Leaving 11th Street

[superfreakicus]

\"I can\'t wait for the next contest, where for an encore Patent will get a zero return with his contest wagers and tell us he wiped out Saratoga for good by winning every wager on the card.\"


I thought that was mall\'s bit...

[TGJB]

Then you have no axe to grind. Right? I used the layout because that was what I was familiar with, and I didn\'t start out to sell--I was using the data for myself, and 3 or 4 others, until Ragozin (who until then had kept it as a private club) started marketing like crazy (mainly via Bob Beinish and Harvey Pack, who aired an interview with Ragozin 3 times). At that point I decided there was no reason I shouldn\'t enter the market as well.

[Friendly]

HP, now\'s your chance. How were my comments about the ground at Calder untrue and slanderous?

Unless Jerry has hired someone new to do the ground, you are gonna have to back down. If I\'m wrong I\'ll apologize.

Perhaps you should consult Jerry on some of these things - he does not want them discussed.  


Jerry, JR.

[Friendly]

Poppa Jer, there is the slanderous comment. I have never discussed your product with anyone at the track, not once. Please stop the lying. Frankly, I have never seen anyone using it.

While the track purchases Ragozin for the big bettors here, your\'s is almost non-existent. That is why you got kicked off a couple of years ago.

\"1- Our trackmen not only watch the races, they watch reruns, and sometimes Steward\'s tape.\"

Well, at least now you are giving us a trickle of the truth. Like Clinton, we must examine this statement carefully because it is only partially true. Your trackman do watch races live, I agree. But, they don\'t watch all the races live. They are employed by the track and may be busy doing something else. So I guess they aren\'t able to hand time them all either, are they?

Next time try your spin on someone that doesn\'t know the truth.


Jerry, JR.

[HP]

I don\'t have to back down or do anything. Regards to Nebel. HP

[Friendly]

But HP, you just did. You didn\'t tell me how I was wrong. That\'s a problem isn\'t it? You are starting to understand that I know the truth.

You guys should be politicians. It\'s nothing but double-speak with you Graphies. Just remember, backing down is the only thing works for you Graphies. I don\'t leave lies left unanswered.

Jerry, JR.

P.S. Nebel\'s not at Calder - I never see him there - you must have a real hard-on for him.

[tegger]

Jerry,

This board has just gotten silly.  Obviously, some of these posters are agents of Rags or else they wouldn\'t spend so many hours posting this one-sided crap.  Jerry Jr\'s post about no one doing ground live at Calder comes from insiders in the figures game.  I really wouldn\'t care if you wathced it on tape or not.  I assume it is easier to focus on all the horses using tape then watching them only during the race.  What a poster without ties to Rags would gain by slamming this board with negative posts is beyond me so I must assume you are right about their agenda and their unrelenting zeal must logically carry over to the track where they must spend hours bad mouthing the TG product.  It must make it hard to handicap when they spend so much time blasting a competitors numbers.

I will probably always be a TG user because Rags does not offer downloads of his product, does not give multiple track discounts, offer the multitude of statistics that TG does and I find his sheets to be nearly illegible.  However, I would never bother blasting his product to anyone and couldn\'t care less if someone likes Rags more.  However, this board should be renamed, \"ask the Rags\' Sycophants\".  This board will never be able to sustain handicapping threads as long as you allow a few zealots to monopolize the board and run off legitimate posters with insults and illogical arguments.  Use your new software for its intended purpose and ban Soupie Sales and Jerry Jr and let the grown-ups talk for a while.  I do have to admit that at least Soup seems to want to discuss handicapping occassionally as opposed to Jerry Jr\'s unrelenting terrorist attacks.

[tegger]

Jerry,

This board has just gotten silly.  Obviously, some of these posters are agents of Rags or else they wouldn\'t spend so many hours posting this one-sided crap.  Jerry Jr\'s post about no one doing ground live at Calder comes from insiders in the figures game.  I really wouldn\'t care if you wathced it on tape or not.  I assume it is easier to focus on all the horses using tape then watching them only during the race.  What a poster without ties to Rags would gain by slamming this board with negative posts is beyond me so I must assume you are right about their agenda and their unrelenting zeal must logically carry over to the track where they must spend hours bad mouthing the TG product.  It must make it hard to handicap when they spend so much time blasting a competitors numbers.

I will probably always be a TG user because Rags does not offer downloads of his product, does not give multiple track discounts, offer the multitude of statistics that TG does and I find his sheets to be nearly illegible.  However, I would never bother blasting his product to anyone and couldn\'t care less if someone likes Rags more.  However, this board should be renamed, \"ask the Rags\' Sycophants\".  This board will never be able to sustain handicapping threads as long as you allow a few zealots to monopolize the board and run off legitimate posters with insults and illogical arguments.  Use your new software for its intended purpose and ban Soupie Sales and Jerry Jr and let the grown-ups talk for a while.  I do have to admit that at least Soup seems to want to discuss handicapping occassionally as opposed to Jerry Jr\'s unrelenting terrorist attacks.

[JRL]

Okay, I had no real desire to enter the name calling war, but I am getting a little tired of the Model T analogy.

The analogy makes no sense because the Porsche, as far as I know, was not designed by a former Ford employee who had access to trade secrets.  Perhaps a little lesson on the law of intellectual property is needed.

There are patents and trade secrets.  A patent protects one for a limited period of time from someone copying the idea or design process.  However, in addition to being restricted in terms of time, it requires a public explanation of the patented product, making it easier to legally copy once the patent expires.  There are also other restrictions that I won\'t discuss.  That is why many products are never patented.  Presumably Ragozin has not attempted to patent his sheet making process.

