This Thanksgiving I truly have something to be thankful for. It isn’t my Wife, my home, my family, my friends, my health or my business. Although I am thankful for all those things. What I’m most thankful for this Thanksgiving is: I got me a stalker!!!
Yep. I’ve got my very own nutjob on the internet who has decided he is going to go out of his way to fling poo at me! Seems like I did something to offend the, dare I say infamous, Rick Downes.
OK. I must admit when they were handing out the stalkers I wasn’t at the front of the queue. No Glenn Close (when she was still pretty darn hot) style femme fatales are after me alas. Instead I get some bitter, semi-retired Swedish geek who has oddly decided that I needed to be brought to task, for whatever it is I did to get his goat.
So who is this Rick Downes character? From his own site: “Rick Downes is an internationally acclaimed and respected computer scientist, long specialising in taking care of the ‘common man’ and in defending the rights of the common man against corporate and political abuses of power.” Go on, google him now, it should be easy to find some positive information on this person for who “hundreds of thousands of individuals worldwide know and well respect”.
Rick, who has a extraordinary fondness for using ©, ® and ™ symbols for ironic emphasis, apparently runs a software company in Cyprus where he likes to release poetry inspiring Mac OS X software (if you only follow one link from this blog post follow that one), has been arrested for commercial spamming and drug trafficking and has absolutely nothing positive to say about other people’s Mac OS X software.
Apparently I am in good company. Rick isn’t frugal with his diatribes against, well apparently lots of things. Rick dislikes a whole lot of things. And people. And software. And TIFF files. Rick especially dislikes TIFF files. Oh and bloat. He really doesn’t like bloat.
And what does Rick say about things he doesn’t like? Why, you get your very own page on rixstep.com where Rick will lay into you about how un-optimised your TIFF files are. He might even accuse of you of being a Texan (yes, really he believes someone who spells optimise with an S is Texan)! Or maybe he’ll call you a tool. Or try to disparage the work you’re doing helping to teach technology to children.
Rick seems to think he can use the internet and his professional web-site to attack whatever it is he doesn’t like. Generally he limits his attacks to software but occasionally he decides individuals are fair game. Unfortunately for Rick these attacks have done nothing more than turn him into a laughing stock amongst the developer community.
So what did I do to deserve the wrath of such a vengeful spirit? Well I participated in the comment thread of a blog post about software optimisation (yes, that blog post). That’s all it takes to unleash the bile and slobbering attacks. I may have also referred to Rick as a “911 conspiracy theory-level fucking nutter.” My bad. But then in my defence I was linking to this posting of Rick’s where he seems to go slightly off the rails about some conspiracy of the imaginary elite Mac developers, the so called “Landed Gentry of Mac Development™“ (note that the United States Patent and Trademark Office doesn’t seem to have that trademark on file yet, I can only assume the application is in the mail).
Rick started on me gently, merely (and quite randomly I might point out) mentioning me in his totally unbiased review of MarsEdit, calling me an “insufferable blogger”, amongst other things. I emailed Rick at this point to see if we could resolve this seemingly bizarre issue. But the chances are that my e-mail got deleted by his rather paranoid email filters (for a company that claims to pride itself on serving the customer I find it odd that e-mail from such large providers as gmail and mac.com are summarily discarded).
But then the big guns came out. Rick devoted a whole blog post to just me, or rather to “Johnathan Right” (a misspelling I can only assume Rick is intentionally making to be just that extra bit juvenile), linking to it from his Industry Watch page (yes really, slagging off a fellow developer is considered “Industry Watch”).
In the blog post Rick posts select quotes from a what was believed to be private conversation between myself and a 3rd party. Not quite sure what this has to do with, well anything really, but when someone takes the time and energy to write a whole blog post trying to character assassinate someone, rationality isn’t a priority. For some reason Rick seems to think a comparison between his qualifications and mine are in order. Bizarre! Batshit insane bizarre? Well go read the blog post. You be the judge. And of course Rick dredges up two applications that have long since been abandoned. Rick is nothing if not swift. By the way, Rick, have you ever considered abandoning some of your apps? Funny Haiku’s aside, some of your apps could really do with being taken out back and put out of their misery.
The funniest quote of the whole bizarre episode is “Ah Texas boy. We can relax. Texas has produced some ace programmers over the years. Like George Walker Bush.” Ignoring the half-arsed attempt at a Bush joke, Rick obviously spent 2 minutes searching my blog trying to find more mud to sling. And the best he could come up with is that I’m a Texan. Which of course, just happens not to be where I’m from at all.
I thought the Mac developer community had some oddballs in it before. But Rick totally takes the cake. A Mac software publisher whose catalog is so awful that there exists Haiku extolling their awfulness. A blogger who takes great pride in picking apart apps and slurring the developers of said apps with insults and ad-hominem attacks. Encouraging script-kiddies to deface websites. And let’s not forget the spamming and drug trafficking arrests.
