Can somone opine as to why exactly HP is doing this ? What do they hope to get ? Why dont they simply cut n run, and/or move HP-UX to x86 as they've already proven to themselves that it can run on x86.
* What effects will that cause (good and bad)? * What can we do to affect the rate of change? * What can we do to mitigate the bad effects? * What can we do to benefit from the good effects?
Hmmm.
I think that between 2 and 3, I'd ask how bad is the bad, and how good the good, and then, assuming that they don't balance, ask what will it cost to fix the bad, and then ask if the cost is best deployed fixing the bad, or doing other better things that produce a greater overall 'improvement'.
For example, should 'fix money' be spent on carbon reduction or flood defences ?
... two of those wells having been drilled in a Nature Reserve, but not the one at Wytch Farm.
Not quite. Wytch Farm field has/had 104 wells drilled across 8 well sites. And the field lies beneath a combination of National Nature Reserve, National Trust, and SSSI land. Its true that not all the 8 sites are on that land, but some are, and others are adjacent, so the impact could have been significant, but wasn't.
In the UK, our (minute) onshore drilling industry has an admirable environmental record; the flagship field at Wytch Farm in Dorset is almost invisble (you really have to search for it), and even though its situated in a envornmentally sensitive protected area, it has won awards for its low impact. Onshore can be done well.
...was there somebody that tried to recover planes that went down in Greenland known as the Lost Squadron and they were expecting the ice to be 10 feet thick or less (according to scientists' best estimates). When they got there, they found that the planes were 268 feet deep.
This was between 1942 and 1992......
Umm, don't objects placed on the surface tend to 'sink' into ice caps ? Gear and huts built on the surface slowly descend into the ice as the years pass. So the P-38s sank down, as well as each years snow/ice deposit being layered on top of them. IIRC isn't the sink faster than the accertion of ice ?
Of course, the automotive analogy might be bad as well. Just ask any "Shade Tree" or "Back Yard" mechanic. Most curse the day they decided to computerize the engine, thus locking them away from manual adjustments.
Actually its worse than that. Its locked for a reason ; the automotive industry needs to (or is forced to) meet ever more stringent emmissions requirements, while delivering better economy with the same level of power in order to compete effectively. At the same time warranty and service interval timescales continue to rise/extend as manufacturers use them as a USP (or one of many).
That is why under the hood are 'no user serviceable parts', and why letting anyone apart from an authorised servicer touch it invalidates everything.... gotta control the emissions and the 'reliability'.
Hang on... thats what it is like with certain Liunx distros from the commercial players - roll your own kernel, and sorry.... thats unsupported.
... [Hurd said]...H-P has a cost structure that is off benchmark in many areas (WSJ 7/15/05
....Employees around the globe will be affected by the move with most of the cuts hitting support staffers. Those working in HP's sales and research and development departments should retain their jobs (The register 19th July)
....Hurd declined to offer specifics on what regions would witness the most cuts. HP, however, did say that HR, finance and IT support operations would thin significantly. (The register 19th July)
[Hurd]...warned in May that some of HP's underperforming units would have to lower their breakeven point, leaving layoffs as an obvious out for management.......
Hurd gained a fearsome reputation for his efficient, cost-cutting moves at NCR, which included offshoring work, shrinking support staff and offering retirement packages to longtime employees. (The Register 9th June)
So, there we have it. HP, in common with many other businesses in the IT sector, continually and obsessively compares itself with others. They are the benchmarks Hurd speaks of, and they are the positive or adverse comparisons that drive the numbers game WRT structural costs.
When HP and Compaq merged, they aquired several things, including a PC division and a services arm. But to continue to be a big PC player and/or a big services player, is a hard game to win at../'ers dont need telling about the real margins in the PC business, or who HP's competition is, but we can guess that HP really struggles to find any way it can win there.
But now, services is almost the same. No one will pay for support on PCs or Billyware, no one will pay anything for Linux support, a few will pay a little for big-systems support, for so-called business-critical systems, and some might pay for an outsourcing FM deal. But none of those can sustain the large and (by 'benchmarks') costly services arm inhertited from DEC/Compaq.
In all these areas the 'benchmark', is a cost of 'peanuts'.... and that is the target structural cost HP is trying to reach. So dumping jobs in a high wage country makes sense, as does the general trend to 2nd and 3rd world outsourcing which usually accompanies it. And if its PCs and Services today, it'll be Storage and the Big-Systems tomorrow.
