Drugs, HP, Platt and Roelandts
George Carter
that HP discovered 120 marijuana plants growing at HP-Santa
Rosa (California). The plants were 75 feet from an HP softball
field and were irrigated with HP water passing through a hose
draped across the softball field. This story of HP management
incompetence has even been picked up by other newspapers
around the country, resulting in nationwide disgrace for the
company.
A great deal of nonsense gets published about Drugs and
Hewlett-Packard, so I thought I would take this opportunity to
give people the real story.
The reason HP has a problem with illegal drugs is that CEO Lew
Platt and Senior Vice President Wim Roelandts encourage the use
of these substances, while only giving lip service to anti-drug
efforts. For example, at HP-Santa Rosa, it would have been a
simple matter to determine who was tending this illegal crop.
Doubtless there are dozens of HP employees and managers who
already know. Installation of a simple motion detector, coupled
with an IR illuminator and CCD camera feeding a remote VCR,
would have provided concrete evidence. Instead, apparently the
crop was ripped out before responsibility was established. How
boneheaded can you get? Obviously, Platt does not want to
know who did this. Platt and Roelandts have plenty of experience
in Cupertino to know it usually turns out to be some degenerate
on the management team, a management degenerate, by the way,
that spends his other hours abusing the engineers that make HP
revenues possible.
Well, what about the drug testing Platt established? Earlier this
year HP announced it would require drug tests for new
employees, after debating such action for many years. What was
not announced was that Platt's drug policy was far weaker than
the drug policy I proposed to the Board. What I proposed was
that an organization reporting directly to HP's Board of Directors
should go out and test all current HP managers in HP Computer
Systems (I now think this should be expanded company-wide),
including Lew Platt and Wim Roelandts, for illegal drug use.
The real problem with illegal drugs at HP is that the use of these
substances is celebrated on the management team. This leads to
enormous problems. First and foremost are the drug-addled
management decisions that get made. These idiotic decisions
result in failed products, vast waste of shareholder funds, and
harm to the careers of HP employees, often the very best
employees, who are resented by the drug degenerate managers.
Second, whenever you have illegal drug use celebrated on the
management team, as it is at HP today, you have the problem that
all other drug efforts are compromised. As a result, the new
employee testing is compromised because the druggie managers
will simply coach their new recruits (in the unlikely event there is
revenue to pay any new recruits) on countermeasures. Also,
employees who were clean on entry to the company may become
corrupted, because Platt and Roelandts have indicated such drug
use is a very positive factor in retention and promotion.
The reason why Platt and Roelandts encourage illegal drug use at
HP is that they want to be respected, and they have a lifetime of
experience to suggest that high performance, high quality people
do not respect them. So they want to re-staff the company with
people who are impaired in some way. Illegal drugs turn even
quality people into dolts. Other techniques to avoid the normal
processes of earning people's respect are also used. One of the
worst is to run off the best of the minority employees and
promote the least capable. During the last six months I have run
into numerous ex-HP minority employees, often in electronics
stores on the weekends, including Blacks, Asian Indians and
Chinese.
I am as concerned about the invasiveness of the war on drugs as
anyone. But I have also seen the horrible impacts on HP that the
Platt administration's encouragement of illegal drugs can have.
Wim Roelandt's favorite, most highly rewarded project manager
for many years was also the worst drug degenerate in Building
43. This manager had to be stopped by HP Security with a road
block set up in the HP parking lot during a bizarre illegal drug
binge that included this manager climbing a barbed wire fence on
the loading dock. Roelandts' reaction was to increase his
compensation in various ways. The maintenance costs of that
code are probably still setting records (high), records even more
amazing than the record length of time (at the high end) it took to
develop. My assessment of this episode is that Wim wanted to
demonstrate to all that he had the power to reward even the worst
employees, and of course to further encourage the illegal drug
degeneracy that he has always encouraged to reduce criticism of
his failed regime.
Greg Cagle
>
<deleted>
Yes, but can you prove the Illuminati are behind it all?
- Greg
--
Greg Cagle |
Mentor Graphics Corporation | "Rosalita, jump a little higher..."
greg_...@mentorg.com |
(503)685-1570 |
Daryl Odnert
: Last Wednesday (8-24-94), the San Jose Mercury-News reported
: Rosa (California).
Speaking for myself and not for my employer, I find it interesting
that Mr. Carter decided to comment on this largely insignificant news
item but that he apparently had nothing to say in this forum about
Hewlett-Packard Company's 1994 third quarter financial results.
Daryl Odnert
Jason Zions
paranoid schizophrenic. Probably too much dope-smoking in your earlier days,
George, when you still had neurons that fired appropriately.
Frankly, as a stockholder I wouldn't give a rat's ass if someone grew dope
in their spare time; I'd be annoyed at the diversion of corporate resources,
and probably spend a little effort to track down the perps, but mostly I'd
rip the shit out quick, get the cops off the premises, and get back to work.
I don't think blame can be laid anyplace but on Site Maintenance and
Security; this isn't the sort of thing in which a CEO would get involved.
Forests and trees, George; you lost the ability to distinguish between the
two years ago. Shoot, I'm surprised you can tell the difference between your
foot and your mouth; the number of times the two are co-located would help
explain that, though.
I agree wholeheartedly with George, though, on his assertion that HP does a
lousy job retaining non-white-male professionals. I disagree with his
"analysis" of the cause of the problem; what he attributes to malice and
drug-addled minds from the top down, I attribute to mere laziness and
tolerance of a lack of understanding from the mid-level down. As for HP
pushing out their best professionals, that can be attributed to market
factors; the best people go elsewhere merely because they *can*. The ones
that aren't tied down by friends or family or disinclination to rip up their
lives, anyway. Voluntary Severance programs that pay people to depart are
not the world's smartest way to reduce the ranks.
Jason Zions, VSI Class of '93
Roger Petersen
| Rosa (California). The plants were 75 feet from an HP softball
| field and were irrigated with HP water passing through a hose
| draped across the softball field.
The local article here says that "HP security officers are searching
the 195-acre site -- which has about 130 acres of open space --
to make certain no other marijuana is being grown on the property."
I expect that all 130 acres of open space are not frequently patrolled.
In fact, much of it is covered with very dense growth.
A few of us went in search of the "pot garden", after hearing the story.
I can tell you, it was rather difficult to find, even after knowing
roughly where it was. The brush in that area is very thick, requiring
a machete or chain saw to navigate. An excellent hiding place.
The plants were grown in 4 separated circles, each about 15 feet in
circumference, interspersed with Scotch broom shrubbery. They were
probably nearly invisible from the air.
Roger Petersen
ro...@sr.hp.com
Roger Petersen
Funniest local news posting:
"An HP spokesperson denied that this was part of HP and Intel's
recently-announced joint venture.
And now, sports news..."
:-)
George Carter
>George Carter (gca...@infoserv.com) wrote:
>: Last Wednesday (8-24-94), the San Jose Mercury-News reported
>: Rosa (California).
>Speaking for myself and not for my employer, I find it interesting
>that Mr. Carter decided to comment on this largely insignificant news
>item but that he apparently had nothing to say in this forum about
>Hewlett-Packard Company's 1994 third quarter financial results.
George Carter writes:
I regard the episode as significant for a number of reasons. Note
that the perpetrator went to a lot of work to create this HP pot
farm, yet felt comfortable enough under the Platt regime to
irrigate the plot with a hose laid across the HP softball field. The
plot was only 75 feet from this field. Similar things happen in
Cupertino.
Regarding 3rd quarter financials, my comments on this appeared
in the related forum comp.sys.hp.hardware. It is reprinted
below:
comp.sys.hp.hardware
From: gca...@infoserv.com (George Carter)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp.hardware
Subject: Re: Platt and the old Corporate Run-around
Keywords: run-around, platt, customer service
Message-ID: <sE8VuA5...@gcarter.infoserv.com>
Date: Sun, 21 Aug 94 17:03:40 GMT
References: <VPpTuAL...@gcarter.infoserv.com> <32s2do$3...@news.cerf.net>
Reply-To: gca...@infoserv.com
Lines: 38
In <32s2do$3...@news.cerf.net> ae...@nic.cerf.net (Tony Burzio) writes:
>... HP is doing great, making record breaking
>profits (which is never enough for the terminally greedy 2-months-is-
>a-lifetime-let's-gouge-the-public types), so exactly what have the HP
>execs been doing wrong?
George Carter writes:
Lew Platt is not "making record breaking profits." The profits he
has posted in recent years are only half of the level Bill Hewlett
and Dave Packard used to routinely achieve. This severely
constrains what HP is able to invest in research and development,
which will hurt the company enormously in the coming years. In
the last two quarters, analysts were alarmed with the declining
profit margins in the second quarter and somewhat relieved they
fell only 0.1% further in the third quarter. The recent stock jump
appears to be the result of Lew misleading Wall Street: net
income came in at $1.33 per share, when the IEBS was predicting
$1.28. However, apparently this estimate did not include the four
cents per share HP earned by selling equity investments. HP
should be making engineering innovations, not these innovative
stock tout and securities fraud schemes, which will eventually
catch-up with it (full earlier disclosure of these sales should have
been made).
The reason Platt's management has not yet led to a complete
financial disaster is that HP's printer business has been doing very
well, especially the ink jets, and these profits cover up the
problems in Roelandts' Computer Systems area.
Beyond these financial considerations, I know Lew Platt and Wim
Roelandts and do not consider them top management material.
One interesting way to think about this is to imagine what would
have happened if Lew Platt had courted one of Dave Packard's
daughters, even when Lew was in his prime (which must have
been long, long ago). I imagine Dave Packard would have done
exactly what I would do in this situation: run Lew off with a
baseball bat.
Paul Hite
George Carter <gca...@infoserv.com> wrote:
>
>A great deal of nonsense gets published about Drugs and
>Hewlett-Packard, so I thought I would take this opportunity to
>give people the real story.
George, you could take an infinite number of monkeys and place them
at an infinite number of keyboards, but even if they posted news until
the end of time, not one of them could ever generate anything as silly
as your article. Not even if they were on drugs the whole time.
Paul Hite p...@spaceworks.com (301) 251-4136
You can't tell which way the train went by studying its tracks.
Jason Zions
From: gca...@bac.org (George Carter)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp.misc
Due to some usenet failures, two earlier postings of the material
below apparently did not make it out on the net. They are
reproduced below:
This, George, is called a usenet Success, not failure. It is true, though,
that automated drivel detection and prevention is not yet ready for
deployment on the internet; lucky you, you get to continue your intellectual
drool.
My "vice", like that of many HP engineers, was in experimenting
with higher voltages on the lab bench than authority authorized...
Hmm. I thought electroshock therapy had gone out of vogue.
I have, of course, been to many parties hosted by HP managers.
As have I.
In roughly half of these illegal drugs were provided and consumed
by some of the partygoers.
Funny, that; I never saw any drug use at parties hosted by managers. I did
see it at parties hosted by leaves on the organization tree. Occasionally,
and rarely.
Even while at HP, I also had a lot of non-HP friends, and at these
parties much higher standards prevailed, for example the parties
were all drug-free, and women were never sprayed with beer from
a keg, which was the favorite ice-breaker of one HP manager for
many years.
George, as your mere existence points out, there are rare exceptions to
accepted norms of behavior. I'm astonished that anyone ever returned to the
home of this beer-spraying manager for another party. (Unless the party was
in fact a pool party, in which case I'd be astounded at the wasting of good
beer.) Sure, the manager in question had a problem; anyone choosing to place
themselves a second time into that situation had a different problem, but a
problem nonetheless. I'm not blaming the victim here; but going back into
the guy's home a second time is about as dumb as walking through Manhattan's
Central Park after dark. You have a right to be there, but it's not the
world's brightest thing to do.
After many years of these parties, Lew Platt and John Young
learned that managers and engineers were partying together. Did
they then establish a company policy prohibiting management
illegal drug use? No. Management illegal drug use remained
acceptable. What they decided to prohibit was managers doing
drugs with engineers.
Here, George, you bring up one of HP's sadder days. It's true that
management once upon a time promulgated this mindless rule. The sad thing is
not, however, that HP failed to "establish a company policy prohibiting
management illegal drug use"; the sad thing is that HP failed to establish a
policy of saying "What our employees do on their own time on their own
premises is *their* business; so long as their work is not negatively
impacted, it is *not* our business."
