Yes, compared to today's languages (or even languages of the '80's), COBOL is a joke. If it were released today, it would be quite correctly derided as a pathetic attempt at "Natural Language Programming." You'd earn a lousy grade if you put it together as part of a language design class.
However, waayyyy back in the Stone Ages of computing when it was developed, it was a stroke of absolute genius. Combined with FORTRAN, it made computers useful for both scientific and business work, and freed programming from the tyranny of rare, and highly-trained, programmers; a reasonably intelligent schmoe could be taught programming in a relatively short span of time. We've learned a LOT since then, but beating up on COBOL for being a bad language compared with the languages of today is like beating up on a PC-XT for not having a 1TB hard drive.
Netflix doesn't have a Linux desktop client for the same reason WoW doesn't. Because it's not worth the trouble. The potential market for such a player is too small, and the Linux market too fragmented, to be worth their time.
I didn't know that support of the Linux desktop for clients was a requirement (or even an obligation) for a company that makes heavy use of Linux on the server-side. I have not the least clue what one has to do with the other...
Okay, I get that Wikipedia doesn't run for free. But plastering a big picture of "Jimbo" at the top of every page is precisely the wrong way to go about it. If I'm going to donate money, it won't be because Jimmy Whales himself asked, it'll be because Wikipedia is a mostly-reliable resource of knowledge.
This should have been a "We, Wikipedia, need money" campaign, not a "I, Jimmy Whales, want you to give money to Wikipedia" campaign. And showcasing the unpaid contributors doesn't make me want to give money either. Personal appeals for money work if the person is a celebrity, and they don't actually run, or work for, the charity they want you to support. Otherwise, stick to appealing to ideas, principles, and projects, and leave the individual out of it.
I know that Alan Greenspan personally knew Ayn Rand. But the article was not about Alan Greenspan, it was about Scott McNealy, who almost certainly did not know her as he was growing up.
Let me get this straight: Ayn Rand was his "mentor", yet he's never read her what is considered by most (and Ms. Rand herself) to be her "flagship" novel? The Fountainhead was merely a warming-up exercise to Atlas... Personally, I think both novels are awful, but I've never been a big fan of polemic, no matter which side of the political spectrum it falls on. (And too many good authors fall into the trap of thinking I give a $hit about their political views and let their books suffer greatly as a result; e.g. Clancy after "Cardinal of the Kremlin".)
Maybe he has political ambitions, and professing admiration for Ayn Rand is just a checkbox he felt obligated to fill out...
A TS security clearance (what I have) takes about six months to process, and the organization requesting it is billed about $20-$25k for the investigation process. The first time, your fingerprints are run, and you get drug tests. Every time, an investigator is dispatched to talk personally to your boss, your friends, your co-workers, and you. Your doctor is called, and your medical records scrutinized. Your travel history is examined. If there are any flags anywhere, the investigation takes even longer. (Foreign birth, foreign-born parents, old minor drug arrests, extensive travel to suspicious-looking places, etc. None of those things bar you from a clearance, they just make it take longer.)
Homosexuals are not excluded from a civilian clearance (they don't even ask, and it's not part of the investigation.) I don't know how it's handled for military clearances.
I hope that answers why there aren't more clearances. (It's too expensive, time-consuming and some might blanch at the intense scrutinizing of their private lives.) If you work for a contractor, they have to pay you during processing, which makes it even more expensive.
I'm up for my third security clearance investigations. What makes somebody with security clearance different from a member of the general population?
- The fortitude to spend about five hours filling out the never-to-be-sufficiently-damned SF-86 form. - A guaranteed mostly-clean criminal record. - Not in dire financial straits - A U.S. Citizen - Not currently suffering from major mental illness, nor on any more than negligible doses of tranquilizers or opioid painkillers. (They do pull your health records.) - You don't spend time hanging out with the local terrorist cell - A sense of humor to answer questions like: "Are you planning to overthrow the US govt.? Are you a terrorist? Are you a drug dealer?, etc." without busting out laughing that they even ask. (If you answer "no" to any of those questions and they find out you were lying, I don't think the "negative employment consequences" they warn you about when filling out the form will matter a whole lot..)
In other words, probably about 90%+ of U.S. citizens are perfectly eligible for security clearance; it isn't that hard.
Read a fascinating (and funny) book called "Sympathy for the Devil" by Holly Lisle. It's available for free from the Baen Books Free Library. (baen.com) (Baen is a large SF publisher specializing in fantasy and military SF, not a religious books place, so fear not that I'm trying to convert you...) I believe Holly Lisle is a Fantasy author, although I have not read her other work.