Someone has called this the "Sarajevo Effect'. It occurs whenever a power-dependant connurbation above some ill-defined size losses its power for more than a day or two. Without power in its various forms, westernized cities cannot sustain their inhabitants for very long. In Sarajevo, once the electricity, gas and water faded away, the population were reduced to 'every man for himself'. It was perhaps, the first time the world had seen a western city so humbled. Since then, there have been numerous Sarajevos around the world.
Western life needs power.... New Orleans lost that power last week.
Do the editors really need to emphasise that the scammers were indian? I don't want to sound naive but do the editors really want to turn this site into a populist racist forum?
Security is a 'system', and altering or extending a system, can open it to risk that were not originally envisaged when it was established. Adding a new site, adding additional computer systems, new network(s), new operative etc all can alter the security threat mix.
Extending a secure system to a new country, a new language group, a new multi-cultural mix, will also expose the system to a new mix of threats. Ths issue of extending such a system to a different continent, particularly if the operatives there are working at the higher(est) levels, entails exposing the system to all the differences between the new location and the old.
Whether the staff are physically in India or hold Indian state passports is incidental. The significant factors are, a) how close or removed they are from the cultural assumptions of the systems designers, b) how exposed they are to personal weakness, c) how exposed they are to external influence. These are sometimes referred to as Antipathy, Jealousy, Poverty, and Corruption. Placing a call centre in Dehli, Amritsar or Goa would vary the mix, as would placing it in Belfast, Glasgow or Ipswitch.
High police efficiency, for example, existed in the Third Reich - didn't help their citizenry much, it just enabled criminals and gangsters in the police forces to exploit them more easily
Efficiency in the Third Reich is largely a popular misconception. Doubtless there were sections of the government apparatus and of industry that might be termed 'efficient', but mostly, National-Socialist control was whimsical, unplanned and uncoordinated. State(s) police, several incarnations of Party police and the ad-mixture of an ever present Wermacht, coupled with obsessive bureaucracy led to very patchy 'policing'.
Of course western police forces like to appear efficient, and those countries with only one national organisation might be in with a better chance than was National-Socialist Germany. However, regardless of the likely hood of such a technology as this becoming available, its deployment would likely be all or none as the bigger forces tend to feel more tied to their regulatory framework WRT equipment use/non-use.
All of the real geeks I've known that accepted a management position did so because of the bigger paycheck
Working for what might be termed a big souless corporation, one observes that many geeks actually get bigger paychecks than their immediate supervisors. This is probably how it ought to be; ones abilities are valued above that of an ever changing procession of well meaning but un-empowered (or was that underpowered) management. So to make a jump into management could actually result in a drop in salary !
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Can somone opine as to why exactly HP is doing this ? What do they hope to get ? Why dont they simply cut n run, and/or move HP-UX to x86 as they've already proven to themselves that it can run on x86.
Corporations are weird.
* What effects will that cause (good and bad)?
* What can we do to affect the rate of change?
* What can we do to mitigate the bad effects?
* What can we do to benefit from the good effects?
Hmmm.
I think that between 2 and 3, I'd ask how bad is the bad, and how good the good, and then, assuming that they don't balance, ask what will it cost to fix the bad, and then ask if the cost is best deployed fixing the bad, or doing other better things that produce a greater overall 'improvement'.
For example, should 'fix money' be spent on carbon reduction or flood defences ?
Because we won World War II
It amuses me to no end that Americans think that they won World War II.
Ah, but who were the loosers ?
Not quite. Wytch Farm field has/had 104 wells drilled across 8 well sites. And the field lies beneath a combination of National Nature Reserve, National Trust, and SSSI land. Its true that not all the 8 sites are on that land, but some are, and others are adjacent, so the impact could have been significant, but wasn't.
Hmmm. And between England and Holland too.
In the UK, our (minute) onshore drilling industry has an admirable environmental record; the flagship field at Wytch Farm in Dorset is almost invisble (you really have to search for it), and even though its situated in a envornmentally sensitive protected area, it has won awards for its low impact. Onshore can be done well.
....... and so the only certified Unixes out there are the ones like Solaris, HP/UX, AIX and OS-X.
And Tru64 UNIX. IIRC it received the branding ahead of the others mentioned above.
...was there somebody that tried to recover planes that went down in Greenland known as the Lost Squadron and they were expecting the ice to be 10 feet thick or less (according to scientists' best estimates). When they got there, they found that the planes were 268 feet deep.
This was between 1942 and 1992. .....
