Umm, I've used LaTeX and no, the early tools did not support colored text or graphics
You're wrong. TeX and LaTeX supported graphics from day one. troff came with pic.
If you think layout and editing are completely separate tasks, fine, although hundreds of famous authors who were very meticulous and unwavering about the layouts of their books might disagree.
LaTeX gives you very fine control over appearance, something that I value greatly as an author. It simply frees me from having to do layout editing. I'm sorry if you don't understand the difference.
There are three things we know about WYSIWYG and markup: (1) users generally prefer WYSIWYG, (2) users rationalize their preference by saying that they're more productive with it, and (3) when you measure it, they are actually more productive using markup.
In different words, you may not believe it, but you'd almost certainly be more productive using markup languages for technical documentation, images or not. That's why many big companies force their technical writers to use markup languages.
Number one is application availability. In OS X, I can run the native programs that work together better than on any platform I've used. I can run Windows applications via an emulator or crossover. I can run Linux/UNIX application in X11.
Perhaps the reason why you have such a low opinion of Linux/UNIX applications is because you're trying to run them under Apple's X11 server; running applications under Apple's X11 breaks most of the desktop integration (in addition to having really lousy performance). On my Mac, I leave X11 off pretty much all the time because it's so poorly implemented and integrated; when I need to use X11, I use a real Linux system.
Services allow me to customize the functionality of most programs, and share configuration between them. I can use one dictionary and all my apps learn the words. I can reuse my scripts and apply functions to text anywhere with a simple key press.
Linux has hundreds such services built-in, including, among other things, services for spell checking across applications, reformatting text, etc. OS X services provide only a tiny fraction of that functionality, and in a way that is much harder to extend and not particularly convenient to use. OS X tries to imitate some of the "little shared tools" approach pioneered by UNIX, but it doesn't really succeed.
Firewire mode updates. In OS X I can move to my new laptop with a few key presses and a short walk to get some coffee. This includes all my programs, user accounts, files, preferences, Web cookies, authentication keys, etc, including my Windows and Linux software VMs. It is simple and foolproof
It is simple, but unfortunately, it doesn't work completely: some settings and some applications don't make it. After moving from one Mac to another, it usually takes several days until I have figured out all the little missing bits and pieces and reinstalled them.
In any case, it's actually simpler under Linux: if you copy your home directory, all your user-related information is transferred; there is nothing else to copy. There is no user-specific customization on the machine other than the list of applications (which you can transfer with a single command). That's no accident, because traditionally, UNIX and Linux users use the same home directory on many computers simultaneously.
Overall, people like you will never be satisfied with Linux: Linux has all the capabilities you want, you're simply unwilling to learn how it works. That's fine--feel free to use whatever you like--but stop badmouthing platforms you are apparently not very well versed in.
I just recognize that it's a pile of hacks to make up for the fact that it was not originally intended to support graphics or color and that the toolset is inappropriate for many tasks.
LaTeX and troff have been used nearly from day one for professional writing including graphics and they handle that job the way they were intended to, and the way that its users need them to.
Especially for writers that use graphics as an integral part of their writing and make use of it for layout, a non-WYSIWYG view is simply too slow and cumbersome.
When you're doing layout, you're not a writer, you're a layout editor. LaTeX is not a good layout editor for fancy layouts, but then its users don't need it to be. I'm sorry if you need to supplement your writing with layout editing, but other people don't have that problem.
Take LaTeX and Adobe InDesign and go build a 50 page magazine including five or more graphics on each page,
It is not the job of professional writers to lay out magazine pages. In fact, that's not their job even if they supply the graphical content. And it doesn't make sense for professional writers to use layout software to do their writing.
The people who lay out magazine pages are layout editors. They get the text from the writer, the graphics from the graphic designers and photographers, and then put it all together using layout software.
The end result is everyone writes their own "system level" service. Its a nice idea thats utterly impractical and fails every time....except it works on OS X right now and has been working for years.
You are using OS X because of its Services menu? The cluttered thing that most people don't even know what it's for and are loathe to click on? Well, to each their own.
Well, first you argue for measuring outcomes, then you go through a list of possible measurements and why they're difficult to do.
So, you have almost come full circle. You see, the reason people like to tax vehicles (or measure motor currents or whatever) is not because they're stupid. They realize full well that it would be better to "measure outcomes". However, costs and external constraints prevent them from doing so. So, the choice is between doing nothing or finding a surrogate measure, and they simply pick the one that seems like a reasonable compromise.