In the book a young nurse asks the very same question of God after a rough day at work and offers up her very soul to stop it. She gets a very interesting (and funny) response from God. No bible quotes, no Jesus, no proselytizing of any sort... (I promise.) It covers Damnation, Satan, Fallen Angels, the lack of competent IT Techs in Hell, and the demonically-designed highway system of Charlotte, North Carolina.
Is it theologically sound? Does it conform in any way with scripture? This agnostic is the wrong person to ask... But it's a short, quick, read, and will waste no more than a few hours of your time if you don't like it... (Feel free to flame me afterwards.)
Beef is indeed a horribly inefficient way of producing edible protein. However, both pork and, even better, poultry, are far more efficient.
Next, I can't find a single source that comes anywhere close to your 54:1 ratio. Three different books on Google (meant as practical references for ranchers raising cattle, and therefore having an interest in being accurate instead of propaganda) gave ratios from 6-15%, depending on what was being raised. That's a LONG way from sub-2%.
Also, see those pointy things at the front of your mouth? The ones maladapted to 100% plant consumption? They're called "canines", right next to "incisors." They are designed for tearing meat. Why are they there, in addition to the plant-grinding-things at the back of the mouth? Because you are an OMNIVORE. Mankind has been eating meat long before fire; raw meat is perfectly edible and digestible, even if game meats are a bit chewy.
Oh, and that last link to fao.org said NOTHING about renal/kidney failure (neither word occurs anywhere), and nothing about the hazards of excess protein consumption. (It did refer to excess fat consumption)
I like how you completely ignored my original point. Where did ANY of that bill include DHS being able to seize networks in the event of a disaster? I did read it (hence my original challenge.) A provision like that is NOWHERE in there. At all. Not even close.
Your summary is that of a 100% bog-standard regulatory bill. You could have substituted the word "meatpacking plant", "stock brokerage", "bank", "electric utility", "airline", "insurance company", "monopoly", or "drug manufacturer" for "private network" in your summary and you would have summarized just about every U.S. regulatory bill written any time starting around the beginning of the 20th century. One of the functions of government is to regulate many different classes of private commerce. The constitution says they can do so, and pretty much every government outside of Somalia does this (or at least pretends to.)
Oh, and the one bullet you didn't include a cite for: "the operator of the private network must pay to certify that they meet the criteria." Looked for that in the bill, and I can see why you didn't include a cite. It's not there. (I searched for pay, cost, costs, and certify.) Did you just make it up? Just like the evil plot to sieze the networks in an emergency?
Before you go ranting and accusing the government of fascism, maybe you could actually, you know, READ the proposed legislation, and then cite the passage where you have found this provision?
DHS has been given authority to ensure critical networks are up to federal security standards. Apart from the discussion of if this will be useful, this does not, in any way, put them "In Charge" of the networks.
I haven't the least freaking clue why municipalities and states fall all over themselves to recruit these data centers. In return for a finite good (the available electrical power off the grid), and waiving pretty much all taxes, they get only a tiny handful of jobs. And most of the jobs are NOT high-skill or high-paid, because the jobs in the data center itself revolve almost solely around equipment maintenance. The "high-tech" work is pretty much all done remotely.
I guess it's not bad for a temporary blip in the construction industry, but I'm not sure that's worth the cost. That available grid capacity could almost certainly be put to better use running an office park or a factory.
Imagine that your entire life you eat a lot of oatmeal. In fact, you love it so much you have it every single day. You see somebody eat an bright red apple across the street. Do you then say: "I have eaten enough oatmeal in my life to know that that person just ate a red candy-coated crunchy bleached oatmeal ball." ?
3D does not reduce the Depth of Field of the final image. Movies are commonly shot at a wide aperture in order to throw the background out of focus; if it were otherwise, your eye would not be able to comfortably process the scene; it would be too "busy". Where 3D throws you for a loop is because your eye sees the depth in the image and expects to be able to focus in on the out-of-focus elements. If you weren't able to see the background in 3D, you aren't going to see it in 2D either.
It took me about an hour to get used to this when watching Avatar; I wanted to see all that cool stuff in the background too.
Gee, I have no problem whatsoever telling the difference between ads and content on Google (or almost anywhere, for that matter.) Even if this clown can't tell the difference, I can't say it's a universal problem. As far as the search index goes; Google seems to have been a decent steward so far. For what I search for, it produces good results, and they clearly delineate between ads and search results (unlike some other engines) and they have always done so.