The sad thing is that HP issued a policy of requiring new hires to pee in a
cup, not that they were forced to suspend that policy for a time. I'll sell
pencils on the street before I'll submit to urinalysis as a precondition of
employment.
This is one more reason I think Lew Platt
and John Young are rotten to the core. My position is that the
problem is not conviviality, it is illegal drugs.
My position is that the problem is not illegal drugs but the very fact of
their illegality. My problem is with employers and citizens sticking their
noses into my private life and making rules about my behavior insofar as it
affects no one other than myself.
At this point I've gotten off an HP subject and onto a general soap box, so
I'll step down now. Further drift shouldn't happen in this newsgroup; take
it someplace else.
Jazz
George Carter
below apparently did not make it out on the net. They are
reproduced below:
>From: gca...@infoserv.com (George Carter)
>Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp.misc
>Subject: Re: Drugs, HP, Platt and Roelandts
George Carter wrote:
>| Last Wednesday (8-24-94), the San Jose Mercury-News reported
>| that HP discovered 120 marijuana plants growing at HP-Santa
>| Rosa (California). The plants were 75 feet from an HP softball
>| field and were irrigated with HP water passing through a hose
>| draped across the softball field.
In <CvBrx...@srgenprp.sr.hp.com> ro...@sr.hp.com (Roger Petersen) writes:
>The local article here says that "HP security officers are searching
>the 195-acre site -- which has about 130 acres of open space --
>to make certain no other marijuana is being grown on the property."
>I expect that all 130 acres of open space are not frequently patrolled.
>In fact, much of it is covered with very dense growth.
>A few of us went in search of the "pot garden", after hearing the story.
>I can tell you, it was rather difficult to find, even after knowing
>roughly where it was. The brush in that area is very thick, requiring
>a machete or chain saw to navigate. An excellent hiding place.
>The plants were grown in 4 separated circles, each about 15 feet in
>circumference, interspersed with Scotch broom shrubbery. They were
>probably nearly invisible from the air.
George Carter writes:
Now let's be sensible here. The pot farm was 75 feet from the
softball field. I don't know how popular softball is at HP-Santa
Rosa, but if this field was in Cupertino, hundreds of people would
use it weekly, including a large number of engineers. Such a pot
farm in Cupertino would be found the first business day by a
number of people: those chasing foul balls, softball playing
engineers interested in why a gurgling hose is leading into a
mystery thicket, thirsty softballers looking for a drink, joggers,
walkers, landscape people, etc.
Obviously a chain saw or machete is not needed for entry since
the HP pot farmer has already blazed that trail. He did not drop
out of the sky.
For those of you that are city people, 130 acres is not very big.
Only someone as vastly arrogant as Lew Platt would give these
preposterous explanations to the press, or someone that was
consuming the product of this marijuana farm. Possibly both.
*********************************************
>From: gca...@infoserv.com (George Carter)
>Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp.misc
>Subject: Re: Drugs, HP, Platt and Roelandts
In <JAZZ.94Au...@jazz.hal.com> ja...@hal.com (Jason Zions) writes:
>Ah, yes, another diatribe inspired by Prozac withdrawal from our resident
>paranoid schizophrenic. Probably too much dope-smoking in your earlier days,
>George, when you still had neurons that fired appropriately.
George Carter writes:
I have NO experience with any illegal drug or Prozac. I have
done some reading in the illegal drug area and it is clear that these
substances can cause dangerous short circuits.
My "vice", like that of many HP engineers, was in experimenting
with higher voltages on the lab bench than authority authorized...
I have, of course, been to many parties hosted by HP managers.
In roughly half of these illegal drugs were provided and consumed
by some of the partygoers. The hosts were almost always
considerate, however, in restricting illegal drug consumption to a
back bedroom so as not to offend those in the living/dining areas,
many of whom dislike pot smoke or contact with white powders
prepared by felons. Since this was often the bedroom in which
winter coats were piled, the non-drug HP people soon learn to
bring a jacket that can simply be thrown in the washer at home
after the party to remove the horrible smell without running up
dry clearing bills. These were the social conventions in my area
of HP. Has Miss Manners issued a ruling on these practices?
Even while at HP, I also had a lot of non-HP friends, and at these
parties much higher standards prevailed, for example the parties
were all drug-free, and women were never sprayed with beer from
a keg, which was the favorite ice-breaker of one HP manager for
many years.
After many years of these parties, Lew Platt and John Young
learned that managers and engineers were partying together. Did
they then establish a company policy prohibiting management
illegal drug use? No. Management illegal drug use remained
acceptable. What they decided to prohibit was managers doing
drugs with engineers. This is one more reason I think Lew Platt
Brian Huntley
>For those of you that are city people, 130 acres is not very big.
Yeah, only about 4200 feet by 4200 feet. Tiny. George mows that much
grass in an hour. With tweezers, to ensure there's no illicit materials.
--
Brian Huntley "Merely to kill the killer of his
The Toronto Stock Exchange child did not kill the killing.
Toronto, Ontario, Canada It extended it." Timothy Findley,
bhun...@tse.com _Famous Last Words_
Charlie Brett
: gca...@bac.org (George Carter) rambles:
: >For those of you that are city people, 130 acres is not very big.
: Yeah, only about 4200 feet by 4200 feet. Tiny. George mows that much
: grass in an hour. With tweezers, to ensure there's no illicit materials.
Brian,
I don't know how big acres are where you live, but here they're
43,560 sq. ft. To help those used to living in the city, 160 acres
is what we call a quarter section. It's 1/2 mile on a side (hence
1/4 of a section, or square mile). If 130 acres were square, it would
be 2380 ft on a side (still a large piece of land).
Charlie Brett - HP Ft. Collins
My opinions are my own and in no way represent Hewlett Packard.
George Carter
policies of HP CEO Lew Platt. I think it would be useful to
describe what short-term actions he should take resolve these
problems.
Lew Platt should announce and distribute a new HP Policy on
illegal drugs that makes it very clear that recreational use of these
substances is incompatible with HP employment, and that urine
testing of all HP managers (including top executives) for illegal
drugs will begin as soon as Board approval is secured. He should
make it very clear that individual rights will be respected by HP
spending thousands of dollars per person if necessary to resolve
uncertain cases to make sure no false positives occur. It should
also be empathized that what is being tested for is recreational
use, not snaring some 62 year old HP cancer patient that traveled
to Mexico for experimental treatments not yet legal in the US.
Managers that fail this test would be terminated. It simply is
not fair to burden HP customers, stockholders, and employees
with the vast costs to the company imposed by drug addict HP
managers. HP stock sells today for about half of what it would
have if Platt and Young had maintained the Bill and Dave
business pace. That is more than 20 billion dollars of destroyed
wealth, some of which is due to drug-addled HP managers.
Platt should then go through and fire those managers, who, while
they may not be drug addicts themselves, encouraged illegal drug
use at HP. Certainly this list would include managers like Wim
Roelandts, Ed Yang and Araceli Valle. And, of course, Lew Platt
would then need to hand in his own resignation in this regard.
The Board should accept it immediately.
My assessment is that if you get rid of drug addicts on the
management team and the managers that permitted this, the
individual contributor drug problem will disappear as well,
without the much higher costs of testing this group. If this does
not occur, then a wider testing effort should be implemented. I
dislike the idea of drug testing, but the problem at HP is out-of-
control. My hope is that once the drug element on the
management team is removed, these tests will not have to be
done again so long as the remaining management runs a tight
ship.
George Carter
>... The sad thing is
>not, however, that HP failed to "establish a company policy prohibiting
>management illegal drug use"; the sad thing is that HP failed to establish a
>policy of saying "What our employees do on their own time on their own
>premises is *their* business; so long as their work is not negatively
>impacted, it is *not* our business."
George Carter writes:
The problem is an HP manager's work is always very negatively
impacted in two important ways: First, is the obvious mental
impairment that always extends into working hours due to the
long time constants of these substances. Second, and perhaps just
as important, is the psychological impairment. Drug-addled
managers adopt the view that their addiction is acceptable
because they are such important people. This is a fatal arrogance
in a business where there are tough competitors out there that do
not handicap themselves with drug degenerate managers.
Ask yourself if you want to be a passenger in an airplane where
the pilot did illegal drugs last night or last week? Of course not,
and this industry wisely tests for this potential. In order to be
competitive, HP managers need to be just as mentally sharp as
any pilot. If they are not, they will crash the company instead of
an airplane. I have personally seen HP lose what could have been
a revenue stream in the billions over the years due to the
Platt/Roelandts encouragement of management drug degeneracy.
CEO Lew Platt has failed completely to rid HP of the burden of
its drug degenerate managers, in fact he encourages them. He
should resign for this reason alone, although there are a lot of
other reasons that justify this resignation as well.
Jason Zions
The problem is an HP manager's work is always very negatively
impacted in two important ways: First, is the obvious mental
impairment that always extends into working hours due to the
long time constants of these substances.
Nice try, but wrong. The "long time constants" to which you refer are the
lifetime of metabolic byproducts of the drugs in question. The actual
duration of effect of the typical recreational drug is in the 2-12 hour
range.
If you're concerned about mental impairment, then why not be concerned about
mental impairment due to plain old drinking? How about plain old distraction
(due to divorce, kids in trouble, elderly parent in ill health, etc.)? How
about the bad judgement associated with lack of sleep? How about the
confusion, muddle-headedness and muzzy thinking associated with the goddamn
common cold? *Each* of those sources cause far more "mental impairment" than
drug use, George; there are studies to back that up, by the way. Do you
remember the Pareto Principle? Tackle the biggest contributer to the problem
first? I wouldn't recommend starting with drug use, I'd suggest starting
with marriage!
If you want to stop people from working when mentally impaired, then test
for impairment, not for metabolic byproducts of certain socially
unacceptable chemicals. Give random tests of concentration ability,
reasoning and problem-solving capabilities, reaction times. Test the root
problem, not something three times removed from one potential cause of the
problem.
Second, and perhaps just
as important, is the psychological impairment. Drug-addled
managers adopt the view that their addiction is acceptable
because they are such important people. This is a fatal arrogance
in a business where there are tough competitors out there that do
not handicap themselves with drug degenerate managers.
If the problem is arrogance, George, I know more arrogant people who do not
use drugs than people whose arrogance is caused by drug usage. If you want
to stop people from behaving arrogantly, then give random personality tests
to find arrogant tendencies. Have outside consultants sit in on random
manager/employee or employee/outsider interactions to monitor for arrogant
behavior. Again, don't test something now four times removed from one
potential cause of the problem.
Ask yourself if you want to be a passenger in an airplane where
the pilot did illegal drugs last night or last week? Of course not,
and this industry wisely tests for this potential.
The industry's testing policy is *not* wise as-is. They have rules
prohibiting flying for X hours after drinking; untested. They have rules
about maximum flight-time in 24 hours and within 72 hours; untested, and
they don't even test for sufficient sleep. There are no tests for general
ability to concentrate and focus, abilities which can easily be impaired by
legal biological, psychological, or social causes.
Train engineers are subject to the same rules as airline pilots; yet we've
had accidents involving sober engineers who've nodded off at the controls,
who've had other things intrude in their ability to do their job. If they
were subject to a rational testing policy, one which directly tested their
ability to do their job safely *every time* they got behind the controls,
they'd stop those accidents from happening, as well as accidents involving
drug usage too close to work time.
Jason
Mark Hahn
or were _his_ brains addled at HP?
If you know the Story of George Carter, let me know.
Such a collection really should be part of the FAQ,
but that could probably be contrived as libel.
Anonymity guaranteed to the greatest practical extent:
I'm root here.
BTW, if even half of the George-o-matic comments are true,
then HP seems like a very reasonable place to work.
regards, mark hahn.
--
operator may differ from spokesperson. ha...@neurocog.lrdc.pitt.edu
Keith Bierman-khb@chiba.eng.sun.com::SunPro
Is George Carter a posting bot run out of sun.com,
No. HP was foolish enough to employ George. Sun wasn't (I dunno if he
ever applied for whatever that's worth).
or were _his_ brains addled at HP?
I suspect it predates his employment at HP. I've known many sensible
people to have come from HP.
