Atipa Corporation to Receive $30M Investment

Dave Whitinger, formerly of LinuxToday fame, now from Atipa wrote in to tell us that "Soros Private Equity Partners, TA Associates, and WR Hambrecht + Co. have invested more than $30 million in Atipa Linux Solutions. " Also, if you haven't seen Dave's Linsight service, you should check it out. I've been wanting to hack something like that together for years, but now I don't have to ;)

Is this better? (A Classic Flame! Moderate UP!!!)

[Anonymous Coward]

You swine. You vulgar little maggot. Don't you know that you are pathetic? You worthless bag of filth. As they say in Texas, I'll bet you couldn't pour piss out of a boot with instructions on the heel. You are a canker. A sore that won't go away. I would rather kiss a lawyer than be seen with you.

You are a fiend and a coward, and you have bad breath. You are degenerate, noxious and depraved. I feel debased just for knowing you exist. I despise everything about you. You are a bloody nardless newbie twit protohominid chromosomally aberrant caricature of a coprophagic cloacal parasitic pond scum and I wish you would go away.

You're a putrescence mass, a walking vomit. You are a spineless little worm deserving nothing but the profoundest contempt. You are a jerk, a cad, a weasel. Your life is a monument to stupidity. You are a stench, a revulsion, a big suck on a sour lemon.

You are a bleating fool, a curdled staggering mutant dwarf smeared richly with the effluvia and offal accompanying your alleged birth into this world. An insensate, blinking calf, meaningful to nobody, abandoned by the puke-drooling, giggling beasts who sired you and then killed themselves in recognition of what they had done.

I will never get over the embarrassment of belonging to the same species as you. You are a monster, an ogre, a malformity. I barf at the very thought of you. You have all the appeal of a paper cut. Lepers avoid you. You are vile, worthless, less than nothing. You are a weed, a fungus, the dregs of this earth. And did I mention you smell?

If you aren't an idiot, you made a world-class effort at simulating one. Try to edit your writing of unnecessary material before attempting to impress us with your insight. The evidence that you are a nincompoop will still be available to readers, but they will be able to access it more rapidly.

You snail-skulled little rabbit. Would that a hawk pick you up, drive its beak into your brain, and upon finding it rancid set you loose to fly briefly before spattering the ocean rocks with the frothy pink shame of your ignoble blood. May you choke on the queasy, convulsing nausea of your own trite, foolish beliefs.

You are weary, stale, flat and unprofitable. You are grimy, squalid, nasty and profane. You are foul and disgusting. You're a fool, an ignoramus. Monkeys look down on you. Even sheep won't have sex with you. You are unreservedly pathetic, starved for attention, and lost in a land that reality forgot.

And what meaning do you expect your delusionally self-important statements of unknowing, inexperienced opinion to have with us? What fantasy do you hold that you would believe that your tiny-fisted tantrums would have more weight than that of a leprous desert rat, spinning rabidly in a circle, waiting for the bite of the snake?

You are a waste of flesh. You are ridiculous and obnoxious. You are the moral equivalent of a leech. You are a living emptiness, a meaningless void. You are sour and senile. You are a disease, you puerile one-handed slack-jawed drooling meatslapper.

On a good day you're a half-wit. You remind me of drool. You are deficient in all that lends character. You have the personality of wallpaper. You are dank and filthy. You are asinine and benighted. You are the source of all unpleasantness. You spread misery and sorrow wherever you go.

I cannot believe how incredibly stupid you are. I mean rock-hard stupid. Dehydrated-rock-hard stupid. Stupid so stupid that it goes way beyond the stupid we know into a whole different dimension of stupid. You are trans-stupid stupid. Meta-stupid. Stupid collapsed on itself so far that even the neutrons have collapsed. Stupid gotten so dense that no intellect can escape. Singularity stupid. Blazing hot mid-day sun on Mercury stupid. You emit more stupid in one second than our entire galaxy emits in a year. Quasar stupid. Your writing has to be a troll. Nothing in our universe can really be this stupid. Perhaps this is some primordial fragment from the original big bang of stupid. Some pure essence of a stupid so uncontaminated by anything else as to be beyond the laws of physics that we know. I'm sorry. I can't go on. This is an epiphany of stupid for me. After this, _you_ may not hear from me again for a while. I don't have enough strength left to deride your ignorant questions and half baked comments about unimportant trivia, or any of the rest of this drivel. Duh.

