Watching Slashdot readers spew on topics they know nothing about.
Newsflash #1: Carly doesn't actually RUN anything. She's the CEO of a 150,000 person company. Asking her to explain in detail any computing architecture is like asking Arnold Schwarzenegger to explain California's budget. Yeah, it's painful. She's also not the person to look to for a good explination.
Newsflash #2: You won't *really* get it until it happens. Do you remember the first time you heard about the web? I was a VAX/VMS programmer in college in 1992 when my brother calls me up and says "Have you heard about this Mosaic program they cooked up?" He tried his best to explain it to me. I didn't get it.
Newsflash #3: To those of you ranting on about Carly: I'm sorry you got fired/laid off from HP or Compaq and you're still bitter. But if you were so damn bright you should have seen the writing on the wall and gotten out on your own schedule. And since you left all divisions are profitable, growing, and the stock is up 25% in the past year. Not exactly the definition of a dying company. Get over it.
Do you live in the US? Do you own stocks or mutual funds (maybe in your 401(k) or IRA)? If so, you own HP stock. An Intel. And Microsoft. Don't think you do? Better read that prospectus for the Index fund.
Corporate boards work for you. They represent your views in corporate governance.
CEO's work for the boards. They are accountable for geting the best possible return on investors money.
In order to do so, they will do shocking things like try to increase revenues while managing costs.
So as soon as YOU stop being so "greedy" about your investments, I'm sure boards won't care how well the CEO does.
Now there's an argument to be make here about short-term and long-term performance, blah blah, but the truth here is that if Carly or Craig or Steve don't deliver short-term results they get fired.
Nothing introduced yet, including this Phillips thing, holds a candle to the now-discontinued HP DEC. The DEC was full Linux-based PC with a CD-RW, 40GB HD (expandable), and really slick TV interface (designed by Real and HP) that included internet radio and TV, ripping CD's to MP3, writing audio and MP3 CD's, import/export via Samba to your PC, exchanging MP3's with your USB portable...
Well, nothing you can see. The edge of the heliosphere (where the electromagnetic influence of the sun gets overwhelemed by background radiation) has long been a holy grail for astrophysicists. Pioneer 10 has the instruments on board to sense the edge, if only we could communicate with it.
Here's what the customer experience has to be to make something like this OK for the mass market:
1. Turn on. 2. Select media. 3. Push play.
What this idea would look like: 1. Turn on "media adapter" 2. Walk across the house to where the computer is. 3. Boot computer. Wait 5 minutes for boot. 4. Walk back to living room. 5. Find remote for media adapter. 6. Browse through dozens of menus and file systems to locate content. 7. Computer crashes. Repeat steps 2-6. 8. Push play. 9. Wait for content to buffer. 10. Little Johnny decides to play his new networked game. 11. Repeat steps 9-10 until (A) Johnny doesn't get to play any more or (B) you give up. 12. Turn off media adapter. 13. Shut down computer. 14. Go to bed.
In the US, it costs $13-34, including shipping. There are cheaper solutions, but you risk having your monitor end up in somebody's backyard in China. HP at least operates 2 recycling plants in Roseville, CA, and Nashville, TN.
I'm not going to wade in on a lame language war, but Fortran IS very portable. I have worked on code that was written in 1967 for a CDC mainframe. It was then ported to a: PDP-11, then a Vax, then a 486-class PC. The code ran much faster on the PC then the Vax.
Then I discovered that I needed a routine from the original CDC implementation, which had not been touched since. So I typed in the routine FROM CDC PUNCH CARDS. Compiled perfectly.
If you want to spend your time trying to figure out how to get around any company's business model, go right ahead. I know lots of people who bought two roundtrip airplane tickets to get around the Saturday night stay rules.
And if you don't like the way they protect their business model, shop elsewhere.
But if you start a business based on another company's product, please don't turn to legislation or lawsuits when they change their architecture to protect their profits.
And for those of you out there thinking "But what about Microsoft?", it's not the same. Printer manufacturers always made their own supplies...MS never touched the browser until it threatened them.
Look at these companies' financial statements. Nobody is making an obscene amount of money selling ink-jet printers and supplies.
Why not? Because it's an incredibly competitive industry, in which they take a huge loss (up to $100) on every printer sold, and make it up on cartridges.