I'm still using the same GUI in Windows that I started using in 1996 with Windows 95. There is no "try" about it... a few button clicks and about 30 seconds and I'm done. I don't have to download or install a single freaking thing, nor do I have to have any clue as to what is going on under the covers. I truly do not give a $hit that Windows "isn't modular." The GUI works the same way it has for the last decade and a half. That's what I need it to do, and the fact that Linux can do it in a more elegant way is not a feature I need.
I was applying for Federal security clearance back in college, and the form gave dire warnings of the consequences should they find out I was lying on the form. Some of the sample questions: - Do you currently deal illegal drugs? - Are you a member of an organization dedicated to the overthrow of the United States government through unconstitutional means? - Are you a terrorist?
If you answer "No" to these questions, and they later find out you lied on your form, I have a funny feeling lying on your form is going to be a rounding error on your eventual prison sentence.
While a plain steel paperclip is probably not in danger of lead contamination, coated/painted ones are, especially those coming from China.
Rulers can have the markings painted with lead paint. Lead Oxide is a fantastic paint additive: it's cheap, colorful, sticks well, stays dissolved in solution, etc. If it weren't for the fact its toxic it would probably still be the primary pigment in white paint.
What this brouhaha is referring to is NOT to determine if a child may poke their eye out with a paperclip or cut themselves with the ruler. This is to determine if the makers of the kits must test these constituent parts for lead, which has been banned in toys.
Given that "Cloud Computing" as a buzzword is only about two years old, and has yet to receive a great deal of commercial deployment, I think we can hardly blame the FAA, NTSB, Boeing, Airbus, and airlines for not deploying it Right The Heck Now.
What does that even mean, to use "Cloud Computing" for the "black box"? Cloud Computing has about as coherent of a definition as the previous buzzword du jour, "Web 2.0".
English pronunciation also varies widely. So much so that somebody with a strong New England accent would be unlikely to be able to understand someone with a deep Southern accent without great difficulty. In the company where I work, I heard this all the time from Yankees that had to take classes from our training center in Atlanta. And there are many deep accents all over the world: Scottish, Cockney, "BBC English", and the accent belonging to each individual former English colony.
While the advent of modern media has decreased these differences markedly, but they have always been strong enough that English has never been phonetically spelled. Yes, there are some minor regional spelling differences, but they are not so great as to markedly affect understanding.
If the OP wants to choose to remember his wife in this way, and help preserve a legacy for his/her daughters by recording everything he can about her, than that is his choice. The fact that this information is not of interest to YOU is entirely irrelevant. This data isn't for you to consume, and I'm not sure how you could possibly evaluate the worth of this.
Given that his wife is in Stage 4, and the daughters so young, the ability to create memories is likely not great, and getting worse. If recording memories is all he can put together, so be it.
Larry Ellison runs Oracle like his own personal fiefdom. He's very good at what he does, but he's the last person on earth I'd ask for advice on executive boundaries. His attitude fits in very well with Oracle's corporate culture (which he built.) It would be a disaster for HP.
Oracle's board would never fire him for such a thing (could they even do so?), but HP's board was quite right in tossing Hurd to the curb.
HP's board made a tough choice, but in the end, I think it will have proven to be the correct one.
The firing wasn't about the amount of the falsification. $20k is indeed chump change for a bazillion-dollar executive. But once you let the CEO get away with blatantly falsifying expense accounts, you've now made theft from the company an acceptable practice. How do you now justify firing an employee for the same thing? Why is it okay for a CEO to steal $20k, but not okay for a peon to do the same? Condoning this behavior is simply not the right thing to do, and can trigger long-term problems with morale and the company culture which can lead to massive losses (and possibly company failure) years down the road.
I'd say there is a 100% chance that any peon that stole $20k would be escorted out of the building by security (and isn't going to receive any cushy severance package either) and possibly brought up on charges.
I applaud HP's board for doing the right thing here and demonstrating the executives are held to the same ethical rules as front-line employees. Yes, it hurt. Yes, Hurd was an otherwise-excellent CEO. Yes, this has cost a lot of short-term pain to the stock price. But some things just aren't right, and churning up $20k in fraudulent expense accounts is one of them. (Wiretapping journalists to find out their sources is another, which HP found out the hard way.) I think HP will be a stronger company down the road as a result.