If a an idea is not patented, it can legally be copied.  Thus, if there were no patent for the Model T (and I don\'t know whether there was or not) anybody could buy a Model T, take it apart and copy it piece by piece (this is called reverse engineering, which is perfectly legal).  Similarly, I could buy Thorograph Sheets, take the information provided on this board, and copy the sheet maing process, and JB could do nothing about it (presumably though I have insufficient information to do that from purchasing his product).

Now, trade secrets are a different animal.  It is unlawful to use proprietary information obtained through a confidential relationship.  Now, I have no idea whether that is what JB did, and I don\'t want to speculate, but I let\'s discuss a hypothetical.

An employee of Thorograph takes JB\'s database and everything he learned about figure making  and makes an identical product.  Is that illegal?  Probably.  It depends on what steps JB used to keep his information secret, whether the information is readily available to the public and whether the employee had a confidential relationship (most employees do).  Is it immoral?  Well, that is for each individual to decide.

My point in this is not to accuse JB of anything.  I have no idea what information he had access to, what information he took and whether that information was proprietary or not.  What I do know is that the Model T analogy is stupid, and hopefully will not surface again.

BTW, while we are talking about law.  JB\'s assertions that Ragozin must be guilty of slander because he never \"answered\" his public letter is even more silly than his Model T analogy.  No lawyer would ever advise a client to answer such allegations, as it could only be used against him in the future. If JB really wanted an answer instead of a publicity stunt, he would have sued.

[TGJB]

Boy, there’s a lot to work with here.

1. You have never discussed our product with anyone at the track. You won’t find a living human who believes that one.

2. We sell okay at Gulfstream (so you’ve definitely seen someone using it—and you know Bill Goldsmith), less so at Calder, which couldn’t have anything to do with you and Nebel telling people we don’t use live ground, could it? By the way, Suffolk Racing Forum, Albany Teletheater, Connecticut OTB, Monmouth, and Meadowlands all buy our product to give as comps to big bettors.

3. Among our trackmen are the DRF’s Dave Litfin and five Equibase trackmen. Most watch the races live, all watch tapes—as do the Ragozin trackmen. There was (and I believe still is) one Ragozin trackman who does 5 tracks daily from his living room via satellite dish. He hand times races, same as ours do.

4. You’re the same guy who parsed the truth about your mentor Charlie Nebel—splitting hairs about which track he was barred from (for being dishonest), to make it appear it never happened. You really want to accuse us of half truths? Nebel’s still barred at Calder—that’s why you haven’t seen him there, right? Wonder why you didn’t mention that.

5. Our Florida trackman watches most of the races live, and all of them on both pan and head-on tapes. You weren’t parsing the truth to make it appear he was doing a bad job, were you?

6. Ragozin outsells us on weekends at Calder, we’ve been outselling him slightly during the week. Overall they outsell us, but by roughly 10 sets a week, or 2 a day. Which doesn’t matter, except in judging your credibility.

[Michael D.]

Jason,
 How long did it take you to think up all that crap? Life is too short matey, stop wasting your time. There is some good racing this w/e; save you energy, put up a few posts on Friday, and show us if you really know anything about horse racing..... Cheers

[JRL]

After 20 or so posts that have nothing to do with horse racing (90 percent of this board has nothing to do with handicapping), I get accused of wasting everyone\'s time.

[Michael D.]

Anybody following the Ascot meet? Great racing all week. I think a number of horses running will be at Belmont and Arlington this fall. I have a friend there, so I should get some feedback on the big ones. I would appreciate it if anybody else who follows European racing (TG included) would join in on the discussion.

[TGJB]

I\'m going to make the assumption that you haven\'t been reading all the posts recently, because I have a higher opinion of you than of the run of the mill Raggies psychos we\'ve been getting here, and I\'ve covered pretty much all these points recently. Just a couple of things, because I\'ve had a long day, and I\'m going home.

1. Re trade secrets--as I said recently, when I was in Ragozin\'s office he said repeatedly, in front of lots of people, that anyone could take anything they wanted. He knew that the formulas were the least of it--you still needed capital, live ground, judgement, and a willingness to work incredibly hard for a long time. In point of fact, I didn\'t touch his database and took very little else--we use slightly different wind and ground formulas and, as you have noticed, very different methods to make figures. We made our database from scratch.

2. Given the above there is nothing stupid about the analogy at all, and there wasn\'t anyway. No-one takes the position that the inventor of cars is the best or should be the only maker of cars, and in this case Ragozin didn\'t invent one damn element of his product other than his father\'s idea, the use of the graph, and you tell me whether putting figures on a graph would be copyright infringement in any business.

3. I don\'t remember saying Ragozin was guilty of slander. I did say his employees are guilty of lying, which I know and can prove because we got them on tape, and sent transcripts to Ragozin. You\'re damn right his lawyer told him to clam up--my point was that it should be obvious to anyone that if I didn\'t have the goods they could have shoved it up my butt in public, and anyone with a brain can draw their own conclusions.

4. In one of the posts you didn\'t read I explained why I didn\'t sue (again). My lawyer, who is very good, explained that to win I would have to prove both that Ragzoin had prior knowledge of his employees actions, and damages on a case by case basis. If you can figure out a cost effective way to do that let me know, and I\'ll give you half the net profit from the suit.

[superfreakicus]

ahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!

I should have guessed!!!!

that guy makes crist look like nostradamus!!


I guess it\'s true, what they say about birds of a feather...