For example, a friend who lives in California owns an older car. But she drives about two miles every couple of weeks. Regardless, the emissions limits the vehicle has to fufill are based on some presumptive and quite false belief about how far she drives each year.
Yes, but so what? First of all, old cars are usually exempt from these kinds of regulations. Second, what is the harm of making it more costly for people who drive gas guzzlers rarely to pay high vehicle taxes anyway? In fact, demand for gas guzzlers by people who drive them rarely doesn't even measure outcome, since merely buying a gas guzzler even without driving it contributes to keeping gas guzzlers in production.
Hmm...I guess the cars manufacturers could just stop selling their 'horrible' product in CA, and see how that works, eh?
In fact, I think it would be great for CA and for the US car industry if US car manufacturers stopped selling in CA; it would create a fertile ground for innovation and it would create a new breed of high-tech car company in CA.
Geez, doesn't CA have enough problems in house that should take precidence over stupid shit like this?
Air quality has been a major problem in CA, and emission controls have been very effective. Hard as it may be to believe for outsiders, Californians actually like breathing cleaner air.
When I suggested he change it, he said "No way. It took nine months to get that spec approved. Any change would require a review cycle and several meetings to get it approved. And if I change it without getting the spec changed, it won't pass SQA. This project is already behind schedule. I'm implementing it exactly the way this piece of paper says."
Discovering that the requirements you wrote don't work the way you intended is very common, and it's what Extreme Programming is supposed to fix...
While we are talking lawsuit, what's the logical argument/premise going to be for filing the suit? If we hold the automobile manufacturers responsible then what of the users of their products? Are you going to say that the drivers of such automobiles are "addicted", so by their logic are immune to prosecution?
It's a common strategy to avoid liability by pointing at other people and saying "but they bear part of the guilt". But whether their customers are also responsible is irrelevant. The fact is that car manufacturers have clearly some responsibility. And their responsibility isn't just limited to producing a product that later turned out to have unexpected problems, car manufacturers (like tobacco manufacturers) have been actively resisting making their products safer.
Jeez, sometimes I feel like I am getting squeezed on the far left by goofy loonies like Lockyer and pushed out of the picture by power hungry neocon fundies on the extreme right. What happened to the middle ground where people of reason and careful thought worked through compromise to help advance progress?*/RANT*
Of course, you are being squeezed; that is, there is pressure on both sides now. Why is that? Because there has been a long history of pressure from the right and staking out extreme positions on the right to try to shift the debate further to the right than would otherwise happen: the car industry has been using lawsuits, lobbying, FUD, and subsidies to strengthen their position. The car manufacturer's position--"we are not responsible"--is just as extreme. California's action is counterpressure to that, and arguably necessary counterpressure. Hopefully, the result will be a compromise in the middle.
For some reason, OpenOffice.org extensions have yet to capture developers' imaginations the way that Firefox extensions have. For every OpenOffice.org extension, there must be 20 or 30 for Firefox.
Well, one reason is that for every OpenOffice.org user, there must be 20 or 30 Firefox users.
But another reason is this:
OpenOffice.org extensions are a quick way to add functionality. Writable in a variety of languages, including Java, JavaScript, OpenOffice.org Basic, Python, and C++, they allow developers to contribute features without having to master much of OpenOffice.org's notoriously cryptic source code.
Firefox has a fairly consistent extension architecture, and most people seem to write and share their Firefox extensions in Javascript. Giving developers more options is not such a good idea because it reduces the ability to build on one another's work.
In addition, many platforms with a successful plug-in architecture provide means of managing and downloading plugins from within the application. If that exists in OOo, I have never come across it.
I think calling it "private-branding" when a company makes public source code proprietary is a bit of a euphemism.
If this decision is really based on Sun's business considerations, then it is a black eye for the OpenOffice project; an open source project should make decisions based on the best interests of its users, not based on the proprietary interests of one of its commercial sponsors. Furthermore, the rest of OpenOffice is GPL, so what's the problem anyway?
As for Sun, they have, of course, gotten away with this sort of thing multiple times. People like to talk about how oh-so-generous Sun's release of Solaris tend to sweep under the rug that Sun's operating system is based on BSD and originally developed with taxpayer funds at Berkeley.
