istic about this. If you men­tion TK ignor­antly or oth­er­wise, CertGuard will always hold the pos­i­tion that you’re a cheater, des­pite hun­dreds of other posts you might write doc­u­ment­ing how hard you study. That’s their busi­ness. Everything CertGuard said about Ethan was built on a com­ment he made about TK, and in their mind, the logic is valid (and some agree with them). You’re not going to be able to con­vince the com­pany oth­er­wise. In the minds of many oth­ers who read what they had to say, the logic was *not* valid (and thus the hell­storm was unleashed).

   CertGuard is try­ing to get a busi­ness off the ground. You can’t expect CertGuard to change their stance about what they think a men­tion of TestKing actu­ally indic­ates, as it wouldn’t logic­ally fol­low for their busi­ness model. In the same sense, you don’t expect Microsoft to stop strong-​​arming PC man­u­fac­tur­ers into con­tracts designed to sell more cop­ies of Windows. The tac­tics employed might be repel­lent, but a company’s got to do what they got to do. This isn’t about what really happened or a fair and bal­anced view of the facts. It’s about per­cep­tions. Can CertGuard build a busi­ness on the per­cep­tions they cre­ate about them­selves and oth­ers? So far, so good.

   Reply