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Yes, compared to today's languages (or even languages of the '80's), COBOL is a joke. If it were released today, it would be quite correctly derided as a pathetic attempt at "Natural Language Programming." You'd earn a lousy grade if you put it together as part of a language design class.
However, waayyyy back in the Stone Ages of computing when it was developed, it was a stroke of absolute genius. Combined with FORTRAN, it made computers useful for both scientific and business work, and freed programming from the tyranny of rare, and highly-trained, programmers; a reasonably intelligent schmoe could be taught programming in a relatively short span of time. We've learned a LOT since then, but beating up on COBOL for being a bad language compared with the languages of today is like beating up on a PC-XT for not having a 1TB hard drive.
Netflix doesn't have a Linux desktop client for the same reason WoW doesn't. Because it's not worth the trouble. The potential market for such a player is too small, and the Linux market too fragmented, to be worth their time.
I didn't know that support of the Linux desktop for clients was a requirement (or even an obligation) for a company that makes heavy use of Linux on the server-side. I have not the least clue what one has to do with the other...
Quit 'yer whining...
Okay, I get that Wikipedia doesn't run for free. But plastering a big picture of "Jimbo" at the top of every page is precisely the wrong way to go about it. If I'm going to donate money, it won't be because Jimmy Whales himself asked, it'll be because Wikipedia is a mostly-reliable resource of knowledge.
This should have been a "We, Wikipedia, need money" campaign, not a "I, Jimmy Whales, want you to give money to Wikipedia" campaign. And showcasing the unpaid contributors doesn't make me want to give money either. Personal appeals for money work if the person is a celebrity, and they don't actually run, or work for, the charity they want you to support. Otherwise, stick to appealing to ideas, principles, and projects, and leave the individual out of it.
I know that Alan Greenspan personally knew Ayn Rand. But the article was not about Alan Greenspan, it was about Scott McNealy, who almost certainly did not know her as he was growing up.
Let me get this straight: Ayn Rand was his "mentor", yet he's never read her what is considered by most (and Ms. Rand herself) to be her "flagship" novel? The Fountainhead was merely a warming-up exercise to Atlas... Personally, I think both novels are awful, but I've never been a big fan of polemic, no matter which side of the political spectrum it falls on. (And too many good authors fall into the trap of thinking I give a $hit about their political views and let their books suffer greatly as a result; e.g. Clancy after "Cardinal of the Kremlin".)
Maybe he has political ambitions, and professing admiration for Ayn Rand is just a checkbox he felt obligated to fill out...
SirWired
A TS security clearance (what I have) takes about six months to process, and the organization requesting it is billed about $20-$25k for the investigation process. The first time, your fingerprints are run, and you get drug tests. Every time, an investigator is dispatched to talk personally to your boss, your friends, your co-workers, and you. Your doctor is called, and your medical records scrutinized. Your travel history is examined. If there are any flags anywhere, the investigation takes even longer. (Foreign birth, foreign-born parents, old minor drug arrests, extensive travel to suspicious-looking places, etc. None of those things bar you from a clearance, they just make it take longer.)
Homosexuals are not excluded from a civilian clearance (they don't even ask, and it's not part of the investigation.) I don't know how it's handled for military clearances.
I hope that answers why there aren't more clearances. (It's too expensive, time-consuming and some might blanch at the intense scrutinizing of their private lives.) If you work for a contractor, they have to pay you during processing, which makes it even more expensive.
I'm up for my third security clearance investigations. What makes somebody with security clearance different from a member of the general population?
- The fortitude to spend about five hours filling out the never-to-be-sufficiently-damned SF-86 form.
- A guaranteed mostly-clean criminal record.
- Not in dire financial straits
- A U.S. Citizen
- Not currently suffering from major mental illness, nor on any more than negligible doses of tranquilizers or opioid painkillers. (They do pull your health records.)
- You don't spend time hanging out with the local terrorist cell
- A sense of humor to answer questions like: "Are you planning to overthrow the US govt.? Are you a terrorist? Are you a drug dealer?, etc." without busting out laughing that they even ask. (If you answer "no" to any of those questions and they find out you were lying, I don't think the "negative employment consequences" they warn you about when filling out the form will matter a whole lot..)
In other words, probably about 90%+ of U.S. citizens are perfectly eligible for security clearance; it isn't that hard.
Read a fascinating (and funny) book called "Sympathy for the Devil" by Holly Lisle. It's available for free from the Baen Books Free Library. (baen.com) (Baen is a large SF publisher specializing in fantasy and military SF, not a religious books place, so fear not that I'm trying to convert you...) I believe Holly Lisle is a Fantasy author, although I have not read her other work.