Nobody gives you the right to buy a $49 printer (which cost over $150 to make, ship, stock, and promote) and then complain that the evil printer manufacturer wants to pay some salaries now.
And for you refillers...you had a great idea, reaping the rewards of the printer manufacturers' R&D by tapping into their profit stream. And then you complain when they try to protect themselves.
End game: 1. consumables drop in price, refillers' price advantage goes away 2. printer manufacturers raise printer prices to make money again 3. consumers who only print occasionally get hammered.
There is no question that we in the first world need to do something about electronic waste. If you don't agree, read the Silicon Valley Toxic Coalition's report "Exporting Harm" at http://www.svtc.org. And no, I'm not affiliated with them.
In fact, I work for one of the large US PC manufacturers. I personally don't like the idea of an eight-year old kid in China inhaling lead powder while beating apart my company's old monitor with a Crescent wrench.
So let's tax the sale of components? I'm not so sure. (and yes, it will have to be at a component level, aggregated up for TV's and computers and such. Don't think you won't be charged a $3.73 take-back fee for your new 600GB hard drive.)
If our goal is to drive manufacturers to take end-of-life concerns into account while designing products, then the European WEEE directive is a better solution. It mandates that manufactuers are resposible for taking back anything they ship. No up-front fees. No back-end fees. Just call up Compaq or Dell or Sony and say, "Thank you, I'm finished with your pile of lead, cadmium, and mercury. Please take it away now." And they will. And if they're smart, they'll eliminate the lead, cadmium, and mercury in the design because it will cost less to recycle. Who knows what the EU will be doing with home built computers. Maybe if you built it you should be able to take it apart and dispose of it properly, instead of poisoning our environment just so you can have the latest video card.
The era of throwing stuff away is over. There is no "away".
...it's about instant messaging and access to customers.
AOL is hoping it can use the Netscape issue to get forward-looking remedies that will keep AOL and AIM competitive in the future, when MS will inevitably use the OS as a loss-leader to secure control of the de-facto standard messaging protocol, and become the default ISP for most consumers. (or whatever else becomes the control point for owning consumer internet experience in the future)
For AOL the browser war is already lost...they just want to be able to have at least equal footing for the NEXT war.
Of the 120 people, 23 (the best, I assume) were offered jobs in Fort Collins, where a part of the HP-UX work gets done anyway. Also, this is only a fraction of the 1000 or so HP-UX engineers...most of which sit in the Bay Area or Colorado.
The sky is not falling. HP-UX will still be the only non-Linux Unix shipping on Itanium when McKinley rolls around. It looks like Sun and IBM have shelved their ports, for now at least. Don't you think HP gets this?
This iPAQ/Palm news is a perfect example of everybody needing to read the WHOLE story. First, it's based on revenue, that is, dollars NOT units. Since the average selling price for iPAQ's is roughly twice that of Palm's, the announcement basically says that now Compaq is selling roughly half the unit volume of Palm. Pretty impressive, but Compaq is still competing with Handspring, Sony, etc. on Palm OS and HP, Casio, etc. on WinCE.
It's also only the current quarter's sales rate, not installed base, which for WinCE is still pretty anemic.
I'm not trying to defend Palm here. They've got their problems, not the least of which is a CEO who is very good at destroying every company he touches. But really, it bugs me when numbers like this are taken out of context.
It's not a calculator company. Calculators are the gnat on the ass of this $49 Billion elephant.
It's not Test and Measurement. That's Agilent.
It's not 83 different companies.
It's one company, it has a strategy, and whether you like it or not, OpenMail does not fit this strategy.
HP will probably take the relevant parts of OpenMail and the great engineers working on it and focus them on contributing to the strategy.
Nowhere in the HP Way does it state that HP has to please everybody all the time. This includes employees and customers.
What it DOES say in the HP way is that HP will be ethical and fair. It will continue to support its OpenMail customers (or make sure that they are supported) while at the same time admitting that this is a dead-end product for HP and you are free to go elsewhere. And if you want help getting there, call HP and they will do anything from pointing you to Exchange or Sendmail or Notes or whatever to sending an army of HP consultants out to hold your hand.
Slashdot Mirror
Watching Slashdot readers spew on topics they know nothing about.
Newsflash #1: Carly doesn't actually RUN anything. She's the CEO of a 150,000 person company. Asking her to explain in detail any computing architecture is like asking Arnold Schwarzenegger to explain California's budget. Yeah, it's painful. She's also not the person to look to for a good explination.