Re:tell me why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because you disagree with another person's opinion, is no reason to call them a "gay fucking commie". Next time you decide to be ignorant and insult someone, do you think you could come up with something a little more appropriate (and more creative)to say? Your flaming skills need work! I suggest you work on them!

Re:Atipa purchases EST and what about BRU?

[Eric Green]

That's something that I'd be curious to know too, but remember, the EST deal has not been finalized yet. It'd be premature to announce something about such a decision when some unusual event might call the deal off. A letter of intent is not the same thing as a finalized purchase.

In the meantime, EST *has* Open Sourced some code. CRU/ODBR has been Open Sourced and anybody could grab them and modify them to operate with the backup utility of their choice. A couple of encryption modules have been Open Sourced too. Go look at for a cryptographic-quality PRNG and a TwoFish encryption module for Python. [slashdot.org]

Disclaimers:

1. I am an employee of EST.
2. I am not an "authorized speaker" for EST.
3. Like all low-level software engineering types, management tells me things only after they've already released the press release. Thus I have no more inside knowledge of the EST/Atipa deal than you do.
4. Thus all contents of this message represent my own personal opinion, and not the opinion of EST and its management.

-E

Atipa purchases EST and what about BRU?

[Taco Cowboy]

The links go to Atipa, it has an announcement about the recent purchase of EST (Enhance Software Technologies), the maker of the BRU backup and restore utility.

What is lack is there is NO mention about what will happen to the BRU, and to all other Atipa's current and future softwares will be.

Will Atipa change BRU's licensing?

Will Atipa support the open-source community by releasing all its softwares on GPL?

That is something I want to know.

Re:Wow

[bsletten]

I had very mixed experiences with Atipa too. I went to them because they supported FreeBSD. I never received a cable connecting my CD-ROM to my sound card (not a big deal -- but I was told several times that it had been shipped!!!!) and I was told that the HP-8100i was supported under FreeBSD (I even asked for clarification on this point several times). Once I had it, I was told I had to upgrade to 3.0 get the support. To this day, I can't burn audio with it, but I can at least do backups. On the one hand, Kevin was very helpful (I had *LOTS* of weird little problems). On the other, I came away ultimately dissatisfied. Now, they are in a different state and focus on Linux. What the hell?

good for them

[Uart]

atipa is a great company, i'm using one of their boxes to write this, in fact. Linux is good.

Re:tell me why?

[Jason R]

Okay, a few days ago I made a (un political) jab at americans. I'm a Canadian (who personally has nothing against Americans). I'm amazed at the number of people (not you personally) who resort to either sexual or political preference jokes to take someone down. If you can come up with a reasonalbe or logically based arguement to dis-agree with someone, why don't you give up? I mean, all that's left if basically calling someone names...

tell me why?

[Spaztek]

Ok i might get flamed for this but it is what i think. See, i feel that the choice of linux solutions is gradualy increasing which isnt a good thing. It can be, when there is a technology or desktop manager or somthing that uses the kernel to the utmost fullest. But unless this investment is a really kick @$$ deal, i dont think it is worth it.

Aptiva?

[gargle]

Everytime I see Atipa, I think Aptiva.. it's an unnerving negative association.

I think

[rosewood]

I think Taco is just posting till he hits 10k. Thats my opinion

Atipa == not good.

[yomoma]

I as well had a very poor experience with Atipa. They shipped with a cheaper version of an (already cheap) S3 video card that had only very experimental support in Linux. Suffice to say, my "preconfigured" Redhat system would not start in X. Until I called and bitched them out for a while and they sent ATI cards as a replacement (which was very nice I admit). I also ordered a Viewsonic monitor but they shipped an Optiquest, which I understand is made by Viewsonic, but not at all the model which I ordered. Very, very unsatisfied....

Re:So they used to be FreeBSD guys?

[Noctrnl]

I don't suppose you have a damn clue what you are talking about do you? I guess you needn't have one to talk out of your ass. If you DID have a clue, you would know that Atipa changed ownership some time back, and with that change, their focus also changed. Money had little or nothing to do with the new focus on linux. Just remember, when you hear that loud pop, it's the sound of your head coming out of your ass.

Re:Atipa purchases EST and what about BRU?

[Noctrnl]

Atipa is not, and will never be, a software company. So why would they mess with something that works? You do know that companies can be owned by someone and still do their own business, right?