Umm, don't objects placed on the surface tend to 'sink' into ice caps ? Gear and huts built on the surface slowly descend into the ice as the years pass. So the P-38s sank down, as well as each years snow/ice deposit being layered on top of them. IIRC isn't the sink faster than the accertion of ice ?
Actually its worse than that. Its locked for a reason ; the automotive industry needs to (or is forced to) meet ever more stringent emmissions requirements, while delivering better economy with the same level of power in order to compete effectively. At the same time warranty and service interval timescales continue to rise/extend as manufacturers use them as a USP (or one of many).
That is why under the hood are 'no user serviceable parts', and why letting anyone apart from an authorised servicer touch it invalidates everything .... gotta control the emissions and the 'reliability'.
Hang on ... thats what it is like with certain Liunx distros from the commercial players - roll your own kernel, and sorry.... thats unsupported.
[Hurd]...warned in May that some of HP's underperforming units would have to lower their breakeven point, leaving layoffs as an obvious out for management. ......
Hurd gained a fearsome reputation for his efficient, cost-cutting moves at NCR, which included offshoring work, shrinking support staff and offering retirement packages to longtime employees. (The Register 9th June)
So, there we have it. HP, in common with many other businesses in the IT sector, continually and obsessively compares itself with others. They are the benchmarks Hurd speaks of, and they are the positive or adverse comparisons that drive the numbers game WRT structural costs.
When HP and Compaq merged, they aquired several things, including a PC division and a services arm. But to continue to be a big PC player and/or a big services player, is a hard game to win at. ./'ers dont need telling about the real margins in the PC business, or who HP's competition is, but we can guess that HP really struggles to find any way it can win there.
But now, services is almost the same. No one will pay for support on PCs or Billyware, no one will pay anything for Linux support, a few will pay a little for big-systems support, for so-called business-critical systems, and some might pay for an outsourcing FM deal. But none of those can sustain the large and (by 'benchmarks') costly services arm inhertited from DEC/Compaq.
In all these areas the 'benchmark', is a cost of 'peanuts'.... and that is the target structural cost HP is trying to reach. So dumping jobs in a high wage country makes sense, as does the general trend to 2nd and 3rd world outsourcing which usually accompanies it. And if its PCs and Services today, it'll be Storage and the Big-Systems tomorrow.
If He did, I bet some folks wouldnt like it.
Someone has called this the "Sarajevo Effect'. It occurs whenever a power-dependant connurbation above some ill-defined size losses its power for more than a day or two. Without power in its various forms, westernized cities cannot sustain their inhabitants for very long. In Sarajevo, once the electricity, gas and water faded away, the population were reduced to 'every man for himself'. It was perhaps, the first time the world had seen a western city so humbled. Since then, there have been numerous Sarajevos around the world.
Western life needs power.... New Orleans lost that power last week.
Security is a 'system', and altering or extending a system, can open it to risk that were not originally envisaged when it was established. Adding a new site, adding additional computer systems, new network(s), new operative etc all can alter the security threat mix.
Extending a secure system to a new country, a new language group, a new multi-cultural mix, will also expose the system to a new mix of threats. Ths issue of extending such a system to a different continent, particularly if the operatives there are working at the higher(est) levels, entails exposing the system to all the differences between the new location and the old.
Whether the staff are physically in India or hold Indian state passports is incidental. The significant factors are, a) how close or removed they are from the cultural assumptions of the systems designers, b) how exposed they are to personal weakness, c) how exposed they are to external influence. These are sometimes referred to as Antipathy, Jealousy, Poverty, and Corruption. Placing a call centre in Dehli, Amritsar or Goa would vary the mix, as would placing it in Belfast, Glasgow or Ipswitch.
Efficiency in the Third Reich is largely a popular misconception. Doubtless there were sections of the government apparatus and of industry that might be termed 'efficient', but mostly, National-Socialist control was whimsical, unplanned and uncoordinated. State(s) police, several incarnations of Party police and the ad-mixture of an ever present Wermacht, coupled with obsessive bureaucracy led to very patchy 'policing'.
Of course western police forces like to appear efficient, and those countries with only one national organisation might be in with a better chance than was National-Socialist Germany. However, regardless of the likely hood of such a technology as this becoming available, its deployment would likely be all or none as the bigger forces tend to feel more tied to their regulatory framework WRT equipment use/non-use.
Working for what might be termed a big souless corporation, one observes that many geeks actually get bigger paychecks than their immediate supervisors. This is probably how it ought to be; ones abilities are valued above that of an ever changing procession of well meaning but un-empowered (or was that underpowered) management. So to make a jump into management could actually result in a drop in salary !