What made the iPod successful was how easy it was to add songs to it. I haven't seen the software that's going to be shipped with the Zune but I'm guessing it'll be similar to iTunes.
iTunes is a mixed bag. If you completely subscribe to its world view, it works nicely. But there are some areas in which it is quite weak. For example, if you use one iPod and two computers, it doesn't work very well, and it keeps creating duplicate songs and entries for many people.
Overall, iTunes is the typical Apple product: well engineered, good looking, with just enough functionality to satisfy the needs of many people while still being fairly simple to use.
I think the problem with CDs is that the music industry will sooner or later replace them and that they are sufficiently difficult to produce that the music industry will be able to do that. Vinyl is such an obvious and simple standard that it can be pressed and played with cheap hardware.
That argument doesn't work: the cost and risk of having an old organism reproduce once more is less than the cost of having offspring do it. All things being equal, it's evolutionarily better not to age.
The real reason is likely that non-age related factors used to set an upper bound on lifespans: if almost everybody gets killed before age 40, there isn't much point for human bodies to evolve to last much longer than that. The fact that we live to age 80 or 90 is a testament to how well we have evolved to avoid dying those first 40 years.
Now that starvation, disease, predation, and accidents don't kill us so much anymore, we'll be evolving longer lifespans automatically; in fact, a preference for late reproducing in the West will likely contribute to that trend.
I guess the problem is that I don't understand how "a good language to communicate ideas in" is different than "a good teaching language" or "a language that's good to program in".:-)
Yes, I think that's at the heart of the issue. What's the difference? It's like textbook French (learning) vs. colloquial French (programming) vs. academic French (communicating ideas): they are all different languages for different purposes. Scheme is a good teaching language (though not the only one), which is why it's being used to this day for that purpose, but...
The number of people using Scheme is small, but it is there. Yes, PHP is more popular; It is also total garbage.
Scheme has had lots of practical advantages over other languages: lots of people know it because they have to learn it in college and there have been excellent implementations for nearly two decades. The fact that programmers and computer scientists at all levels consistently choose other languages despite that built-in advantage is pretty good evidence that Scheme is not well-suited for those other purposes.
Unfortunately, it doesn't look to me like R6RS makes Scheme any better as a real-world language, but I think it may make it worse as a teaching language.
Yeah, open source voting, scanning, and paper trails are all a good idea.
But where's the meat with the "Open Voting Consortium"? There is no software or technical information on that site, and the people involved don't seem to have produced anything relevant. There is, however, a lot of PR and glitzy photos.
From an organization that is serious about making this sort of thing work, I expect that they focus on the technical aspects first and then use a working technical solution to convince people.
It's a common theme that companies and governments want you to do things that are illegal. In fact, arguably, a lot of legislation is aimed at making things illegal that many people will be doing anyway (and, in some cases, don't have a choice): traffic laws, drug laws, decency laws, copyright laws, etc. Those sorts of laws are useful tools for selective enforcement, stronger contract negotiation positions, barriers to entry, and differential pricing.
Microsoft like DRM and the DMCA because it gives them the ability to implement differential pricing, erect bariers to entry, and have stronger negotiating positions; and they like DRM-breaking software because it makes their devices more useful. There is no contradiction in their behavior.
Of course, there is a contradiction tp their stated justifications for DRM, and it is important to bring this up prominently whenever Congress reconsiders DRM-related legislation.
but the corporation as an entity made a decision to conduct business in an illegal fashion
If spying on board members were part of conducting business, you'd be right. But this isn't part of "conducting business"--it doesn't involve customers or society at large--it involves board members and their media contacts.
HP customers don't care much because they haven't been directly harmed. It would be different if HP had, say, shipped their PCs with spyware: in that case, the customers would have been harmed, and in that case, it customers would take action against HP (like buying elsewhere).
Whatever happens (and I don't expect it to be much) should happen to the corporate entity.
Quite to the contrary: the individuals in question would love to use the corporate entity as a shield. Prosecuting them as individuals not only is the logical thing to do, it is also a far better deterrent.
The interesting question is, will anyone care enough about this to stop doing business with HP? Will any major corporate clients reject these practices and refuse to deal with a company that engages in them?
I'm all for holding companies responsible for corporate misconduct. But this wasn't corporate misconduct, it was individual misconduct. The proper course of action is to take the responsible individuals to court. They should face hefty fines and jail time.
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Umm, I've used LaTeX and no, the early tools did not support colored text or graphics
You're wrong. TeX and LaTeX supported graphics from day one. troff came with pic.
