Quick Hits
I’m still playing with bits and pieces, but there were a few items of interest:
Ms Bachmann has a ‘cunning plan’ to lower gas prices to $2.00. The picture with the article shows her clutching a $20, but I assume she knows the difference. I could lower the price of gas to $1 overnight – start pumping in liters. If the half-gallon size of ice cream can contain only a quart and a pint, and the $10 bag of dry cat food can go from 20 pounds to 16, why not? Business does it all the time.
The next innovation in employee pensions is the ‘401L’. Employers will deduct a dollar from workers’ paychecks and give them a lottery ticket. The odds of having enough money to retire are about the same as a 401K, and it saves businesses a lot of money and accounting overhead.
HP is exiting the PC business, screwing everyone who bought their pad or any of their mobile equipment first. I assume that someone will pretend to buy the division, as it has been a very long time since HP actually made anything with their trademark on it.
Oh, yes the market tanked again. The DOW closed below 10K and the T-Bill yield is barely 2%. There were more than 400K unemployment filings again, home sales tanked, and Merrill Lynch is saying double-dip is on the way. This is the awesomeness of austerity.
4 comments
The WebOS business was doomed as soon as Mark Hurd was forced out of the company. It was Hurd’s baby, and its days were numbered under the new regime, awaiting only an excuse to get the axe. And the dismal sales of the new tablet computer — apparently less than 50,000 sold in the first six weeks of sales — pretty much gave them an excuse.
Not that HP needed much of one. HP’s current CEO, Léo Apotheker, came from SAP. He doesn’t know the consumer market, he doesn’t like the consumer market, he doesn’t want HP to be in the consumer market. And yeah, all of HP’s consumer gear is made by contract manufacturers in Singapore. My guess is that one of those manufacturers is going to do a Lenova and buy the consumer gear division. Maybe the new owners will even invest enough money in engineering to fix the buggy AMD device drivers that make OpenGL games craptacular on their laptop systems :twisted:. I know it can be done, because Apple did it for their current generation of laptops, which ship with AMD graphics chips.
The decline and eventual demise of Palm was set into play when they decided to split the hardware and software divisions into separate companies in 2002. What makes the iPhone work is the close cooperation of hardware and software, but by spinning off all their software talent, Palm was basically doomed to OS obsolescence because it takes time to build up an OS team from scratch, because people aren’t fungible, once you lose your critical core of people you’re f**ked. If WebOS had been released shortly after Palm started talking about a Linux-based OS, somewhere around 2005, we wouldn’t be talking about iPhones today. But they no longer had the people to pull it off in a reasonable amount of time because of that stupid, stupid business decision…
A shame, really. My old Treo 700p was the last “smartphone” I owned that could actually be used one-handed. Quite handy for reading the Internet while sitting on the potty, because with a two-handed phone, how do you wipe? 😈
– Badtux the Geeky Penguin
Maybe it’s a plot to make Carly look competent 😉
I knew a number of HP people, and was a contractor for them in SoCal. They were never the easiest people to do business with, but they general put out reasonable products, and occasionally some great products. Like IBM, the divisions within the company competed more often than cooperated with each other, and there was constant political infighting.
My main contact person was on track to an early grave trying to get computers and printers to work together for trade shows and software demonstrations. At the time HP would supply free equipment to developers for demos as a form of product placements. Other than the obvious logos on the equipment, you had to have HP brochures and small stand-up cards at your booth or other demo area. It was a good deal, especially for East Coast developers, because HP delivered and picked up the equipment, and made sure it was working.
At some point the printer division began outsourcing the drivers, instead of using HP’s own software staff, and everything became a nightmare. Marketing wanted the newest equipment out there, and too often the newest printers didn’t communicate properly with the newest computers.
Palm made the same mistake, the belief that competition is always better than cooperation. It’s part of the MBA indoctrination.
As for your question, if it’s a Motorola ‘smartphone’, use it, although it will probably perform just as poorly at that task as most of the others it tries. You make the big bucks, buy a bidet … it will amuse the cats.
You don’t want to get me started about HP! Morons! (Just BTW, their T&M (Test & Measurement) biz is garbage also). The only reason HP survive is their medical & server Biz (though dog only knows why!
Anyway… (and OT)! I was sent a joke today. 😀
😆 😆 😆
In other news… We are moving house. Again. Over the next two weeks. *shrug*
I think I’ve mentioned before, my life seriously sux!
Ehhh… WTH, here’s another: 😛