--
----------------------------------------------------------------
Keith H. Bierman keith....@Sun.COM| k...@chiba.Eng.Sun.COM
SunSoft Developer Products |
2550 Garcia MTV 12-40 | (415 336 2648) fax 964 0946
Mountain View, CA 94043 <speaking for myself, not Sun*> Copyright 1994
George Carter
>If you're concerned about mental impairment, then why not be concerned about
>mental impairment due to plain old drinking? How about plain old distraction
>(due to divorce, kids in trouble, elderly parent in ill health, etc.)? How
>about the bad judgement associated with lack of sleep? How about the
>confusion, muddle-headedness and muzzy thinking associated with the goddamn
>common cold? *Each* of those sources cause far more "mental impairment" than
>drug use, George; there are studies to back that up, by the way. Do you
>remember the Pareto Principle? Tackle the biggest contributer to the problem
>first? I wouldn't recommend starting with drug use, I'd suggest starting
>with marriage!
George Carter writes:
Jason's views in this area are alarming by themselves, but because
Lew Platt has effectively adopted much the same philosophy in
setting HP policy, this degenerate attitude is a big, big problem.
HP simply cannot afford to have drug degenerates on the
management team. Employees that may not be performing at
their best because they are taking care of an elderly parent in ill
health should hardly be put in the same class as an employee that
voluntary takes illegal drugs.
I have nothing but contempt for these apologists for illegal drugs
like Jason and Lew Platt. Yes, if Lew goes on a drug binge, he
would most likely go into some expensive detox center for rich
men. But these substances are destroying large areas of
America's Black community, among others, who do not have
access to rich men's detox centers. They end up dead from bullets
or the drugs. For Jason to support the soft-on-drugs policies at
HP and elsewhere that are causing this carnage is obscene in my
view. It is essential to get this sort of trash out of HP and any
respectable company. HP managers have a responsibility to be
exemplars for the rest of society, not wallow in its gutters.
Jason has also recommended performance tests as opposed to
drug tests. This is impractical in that no reliable tests of this sort
exist, nor is there any prospect of them existing. While it is true
that one occasionally runs into a continually drug-addled
employee that even under the drugs performs better than a
boneheaded sober employee, the solution to this problem is to get
rid of the bonehead, not endorse drug degeneracy. My
experience is that these boneheads are usually managers at HP
and are virtually always soft-on-drugs, because it increases the
number of people they have a chance of being competitive
against.
Jason Zions
Sorry about the previous one; for the first time in more than a decade of
usenet usage, a post escaped my fingers before I was done. Damn. Must be the
legal antihistamine I'm currently using. :-)
>If you're concerned about mental impairment, then why not be concerned
>about mental impairment due to plain old drinking? How about plain old
>distraction (due to divorce, kids in trouble, elderly parent in ill
>health, etc.)? How about the bad judgement associated with lack of
>sleep? How about the confusion, muddle-headedness and muzzy thinking
>associated with the goddamn common cold? *Each* of those sources cause
>far more "mental impairment" than drug use, George; there are studies to
>back that up, by the way. Do you remember the Pareto Principle? Tackle
>the biggest contributer to the problem first? I wouldn't recommend
>starting with drug use, I'd suggest starting with marriage!
Employees that may not be performing at
their best because they are taking care of an elderly parent in ill
health should hardly be put in the same class as an employee that
voluntary takes illegal drugs.
Why not? Both employees have impaired performance; action should be taken in
both cases. I believe the action should be *different* when the problem
stems from different causes; you tell the druggie to make damn sure his
usage doesn't affect his performance or else he's fired, and you help the
employee with the elderly parent find resources to assist him/her in caring
for that parent, including time off, assistance with aid programs, etc.
The *problem* is the same, George: impaired performance. The need for
response is the same. The specific response is different.
But these substances are destroying large areas of
America's Black community, among others, who do not have
access to rich men's detox centers. They end up dead from bullets
or the drugs.
Why are there bullets flying, George? Answer: selling drugs makes the dealer
extremely rich. Why is that? Because they're so expensive. Why are they
expensive? Because they're illegal. Legalize drugs, and the dealer on the
street corner goes away; the huge profit margin goes away; prices drop, so
consumers have less need to rob and mug to get money for their next fix.
Dead from an overdose? Call it evolution in action, George. Besides, there
are no recorded cases of anyone dying from an overdose of Marijuana. And
don't talk about DUI until you solve that problem with respect to alcohol.
For Jason to support the soft-on-drugs policies at
HP and elsewhere that are causing this carnage is obscene in my
view.
Knucklehead, the carnage is a direct result of the criminialization of
drugs, not of the drugs themselves.
Jason has also recommended performance tests as opposed to
drug tests. This is impractical in that no reliable tests of this sort
exist, nor is there any prospect of them existing.
Okay, so you advocate semi-reliable tests for byproducts of something that
may or may not be related to performance.
As for the lack of reliable tests for performance - tell me this, George,
how does the FAA know a pilot is qualified to fly an airplane? How does the
DOT know a train engineer is qualified for his post? How does an employer
know a job candidate is qualified for the position? THEY TEST HIM. Use the
same dang tests.
They run pilots through simulators; extract the core of that experience,
bundle it into a small and relatively brief package (like, say, MS Flight
Simulator running a touch-and-go landing) and that's it. There are reaction
time tests that are highly reliable. There are tests for ability to make
rational judgements and the rest of the usual set of cognitive tools. They
can be adjusted, as necessary, to accomodate differing socio-economic and
cultural backgrounds. Use them. They can take a few minutes to apply on a
random basis; enough to catch the folks who are 'way under it on that day.
the solution to this problem is to get
rid of the bonehead, not endorse drug degeneracy.
My position has never been one of endorsing drug degeneracy (whatever *that*
is). My position is that drug use _per_se_ is *irrelevant* to an employer;
what matters is on-the-job performance, not off-the-job behavior.
My experience is that these boneheads are usually managers at HP and are
virtually always soft-on-drugs, because it increases the number of people
they have a chance of being competitive against.
You're a sick person, George; you need psychiatric care. Get some, soon.
Jason
Jason Zions
>about mental impairment due to plain old drinking? How about plain old
>distraction (due to divorce, kids in trouble, elderly parent in ill
>health, etc.)? How about the bad judgement associated with lack of
>sleep? How about the confusion, muddle-headedness and muzzy thinking
>associated with the goddamn common cold? *Each* of those sources cause
>far more "mental impairment" than drug use, George; there are studies to
>back that up, by the way. Do you remember the Pareto Principle? Tackle
>the biggest contributer to the problem first? I wouldn't recommend
>starting with drug use, I'd suggest starting with marriage!
George Carter writes:
Employees that may not be performing at
their best because they are taking care of an elderly parent in ill
health should hardly be put in the same class as an employee that
voluntary takes illegal drugs.
Ummm, why not? Neither employee is performing to an appropriate level;
action should be taken. I definitely believe that the action may very well
be *different* when the problem stems from different causes, but action to
solve the problem should be taken. >
dmin Frank Slootweg
misc! :-)
Not to downplay the drugs problem in the US, but just, like Jason,
some datapoints to put things in perspective (i.e. put the most effort
in solving the biggest problem:
- In the US, more people die due to side-effects of anti-arthritis
(sp?) drugs, than due to use of illegal drugs.
- The US has more gunshops than gasstations.
- The US has a city with more murders than in the whole of Europe.
Jay Maynard
dmin Frank Slootweg <fra...@neth.hp.com> wrote:
>- In the US, more people die due to side-effects of anti-arthritis
> (sp?) drugs, than due to use of illegal drugs.
So far, so good. I agree with Jason that the problem is due to the fact that
drugs are illegal. I have reached that conclusion reluctantly, but it is
inescapable.
>- The US has more gunshops than gasstations.
>- The US has a city with more murders than in the whole of Europe.
Frank, are you trying to say that guns are the problem in the US today? If
so, I invite you to try that on talk.politics.guns...they can do a far
better job than I of destroying that argument, having had more practice.
FWIW, I concluded that outlawing drugs won't get us anywhere for the same
reason that outlawing guns won't get us anywhere: you'll never do away with
them in the real sense, no matter how illegal they are.
Jason's right, though, and George is (still) a raving lunatic bent on
blaming the evils of the world on Platt etc...not that that's news. George,
is there _anything_ Platt's done right, or does your blind, naked hatred not
allow you to say so?
--
Jay Maynard, EMT-P, K5ZC, PP-ASEL | Never ascribe to malice that which can
jmay...@admin5.hsc.uth.tmc.edu | adequately be explained by stupidity.
The US Constitution: 1789-1994. RIP.
Steve Witten
> is there _anything_ Platt's done right, or does your blind, naked hatred not
> allow you to say so?
I'd be interested in this too. Also, let's widen the query a bit to
include Wim Roelandts and John Young as well.
--
=================================================================
Steve Witten steve_...@sid.hp.com
Bay Area Analytical Operation
Hewlett-Packard Co.
Ron Gould
: Disclaimer: This has nothing to do with comp, sys or hp, so it must be
: misc! :-)
:
: Not to downplay the drugs problem in the US, but just, like Jason,
: some datapoints to put things in perspective (i.e. put the most effort
: in solving the biggest problem:
:
: - In the US, more people die due to side-effects of anti-arthritis
: (sp?) drugs, than due to use of illegal drugs.
:
: - The US has more gunshops than gasstations.
For me, this one is really hard to believe. So...
In this context what is the definition of gunshops and gasstations?
And where did this data come from?
:
: - The US has a city with more murders than in the whole of Europe.
Ron Gould
Mike Light
: - The US has more gunshops than gasstations.
Sorry, but this is a confusion with Federal Firearms Licenses.
A FFL is required for dealers, true, and for anyone wishing to collect
curios such as WWI full-auto machine guns, for example. Not all curio
collectors are dealers. (Probably few are).
Another use for having an FFL is the ability to transfer guns across
state lines, such as for wholesalers. There are only ~80,000 "gun shops",
and many of them are general sporting goods retailers.
BTW: I've heard western Europe now has a plentiful supply of weapons coming
in from the east. Plutonium, even. Imagine that. "Europe has more
plutonium dealers than the USA!"
-- Mike Light
George Carter
>They run pilots through simulators; extract the core of that experience,
>bundle it into a small and relatively brief package (like, say, MS Flight
>Simulator running a touch-and-go landing) and that's it. There are reaction
>time tests that are highly reliable. There are tests for ability to make
>rational judgements and the rest of the usual set of cognitive tools. They
>can be adjusted, as necessary, to accomodate differing socio-economic and
>cultural backgrounds. Use them. They can take a few minutes to apply on a
>random basis; enough to catch the folks who are 'way under it on that day.
George Carter writes:
This does not work. Testing isolated cognitive parts of the task
is possible, testing the overall performance, including the
complex perceptual-motor skill requirement cannot be done with
Microsoft Flight Simulator or similar efforts. This is great.
Jason wants to turn the safety of the air traveler over to an
assessment made by the Microsoft Flight Simulator. I think I'll
take ground transportation. This is why pilots must take actual
check rides and meet frequent experience requirements.
The same is true of HP, of course. The illegal drug problem HP
has in the Computer Systems area is one of the reasons this part
of HP's business is not living up to its potential. Illegal drugs are
simply incompatible with high performance in this business. The
fact that Jason and much of the Hollywood crowd tells America
differently is a horrible lie. Many technical and management
insights come at odd hours, but don't come at all if one is a
vegetable at that time.
Another aspect of this problem is that the use of illegal drugs by
HP Computer Systems people demonstrates that Lew Platt and
Wim Roelandts have completely lost control of the organization.
Drug testing to eliminate this problem is a simple management
task. If they can't manage a relatively simple problem like this,
how on earth are they going to get on top of the tough technical
and management problems that need to be solved for long term
success? They cannot, and for that reason, must leave.
P.S.
Adding political correctness to a pilot testing effort, is of course,
complete nonsense, re Jason's statement:
>They <pilot tests>
>can be adjusted, as necessary, to accomodate differing socio-economic and
>cultural backgrounds.
The requirements of this job are the same regardless of
socioeconomic or cultural background. Are you sure you don't
want to also make pilot testing sensitive to the whinny needs of
women as well? I would rather ride in a plane skillfully piloted
(regardless of the demographic characteristics of the pilot), not
one whose pilot met some political correctness test.