If you think layout and editing are completely separate tasks, fine, although hundreds of famous authors who were very meticulous and unwavering about the layouts of their books might disagree.
LaTeX gives you very fine control over appearance, something that I value greatly as an author. It simply frees me from having to do layout editing. I'm sorry if you don't understand the difference.
There are three things we know about WYSIWYG and markup: (1) users generally prefer WYSIWYG, (2) users rationalize their preference by saying that they're more productive with it, and (3) when you measure it, they are actually more productive using markup.
In different words, you may not believe it, but you'd almost certainly be more productive using markup languages for technical documentation, images or not. That's why many big companies force their technical writers to use markup languages.
Number one is application availability. In OS X, I can run the native programs that work together better than on any platform I've used. I can run Windows applications via an emulator or crossover. I can run Linux/UNIX application in X11.
Perhaps the reason why you have such a low opinion of Linux/UNIX applications is because you're trying to run them under Apple's X11 server; running applications under Apple's X11 breaks most of the desktop integration (in addition to having really lousy performance). On my Mac, I leave X11 off pretty much all the time because it's so poorly implemented and integrated; when I need to use X11, I use a real Linux system.
Services allow me to customize the functionality of most programs, and share configuration between them. I can use one dictionary and all my apps learn the words. I can reuse my scripts and apply functions to text anywhere with a simple key press.
Linux has hundreds such services built-in, including, among other things, services for spell checking across applications, reformatting text, etc. OS X services provide only a tiny fraction of that functionality, and in a way that is much harder to extend and not particularly convenient to use. OS X tries to imitate some of the "little shared tools" approach pioneered by UNIX, but it doesn't really succeed.
Firewire mode updates. In OS X I can move to my new laptop with a few key presses and a short walk to get some coffee. This includes all my programs, user accounts, files, preferences, Web cookies, authentication keys, etc, including my Windows and Linux software VMs. It is simple and foolproof
It is simple, but unfortunately, it doesn't work completely: some settings and some applications don't make it. After moving from one Mac to another, it usually takes several days until I have figured out all the little missing bits and pieces and reinstalled them.
In any case, it's actually simpler under Linux: if you copy your home directory, all your user-related information is transferred; there is nothing else to copy. There is no user-specific customization on the machine other than the list of applications (which you can transfer with a single command). That's no accident, because traditionally, UNIX and Linux users use the same home directory on many computers simultaneously.
Overall, people like you will never be satisfied with Linux: Linux has all the capabilities you want, you're simply unwilling to learn how it works. That's fine--feel free to use whatever you like--but stop badmouthing platforms you are apparently not very well versed in.
I just recognize that it's a pile of hacks to make up for the fact that it was not originally intended to support graphics or color and that the toolset is inappropriate for many tasks.
LaTeX and troff have been used nearly from day one for professional writing including graphics and they handle that job the way they were intended to, and the way that its users need them to.
Especially for writers that use graphics as an integral part of their writing and make use of it for layout, a non-WYSIWYG view is simply too slow and cumbersome.
When you're doing layout, you're not a writer, you're a layout editor. LaTeX is not a good layout editor for fancy layouts, but then its users don't need it to be. I'm sorry if you need to supplement your writing with layout editing, but other people don't have that problem.
Take LaTeX and Adobe InDesign and go build a 50 page magazine including five or more graphics on each page,
It is not the job of professional writers to lay out magazine pages. In fact, that's not their job even if they supply the graphical content. And it doesn't make sense for professional writers to use layout software to do their writing.
The people who lay out magazine pages are layout editors. They get the text from the writer, the graphics from the graphic designers and photographers, and then put it all together using layout software.
The end result is everyone writes their own "system level" service. Its a nice idea thats utterly impractical and fails every time. ...except it works on OS X right now and has been working for years.
You are using OS X because of its Services menu? The cluttered thing that most people don't even know what it's for and are loathe to click on? Well, to each their own.
Well, first you argue for measuring outcomes, then you go through a list of possible measurements and why they're difficult to do.
So, you have almost come full circle. You see, the reason people like to tax vehicles (or measure motor currents or whatever) is not because they're stupid. They realize full well that it would be better to "measure outcomes". However, costs and external constraints prevent them from doing so. So, the choice is between doing nothing or finding a surrogate measure, and they simply pick the one that seems like a reasonable compromise.
