Why was Groupstudy down for 3 days in the Middle of September when every CCIE Candidate who desperately needs his/her peers to meet and beat the CCIE Lab while they still can before the October 17th Deadline?
Answer:
Darby Weaver
Wait!
Darby did not attack the site and DoS it... No, he didn't. That's a little fiction with no fact attached. Makes a good story to append to the legend of Darby Weaver but it's not quite true.
Darby and some of the owners of some of the Cisco 360 Program had exchanged some emails, well not just Darby, there were other luminaries and well known trainers and folks from the "CCIE Grey Market" or "CCIE 2.0 Program" too.
By the time this OK Corral was finished over 100 rounds (emails) had been fired and Brad Ellis nor any of the other of the 360 instructors were anywhere to be found... Wayne Lawson still stood, so did Scott Morris and Darby weaver was still in the fray but the others seemed to have just ran away... Darby called "Iron Brad" out after he said the 360 offered "A little something extra" and Brad was fired heavily upon for suggesting that the Cisco 360 would break the NDA - there was talk of the days when some training companies used the TestKing to teach in their classes... So Iron turned to Rust and then to Dust... and Iron Brad was heard from no more... That was that.
Narbik chimed in and to Iron Brad's dismay, he didn't really lend a hand... no surprise either... "The Whiner" ummm.... excuse me... "Iron Brad"... disappeared. He never replied to Darby...
The last post of the thread came from Rick Smith, the Cisco 360 Program Director (kinda sounds like Bill Cosby saying...B-U-C-K S-M-I-T-H back in the day...). He charged that what Darby said was untrue and off-base and that the other vendors where taking cheap shots at the Cisco 360.
Umm... If it is true... (how can it be un-true?), if it is right on target.. (Ummm.. how can it be off-base...).
Look the 360 is pretty much dead or dying and you can blame it on the economy... you can blame it on the competition, or you just blame it on Darby Weaver...
Well guess which one happened?
They took out the root cause of their failure: Darby Weaver
Seriously.
They must have some issues doing so but in any event they erased his posts from him (his replies are still fully viewable from other members of that list) and then they gagged his account and finally disabled his account too.
Darby told the Cisco to R.I.P. - Rest in Peace and they tried to erase him from the Internet Archives - well at least of Groupstudy.
And apparently they gagged some of the others too...
This is hot as sh*t and so the dust has not settled yet.
Groupstudy is as quiet as a library.
No telling who is left and who it not.
They will claim technical difficulties - of course...
Paul Borghese is the man who owns Groupstudy.
Cisco 360 owns Paul Borghese...
Rick Smith owns Cisco 360...
You see the pride of ownership...
It's called Censorship - but the site is privately owned and it is the right of the owner to delete unwanted content.
(I really have trouble with understanding Paul Borghese - Cisco has starved his business, he's even said he'd let Narbik teach his classes and he may even sell his books, and then his list is being undermined just a bit by Cisco's own study groups...
Maybe he does not see it this way... anyway he used to be his own man... maybe he will soon).
So it is what it is.
Now the Cisco 360 Monopoly.... I mean the Cisco 360 Program.
As of this year the Cisco 360 has approached pretty much every Cisco CCIE Trainer and tried to strong-arm them into the program...
1. CCSI - Must teach Cisco CCIE 360 or Decertify.
2. CLC's - Must be Cisco 360 or cannot accept CLC's.
3. Students - Cisco is not sending students to non-Cisco 360 Training Companies.
If Cisco has an independent program... why would they?
That's a given too.
This is a multi-million dollar business and overall training may be a Multi-Billion Dollar industry.
So... get out the Monopoly Money - I mean Cisco Learning Credits and let the games begin...
Who want to be the hat or the boot?
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