In the book a young nurse asks the very same question of God after a rough day at work and offers up her very soul to stop it. She gets a very interesting (and funny) response from God. No bible quotes, no Jesus, no proselytizing of any sort... (I promise.) It covers Damnation, Satan, Fallen Angels, the lack of competent IT Techs in Hell, and the demonically-designed highway system of Charlotte, North Carolina.
Is it theologically sound? Does it conform in any way with scripture? This agnostic is the wrong person to ask... But it's a short, quick, read, and will waste no more than a few hours of your time if you don't like it... (Feel free to flame me afterwards.)
Beef is indeed a horribly inefficient way of producing edible protein. However, both pork and, even better, poultry, are far more efficient.
Next, I can't find a single source that comes anywhere close to your 54:1 ratio. Three different books on Google (meant as practical references for ranchers raising cattle, and therefore having an interest in being accurate instead of propaganda) gave ratios from 6-15%, depending on what was being raised. That's a LONG way from sub-2%.
Also, see those pointy things at the front of your mouth? The ones maladapted to 100% plant consumption? They're called "canines", right next to "incisors." They are designed for tearing meat. Why are they there, in addition to the plant-grinding-things at the back of the mouth? Because you are an OMNIVORE. Mankind has been eating meat long before fire; raw meat is perfectly edible and digestible, even if game meats are a bit chewy.
Oh, and that last link to fao.org said NOTHING about renal/kidney failure (neither word occurs anywhere), and nothing about the hazards of excess protein consumption. (It did refer to excess fat consumption)
I like how you completely ignored my original point. Where did ANY of that bill include DHS being able to seize networks in the event of a disaster? I did read it (hence my original challenge.) A provision like that is NOWHERE in there. At all. Not even close.
Your summary is that of a 100% bog-standard regulatory bill. You could have substituted the word "meatpacking plant", "stock brokerage", "bank", "electric utility", "airline", "insurance company", "monopoly", or "drug manufacturer" for "private network" in your summary and you would have summarized just about every U.S. regulatory bill written any time starting around the beginning of the 20th century. One of the functions of government is to regulate many different classes of private commerce. The constitution says they can do so, and pretty much every government outside of Somalia does this (or at least pretends to.)
Oh, and the one bullet you didn't include a cite for: "the operator of the private network must pay to certify that they meet the criteria." Looked for that in the bill, and I can see why you didn't include a cite. It's not there. (I searched for pay, cost, costs, and certify.) Did you just make it up? Just like the evil plot to sieze the networks in an emergency?
Before you go ranting and accusing the government of fascism, maybe you could actually, you know, READ the proposed legislation, and then cite the passage where you have found this provision?
DHS has been given authority to ensure critical networks are up to federal security standards. Apart from the discussion of if this will be useful, this does not, in any way, put them "In Charge" of the networks.
I haven't the least freaking clue why municipalities and states fall all over themselves to recruit these data centers. In return for a finite good (the available electrical power off the grid), and waiving pretty much all taxes, they get only a tiny handful of jobs. And most of the jobs are NOT high-skill or high-paid, because the jobs in the data center itself revolve almost solely around equipment maintenance. The "high-tech" work is pretty much all done remotely.
I guess it's not bad for a temporary blip in the construction industry, but I'm not sure that's worth the cost. That available grid capacity could almost certainly be put to better use running an office park or a factory.
Think for a moment about your statement.
Imagine that your entire life you eat a lot of oatmeal. In fact, you love it so much you have it every single day. You see somebody eat an bright red apple across the street. Do you then say: "I have eaten enough oatmeal in my life to know that that person just ate a red candy-coated crunchy bleached oatmeal ball." ?
3D does not reduce the Depth of Field of the final image. Movies are commonly shot at a wide aperture in order to throw the background out of focus; if it were otherwise, your eye would not be able to comfortably process the scene; it would be too "busy". Where 3D throws you for a loop is because your eye sees the depth in the image and expects to be able to focus in on the out-of-focus elements. If you weren't able to see the background in 3D, you aren't going to see it in 2D either.
It took me about an hour to get used to this when watching Avatar; I wanted to see all that cool stuff in the background too.
SirWired
Gee, I have no problem whatsoever telling the difference between ads and content on Google (or almost anywhere, for that matter.) Even if this clown can't tell the difference, I can't say it's a universal problem. As far as the search index goes; Google seems to have been a decent steward so far. For what I search for, it produces good results, and they clearly delineate between ads and search results (unlike some other engines) and they have always done so.