For example, a friend who lives in California owns an older car. But she drives about two miles every couple of weeks. Regardless, the emissions limits the vehicle has to fufill are based on some presumptive and quite false belief about how far she drives each year.
Yes, but so what? First of all, old cars are usually exempt from these kinds of regulations. Second, what is the harm of making it more costly for people who drive gas guzzlers rarely to pay high vehicle taxes anyway? In fact, demand for gas guzzlers by people who drive them rarely doesn't even measure outcome, since merely buying a gas guzzler even without driving it contributes to keeping gas guzzlers in production.
Hmm...I guess the cars manufacturers could just stop selling their 'horrible' product in CA, and see how that works, eh?
In fact, I think it would be great for CA and for the US car industry if US car manufacturers stopped selling in CA; it would create a fertile ground for innovation and it would create a new breed of high-tech car company in CA.
Geez, doesn't CA have enough problems in house that should take precidence over stupid shit like this?
Air quality has been a major problem in CA, and emission controls have been very effective. Hard as it may be to believe for outsiders, Californians actually like breathing cleaner air.
When I suggested he change it, he said "No way. It took nine months to get that spec approved. Any change would require a review cycle and several meetings to get it approved. And if I change it without getting the spec changed, it won't pass SQA. This project is already behind schedule. I'm implementing it exactly the way this piece of paper says."
Discovering that the requirements you wrote don't work the way you intended is very common, and it's what Extreme Programming is supposed to fix...
While we are talking lawsuit, what's the logical argument/premise going to be for filing the suit? If we hold the automobile manufacturers responsible then what of the users of their products? Are you going to say that the drivers of such automobiles are "addicted", so by their logic are immune to prosecution?
It's a common strategy to avoid liability by pointing at other people and saying "but they bear part of the guilt". But whether their customers are also responsible is irrelevant. The fact is that car manufacturers have clearly some responsibility. And their responsibility isn't just limited to producing a product that later turned out to have unexpected problems, car manufacturers (like tobacco manufacturers) have been actively resisting making their products safer.
Jeez, sometimes I feel like I am getting squeezed on the far left by goofy loonies like Lockyer and pushed out of the picture by power hungry neocon fundies on the extreme right. What happened to the middle ground where people of reason and careful thought worked through compromise to help advance progress?*/RANT*
Of course, you are being squeezed; that is, there is pressure on both sides now. Why is that? Because there has been a long history of pressure from the right and staking out extreme positions on the right to try to shift the debate further to the right than would otherwise happen: the car industry has been using lawsuits, lobbying, FUD, and subsidies to strengthen their position. The car manufacturer's position--"we are not responsible"--is just as extreme. California's action is counterpressure to that, and arguably necessary counterpressure. Hopefully, the result will be a compromise in the middle.
Well, one reason is that for every OpenOffice.org user, there must be 20 or 30 Firefox users.
But another reason is this:
Firefox has a fairly consistent extension architecture, and most people seem to write and share their Firefox extensions in Javascript. Giving developers more options is not such a good idea because it reduces the ability to build on one another's work.
In addition, many platforms with a successful plug-in architecture provide means of managing and downloading plugins from within the application. If that exists in OOo, I have never come across it.
I think calling it "private-branding" when a company makes public source code proprietary is a bit of a euphemism.
If this decision is really based on Sun's business considerations, then it is a black eye for the OpenOffice project; an open source project should make decisions based on the best interests of its users, not based on the proprietary interests of one of its commercial sponsors. Furthermore, the rest of OpenOffice is GPL, so what's the problem anyway?
As for Sun, they have, of course, gotten away with this sort of thing multiple times. People like to talk about how oh-so-generous Sun's release of Solaris tend to sweep under the rug that Sun's operating system is based on BSD and originally developed with taxpayer funds at Berkeley.
You know, it's perfectly OK for you to be attracted to dancing men--we are open minded and tolerant here. But, for God's sake, have some taste!
What made the iPod successful was how easy it was to add songs to it. I haven't seen the software that's going to be shipped with the Zune but I'm guessing it'll be similar to iTunes.
iTunes is a mixed bag. If you completely subscribe to its world view, it works nicely. But there are some areas in which it is quite weak. For example, if you use one iPod and two computers, it doesn't work very well, and it keeps creating duplicate songs and entries for many people.
Overall, iTunes is the typical Apple product: well engineered, good looking, with just enough functionality to satisfy the needs of many people while still being fairly simple to use.