George Carter
>... George,
>is there _anything_ Platt's done right, or does your blind, naked hatred not
>allow you to say so?
>--
George Carter writes:
Let me defer my answer until HP builds another building in the
Bay Area (if ever). If it continues to build the classic HP
building, such as Buildings 43 and 47 (which have been
constructed all over the world), or if it is able to improve on the
exterior of this design, I will compliment Lew Platt. The
interior of these buildings is not good, but the exterior is very
well done: it communicates both cost-effectiveness and very
good taste through a classic combination of both Bauhaus and
Frank Lloyd Wright.
Sun Microsystems, by contrast, while they have done a great job
on their workstations, just built a horrible monstrosity of a
campus near the west end of the Dumbarton Bridge. Anyone
involved in the architecture of the new Sun Microsystems
campus should be given an illegal drug test. Feel free to tell
Scott or Eric I said so.
BEERS_JCP
: Jason's views in this area are alarming by themselves, but because
: Lew Platt has effectively adopted much the same philosophy in
: setting HP policy, this degenerate attitude is a big, big problem.
: HP simply cannot afford to have drug degenerates on the
: management team. Employees that may not be performing at
: their best because they are taking care of an elderly parent in ill
: health should hardly be put in the same class as an employee that
: voluntary takes illegal drugs.
So is the problem then with the illegality of the drugs? Then what do
you propose HP do in a country like The Netherlands where some drugs
that are illegal in the U.S. are quasilegal and readily available in
public establishments?
Should HP withdraw its operations from such an obviously degenerate
country (I mean, they tolerate prostitutes openly soliciting customers
along public thoroughfares)? Consider that the sales team here performs
very well bringing in a substantial amount of revenue. Because it's a bit
difficult for me to tell whether you're after profit or purity.
-- Chan Benson
HP (on-site at Philips)
cbe...@ms.philips.nl
Frank Slootweg
jmay...@nyx10.cs.du.edu (Jay Maynard) wrote:
> >- The US has more gunshops than gasstations.
> >- The US has a city with more murders than in the whole of Europe.
>
> Frank, are you trying to say that guns are the problem in the US today? If
> so, I invite you to try that on talk.politics.guns...they can do a far
> better job than I of destroying that argument, having had more practice.
> FWIW, I concluded that outlawing drugs won't get us anywhere for the same
> reason that outlawing guns won't get us anywhere: you'll never do away with
> them in the real sense, no matter how illegal they are.
Don't take me too seriously! :-) Others don't, myself included, so why
would you? I only wanted to point out that there are much bigger
problems than illegal drugs in general, and at HP specifically. I just
thought that some of the senseless drivel in this string might as well
come from me! :-)
With regard to guns, I can only say that most European countries have
much tighter gun control and much lower murder figures than the US. Are
these related? You be the judge of that.
r...@core.rose.hp.com (Ron Gould) wrote:
> For me, this one is really hard to believe. So...
>
> In this context what is the definition of gunshops and gasstations?
A shop where you can buy a gun (pistol, revolver, what-have-you)? A
place where you can buy gas for your car? I don't see the problem.
> And where did this data come from?
I have seen this quoted several times. I believe also in one of our
internal newsgroups, so It Must Be True (tm).
mli...@cup.hp.com (Mike Light) wrote:
> : - The US has more gunshops than gasstations.
>
> Sorry, but this is a confusion with Federal Firearms Licenses.
I don't think so.
> There are only ~80,000 "gun shops", and many of them are general
> sporting goods retailers.
So now the question is: How many gasstations are there? Any
volunteers?
Frank "Did *I* really start this mess?" :-) Slootweg
Bob Calvert
|> Illegal drugs are simply incompatible with high performance in this business.
Are you suggesting that all companies who are succeeding in this business
have no illegal drug problem and all that are failing, do? Or by "incompatible"
do you mean to suggest that any company which has employees who do partake
in illegal drugs, cannot succeed?
As an historical note, when HP was in its heyday (huge profit margins, Bill and
Dave in charge, etc.) do you suggest that employees of HP did not partake
in illegal drugs?
Bob Calvert
"Speaking for myself and not as an employee of HP"
r...@atl.hp.com
Tom von Alten
quantity does not imply quality. Certain posters in this forum do an
outstanding job at filling space, but the contents are questionable.
I've worked at HP for over a decade, and I'd just like to let readers know
that my experience here is completely orthogonal to the more lurid
descriptions that have been seen in this group lately.
It's not a perfect place, but I still think HP is a great company, and I'm
proud to work here. I think results speak much more eloquently than
personal attacks.
Speaking only for myself,
_____________
Tom von Alten email: al...@boi.hp.com
Hewlett-Packard Disk Memory Division
Thomas V. Myers
> Disclaimer: This has nothing to do with comp, sys or hp, so it must be
> misc! :-)
> Not to downplay the drugs problem in the US, but just, like Jason,
> some datapoints to put things in perspective (i.e. put the most effort
> in solving the biggest problem:
> - In the US, more people die due to side-effects of anti-arthritis
> (sp?) drugs, than due to use of illegal drugs.
More people die as a result of the use of LEGAL drugs (alcohol and tobacco)
than illegal drugs. This includes liver disease, lung cancer and heart
disease as well as drunk driving and domestic violence.
> - The US has more gunshops than gasstations.
Not true actually. There are more gas stations than any other category of
retail store, but that's because fast food shops are counted seperately from
'real' restaurants.
> - The US has a city with more murders than in the whole of Europe.
Right! The U.S. is a nice place to visit but you wouldn't want to live here.
Well... it really isn't that nice a place to visit either.
McDonalds outnumbers the gun shops! (but is that good or bad?)
--
Tom Myers : tvm...@icdc.delcoelect.com
Mike Light
: mli...@cup.hp.com (Mike Light) wrote:
: > : - The US has more gunshops than gasstations.
: >
: > Sorry, but this is a confusion with Federal Firearms Licenses.
: I don't think so.
If you got your data from the news-bites by such notables as Janet Reno
and Lloyd Bentsen, then they were referring to class III FFL's.
This was at the same time they were pushing to increase the cost
of these FFL's from $600 per three years to $2000 per three years
in an attempt to drive "Kitchen Table Dealers" out of business.
These were the same newsbites in which said notables kept bleating
about how there were more FFL holders than gas stations.
'Course, shortly before the price was increased to $200/year it only cost
$10/year to be an FFL holder, and as long as you weren't a convicted felon
you could get a license with a hassle-free background check by the BATF.
Since it was cheap and easy, many people took advantage of it, just
as any small business person might do.
: > There are only ~80,000 "gun shops", and many of them are general
: > sporting goods retailers.
: So now the question is: How many gasstations are there? Any
: volunteers?
No idea. But I'd wager a lower bound at one per thousand people.
If so, that would be ~270,000 gas stations.
-- Mike Light
Sandy Morton
|> Let me defer my answer until HP builds another building in the
You should see the one we're building in Atlanta. :^)
George Carter
writes:
...
> Not to downplay the drugs problem in the US, but just, like Jason,
>some datapoints to put things in perspective (i.e. put the most effort
>- The US has a city with more murders than in the whole of Europe.
George Carter writes:
It is largely the same problem. The crime rate in the United
States is about the same as that in the best parts of Europe once
the large contribution to that rate of the Black and Hispanic
communities in the U.S. is factored out. White American men
need to solve this problem because much of the Black and
Hispanic crime is drug related, and much of the demand for this
product comes from the White community. Therefore if White
guys like Lew Platt would do their damn job, and get the drug
users out of Hewlett-Packard, significant improvement in the
Black and Hispanic communities could be expected due to the
drop in demand for illegal drugs, which is tearing apart those
communities, and is the main reason the crime rate in the U.S. is
higher than that in Europe.
One of the most effective things the Black Caucus could do for
their community is to forget about places like Haiti (which needs
to solve its own problems) and pressure companies like HP to
install strong anti-drug leadership to replace the largely pro-drug
people like Lew Platt and Wim Roelandts.
I hope people are beginning to understand the enormous
problems having this irresponsible trash like Lew Platt in key
positions is causing, not only in Hewlett-Packard, but nationwide.
HP should be an anti-drug leader. Lew Platt should not only have
already solved the illegal drug problem at HP, but given HP's
prominence, Lew should have provided some leadership to get
other CEOs on the bandwagon.
An effective leader understands the downstream consequences of
his policies outside his own community. To Lew Platt, illegal
drugs mean some of his fellow executives act like zombies at
parties and sometimes results in their hospitalization. No big deal
to him, and illegal drugs have the advantage to him of reducing
the number of upstarts below him in the organization, so he
encourages drug use. I submit real leaders understand the
horrible consequences management consumption of these illegal
products has in the nation as a whole, particularly in the poorer
communities. Anyone that understands these consequences also
understands the need for no tolerance of these substances at HP.
George Carter
writes:
>Hello George,
George Carter writes:
If the culture in any area is such that an HP salesman must do
illegal drugs with the client in order to sell HP products, then HP
should find an alternative channel to supply these customers that
does not involve illegal drugs with HP people. In the rare case
where there is no other sales channel, then HP should avoid the
area, whether it is the Netherlands or Hollywood, USA. This
judgment is not only the moral one, but the only practical profit
maximization one, due to liability concerns. Most of us, if we
were on a jury where a surviving wife convinced us HP demanded
a salesman (her husband) do drugs illegal in the U.S. to make a
sale, and the salesman died as a result, would award enough to
her to strip HP of any profits in that area, even if it were in the
hundreds of millions of dollars.
George Carter
>|>... Illegal drugs are simply incompatible with high performance in this business...
In <35c45s$d...@hpuerci.atl.hp.com> r...@atl.hp.com (Bob Calvert) writes
>...
>As an historical note, when HP was in its heyday (huge profit margins, Bill and
>Dave in charge, etc.) do you suggest that employees of HP did not partake
>in illegal drugs?
George Carter writes:
For the first several decades of HP's history, there was virtually
no use of drugs like marijuana and cocaine. Marijuana use was
concentrated in the ghettos and among jazz musicians, neither of
which were recruited by HP. It increased somewhat after that as
society went through the Sixties, but under Bill and Dave, was
far, far less of a problem at HP than in society at large and was
relatively isolated, based on what I have heard (this was before
my time at HP). The John Young and Lew Platt era caused the
problem to explode because both of these people run a very
loose ship and because the sort of manager they promoted often
view the druggies as another special interest group that can be
exploited for their own personal benefit, not HP's benefit.
Highly ranking, paying, and promoting a drug addict
demonstrated their absolute power in the organization to all, and
therefore appealed to people like Wim Roelandts. This
investment also meant they could count on the druggie network
for information and support for their policies, no matter how
ignorant.
Platt, Young and Roelandts have also encouraged the
Balkanization of HP in above-ground groups, with varying levels
of support for all sorts of ill-advised groups of employees,
ranging from women to racial groups. This is harmful to HP.
The old way was much better, when HP groups were open to
everyone like fisherman, bicyclists, duck hunters, etc. Platt's
open and nefarious support for the HP Technical Women's
Conference and other Balkanization of HP benefits him by
convincing these individuals they will get special treatment, but it
hurts HP severely as a company, by undermining desirable
meritocracy. Only his encouragement of illegal drug use is a
cheaper, more damaging hustle.
Pat Wilson
gca...@infoserv.com (George Carter) blithers:
>The crime rate in the United
>States is about the same as that in the best parts of Europe once
>the large contribution to that rate of the Black and Hispanic
>communities in the U.S. is factored out. White American men
>need to solve this problem because much of the Black and
>Hispanic crime is drug related, and much of the demand for this
>product comes from the White community.
White Man's Burden rears its ugly head.
Ok, White Men! Get off your lazy butts and fix the world up so
Happy Minorities and Women will be Safe and Productive. After, all
it's All Your Fault, and we don't know any better.
Jeez.
--
Pat Wilson
p...@coos.dartmouth.edu
Joe Freeman
> mli...@cup.hp.com (Mike Light) wrote:
> > : - The US has more gunshops than gasstations.
> >
> > Sorry, but this is a confusion with Federal Firearms Licenses.
>
> I don't think so.
Yes it is. The gunshop/gasstation statistic includes every FFL licenese ,
most of which are people operating out of their homes and who do little if
any buisness. (All gunsmiths are required to have an FFL even if they
don't sell. Otherwise they can't ship parts around) It is kind of like
including every operation that has a buried gas tank an pump on their land
as a gas station. HP has several hundred of these and would add those to
the gas station total if they were counted the same way.