Newsflash #2: You won't *really* get it until it happens. Do you remember the first time you heard about the web? I was a VAX/VMS programmer in college in 1992 when my brother calls me up and says "Have you heard about this Mosaic program they cooked up?" He tried his best to explain it to me. I didn't get it.
Newsflash #3: To those of you ranting on about Carly: I'm sorry you got fired/laid off from HP or Compaq and you're still bitter. But if you were so damn bright you should have seen the writing on the wall and gotten out on your own schedule. And since you left all divisions are profitable, growing, and the stock is up 25% in the past year. Not exactly the definition of a dying company. Get over it.
A: You.
Do you live in the US? Do you own stocks or mutual funds (maybe in your 401(k) or IRA)? If so, you own HP stock. An Intel. And Microsoft. Don't think you do? Better read that prospectus for the Index fund.
Corporate boards work for you. They represent your views in corporate governance.
CEO's work for the boards. They are accountable for geting the best possible return on investors money.
In order to do so, they will do shocking things like try to increase revenues while managing costs.
So as soon as YOU stop being so "greedy" about your investments, I'm sure boards won't care how well the CEO does.
Now there's an argument to be make here about short-term and long-term performance, blah blah, but the truth here is that if Carly or Craig or Steve don't deliver short-term results they get fired.
By you, ultimately. You Greedy Bastard.
Nothing introduced yet, including this Phillips thing, holds a candle to the now-discontinued HP DEC. The DEC was full Linux-based PC with a CD-RW, 40GB HD (expandable), and really slick TV interface (designed by Real and HP) that included internet radio and TV, ripping CD's to MP3, writing audio and MP3 CD's, import/export via Samba to your PC, exchanging MP3's with your USB portable...
Extremely hackable. Too bad it was killed.
Well, nothing you can see. The edge of the heliosphere (where the electromagnetic influence of the sun gets overwhelemed by background radiation) has long been a holy grail for astrophysicists. Pioneer 10 has the instruments on board to sense the edge, if only we could communicate with it.
Here's what the customer experience has to be to make something like this OK for the mass market:
1. Turn on.
2. Select media.
3. Push play.
What this idea would look like:
1. Turn on "media adapter"
2. Walk across the house to where the computer is.
3. Boot computer. Wait 5 minutes for boot.
4. Walk back to living room.
5. Find remote for media adapter.
6. Browse through dozens of menus and file systems to locate content.
7. Computer crashes. Repeat steps 2-6.
8. Push play.
9. Wait for content to buffer.
10. Little Johnny decides to play his new networked game.
11. Repeat steps 9-10 until (A) Johnny doesn't get to play any more or (B) you give up.
12. Turn off media adapter.
13. Shut down computer.
14. Go to bed.
I'll wait for the Apple version, thank you.
Most reputable computer companies provide recycling services for their and other manufacturers' equipment.
Try HP Product Recycling Services
In the US, it costs $13-34, including shipping. There are cheaper solutions, but you risk having your monitor end up in somebody's backyard in China. HP at least operates 2 recycling plants in Roseville, CA, and Nashville, TN.
I'm not going to wade in on a lame language war, but Fortran IS very portable. I have worked on code that was written in 1967 for a CDC mainframe. It was then ported to a:
PDP-11, then a
Vax, then a
486-class PC. The code ran much faster on the PC then the Vax.
Then I discovered that I needed a routine from the original CDC implementation, which had not been touched since. So I typed in the routine FROM CDC PUNCH CARDS. Compiled perfectly.
Do you really think that a mechanism and control electronics that can repeatably position an ink dot to within 0.0004 of an inch only costs $60?
I don't know about other manufacturuers.
Today you can buy "economy" cartridges, but the printers come with full tanks.
I violently agree.
If you want to spend your time trying to figure out how to get around any company's business model, go right ahead. I know lots of people who bought two roundtrip airplane tickets to get around the Saturday night stay rules.
And if you don't like the way they protect their business model, shop elsewhere.
But if you start a business based on another company's product, please don't turn to legislation or lawsuits when they change their architecture to protect their profits.
And for those of you out there thinking "But what about Microsoft?", it's not the same. Printer manufacturers always made their own supplies...MS never touched the browser until it threatened them.