Ipod is synonamous with MP3 player now
Maybe in parts of the US. Around the world, people use lots of different kinds of MP3 players.
He also said "don't believe everything you read"... that may apply to what he himself has written :-)
Microsoft is trying to kill DRM.
I think the problem with CDs is that the music industry will sooner or later replace them and that they are sufficiently difficult to produce that the music industry will be able to do that. Vinyl is such an obvious and simple standard that it can be pressed and played with cheap hardware.
That argument doesn't work: the cost and risk of having an old organism reproduce once more is less than the cost of having offspring do it. All things being equal, it's evolutionarily better not to age.
The real reason is likely that non-age related factors used to set an upper bound on lifespans: if almost everybody gets killed before age 40, there isn't much point for human bodies to evolve to last much longer than that. The fact that we live to age 80 or 90 is a testament to how well we have evolved to avoid dying those first 40 years.
Now that starvation, disease, predation, and accidents don't kill us so much anymore, we'll be evolving longer lifespans automatically; in fact, a preference for late reproducing in the West will likely contribute to that trend.
I guess the problem is that I don't understand how "a good language to communicate ideas in" is different than "a good teaching language" or "a language that's good to program in". :-)
Yes, I think that's at the heart of the issue. What's the difference? It's like textbook French (learning) vs. colloquial French (programming) vs. academic French (communicating ideas): they are all different languages for different purposes. Scheme is a good teaching language (though not the only one), which is why it's being used to this day for that purpose, but...
The number of people using Scheme is small, but it is there. Yes, PHP is more popular; It is also total garbage.
Scheme has had lots of practical advantages over other languages: lots of people know it because they have to learn it in college and there have been excellent implementations for nearly two decades. The fact that programmers and computer scientists at all levels consistently choose other languages despite that built-in advantage is pretty good evidence that Scheme is not well-suited for those other purposes.
Unfortunately, it doesn't look to me like R6RS makes Scheme any better as a real-world language, but I think it may make it worse as a teaching language.
Ah well... can I buy you coffee?
Thanks for the thought.
Yeah, open source voting, scanning, and paper trails are all a good idea.
But where's the meat with the "Open Voting Consortium"? There is no software or technical information on that site, and the people involved don't seem to have produced anything relevant. There is, however, a lot of PR and glitzy photos.
From an organization that is serious about making this sort of thing work, I expect that they focus on the technical aspects first and then use a working technical solution to convince people.
It's a common theme that companies and governments want you to do things that are illegal. In fact, arguably, a lot of legislation is aimed at making things illegal that many people will be doing anyway (and, in some cases, don't have a choice): traffic laws, drug laws, decency laws, copyright laws, etc. Those sorts of laws are useful tools for selective enforcement, stronger contract negotiation positions, barriers to entry, and differential pricing.
Microsoft like DRM and the DMCA because it gives them the ability to implement differential pricing, erect bariers to entry, and have stronger negotiating positions; and they like DRM-breaking software because it makes their devices more useful. There is no contradiction in their behavior.
Of course, there is a contradiction tp their stated justifications for DRM, and it is important to bring this up prominently whenever Congress reconsiders DRM-related legislation.
What should happen?
Spying on people is illegal; the people involved should be charged and tried criminally. If found guilty, they should go to jail.
The failure to act is not on the part of HP (they have done all they should), it's on the part of the DA.
but the corporation as an entity made a decision to conduct business in an illegal fashion
If spying on board members were part of conducting business, you'd be right. But this isn't part of "conducting business"--it doesn't involve customers or society at large--it involves board members and their media contacts.
HP customers don't care much because they haven't been directly harmed. It would be different if HP had, say, shipped their PCs with spyware: in that case, the customers would have been harmed, and in that case, it customers would take action against HP (like buying elsewhere).
Whatever happens (and I don't expect it to be much) should happen to the corporate entity.
Quite to the contrary: the individuals in question would love to use the corporate entity as a shield. Prosecuting them as individuals not only is the logical thing to do, it is also a far better deterrent.
The interesting question is, will anyone care enough about this to stop doing business with HP? Will any major corporate clients reject these practices and refuse to deal with a company that engages in them?
I'm all for holding companies responsible for corporate misconduct. But this wasn't corporate misconduct, it was individual misconduct. The proper course of action is to take the responsible individuals to court. They should face hefty fines and jail time.