So while I’m disappointed that my stalker isn’t a leggy blonde unafraid to do cruel things to bunnies, I must admit that as nutjobs go I think I’ve attracted one of timecubesque magnitude.
Of course I’ve committed the the biggest blunder on the internet: “Do not feed the trolls!”. Guilty I’m afraid. But maybe someone will hit this page while googling for Rick and realise what kind of person he is.
28 responses so far ↓
1 Chris // Nov 22, 2007 at 11:54 am
Feed away! It’s about time the Mac developer community started to stand up to this guy. I’ve come across his juvenile rants from time to time and been amazed that he continues to get away with it. “Who the hell is this rixstep guy?”, I’ve Googled, to little avail. Your blog post was soreley needed.
The worst part, really, is that any good points he may have to make are completely overcome by his vitriolic attitude. If he noticed an application accidentally included a .Trashes folder or some unnecessarily large image files, what’s wrong with a polite e-mail to the developer? Even the post about CTGradient he links to, while coming across as slightly rude to some people, at least inspired a bit of reasonable discussion until he stepped in and turned it into a flame war.
What a sad, angry, pathetic little man.
2 schwa // Nov 22, 2007 at 12:16 pm
Thanks Chris,
Appreciate the comment. We really don’t have to suffer the nutjobs.
3 soeren says » Blog Archive » Is code bloat bad? // Nov 22, 2007 at 3:00 pm
[...] all of it could have been expressed in comments to Ankur’s post. Unfortunately, as Jonathan thoroughly discussed, Sir RixStep apparently preferred to turn the discussion into a venue for once again displaying his [...]
4 Joe // Nov 22, 2007 at 3:15 pm
There’s a few people on the internet that I just don’t bother to read or comment about. The critter above is one of them. I couldn’t even figure out some of his ravings (I must be kinda dumb then - obviously) - but he’s just not even relevant.
You’re kind of feeding the “energy monster” with this post, but I do understand the desire to swing back when that fastball is coming at you. Maybe consider that you just knocked it out of the park (see! a gruber-esque baseball reference!) and leave the poor sad monkey alone. We’ll all be better for just ignoring him/it.
Best of Turkeyday to you!
5 schwa // Nov 22, 2007 at 9:14 pm
Hey Joe,
I’ve been fortunate enough to completely miss Rick up until now. The first I heard of him was on Ankur’s “optimisation” blog post. Practically the next thing I know he’s posting that “Johnathan Right” post.
Yeah I’m sure Rick is just thriving on this. I figured that’s the way these kind of people work. He’s obviously screaming for attention and just needs a big hug. Not much I can do about that.
But Rick has been ignored for a long time it seems (do not mention the spiteful vindictive batshit insane elephant in the room) and I’m not going be the victim of his abuse.
6 Jacob Rus // Nov 23, 2007 at 12:43 am
Yeah, you’re feeding the troll, and giving him traffic, but someone needed to take this guy down a few notches. He’s been getting away with such bullshit for years.
7 Jacob Rus // Nov 23, 2007 at 12:58 am
Also, in the “Postscript” section of his post, entitled “Johnathan Wong”, did he just call you a gay pedophile?
8 schwa // Nov 23, 2007 at 11:08 am
Jacob,
Yeah, looks like it. He’s throwing any shred of credibility he had left out the window.
9 Scott // Nov 24, 2007 at 3:39 am
Ha! Yep, he also pisses on me on his web site. And I don’t think I’ve ever even talked to the guy.
But he gets 100% of his facts wrong, at least on me. He also has info on there about me is simply scary. Nobody ever calls me by my first name, yet he does. I don’t think it’s out there anywhere. And every other thing he writes about me is also wrong.
His contact page says that you must be polite and respectful, but he isn’t.
I’ve also seen him at least once claim a guy was an Apple engineer when, in fact, the guy was a Genius at an Apple Store.
10 Kevin // Nov 26, 2007 at 1:05 am
You know as a Texan I think I should be offended by something here…
As for Texas developers… well there is always: http://www.idsoftware.com/
Kevin
11 schwa // Nov 26, 2007 at 9:19 am
Kevin,
I lived in TX for 6 years. I loved it there and would move back in a heartbeat.
12 Axxel // Nov 28, 2007 at 4:18 am
I think my favorite part of his post is the snark about the number of downloads and reviews for your hobby apps on VersionTracker. The download counts he’s bashing on are actually larger than the downloads for the current version of his actual pay-me-money-for-this bundle product, and not that far off his all-time-all-versions totals for all his products. And his review comments are actually worse.
