Someone should do a story on FORTUNE reporter Carol J. Loomis, whose story (subscription required) on HP's performance under Fiorina hit the newstands about a week before Carly was fired.
Nor was this story remarkable by Loomis' standards. She covered her own corporate employer, AOL Time Warner, for several years and her reports were characterized by withering sarcasm in reviewing their strategies, finances, and internal politics.
Fiorina may no longer be one of the most powerful women in American business, but Loomis still is.
IBM guerilla marketing reloads
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SCO On the Rocks
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· Score: 5, Funny
Word is that IBM will attempt to push the envelope with yet another guerrilla Linux PR campaign starting next month, replacing its current campaign, code-named "SCO", which appears to be running out of steam.
The SCO campaign, featuring a struggling UNIX vendor that was taken over by greedy executives claiming IP ownership of the entire GNU/Linux code base, was a stunning success. Major news sites such as those run by the Open Source Technology Group eagerly signed up to perpetrate the tongue-in-cheek hoax, which one editor called "the longest running April Fool's joke in the technology business".
Prior to SCO, IBM's PR experts tried hiring teams of college students to spray-paint logos and slogans on the sidewalks of San Francisco and Chicago. That campaign was acknowledged to be a flop.
Not long after, Bill Gates did an interview with Gizmodo. Coincidence? (Gizmodo was not featured in the FORTUNE article - Engadget and Microsoft's own Bob Scoble were).
I've always thought the term "Quality Assurance" was suspect - does that mean a senior executive pats the box in front of the customer and says "Our engineering is rock solid"?
Lots of games are sold at Christmas time by people who aren't necessarily gamers. A brand name helps assure buyers - nobody ever got tossed out of Christmas dinner for buying ESPN.
Of course, the default page they provide will contain a database of fake players like "linebacker Terry Tate" - then they'll be shocked, **shocked** when a Shawn Fanning type comes along and builds a real NFL game around it.
Something like this might actually happen.
If you're an American IT worker you hope that offshore salaries and buying power (from the weakened dollar) will increase to near parity with the US, when comparing similarly skilled workers. The other equilibrium scenario is much worse.
Windows 2000 is what NT 4 should have been. Win 2K was Microsoft's best desktop OS until XP SP2 shipped this past summer. Its biggest new feature was Active Directory, but even while adding that it seemed noticeably more stable than NT 4.
XP added the Aqua lookalike shell and lots of bloatware like WMP and Messenger that provided many more entry points into the OS for adware and virus writers. Not to mention compatibility modes for Win 3.x and Win 95 apps, which NT 4 didn't have to deal with. Win NT and 2K were both highly complex, but XP just has too many damn features to be managed or secured properly. If you listen closely, you can hear Fred Brooks laughing every time XP gives you a blue screen.
Agreed. Although MSN search is still fairly lame, eventually it won't be, and the google folks better keep tabs on what MS is coming up with.
Many years ago John Delorean wrote a book describing his career as a GM executive. As an example of the rigidity of their culture, he was called on the carpet for renting Ford cars at airports to check out the competition. GM employees, he was told, rented only GM cars. And GM executives weren't supposed to drive rental cars at all - they were chauferred by subordinates.
when working 70+ hr work weeks. It's an especially bad idea in the early phase of a project. But sure it's possible to write and debug the type of code "you could write in your sleep", by definition, or integrate with some other developer's changes (usually this is where most of the swearing occurs).
When you have inadequate architecture, tools, or communication between groups, and the team lacks the will or ability to fix them, schedule slippage occurs. When you're confronted with a hard deadline (e.g. must ship before the holidays) or the project is so far behind the original schedule it's an embarrassment, you get mandatory overtime.
They should have said "weather desk staffer" at a TV station.... the one who takes the calls after the "great weekend" doesn't materialize.
Agree that the on-camera job is actually a pretty good one, and it's in the entertainment industry, not science.
And how many of those were around before Turner came along?
Turner is the greatest living entrepreneur in the media business. Calling him the Steve Jobs of TV wouldn't do him justice: CNN alone revolutionized both cable TV and the news business. He also happens to be the last amateur, non-milionaire sailor to win America's Cup, and has almost singlehandedly saved the American buffalo. During the Cold War when everyone was afraid of MAD he reached out with the Goodwill Games. I'd say he's earned our attention to read a brief essay he's written on the state of the media industry.
Re:Who's going to play Fisher in the movie?
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Bobby Fischer Found
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· Score: 4, Funny
Nicholas Cage. "Searching for Bobby Fischer II: Real stories of the Airport Security Patrol" will also feature Sandra Bullock as the American expat stuck in a crummy data entry job for the Japanese government.
Re:Open mouth, insert paranoid foot
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Bobby Fischer Found
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Not a bad idea. Memorization of openings has long been a dreary arms race, and machines have way more capacity than anybody else. Maybe they should try it on an exhibition basis during tournaments.
There's no question that part of the motivation of continuing the lawsuit was to protect Massachusett's software industry against an abusive monopolist. I don't see how that makes the fight any less just. Microsoft's abuses against competitors and consumers alike have been well documented.
Despite losing the case in court, these two leaders (from different political parties) and their staffs deserve credit for fighting the good fight while others settled and cheered from the sidelines. As a state taxpayer I'm aware that Massachusetts has a post-boom budget problem at least on par with most other states, and obviously one state taking on Microsoft in the courts was going to be at a huge disadvantage. But this fight was highly worthwhile because of the detrimental effects of Microsoft's monopoly and dirty tricks on the software industry and consumers. I'm proud that my state didn't roll over and play dead.