Re:Wow

[zaytar]

I actually have had good sucess with them. They have always taken care of any DOA equipment or other problems quickly. I guess YMMV.

They got the linux focus when they were bought out

[jaybuffington]

I've worked with Atipa before and from what I understand they were bought by Jason Talley (current CEO and President) about 8 months ago. Jason changed the focus of the company to Linux as part of his taking over. So then, the switch from FreeBSD to Linux was a result of a change in managment. The old garage Atipa in AZ that some people remember barly exists anymore, basically the only thing that survives is the name. They are a good company and I support whatever it is they do.

Jay

Re:Wow + some Atipa background

[smokedatyou]

Anonymous Coward seems you have a lot to say. I think you need to get your info straight before posting it out on the internet. I worked for Talley Technologies and several customers commented on our excellent service and support. If Talley Tech. is "a bottom of the barrell" company then why can it do 3 times the business of it's competitors in the same area. Also Mr. Talley is an excellent boss and strives to make sure his customers are taken care. If you can't post acurate information you shouldn't post it at all!!!!

Re:Atipa == not good.

[smokedatyou]

you got replacement cards that are 10 times better than the crappy ones you ordered and your complaining??? Sounds like you're the one with the problem.

testing

[bandicoot]

12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890
12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890
12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890
12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890
12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890
12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890
12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890
12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890
12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890
12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890
12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890
12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890
12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890
12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890
12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890
12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890
12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890
12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890
12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890
12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890
12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890
12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890
12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890
12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890
12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890
12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890
12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890
12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890
12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890
12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890

In related news...

[Kaz Kylheku]

Atipa immediately used the $30M to settle a debt with the company that invented the name ``Atipa''.

;)

Re:Wow

[takemiya]

Times are indeed changing. Last year I chose to buy a box from Atípa mainly because they didn't think (at the time) that the free Unix world began and ended with Linux.

My mistake.

The box - or most of it, I should say - didn't ship until a month after they charged my credit card. When it did arrive, it had an ATAPI CD-ROM instead of the SCSI I ordered, the SCSI chain was unterminated so it wouldn't have booted at all... and the monitor didn't arrive at all. I had to call them to find out that the monitor - which they had already charged me for - was back-ordered. I told them to drop that part of the order and got a better monitor cheaper from someone else - but still had to spend several months playing phone tag with them before they refunded me.

On the rare occasions I could get someone on the phone who would admit to knowing about my order, I was usually told I had to talk to Jason Talley, the boss - who was never there and who never, ever, ever returned my calls. Even when they admitted shipping the wrong CD-ROM drive was their mistake, they never gave me an RMI for it so I could return the damned thing.

Of course, I was an idiot not to just buy parts and put them together myself. All the same, fuck Atípa.

Linux.com Has an Article About Dave Whitinger Too

[Anonymous Coward]

This article [linux.com] provides an interesting insight into Dave's achievements. --Marius.

So they used to be FreeBSD guys?

[auntfloyd]

I wonder what made them switch? Certainly not all the money to be made in Linux these days, huh? I may well be wrong, but it goes to show what can happen to dedication to a cause when money becomes a factor.

After all, we don't hear about multi-million dollar FreeBSD company IPOs, do we? Have there been any, anyway? I don't really follow the BSD world (but maybe I should given that I use OpenBSD!)

~~~~~~~~~
auntfloyd

Wow

[cjsnell]

Back when I was in college at the University of New Mexico, I remember visiting Atipa when it was in a garage-like building behind a house in a scary part of town. We went there to pick up a PC (back before they were big into Linux...they were FreeBSD zealots at the time) and some cholos across the street were throwing up gang signs at us. It was classic. Somehow, my roommate (the guy buying the peecee) knew one of the Atipa guys from back in Texas and they we're supposed to be kind of crazy. We knock on the door, half expecting some guys with 9mm's to open it and shoot us on site. They invite us into the place and my jaw drops. It was the coolest office I'd ever seen. It was, as I said, a building that once held some sort of garage or warehouse. It was kind of dark inside but they had it lit up with torch lamps, which were pretty new and cool at the time. They had a rack with a fractional T1 or something like that and a couple of FreeBSD boxes. We got our pc and left and I remember thinking that it was the most "garage-ish" operation I'd ever seen.

And now they're getting funded. Times are changing!

Chris