Of course his market has to be limited. How many users really need a reimplementation of ’strings’? Or a ’swap file’ app whose major accomplishment is apparently to call exchangedata(2)?
One would think the cognitive dissonance of his rants and his own failure in the market would eventually break him. Sadly instead it seems to just make him more bitter. If you read his site in rough chronological order its hard to miss the increasing levels of vitriol and a tendency towards more ad-hominem attacks. Its all really very sad in a cry-for-help kind of way.
13 Jon H // Nov 28, 2007 at 10:20 pm
I think he tried to unsub me from Apple’s cocoa-dev list after I posted to that ctgradient thread.
A few hours after I posted, I got an email from the list server asking me to confirm.
14 maggie Wight // Nov 29, 2007 at 10:17 am
it seems to me that half an hour sitting in the naughty corner would not do him iny harm
it worked for you
Love
mum
15 Innocent Bystander // Dec 10, 2007 at 2:32 pm
Mr. Wight, you have a wise mother. :-)
16 matx // Dec 15, 2007 at 2:37 am
I’ve been wondering about him and that website for years. Some of the rants are simply lunatic. Thanks for your post. I don’t think you’re fanning the flames, as much as calling it like you see it. I’ve really wondered why no one said anything earlier. I guess everyone was just trying to ignore him. Egads.
17 possible/probable » Blog Archive » Rick Downes // Dec 21, 2007 at 8:57 pm
[...] Wight has discussed Rick. Daniel Jalkut (possibly one of the nicest guys on the planet) has been attacked by [...]
18 John C. Randolph // Dec 22, 2007 at 5:14 am
As it happens, I am acquainted with a few people who really are “internationally acclaimed and respected”, and not one of them has any need to proclaim this on their web site.
-jcr
19 Ilgaz // Dec 22, 2007 at 6:39 am
I think you have give him enough material to keep his webpage busy for months.
Remember the rule not to feed trolls ;)
20 Dr. Ian Silvester // Dec 29, 2007 at 6:54 am
I feel it is necessary that I should redress the balance here. I shall start by saying that I am a paid-up user of the ACP software suite published by Rixstep, just so y’all don’t think I’m trying to pretend to be an impartial observer who has just wandered in. There are two points I’d like to make.
First and foremost, I find your comments about the quality and utility of his software both inaccurate and offensive. Have you actually used his software may I ask? If you did I’d be surprised if you’d still make such comments. The Haiku link you posted is 5 years old and no longer relevant; whilst indeed game implementations will not set the world alight, his Xfile (file manager) and SPX (Gutmann-quality file shredder) are unique pieces of software in the OS X arena in that they actually do what they say on the tin, and in the leanest fastest code I’ve witnessed - Xfile consumes a mere 168K on disk. I think the developer has earned the right to comment upon the (lack of) quality in others’ software - his I have found excellent.
Secondly regarding the man himself. Mr. Downes is clearly a man unafraid of stating his opinions, and stating them in the strongest terms possible. Since those opinions often run against the grain of the received wisdom concerning the quality of Apple’s products it is inevitable that he will run into flak for what he has to say. His style may be caustic, but if you review his written output you can’t help but notice how often he has been right on the money. Arrogant and even rude yes, but not wrong. Let’s not let the messenger’s style drown the message content.
Regarding the “Landed Gentry of Mac Development™”, I have to say I observe the same movement - a loose group of software developers who slap backs and describe eachother’s products as “way cool” and similar, yet whose approach to software development seems to me (and it would seem to Mr. Downes) slapdash and rather ‘MacOS’ in style, harking back to the bad old days before OS X hit the streets. To put it simply, software development should be about software quality foremost and cool graphics second, not the other way around.
21 RonArt // Jan 2, 2008 at 12:49 pm
I found this thread by doing a search for ‘rixstep’ (via Google).
Now I see that ricky is also seen as major prick by others.
I can’t imagine any longer pluging in my admin password to his software. Maybe there’s a reason why it’s free?
Visiting his site for a little advice the jerk went ballistic on me simply because I had forgotten to include some info to his request.
I’d NEVER had someone go off on me for no reason as he did. And I’ve been using computers for decades.
The guy makes me think he’s a major tweeker from how incredibly hostile he is.
Just out of curiosity… I tried going to his website and now I can’t even load the home page… incredible! What a prick!
22 Watts // Jan 6, 2008 at 2:44 pm
To put it simply, software development should be about software quality foremost and cool graphics second, not the other way around.
Maybe Xfile is “the absolute fastest browser ever” as claimed and works best with ZFS, but in terms of what might be called “things most Mac users actually need,” it’s not fit to tie Path Finder’s shoelaces.