Frank Slootweg
> - The US has more gunshops than gasstations.
OK! I give in:-) :
- The US has more gasstations than gunshops.
Now, let' see, who can we blame for that one? :-)
Frank "I said that it was senseless drivel, didn't I?!" :-)
Marc Sabatella
> Therefore if White
> guys like Lew Platt would do their damn job, and get the drug
> users out of Hewlett-Packard
Funny, I don't remember that being in the job description.
Or did you mean to list two separate activites for Lew to engage in: first, his
job, and second, to get drug users out of HP?
>For the first several decades of HP's history, there was virtually
>no use of drugs like marijuana and cocaine. Marijuana use was
>concentrated in the ghettos and among jazz musicians, neither of
>which were recruited by HP. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
No, they didn't start recruiting jazz musicians until the 1980's. Me in 1988;
when did they let you in, Jason?
--
Marc Sabatella
ma...@sde.hp.com
--
All opinions expressed herein are my personal ones
and do not necessarily reflect those of HP or anyone else.
Thomas V. Myers
> For the first several decades of HP's history, there was virtually
> no use of drugs like marijuana and cocaine. Marijuana use was
> concentrated in the ghettos and among jazz musicians, neither of
> which were recruited by HP.
So HP discriminated against employees from ghettos? How about Jews,
Catholics and women? Or are you saying that ghettos dwellers of that era
did so by choice rather than work for a company like HP?
Aha! So Socialism is the real problem. Being a member of the majority,
George objects to any minority group which attempts to influence HP (and/or
the Government) to their benefit. The 'meritocracy' has been the published
'policy' of hundreds of companies, but the achieved goal of damn few of them.
The one factor which always seems to outweigh 'merit' is 'seniority'. But of
course I think that, I'm a post-boomer being crushed by all the boomers ahead
of me. ;-)
--
Tom Myers : tvm...@icdc.delcoelect.com
George Carter
V. Myers) writes:
>George Carter (gca...@infoserv.com) wrote:
>> For the first several decades of HP's history, there was virtually
>> no use of drugs like marijuana and cocaine. Marijuana use was
>> concentrated in the ghettos and among jazz musicians, neither of
>> which were recruited by HP.
>So HP discriminated against employees from ghettos? How about Jews,
>Catholics and women? Or are you saying that ghettos dwellers of that era
>did so by choice rather than work for a company like HP?
George Carter writes:
HP for the first 20 years built electronic instruments and was not
located near any ghettos. I am sure anyone with the appropriate
skill set for this sort of work was welcome to compete for a
position, subject to normal business need constraints. Jews,
Catholics and women have all done very well at HP. This is well
accepted in the first two cases but HP management women seem
to have a totally unjustified burr on their saddle.
Both Carolyn Tichnor and Carol Mills currently occupy two of the
most important GM positions in the company, largely determining
the fate of over 10 billion dollars of revenue. They were given
these positions despite very checkered results in previous
positions. Despite major investments, Carol's HP-UX is still barely
tolerated by the customer base when it should be a solid
competitive advantage by now. Carolyn's results in HP3k-IBM
datacomm were modest (and I think she was part of HP's
notorious corporate MIS department before that), and her datacomm
processor a fiasco. Two other efforts she supervised (as GM or
LM) in Roseville, HP routers and a small telephony effort fell far,
far short of their multi-billion dollar potential. I will grant that
both of these women are more talented than Lew Platt, but when
measured against the traditional high standard HP sets, still have
quite a ways to go. I wish them the best. As a businessman, I
would only entrust 10 billion dollars of revenue to hard-core
engineering entrepreneurial types, people that eat and sleep the
business, which I don't think they will ever be -- but I hope they
prove me wrong.
>Aha! So Socialism is the real problem. Being a member of the majority,
>George objects to any minority group which attempts to influence HP (and/or
>the Government) to their benefit.
George Carter writes:
Yes, the socialist tradition of Balkanizing a society into racial,
religious or gender differentiated groups all of whom are aimed at each
other throats is a big, big problem in America today. Bosnia is a
great example of the stupidity of this practice. The best approach
for both HP's minorities and women is to strongly support
meritocracy. A focus on merit in Europe is what allowed
Rosalind Franklin to achieve what she did in her all too brief life.
This is the only approach that can maximize the achievements of
these groups. I've known some very talented HP women that
were essentially blocked from advancing even when the company
was growing rapidly, not by a WASP male, but by a no-talent
female poseur who did not want any competition. A focus on
merit will prevent this.
George Carter
>>...Therefore if White
>> guys like Lew Platt would do their damn job, and get the drug
>> users out of Hewlett-Packard....
In <35l1s5$p...@tadpole.fc.hp.com> ma...@sde.hp.com (Marc Sabatella) writes:
>Funny, I don't remember that being in the job description.
>Or did you mean to list two separate activites for Lew to engage in: first, his
>job, and second, to get drug users out of HP?
>>For the first several decades of HP's history, there was virtually
>>no use of drugs like marijuana and cocaine. Marijuana use was
>>concentrated in the ghettos and among jazz musicians, neither of
>>which were recruited by HP. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>No, they didn't start recruiting jazz musicians until the 1980's. Me in 1988;
>when did they let you in, Jason?
George Carter writes:
I've never met Marc and Jason since they were based at HP-
Colorado while I was in Cupertino, so I have no knowledge of
their actions, but I find their attitude as disturbing as that
exhibited by that subset of the HP-Cupertino managers that can
be classified as illegal drug degenerates. So in those cases where
the actions parallel the attitude:
Don't you guys worry that you are not pulling your weight at HP
or in your families as a result of being stoned? Why should HP
shareholders subsidize your zombiedom?
Are you not worried that your degeneracy will disrupt the lives of
many of your subordinates? At HP, even a first-level manager
failing due to drugs may lead to the disruption of the careers of
eight to ten subordinates. At higher levels, the stakes are much
higher. HP no longer has an effective means of removing bad
apples on the management team. If an engineer complains of
being managed by a drug addict, this complaint often improves
the drug-addled manager's status in the organization, since the
manager's boss now has more leverage and less competition.
Are you not concerned about the high costs the very negative
health impacts of drugs have on both yourselves and the rest of
society? While you are clogging up hospital emergency rooms,
someone more deserving may need that space, someone whose
injury was accidental.
Are you not worried that your addiction may be responsible for
your horribly bad judgment, that if adopted by others, could lead
to disaster? Remember earlier in this discussion Jason seriously
proposed doing away with pilot drug tests and replacing them
with something similar to the Microsoft Flight Simulator. Jason
wanted to give pilots the freedom to do all the drugs they want
before flying commercial passenger jets, so long as they could
fool some PC-based game. If such an idiotic proposal was
actually adopted, thousands could die in crashes before this
nutcase policy was reversed.
Are you not concerned that the dollars you spend on this leads to
nothing but death, corruption and squalor in the inner city?
Are you not concerned that your drug degeneracy leads you to
support the weakest, least suitable people to promote at HP all
the way to the top? While Lew Platt has certainly repaid the
favor by refusing to take effective action against the drug crowd
at HP, it also proves to all that he is unfit to manage.
Are you not concerned that your drug degeneracy is reflecting
very poorly on a company that was managed by its founders very
effectively for forty years? Hewlett and Packard built up a lot of
trust with customers over those decades, a trust that is often
broken today for a number of reasons, but often because a
manager is too drug-addled to perform properly.
Have you considered that drug degeneracy is leading to greater
socialism in the United States? What happens when people like
Lew Platt represent HP is that it causes people to question
capitalism. People see the drug degeneracy and the low quality of
the CEO and say something must be done. Because it is virtually
impossible to win a proxy fight unless your name is Hewlett or
Packard, smaller shareholders may then support democratic
socialism just for an opportunity to vote the scoundrel out. It is a
great irony that having Lew Platt as CEO is a major contribution
to socialism in the United States. Dave Packard deserves better.
And finally, have you considered that drug degeneracy and the
atmosphere of drug tolerance you advocate at HP brings with it
the potential of enormous tragedy at HP? What if one of HP's
degenerate managers on a drug binge rapes an HP woman, and
her husband/boyfriend/brother/father, faced with either fighting
HP in court for ten years or employing frontier justice (perhaps
with a chain saw), settles the score with both the drug addled
manager and the executive responsible for drug degeneracy in the
organization (Platt)?
So, yes Marc, getting the drug degenerates out of Hewlett-
Packard is part of Lew Platt's job description.
Andy Carey
Distribution:
George Carter (gca...@infoserv.com) wrote:
: Both Carolyn Tichnor and Carol Mills currently occupy two of the
: most important GM positions in the company, largely determining
: the fate of over 10 billion dollars of revenue. They were given
: these positions despite very checkered results in previous
: positions. Despite major investments, Carol's HP-UX is still barely
: tolerated by the customer base when it should be a solid
: competitive advantage by now. Carolyn's results in HP3k-IBM
The main problem with HP-UX is not it's manegerial aspect, but the
technical side. It sucks. Besides, why should I put money into a
lousy OS, when I can get better ones for free. (Another example: Motif)
--
Andy Carey
car...@csos.orst.edu http://www.csos.orst.edu/~careya/
Daryl Odnert
Andy Carey (car...@CSOS.ORST.EDU) wrote:
: The main problem with HP-UX is not it's manegerial aspect, but the
: technical side. It sucks. Besides, why should I put money into a
: lousy OS, when I can get better ones for free.
Thank you for your detailed technical analysis of HP-UX versus
its competition. You've certainly convinced me that you know
what you're talking about.
Are you always this thorough in you work?
Daryl Odnert
da...@cup.hp.com
Hewlett-Packard Company
Andy Carey
: Thank you for your detailed technical analysis of HP-UX versus
: its competition. You've certainly convinced me that you know
: what you're talking about.
I never intended to present a detailed list of HP-UX's failings, including
gaping holes in security and general bugginess. I was only conveying my
general impression of why HP-UX has failed to make it big in the marketplace,
base this on both personal experience and those of others.
"Stupid is as Admin does..."
Frank Slootweg
> I was only conveying my
> general impression of why HP-UX has failed to make it big in the marketplace,
> base this on both personal experience and those of others.
Indeed we did not make it big, we made it biggest (in sales of UNIX
systems in 1993). So I guess we must be doing something right.
David Breneman
: I have been very critical in this thread of the soft-on-drugs
: policies of HP CEO Lew Platt. I think it would be useful to
: describe what short-term actions he should take resolve these
: problems.
: Lew Platt should announce and distribute a new HP Policy on
: illegal drugs that makes it very clear that recreational use of these
: substances is incompatible with HP employment, and that urine
: testing of all HP managers (including top executives) for illegal
: drugs will begin as soon as Board approval is secured. He should
: make it very clear that individual rights will be respected by HP
: spending thousands of dollars per person if necessary to resolve
: uncertain cases to make sure no false positives occur. It should
: also be empathized that what is being tested for is recreational
: use, not snaring some 62 year old HP cancer patient that traveled
: to Mexico for experimental treatments not yet legal in the US.
It seems like Mr. Carter left his terminal logged in again, and
Bill Bennett is posting another of his prank articles...
Deletions...
: My assessment is that if you get rid of drug addicts on the
: management team and the managers that permitted this, the
: individual contributor drug problem will disappear as well,
: without the much higher costs of testing this group. If this does
: not occur, then a wider testing effort should be implemented. I
: dislike the idea of drug testing, but the problem at HP is out-of-
: control. My hope is that once the drug element on the
: management team is removed, these tests will not have to be
: done again so long as the remaining management runs a tight
: ship.
It's a metaphysical jump from "recreational users" to "drug addicts".
If HP implements the policies you expouse, it would serve them right
if their best and most talented people left en masse and the company
withered into oblivion. It's happened before. The only people who
gain from the War On Drugs are government bureaucrats and mobsers,
neither of whom would like to give up their synergistic relationship.
Drug testing policies are only playing into their hands.
Typical disclaimers (although my company at least agrees with me
to the extent that they do not have mandatory drug testing).