Look at these companies' financial statements. Nobody is making an obscene amount of money selling ink-jet printers and supplies.
Why not? Because it's an incredibly competitive industry, in which they take a huge loss (up to $100) on every printer sold, and make it up on cartridges.
Nobody gives you the right to buy a $49 printer (which cost over $150 to make, ship, stock, and promote) and then complain that the evil printer manufacturer wants to pay some salaries now.
And for you refillers...you had a great idea, reaping the rewards of the printer manufacturers' R&D by tapping into their profit stream. And then you complain when they try to protect themselves.
End game:
1. consumables drop in price, refillers' price advantage goes away
2. printer manufacturers raise printer prices to make money again
3. consumers who only print occasionally get hammered.
There is no question that we in the first world need to do something about electronic waste. If you don't agree, read the Silicon Valley Toxic Coalition's report "Exporting Harm" at http://www.svtc.org. And no, I'm not affiliated with them.
In fact, I work for one of the large US PC manufacturers. I personally don't like the idea of an eight-year old kid in China inhaling lead powder while beating apart my company's old monitor with a Crescent wrench.
So let's tax the sale of components? I'm not so sure. (and yes, it will have to be at a component level, aggregated up for TV's and computers and such. Don't think you won't be charged a $3.73 take-back fee for your new 600GB hard drive.)
If our goal is to drive manufacturers to take end-of-life concerns into account while designing products, then the European WEEE directive is a better solution. It mandates that manufactuers are resposible for taking back anything they ship. No up-front fees. No back-end fees. Just call up Compaq or Dell or Sony and say, "Thank you, I'm finished with your pile of lead, cadmium, and mercury. Please take it away now." And they will. And if they're smart, they'll eliminate the lead, cadmium, and mercury in the design because it will cost less to recycle. Who knows what the EU will be doing with home built computers. Maybe if you built it you should be able to take it apart and dispose of it properly, instead of poisoning our environment just so you can have the latest video card.
The era of throwing stuff away is over. There is no "away".
...it's about instant messaging and access to customers.
AOL is hoping it can use the Netscape issue to get forward-looking remedies that will keep AOL and AIM competitive in the future, when MS will inevitably use the OS as a loss-leader to secure control of the de-facto standard messaging protocol, and become the default ISP for most consumers. (or whatever else becomes the control point for owning consumer internet experience in the future)
For AOL the browser war is already lost...they just want to be able to have at least equal footing for the NEXT war.
Of the 120 people, 23 (the best, I assume) were offered jobs in Fort Collins, where a part of the HP-UX work gets done anyway. Also, this is only a fraction of the 1000 or so HP-UX engineers...most of which sit in the Bay Area or Colorado.
The sky is not falling. HP-UX will still be the only non-Linux Unix shipping on Itanium when McKinley rolls around. It looks like Sun and IBM have shelved their ports, for now at least. Don't you think HP gets this?
This iPAQ/Palm news is a perfect example of everybody needing to read the WHOLE story. First, it's based on revenue, that is, dollars NOT units. Since the average selling price for iPAQ's is roughly twice that of Palm's, the announcement basically says that now Compaq is selling roughly half the unit volume of Palm. Pretty impressive, but Compaq is still competing with Handspring, Sony, etc. on Palm OS and HP, Casio, etc. on WinCE.
It's also only the current quarter's sales rate, not installed base, which for WinCE is still pretty anemic.
I'm not trying to defend Palm here. They've got their problems, not the least of which is a CEO who is very good at destroying every company he touches. But really, it bugs me when numbers like this are taken out of context.
It's not a calculator company. Calculators are the gnat on the ass of this $49 Billion elephant.
It's not Test and Measurement. That's Agilent.
It's not 83 different companies.
It's one company, it has a strategy, and whether you like it or not, OpenMail does not fit this strategy.
HP will probably take the relevant parts of OpenMail and the great engineers working on it and focus them on contributing to the strategy.
Nowhere in the HP Way does it state that HP has to please everybody all the time. This includes employees and customers.
What it DOES say in the HP way is that HP will be ethical and fair. It will continue to support its OpenMail customers (or make sure that they are supported) while at the same time admitting that this is a dead-end product for HP and you are free to go elsewhere. And if you want help getting there, call HP and they will do anything from pointing you to Exchange or Sendmail or Notes or whatever to sending an army of HP consultants out to hold your hand.