Slashdot Mirror
Nor was this story remarkable by Loomis' standards. She covered her own corporate employer, AOL Time Warner, for several years and her reports were characterized by withering sarcasm in reviewing their strategies, finances, and internal politics.
Fiorina may no longer be one of the most powerful women in American business, but Loomis still is.
The SCO campaign, featuring a struggling UNIX vendor that was taken over by greedy executives claiming IP ownership of the entire GNU/Linux code base, was a stunning success. Major news sites such as those run by the Open Source Technology Group eagerly signed up to perpetrate the tongue-in-cheek hoax, which one editor called "the longest running April Fool's joke in the technology business".
Prior to SCO, IBM's PR experts tried hiring teams of college students to spray-paint logos and slogans on the sidewalks of San Francisco and Chicago. That campaign was acknowledged to be a flop.
And if their bug tracking tool hadn't been a 16-bit app, they might've reported even more bugs.
I'm not surprised at this new discovery... people keep underestimating George Martin's contribution to the success of the Beatles.
Not long after, Bill Gates did an interview with Gizmodo. Coincidence? (Gizmodo was not featured in the FORTUNE article - Engadget and Microsoft's own Bob Scoble were).
No, I didn't call or email him, but... he *knew*.
for high ground, they decided that they'd better get their butts in gear.
That's also known as the "herd instinct". We see that a lot in the business world, I've never heard it referred to as a sixth sense though.
Alice: Hello, who are you?
Bill: I'm Bill Gates
Alice: prove it
*throws pie in Bill's face*
Bill: (unintelligible)
*communication proceeds between the two parties*
I've always thought the term "Quality Assurance" was suspect - does that mean a senior executive pats the box in front of the customer and says "Our engineering is rock solid"?
Eric Schmidt once said in a keynote address that the career of a computer scientist consists of finding new applications for caching and indirection.
Lots of games are sold at Christmas time by people who aren't necessarily gamers. A brand name helps assure buyers - nobody ever got tossed out of Christmas dinner for buying ESPN.
Of course, the default page they provide will contain a database of fake players like "linebacker Terry Tate" - then they'll be shocked, **shocked** when a Shawn Fanning type comes along and builds a real NFL game around it. Something like this might actually happen.
If you're an American IT worker you hope that offshore salaries and buying power (from the weakened dollar) will increase to near parity with the US, when comparing similarly skilled workers. The other equilibrium scenario is much worse.
Windows 2000 is what NT 4 should have been. Win 2K was Microsoft's best desktop OS until XP SP2 shipped this past summer. Its biggest new feature was Active Directory, but even while adding that it seemed noticeably more stable than NT 4.
XP added the Aqua lookalike shell and lots of bloatware like WMP and Messenger that provided many more entry points into the OS for adware and virus writers. Not to mention compatibility modes for Win 3.x and Win 95 apps, which NT 4 didn't have to deal with. Win NT and 2K were both highly complex, but XP just has too many damn features to be managed or secured properly. If you listen closely, you can hear Fred Brooks laughing every time XP gives you a blue screen.
Agreed. Although MSN search is still fairly lame, eventually it won't be, and the google folks better keep tabs on what MS is coming up with.
Many years ago John Delorean wrote a book describing his career as a GM executive. As an example of the rigidity of their culture, he was called on the carpet for renting Ford cars at airports to check out the competition. GM employees, he was told, rented only GM cars. And GM executives weren't supposed to drive rental cars at all - they were chauferred by subordinates.
When you have inadequate architecture, tools, or communication between groups, and the team lacks the will or ability to fix them, schedule slippage occurs. When you're confronted with a hard deadline (e.g. must ship before the holidays) or the project is so far behind the original schedule it's an embarrassment, you get mandatory overtime.
They should have said "weather desk staffer" at a TV station.... the one who takes the calls after the "great weekend" doesn't materialize. Agree that the on-camera job is actually a pretty good one, and it's in the entertainment industry, not science.
Release Candidate!? Now you tell me... I thought RC2 was the encryption algorithm.
And how many of those were around before Turner came along?
Turner is the greatest living entrepreneur in the media business. Calling him the Steve Jobs of TV wouldn't do him justice: CNN alone revolutionized both cable TV and the news business. He also happens to be the last amateur, non-milionaire sailor to win America's Cup, and has almost singlehandedly saved the American buffalo. During the Cold War when everyone was afraid of MAD he reached out with the Goodwill Games. I'd say he's earned our attention to read a brief essay he's written on the state of the media industry.
- Ralph Yarro, Darl McBride
Nicholas Cage. "Searching for Bobby Fischer II: Real stories of the Airport Security Patrol" will also feature Sandra Bullock as the American expat stuck in a crummy data entry job for the Japanese government.
Not a bad idea. Memorization of openings has long been a dreary arms race, and machines have way more capacity than anybody else. Maybe they should try it on an exhibition basis during tournaments.
Contract Essentially Contrary to Imbecilic Legal Lameness
There's no question that part of the motivation of continuing the lawsuit was to protect Massachusett's software industry against an abusive monopolist. I don't see how that makes the fight any less just. Microsoft's abuses against competitors and consumers alike have been well documented.
Despite losing the case in court, these two leaders (from different political parties) and their staffs deserve credit for fighting the good fight while others settled and cheered from the sidelines. As a state taxpayer I'm aware that Massachusetts has a post-boom budget problem at least on par with most other states, and obviously one state taking on Microsoft in the courts was going to be at a huge disadvantage. But this fight was highly worthwhile because of the detrimental effects of Microsoft's monopoly and dirty tricks on the software industry and consumers. I'm proud that my state didn't roll over and play dead.