--
David Breneman Email: da...@jaws.engineering.dgtl.com
System Administrator, Voice: +1 206 881-7544 Fax: +1 206 556-8033
Product Development Platforms
Digital Systems International, Inc. Redmond, Washington, U. S. o' A.
George Carter
>: I have been very critical in this thread of the soft-on-drugs
>: policies of HP CEO Lew Platt. I think it would be useful to
>: describe what short-term actions he should take resolve these
>: problems.
>: Lew Platt should announce and distribute a new HP Policy on
>: illegal drugs that makes it very clear that recreational use of these
>: substances is incompatible with HP employment, and that urine
>: testing of all HP managers (including top executives) for illegal
>: drugs will begin as soon as Board approval is secured. He should
>: make it very clear that individual rights will be respected by HP
>: spending thousands of dollars per person if necessary to resolve
>: uncertain cases to make sure no false positives occur. It should
>: also be empathized that what is being tested for is recreational
>: use, not snaring some 62 year old HP cancer patient that traveled
>: to Mexico for experimental treatments not yet legal in the US.
In <4077@dsinet> da...@dgtl.com (David Breneman) writes:
>It seems like Mr. Carter left his terminal logged in again, and
>Bill Bennett is posting another of his prank articles...
George Carter writes:
Bill Bennett is a good man, and I would be honored if he used my
computer, but I come from the Teddy Roosevelt (action
intellectual) tradition, as opposed to the moral intellectual
tradition of Bill Bennett. Rather than simply writing books about
drugs, Bennett was highly enough placed to convince the
President at that time to wipe out the cocaine industry.
Remember that laser-guided smart bomb in "Clear and Present
Danger"? One hundred of those, directed at the top 100 cocaine
production targets in South America could destroy that industry
by not only decimating current production but also making clear
the business risks of future cocaine production. Very valuable
reliability and bug-fixing data for these weapons would also
result. And Bennett's books would be much more interesting if
they described such an assault and if he rode in the back seat of
one of the fighter-bombers on the mission. That is what Teddy
would have done.
Doing this makes far more sense than Clinton's senseless effort in
Haiti. Haiti is not a danger to the U.S. Cocaine is a severe
danger. Domestically produced drugs are a much tougher
problem because you can't make the police forces strong enough
to solve the problem without ending up with totalitarianism, given
human failings. That is why it is important for companies like HP
to help solve the problem.
George Carter wrote earlier:
>: My assessment is that if you get rid of drug addicts on the
>: management team and the managers that permitted this, the
>: individual contributor drug problem will disappear as well,
>: without the much higher costs of testing this group. If this does
>: not occur, then a wider testing effort should be implemented. I
>: dislike the idea of drug testing, but the problem at HP is out-of-
>: control. My hope is that once the drug element on the
>: management team is removed, these tests will not have to be
>: done again so long as the remaining management runs a tight
>: ship.
In <4077@dsinet> da...@dgtl.com (David Breneman) writes:
>...If HP implements the policies you expouse, it would serve them right
>if their best and most talented people left en masse and the company
>withered into oblivion. It's happened before...
George Carter writes:
"It's happened before," When? To the contrary, illegal drugs,
along with management arrogance have destroyed some large
companies in this valley, including the first incarnation of Atari,
which had 2 billion dollars in sales for a brief period (remember
the 2600) and then fell apart and was sold.
HP's best and most talented people are not recreational users of
illegal drugs. And if you talk to (or overhear) HP women who
have been with drug users, even those HP men that mostly do
marijuana, you will hear a lot of complaints that marijuana results
in a lot of limp-dick guys that don't perform between the sheets
either. I've always thought a videotape of such a complaint,
broadcast on nationwide TV, would be extremely effective, far
more than Nancy Reagan's "Just say No." Part of the reason for
the emergence of radical feminism is the reduced overall virility of
the male population due to drugs, that, in a statistical sense,
results in increased sexual frustration in the impacted women.
Vociferous Mole
>
>Remember that laser-guided smart bomb in "Clear and Present
>Danger"? One hundred of those, directed at the top 100 cocaine
>production targets in South America could destroy that industry
>by not only decimating current production but also making clear
>the business risks of future cocaine production.
>
>Domestically produced drugs are a much tougher
>problem because you can't make the police forces strong enough
>to solve the problem without ending up with totalitarianism, given
>human failings.
So it's OK to blow away people without due process in a foriegn country,
but not here in the good old USA?
George, do you see the inherent contradiction in these two statements?
>HP's best and most talented people are not recreational users of
>illegal drugs. And if you talk to (or overhear) HP women who
>have been with drug users, even those HP men that mostly do
>marijuana, you will hear a lot of complaints that marijuana results
>in a lot of limp-dick guys that don't perform between the sheets
>either. I've always thought a videotape of such a complaint,
>broadcast on nationwide TV, would be extremely effective, far
>more than Nancy Reagan's "Just say No." Part of the reason for
>the emergence of radical feminism is the reduced overall virility of
>the male population due to drugs, that, in a statistical sense,
>results in increased sexual frustration in the impacted women.
This is certainly the funniest thing I've read all week. Could post
your reference for this?
Steve Greenland
--
SteveG | ste...@neosoft.com | '91 SHO, Mocha/Mocha | h.p peon
I feel like a '286 in a Pentium world....
Tom von Alten
: ... you will hear a lot of complaints that marijuana results
Wow, I had no idea. Do you have first-hand information on this?
Martyn=Jones%Su...@bangate.compaq.com
>>George Carter wrote:
>
>>>...Therefore if White
>>> guys like Lew Platt would do their damn job, and get the drug
>>> users out of Hewlett-Packard....
>
>In <35l1s5$p...@tadpole.fc.hp.com> ma...@sde.hp.com (Marc Sabatella) writes:
>
>>Funny, I don't remember that being in the job description.
>
>>Or did you mean to list two separate activites for Lew to engage in: first, his
>>job, and second, to get drug users out of HP?
>
>>>For the first several decades of HP's history, there was virtually
>>>no use of drugs like marijuana and cocaine. Marijuana use was
>>>concentrated in the ghettos and among jazz musicians, neither of
>>>which were recruited by HP. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>>No, they didn't start recruiting jazz musicians until the 1980's. Me in 1988;
>>when did they let you in, Jason?
Just goes to show. The worst degenerates are not necessarily drug users.
Martyn - Munich
Martyn=Jones%Su...@bangate.compaq.com
>George Carter writes:
>Both Carolyn Tichnor and Carol Mills currently occupy two of the
>most important GM positions in the company, largely determining
>the fate of over 10 billion dollars of revenue. They were given
>these positions despite very checkered results in previous
>positions. Despite major investments, Carol's HP-UX is still barely
>were essentially blocked from advancing even when the company
>was growing rapidly, not by a WASP male, but by a no-talent
>female poseur who did not want any competition. A focus on
>merit will prevent this.
Meritocracy? My god! Lucky not everyone isn't judged on merit eh?
Martyn - Munich
Martyn=Jones%Su...@bangate.compaq.com
Just goes to prove how some people form their general impressions - on absolutley
no facts whatsoever.
Well done HP!
Martyn - Munich
Martyn=Jones%Su...@bangate.compaq.com
>>George Carter (gca...@bac.org) wrote earlier:
[a hell of a lot of text deleted]
>
>George Carter wrote earlier:
[ I deleted this as well ]
George, with a little judicious editing you're begining to make some sense.
Martyn - Munich
Jason Zions
our Prozac Poster Child, makes it personal.
In <35l1s5$p...@tadpole.fc.hp.com> ma...@sde.hp.com (Marc Sabatella) writes:
>Quoting George here,
>>For the first several decades of HP's history, there was virtually
>>no use of drugs like marijuana and cocaine. Marijuana use was
>>concentrated in the ghettos and among jazz musicians, neither of
>>which were recruited by HP. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>No, they didn't start recruiting jazz musicians until the 1980's. Me in
>1988; when did they let you in, Jason?
I got in back in 1986; there was an entire Big Band at the Fort Collins site
that was founded in 1984, or so the legend goes. (Damn, me here in Texas and
missing the huge 10th anniversary celebration.)
For the record, I left HP in January of 1993.
George Carter writes:
I've never met Marc and Jason since they were based at HP-
Colorado while I was in Cupertino, so I have no knowledge of
their actions, but I find their attitude as disturbing as that
exhibited by that subset of the HP-Cupertino managers that can
be classified as illegal drug degenerates. So in those cases where
the actions parallel the attitude:
And in the following, George gets personal.
Don't you guys worry that you are not pulling your weight at HP
or in your families as a result of being stoned? Why should HP
shareholders subsidize your zombiedom?
1) I strongly resent your assertion that, because I am a jazz musician, that
I am a marijuana user. Not only is there no causative relationship between
the two, I suggest there isn't even a statistical correlation that is any
stronger than that found in drug use and any creative art, or drug use and
being a stock broker, etc.
2) Had I indulged in recreational pharmaceuticals of any sort, I would have
darn well done so allowing sufficient time frame for the buzz to wear off.
Generally one's college experiences were enough to calibrate the body, so to
speak.
3) HP shareholders subsidize zombiedom of drug users to the same degree they
subsidize alcoholics, people who don't get enough sleep, people who use
antihistamines which induce drowsiness, and people whose lives are currently
undergoing upheaval. All those classes of people have the *potential* to
enter the workplace in an impaired state; and HP subsidizes there presence
in that state not at all.
Are you not worried that your degeneracy will disrupt the lives of
many of your subordinates? At HP, even a first-level manager
failing due to drugs may lead to the disruption of the careers of
eight to ten subordinates. At higher levels, the stakes are much
higher. HP no longer has an effective means of removing bad
apples on the management team. If an engineer complains of
being managed by a drug addict, this complaint often improves
the drug-addled manager's status in the organization, since the
manager's boss now has more leverage and less competition.
As I've said time and again, and as you've chosen to completely ignore time
and again, use of drugs != addiction to drugs; use of drugs != on-the-job
impairment; impairment_due_to(drugs) < impairment_due_to(others) where
others = (stress | alcohol | minor illness | distractions of daily life). Oh
yeah, one more thing: degeneracy != drug use.
Are you not concerned about the high costs the very negative
health impacts of drugs have on both yourselves and the rest of
society? While you are clogging up hospital emergency rooms,
someone more deserving may need that space, someone whose
injury was accidental.
Have you taken a look at ER room stats? Directly drug-related visits are
practically nil. Collateral damage (i.e. gunshot and knife wounds amongts
dealers and customers) are caused by the illegality of drugs, not by the
drugs themselves; legalize drugs, and streetcorner shootings etc. will drop
dramatically.
Are you not worried that your addiction may be responsible for
your horribly bad judgment, that if adopted by others, could lead
to disaster? Remember earlier in this discussion Jason seriously
proposed doing away with pilot drug tests and replacing them
with something similar to the Microsoft Flight Simulator. Jason
wanted to give pilots the freedom to do all the drugs they want
before flying commercial passenger jets, so long as they could
fool some PC-based game. If such an idiotic proposal was
actually adopted, thousands could die in crashes before this
nutcase policy was reversed.
As opposed to now, where a tired pilot could fall asleep at the controls
resulting in thousands of deaths, all because no one tried to find out if he
was too tired to fly. The simulator I'm talking about, by the way, is
comparable to the ones pilots are trained and tested on before they get
their certification; they bear as much resemblence to MS Flight Simulator as
driving a real auto bears to playing an "VR-1 simulator" in an arcade. And
I'm far from the first to propose it; many pilots have made the same
proposal. Finally, airline pilots aren't drug-tested before every flight;
it's random. There's nothing to prevent a pilot from going on a one-night
binge, not being tested, and still killing people. At least with
abilities-testing we could do it *every* time before a pilot takes the
controls, and could in fact test him/her between flights to see if the pilot
is too fatigued to continue flying.
Are you not concerned that the dollars you spend on this leads to
nothing but death, corruption and squalor in the inner city?
That's because of the illegality of drugs, dimwit. If they were legal one
could buy them at reasonable prices a the corner pharmacist (hell, at the
corner tobacconist or candy store, for that matter).
Have you considered that drug degeneracy is leading to greater
socialism in the United States? What happens when people like
Lew Platt represent HP is that it causes people to question
capitalism. People see the drug degeneracy and the low quality of
the CEO and say something must be done. Because it is virtually
impossible to win a proxy fight unless your name is Hewlett or
Packard, smaller shareholders may then support democratic
socialism just for an opportunity to vote the scoundrel out. It is a
great irony that having Lew Platt as CEO is a major contribution
to socialism in the United States. Dave Packard deserves better.