I'm still using the same GUI in Windows that I started using in 1996 with Windows 95. There is no "try" about it... a few button clicks and about 30 seconds and I'm done. I don't have to download or install a single freaking thing, nor do I have to have any clue as to what is going on under the covers. I truly do not give a $hit that Windows "isn't modular." The GUI works the same way it has for the last decade and a half. That's what I need it to do, and the fact that Linux can do it in a more elegant way is not a feature I need.
I was applying for Federal security clearance back in college, and the form gave dire warnings of the consequences should they find out I was lying on the form. Some of the sample questions:
- Do you currently deal illegal drugs?
- Are you a member of an organization dedicated to the overthrow of the United States government through unconstitutional means?
- Are you a terrorist?
If you answer "No" to these questions, and they later find out you lied on your form, I have a funny feeling lying on your form is going to be a rounding error on your eventual prison sentence.
While a plain steel paperclip is probably not in danger of lead contamination, coated/painted ones are, especially those coming from China.
Rulers can have the markings painted with lead paint. Lead Oxide is a fantastic paint additive: it's cheap, colorful, sticks well, stays dissolved in solution, etc. If it weren't for the fact its toxic it would probably still be the primary pigment in white paint.
What this brouhaha is referring to is NOT to determine if a child may poke their eye out with a paperclip or cut themselves with the ruler. This is to determine if the makers of the kits must test these constituent parts for lead, which has been banned in toys.
Given that "Cloud Computing" as a buzzword is only about two years old, and has yet to receive a great deal of commercial deployment, I think we can hardly blame the FAA, NTSB, Boeing, Airbus, and airlines for not deploying it Right The Heck Now.
What does that even mean, to use "Cloud Computing" for the "black box"? Cloud Computing has about as coherent of a definition as the previous buzzword du jour, "Web 2.0".
SirWired
English pronunciation also varies widely. So much so that somebody with a strong New England accent would be unlikely to be able to understand someone with a deep Southern accent without great difficulty. In the company where I work, I heard this all the time from Yankees that had to take classes from our training center in Atlanta. And there are many deep accents all over the world: Scottish, Cockney, "BBC English", and the accent belonging to each individual former English colony.
While the advent of modern media has decreased these differences markedly, but they have always been strong enough that English has never been phonetically spelled. Yes, there are some minor regional spelling differences, but they are not so great as to markedly affect understanding.
If the OP wants to choose to remember his wife in this way, and help preserve a legacy for his/her daughters by recording everything he can about her, than that is his choice. The fact that this information is not of interest to YOU is entirely irrelevant. This data isn't for you to consume, and I'm not sure how you could possibly evaluate the worth of this.
Given that his wife is in Stage 4, and the daughters so young, the ability to create memories is likely not great, and getting worse. If recording memories is all he can put together, so be it.
SirWired
Larry Ellison runs Oracle like his own personal fiefdom. He's very good at what he does, but he's the last person on earth I'd ask for advice on executive boundaries. His attitude fits in very well with Oracle's corporate culture (which he built.) It would be a disaster for HP.
Oracle's board would never fire him for such a thing (could they even do so?), but HP's board was quite right in tossing Hurd to the curb.
HP's board made a tough choice, but in the end, I think it will have proven to be the correct one.
SirWired
The firing wasn't about the amount of the falsification. $20k is indeed chump change for a bazillion-dollar executive. But once you let the CEO get away with blatantly falsifying expense accounts, you've now made theft from the company an acceptable practice. How do you now justify firing an employee for the same thing? Why is it okay for a CEO to steal $20k, but not okay for a peon to do the same? Condoning this behavior is simply not the right thing to do, and can trigger long-term problems with morale and the company culture which can lead to massive losses (and possibly company failure) years down the road.
I'd say there is a 100% chance that any peon that stole $20k would be escorted out of the building by security (and isn't going to receive any cushy severance package either) and possibly brought up on charges.
I applaud HP's board for doing the right thing here and demonstrating the executives are held to the same ethical rules as front-line employees. Yes, it hurt. Yes, Hurd was an otherwise-excellent CEO. Yes, this has cost a lot of short-term pain to the stock price. But some things just aren't right, and churning up $20k in fraudulent expense accounts is one of them. (Wiretapping journalists to find out their sources is another, which HP found out the hard way.) I think HP will be a stronger company down the road as a result.
SirWired