But you seem to be entirely missing the point here, Dr. Ian: maybe ol’ Rick has, in the last five years, gone from someone writing inexplicably useless front ends to Unix commands to The Best Cocoa Developer Ever. But he’s apparently a complete prick.
Are you even reading the complaints people are writing about him? He writes obscenity-filled, slanderous rants about developers who say things he doesn’t agree with. He tries to unsubscribe people he’s in arguments with from mailing lists. He screams at users of his own software when they ask for technical support.
Here’s the bottom line: the first element of being a “professional” is professional courtesy. It is abundantly clear that the Rixster couldn’t spell “courtesy” if he was getting direct hints from the ghost of Noah Webster.
23 Jonathan // Jan 9, 2008 at 4:11 pm
I’ve stumbled across this post purely by accident (I have reached it after reading the last review of CLIX on macupdate.com, via another blog that was linked to there as it suggested I learn something about the developer of CLIX before I downloaded it… this turned out to be far more than I had bargained for).
You know what, having read the articles you’ve linked to I suggest you sit back and take a good look at your own behaviour in this sorry episode as, from what I can tell, the special kind of idiot here is actually you Mr. Wight. I seriously suggest you read articles before citing them as the “drug trafficking” and “spamming” ones you link to (and the whole “Trouble in Paradise” series of posts that they are a part of) achieve the complete opposite of what you so blatantly intended (that is, to infer that Rick Downes is in fact a drug trafficker and spammer, as opposed to having apparently been maliciously accused of being such by what you would probably call a “nutter” and suffering false arrest as a result). Also, you might find out the potential reasons as to why Mr. Downes might just have a soured view of other people and suffer from a mighty big chip on his shoulder:
Tragedy no. 1. Not many years ago, he was made a paraplegic by what he evidently believes to have been medical malpractice.
Tragedy no. 2. Having established himself in what he evidently thought would be “paradise”, he was apparently falsely arrested purely on the basis of ridiculous hearsay and sheer ignorance on the part of the Cypriot police, which led to a tragi-comic, multi-year legal process which is still ongoing and during which he has been shafted left, right and centre by many people he considered friends that he could trust. Also, his property - his work computer, a Powerbook by the sound of things - was seized and never returned to him, even though the charges were finally dropped almost two years later after being dismissed as pure fantasy on the part of the person who initially laid them.
Tragedy no. 3. From what he writes, it appears that no. 1 and no. 2 impinged on his ability to work, probably led to him becoming an alcoholic and royally fucked up his life and his enjoyment of it and made him an extremely bitter person.
Now, does that excuse him being rude and offensive to people - absolutely not. However, does it make you look like a complete jerk for not bothering to read articles you cite, and laying into someone in the exact same fashion as Mr. Downes has done. Yes it does.
Also, if you had read the articles you would have shrugged his criticism off as being from someone who just might have a few issues that they (very understandably) aren’t dealing with very well rather than writing a stupid blog post about it.
A special kind of idiot indeed.
24 Dre. // Feb 7, 2008 at 5:55 am
Wow, reading that crap from rixstep, I find it hard that an actual human could write something so stupid…. wow….. someone forgot their rabies shots thats for sure…
25 Jon // Feb 10, 2008 at 3:37 am
I find it amazing that you wail over him devoting a page of his website to you on the page you’ve dedicated to him. That you accuse him of character assassination and immature name calling in while calling him a nut job, stalker, and drug trafficker. Beautiful!
I think you both need a time out to think about what you’ve done.
26 Jeff // Mar 2, 2008 at 1:35 am
Welcome to the club! I got a couple of whole pages from them where they belittled my name, made up a whole lot of shit about me.
Why? Because I called their “Xfile” app a piece of shit from UI-standards point of view and that they were pimping that “IT-personnel-oriented” stillbirth as a “drop in Finder replacement”. All from my posts:
http://www.godofbiscuits.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-search.cgi?IncludeBlogs=1&search=rixstep
Their hallmark, though, outside of feeble ad-hom attacks, is the wall themselves off:
- no way to challenge what they say on anything
- and as they complain about OS X bugs that haven’t been fixed, they stopped using Apple’s official way to report bugs, then BLOCK OFF ACCESS TO THEIR SITE from all 17.x.x.x addresses (Apple’s entire IP range).
It’s the most deranged and self-damaging site I’ve yet to see.
They’re like ill-trained monkeys flinging poo and humping on a Mac keyboard.
27 kent // Apr 3, 2008 at 10:24 am
I too incurred his wrath, when I had the audacity to question him on a technical point from the vantage point of my 30 years in programming. In return, I was publicly slandered with outrageous lies. My suggestion is simple: stay away from him.
28 schwa // Apr 3, 2008 at 10:34 am
Hey Kent, sorry to hear that. But yeah, keeping away from. I do chortle with amusement at the guy whenever I hear another rix-story.
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