If this is an example of your finest thinking, then you need to look in the
mirror when flaming people for drug-addled thinking. It's been a long time
since I've seen such a long string of poorly-connected illogical statements
strung out under the pretense of cogent argument; grading english com-
position papers from freshmen, I think, and we knoing of poorly-connected illogical statements
strung out under the pretense of cogent argument; grading english com-
position papers from freshmen, I think, and we know how drug-soaked *they*
are. Frankly, George, *we* deserve better argument than this; get the dosage
adjusted for your prozac, or lithium, or whatever anti-psychotic you're on.
And finally, have you considered that drug degeneracy and the
atmosphere of drug tolerance you advocate at HP brings with it
the potential of enormous tragedy at HP? What if one of HP's
degenerate managers on a drug binge rapes an HP woman, and
her husband/boyfriend/brother/father, faced with either fighting
HP in court for ten years or employing frontier justice (perhaps
with a chain saw), settles the score with both the drug addled
manager and the executive responsible for drug degeneracy in the
organization (Platt)?
What if one of HP's biologically-bipolar-depressive employees ...
What if one of HP's never-touched-drugs-but-crazy-as-a-fruitcake
ex-employees ...
What if George Carter finally snaps all the way and takes to the rooftops
with a fully-loaded M-16 - should we blame it on the managers at HP who
had the misfortune of managing his useless ass years before?
I'm more worried about these three cases here than I am about your
hypothetical case, by the way. If I lived in the same geographical area as
you, George, your attitudes and postings would cause me to fear for my life.
As it stands, I merely avoid post offices.
Jason Zions "Wouldn't join a club that would admit George Carter"
Jonathan Eunice
> Andy Carey (car...@CSOS.ORST.EDU) wrote:
> : The main problem with HP-UX is not it's manegerial aspect, but the
> : technical side. It sucks. Besides, why should I put money into a
> : lousy OS, when I can get better ones for free.
>
> Thank you for your detailed technical analysis of HP-UX versus
> its competition. You've certainly convinced me that you know
> what you're talking about.
>
> Are you always this thorough in you work?
Well, just for the record, I did such a detailed QFD analysis of HP-UX a
few years ago. It didn't come out very strong--not bad, really, but not
the "leadership" position the company wanted. The response from HP
then: 'we think it's a lot better than this study shows'. That is, no
matter how thorough or painstaking, the response to a negative review
will always be "we don't agree" or ridicule.
Jonathan Eunice
Yes, you are. In spades. It just doesn't happen to be HP-UX.
George Carter
(Vociferous Mole) writes:
>George Carter <gca...@infoserv.com> wrote:
>>
>>Remember that laser-guided smart bomb in "Clear and Present
>>Danger"? One hundred of those, directed at the top 100 cocaine
>>production targets in South America could destroy that industry
>>by not only decimating current production but also making clear
>>the business risks of future cocaine production.
>>
>>Domestically produced drugs are a much tougher
>>problem because you can't make the police forces strong enough
>>to solve the problem without ending up with totalitarianism, given
>>human failings.
>So it's OK to blow away people without due process in a foriegn country,
>but not here in the good old USA?
George Carter writes:
Yes, it is OK in a foreign country, because what they are doing is
an act of war and therefore falls outside any due process channels.
Whether they are smuggling nerve gas, cocaine, or just massive
amounts of counterfeit currency, severe measures need to be
taken at the source to stop an activity with such extremely
damaging consequences in this country. It is, of course, very
important to make sure these smart bombs are directed at drug
kingpins and important production facilities, and not aimed at the
jungle or innocent people. It is worth spending a lot of money to
make sure the target list is a first-rate assessment. It is also
important that such tactics only be used overseas.
Look at what such a decisive attack would mean. If the attack
occurred, at say, dawn, by noon it would be clear worldwide that
the cocaine business was largely shut down -- that the United
States was finally serious about solving the problem. Most of the
remaining cocaine businessmen would get into another line of
work when faced with this sort of strong leadership, which is a
dramatic counterpoint to the limp-wristed approach used by
managers such as Bill Clinton and Lew Platt.
This country uses military force overseas frequently. I am just
saying we should use such force where it makes sense to protect a
vital national interest, instead of Clinton's senseless Haiti effort.
The cocaine trade not only destroys large numbers of people in
this country but also has the potential for massive governmental
corruption that could turn the U.S. into a basket case country like
Mexico. Illegal drugs have already corrupted the Platt
administration at HP in the sense that well known illegal drug
degenerates have been given key management responsibilities at
HP, because such people can be rewarded without the threat of
future competition with their boss. I don't know whether Lew
Platt has taken direct payoffs from drug interests or not for
maintaining HP's weak drug policy, but I do know that weak men
like Lew Platt cannot manage strong men.
It is important to remember why both the nation and Hewlett-
Packard has a problem with illegal drugs: weak, completely
inappropriate people are placed in key management positions. It
will be another couple years before we can vote out the Clinton
administration, but the Platt/Roelandts administration at HP can
be tossed out at any time by the Board. Lew Platt has already
been fired by his subordinates -- nobody respects him, this
dismissal only needs to be verified by the Board of Directors.
Daryl Odnert
: Well, just for the record, I did such a detailed QFD analysis of HP-UX a
: few years ago. It didn't come out very strong--not bad, really, but not
: the "leadership" position the company wanted. The response from HP
: then: 'we think it's a lot better than this study shows'. That is, no
: matter how thorough or painstaking, the response to a negative review
: will always be "we don't agree" or ridicule.
I'll be among the first to agree that HP-UX has some weaknesses
compared to other systems on the market. It also has some strengths.
I only wished to point out that posting statements like "technically,
it sucks" without saying anything about why he/she has reached that
conclusion does not reflect well on the intelligence of the individual
who posted it.
George Carter, on the other hand, does a very good job of supplying the
reasons for the positions he takes. You can draw your own conclusions
as to how they reflect upon him.
Regards,
Daryl Odnert
da...@cup.hp.com
Hewlett-Packard Co.
Cupertino, California
dmin Frank Slootweg
What is unclear about what I wrote? It does "happen" to be HP-UX. As I
wrote, HP had the biggest sales in UNIX systems in 1993. Since we sell
no other UNIX products than HP-UX, UNIX means HP-UX. Source: Dataquest
(HP 3.8 billion $, Sun 3.6, IBM 2.3, DEC 1.1, SGI 1.1).
Jay Maynard
dmin Frank Slootweg <fra...@neth.hp.com> wrote:
>> > systems in 1993). So I guess we must be doing something right.
>> Yes, you are. In spades. It just doesn't happen to be HP-UX.
> What is unclear about what I wrote? It does "happen" to be HP-UX. As I
>wrote, HP had the biggest sales in UNIX systems in 1993. Since we sell
>no other UNIX products than HP-UX, UNIX means HP-UX. Source: Dataquest
>(HP 3.8 billion $, Sun 3.6, IBM 2.3, DEC 1.1, SGI 1.1).
Are people buying HP Unix systems because of HP-UX or in spite of it? I know
that, in our case, it would have been the latter. Every Unix has its share
of idiosyncrasies and bogosities; HP-UX has more than most, even though they
have been doing well at reducing that.
--
Jay Maynard, EMT-P, K5ZC, PP-ASEL | Never ascribe to malice that which can
jmay...@admin5.hsc.uth.tmc.edu | adequately be explained by stupidity.
The US Constitution: 1789-1994. RIP.
Nick Maclaren
|>
|> Are people buying HP Unix systems because of HP-UX or in spite of it? I know
|> that, in our case, it would have been the latter. Every Unix has its share
|> of idiosyncrasies and bogosities; HP-UX has more than most, even though they
|> have been doing well at reducing that.
Really? I can write serious, portable programs for almost all current
UNICES - except SunOS and Solaris 2, where I need #ifs! This is also
my experience with many outside applications (such as X and Motif).
You aren't by any chance rating UNICES by how close they are to SunOS
(or even BSD), by any chance? People who do that usually find HP-UX
bizarre.
This applies redoubled in spades when it comes to system administration.
Anyone who starts off thinking in Sun or BSD terms is into REAL trouble
when hitting HP-UX, but people who have not suffered this brain damage
have much less trouble.
Nick Maclaren,
University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory,
New Museums Site, Pembroke Street, Cambridge CB2 3QG, England.
Email: nm...@cus.cam.ac.uk
Tel.: +44 223 334761 Fax: +44 223 334679
Joe Freeman
Could it be that the numbers reflect combined hardware and software sales?
It might be that HP sales position has very little to do with HP-UX and
more to do with the fact that their hardware has the most bang for the
buck. Additionally, each S800 server or HP7X5 speed demon is worth
multiple client seats and help bulk up the number. I have run int very few
(like none) people that by HP unix products because of a superior operating
system. In fact, most of the HP users I have met tend to look upon HP-UX
with disfavor.
George Carter
> In <35l1s5$p...@tadpole.fc.hp.com> ma...@sde.hp.com (Marc Sabatella) writes:
> >Quoting George here,
> >>For the first several decades of HP's history, there was virtually
> >>no use of drugs like marijuana and cocaine. Marijuana use was
> >>concentrated in the ghettos and among jazz musicians, neither of
> >>which were recruited by HP. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> >No, they didn't start recruiting jazz musicians until the 1980's. Me in
> >1988; when did they let you in, Jason?
>I got in back in 1986; there was an entire Big Band at the Fort Collins site
>that was founded in 1984, or so the legend goes. (Damn, me here in Texas and
>missing the huge 10th anniversary celebration.)
George Carter writes:
While Jason feels his band is legendary, I can assure him that
even though I worked for HP for 12 years, I never heard of him
or his HP jazz band while at HP. Prior to his appearance in this
forum, I think this would be true of most HP engineers with an
MPE legacy. My reference to jazz musicians playing an
important historical role in the emergence of the illegal drug
culture in this country that is causing so many problems (which
Jason defends) is simply a fact. I have nothing against jazz
aficionados. It is one of two original American musical forms
(the other is country-western) and on that basis alone merits
attention.
In <JAZZ.94Se...@jazz.hal.com> ja...@hal.com (Jason Zions) writes:
>2) Had I indulged in recreational pharmaceuticals of any sort, I would have
>darn well done so allowing sufficient time frame for the buzz to wear off.
>speak...
George Carter writes:
My assessment is that illegal drug degenerates have impaired
judgment 24 hours per day. To engage in this activity, they must
believe that they are very special people who have rights beyond
those of everyone else. They know society cannot produce the
standard of living we have become accustomed to if everybody
was a drug degenerate like them.
George wrote earlier:
> Are you not worried that your addiction may be responsible for
> your horribly bad judgment, that if adopted by others, could lead
> to disaster? Remember earlier in this discussion Jason seriously
> proposed doing away with pilot drug tests and replacing them
> with something similar to the Microsoft Flight Simulator. Jason
> wanted to give pilots the freedom to do all the drugs they want
> before flying commercial passenger jets, so long as they could
> fool some PC-based game. If such an idiotic proposal was
> actually adopted, thousands could die in crashes before this
> nutcase policy was reversed.
In <JAZZ.94Se...@jazz.hal.com> ja...@hal.com (Jason Zions) writes:
>As opposed to now, where a tired pilot could fall asleep at the controls
>resulting in thousands of deaths, all because no one tried to find out if he
>was too tired to fly. The simulator I'm talking about, by the way, is
>comparable to the ones pilots are trained and tested on before they get
>their certification; they bear as much resemblence to MS Flight Simulator as
>driving a real auto bears to playing an "VR-1 simulator" in an arcade...
George Carter writes:
It so happens I've landed a Boeing 747 three times in such a
simulator. The simulator I used cost 15 million dollars. The
cockpit is real and is mounted on computer-manipulated
hydraulic jacks. So to do this, you are talking about investing
over a billion dollars nationwide, all so pilots could do drugs
before flying commercial jets. Such an investment makes no
sense. The current system, which uses random drug tests, results
in an extremely low accident rate overall, and an even much
smaller accident rate due to pilot error for any reason. And we
don't even know if even a 15 million dollar simulator is good
enough to make such an assessment. Making such a proposal
once again makes it clear that you wish to impose vast costs on
others for the most frivolous of reasons: so that drug
degenerates can indulge themselves -- even when we have no
basis for assuming this vast investment would work, even if it
wasn't such a bad idea.
