Off-topic, but interesting (Fiorina fired)

From: Tom Jennings <tomj_at_wps.com>
Date: Wed Feb 9 20:04:54 2005

On Wed, 9 Feb 2005, Computer Collector Newsletter wrote:

>> tomj wrote:
>> Their willingness to sneak in the "anti-counterfeit" (sic) crap into
>> their products is reason enough to dislike them
>
> Oh please. David Packard was the deputy Secretary of Defense for the Nixon
> administration. Do you really think he wouldn't have agreed with
> anti-counterfeiting technology, had it been around back then?

I know that, and of course he would have :-) I wasn't subscribing
to the idea that H & P were love-filled entrepreneurial hippies in
my remarks in this thread...

> I'm not denying that HP isn't the company it used to be, both in culture and in
> quality of products. But I say "The HP Way" didn't die -- it just never
> existed. The founders were just as good at marketing as, say, Steve Jobs is
> today. They simply hid it better.

...so much as taking issue with this image of HP as some holy place
of beauty, that it's some imponderable mystery how Things Could
Have Gone So Wrong? Sheesh.

I agree with you pretty much completely. They once made great
products. They don't now. The culture-wide atribution to
corporations (brands, really) person-like qualities is irritating.
It's just marketing, and everyone falls for it.

Good engineers want to make good products, corps want to make
bucks. Period. What else is new, etc.

I still find the willingness to sign on so unquestioningly with
"homeland security" (the irony of the phrase...) Orwellian people
tracking highly disgusting. They're hardly unique, or first, or
last, etc.
Received on Wed Feb 09 2005 - 20:04:54 GMT