Vociferous Mole
George Carter <gca...@infoserv.com> wrote:
>In <36d8bb$b...@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM> ste...@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM
>(Vociferous Mole) writes:
>
>>So it's OK to blow away people without due process in a foriegn country,
>>but not here in the good old USA?
>
>George Carter writes:
>
>Yes, it is OK in a foreign country, because what they are doing is
>an act of war and therefore falls outside any due process channels.
Unlawful (in both countries) actions by private individuals (in both
countries) do not consititute "acts of war". And whether or not you
believe it, the Columbian government is fighting the druggies as
hard as it can. The main problems are that the druggies are
probably wealthier than the government, and that there are no
serious alternatives for many (most?) of the rural people who
grow the stuff. Except starvation.
Hey, Clancy writes entertaining books. I like 'em. But I don't confuse
them with reality.
Steve Greenland
--
SteveG | ste...@neosoft.com | '91 SHO, Mocha/Mocha | h.p peon
I'm not very good at being good.
Richard Lloyd
> that, in our case, it would have been the latter. Every Unix has its share
> of idiosyncrasies and bogosities; HP-UX has more than most, even though they
> have been doing well at reducing that.
I think the statement might have held true back in the days of HP-UX 6.5 and
the Series 300 machines, but I think nowadays HP-UX is actually a more
standards-conformant and well-organised OS than most others out there (and
I particularly throw a barb at SunOS, which is a total joke in my books).
Sure, I'd still like more "compatibility" with BSD (why can't HP just throw
the kitchen sink into "libBSD.a", so we can link with that and not have to
simulate BSD functions ?), but when I check out SunOS machines running on the
campus here, I thank my lucky stars we run HP-UX here !
Simple test: Does your machine have /bin/ksh and Motif 1.2 on it ? If not,
don't use it :-)
HP-UX Archive Librarian, E-mail queries: f...@csc.liv.ac.uk
Computer Science Dept., Official anonymous FTP sites (get /README first):
Liverpool University, United Kingdom: hpux.csc.liv.ac.uk
United Kingdom. Germany: hpux.ask.uni-karlsruhe.de
United States: ftp.cae.wisc.edu
Not got xbrowser 1.4 yet ? France: hpux.cict.fr
Netherlands: hpux.ced.tudelft.nl *NEW*
You'll find it in Official World Wide Web sites are also available
/hpux9/X11R5/Networking from the above sites (http://site/), except for:
United Kingdom: http://hpux.csc.liv.ac.uk/intro.html
United States: http://www.cae.wisc.edu/
Netherlands: WWW server coming soon...
Stuart Jarriel
|>
|> George Carter writes:
|>
|> My assessment is that illegal drug degenerates have impaired
|> judgment 24 hours per day. To engage in this activity, they must
|> believe that they are very special people who have rights beyond
|> those of everyone else. They know society cannot produce the
|> standard of living we have become accustomed to if everybody
|> was a drug degenerate like them.
|>
Gosh. I feel the same way about people that dont use turn signals when
they change lanes.
Stuart
Sinan Karasu
Richard Lloyd <r...@csc.liv.ac.uk> wrote:
>In article <36sgb4$r...@admin5.hsc.uth.tmc.edu>, jmay...@admin5.hsc.uth.tmc.edu (Jay Maynard) writes:
>I think the statement might have held true back in the days of HP-UX 6.5 and
>the Series 300 machines, but I think nowadays HP-UX is actually a more
>standards-conformant and well-organised OS than most others out there (and
>I particularly throw a barb at SunOS, which is a total joke in my books).
>
>Sure, I'd still like more "compatibility" with BSD (why can't HP just throw
>the kitchen sink into "libBSD.a", so we can link with that and not have to
>simulate BSD functions ?), but when I check out SunOS machines running on the
>campus here, I thank my lucky stars we run HP-UX here !
be a sign that says "Fart!".
>Simple test: Does your machine have /bin/ksh and Motif 1.2 on it ? If not,
> don't use it :-)
Mine does have it, /bin/ksh and Motif 1.2. Oh it also has Solaris 2.4...
Does that mean Ican use it?
Dick Cavett used to ... Oh never mind.....
Sinan
Sinan Karasu
Joe Freeman <j...@FreemanSoft.com> wrote:
>In article <36raif$s...@hpuamsa.neth.hp.com> fra...@neth.hp.com (dmin Frank
>Slootweg) writes:
just 3 weeks ago who said that the $3.6B HP would like to unseat
$4.6B Sun Microsystems. Can't you guys at least see what the man
who should know saying?
Yeah, yeah go ahead justify. You sell fewer machines, but you are
market leader. You sell fewer Unixes but you are market leader.
Solaris runs on Sparc, Intel,PowerPC. Open Computing magazine
just had an article, and said that HP is realizing thjat it probably
will not be able to win the uP wars, and that is why the deal with Intel.
Why don't you check your facts before making these ridicilous
statements.
Sinan
George Carter
>George Carter <gca...@infoserv.com> wrote:
>>In <36d8bb$b...@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM> ste...@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM
>>(Vociferous Mole) writes:
>>
>>>So it's OK to blow away people without due process in a foriegn country,
>>>but not here in the good old USA?
>>
>>George Carter writes:
>>
>>Yes, it is OK in a foreign country, because what they are doing is
>>an act of war and therefore falls outside any due process channels.
>Unlawful (in both countries) actions by private individuals (in both
>countries) do not consititute "acts of war". And whether or not you
>believe it, the Columbian government is fighting the druggies as
>hard as it can. The main problems are that the druggies are
>probably wealthier than the government, and that there are no
>serious alternatives for many (most?) of the rural people who
>grow the stuff. Except starvation.
George Carter writes:
It is an act of war because the Colombian government refuses to
stop it, and they are involved. Yes, they will jail a drug kingpin
periodically for show, but this does not interfere with cocaine
production as the leadership is quickly assumed by someone else.
Your next implication, that somehow we should be sympathetic
to cocaine production on humanitarian grounds, because it
provides income to poor South American farmers, is outrageous.
This sort of weakness will destroy the United States. We need to
protect this country. In the early part of this century we were
even willing to steal the canal zone from Columbia by aiding
Panama, because building this canal was of vital importance to
this nation at that time, and it would take forever for an indolent
and corruption-ridden nation like Columbia to build such a canal.
The least we can do at the end of this century is to muster the
gumption to beat the cocaine thugs concentrated there that are
causing so much damage in this country. Lew Platt can help this
effort by eliminating the demand for cocaine by HP people. He
has an obligation to employees, shareholders and the nation to do
this.
For the sharp eyed:
>believe it, the Columbian government is fighting the druggies as
The President of the "Columbian" (with a u) government is Bill
Clinton, although this term is not used much anymore.
George Carter
Maynard) writes:
>Are people buying HP Unix systems because of HP-UX or in spite of it? I know
>that, in our case, it would have been the latter. Every Unix has its share
>of idiosyncrasies and bogosities; HP-UX has more than most,...
George Carter writes:
I agree, and I think that HP needs to start doing some clear
thinking here. What has happened is that HP is trying to exert
account control by making it difficult to move off HP-UX. This
is fine as a business goal, but the implementation was muddle-
headed. One needs to establish this account control by adding
real proprietary value that customers voluntarily take advantage
of, not creating arbitrary differences. The arbitrary differences
approach is less effort, but also makes it much more difficult for
customers to port into your environment. The whole idea is to
make the Competitor-to-HP transition as easy as possible. One
reason top HP executives are so thick-skulled on this issue is that
the arbitrary difference approach is a common HP tactic in
hardware. Using the same tactic in the UNIX software market is
really dumb. What buyers in this market want is the availability of
a very large code base that is either immediately runnable
(preferred) or is runnable with a very small porting effort. HP-
UX is not doing a good job satisfying this need.
Robert Monical
The good news is that we (the customers) are demanding increasing
interoperability and portability between platforms and vendors,
oh so slloowwllyy, are responding.
One's perspective of what is idiosyncratic may well start with one's
point of departure. For me VMS->HPUX->SunOS->Irix->Solaris. Starting
with Motif - OpenLook never quite worked for me, even though the
human factors are probably equally valid.
What I continue to hope for is a standard SAM-like interface for
just getting a new system going-tuning can wait-on all platforms.
--
-- rob: i e-mail, therefore i am
-- mon...@walnut.csp.mmc.com
-- v: 719-528-3777 f: 719-528-3848
Dave Waller
|> In article <36u2eu$r...@lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk>,
|> Nick Maclaren <nm...@cus.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
|> >In article <36sgb4$r...@admin5.hsc.uth.tmc.edu>, jmay...@admin5.hsc.uth.tmc.edu (Jay Maynard) writes:
|> >|>
|> >|> Are people buying HP Unix systems because of HP-UX or in spite of it? I know
|> >|> that, in our case, it would have been the latter. Every Unix has its share
|> >|> of idiosyncrasies and bogosities; HP-UX has more than most, even though they
|> >|> have been doing well at reducing that.
|> >
|> >Really? I can write serious, portable programs for almost all current
|> >UNICES - except SunOS and Solaris 2, where I need #ifs! This is also
|> Solaris for Intel, and Solaris for PowerPC. Then you will not need
|> #ifs!
I could be mistaken, but I beleive there is a larger installed base of HP-UX
systems than Solaris systems. Note here, that I'm talking _Solaris_, not
SunOS and Solaris installations combined.
Regardless, the percentage of he UNIX installed base that is made up by
Solaris hardly makes it "the industry standard", unless your definition of
"industry standard" is loose enough to specify a market percentage less
than 50%, which seems kind of useless as a term to me.
DOS is an industry standard for PC's. Solaris doesn't come close to matching
this dominance. Rather, I think you are just waxing rhetorical based on your
own bias.
|> For your information, Solaris (Which is Sun in case you have not noticed!!!)
|> Is not BSD. As a matter of fact it is a lot newer version of
|> SYSV than HP-UX (which IS built on top of BSD.....). Now what was that
|> adjective you used????
This is factually incorrect. The base code for HP-UX is SysV.3, with
Berkeley extensions. This is why HP-UX is SVID compliant, while only about
80% compliant with BSD.
--
Dave Waller
Hewlett-Packard Co. 19055 Pruneridge Ave.
Workstation Systems Division Cupertino, CA 95014-9809
Channel Partner Consulting, West (408|T) 447-4413
dwa...@cup.hp.com
Marc Sabatella
> >> HP had the biggest sales in UNIX systems in 1993. Since we sell
> >> no other UNIX products than HP-UX, UNIX means HP-UX. Source: Dataquest
> >> (HP 3.8 billion $, Sun 3.6, IBM 2.3, DEC 1.1, SGI 1.1).
> Why don't you check your facts before making these ridicilous
> statements.
Sounds like he did. Dataquest's numbers appear to back him up.
> You sell fewer machines, but you are
> market leader. You sell fewer Unixes but you are market leader.
Try: we make more money selling Unix machines, so we are the market leader.
Obviously you can measure "leader" different ways, but surely this way is not
so much less appropriate that you have to resort to insults?
> Open Computing magazine
> just had an article, and said that HP is realizing thjat it probably
> will not be able to win the uP wars, and that is why the deal with Intel.
Oh, well, if "Open Computing" states an opinion, then it must be true!
--
Marc Sabatella
ma...@sde.hp.com
--
All opinions expressed herein are my personal ones
and do not necessarily reflect those of HP or anyone else.
Marc Sabatella
> >Really? I can write serious, portable programs for almost all current
> >UNICES - except SunOS and Solaris 2, where I need #ifs! This is also
> Well, you should write in the Industry standards like Solaris for Sparc,
> Solaris for Intel, and Solaris for PowerPC. Then you will not need
> #ifs!
Of course you won't need many #if's; these OS's all come from the same vendor.
Real standards are things that work across vendors - things like POSIX and
X/Open.
Frank Slootweg
[deleted]
> > What is unclear about what I wrote? It does "happen" to be HP-UX. As I
> > wrote, HP had the biggest sales in UNIX systems in 1993. Since we sell
> > no other UNIX products than HP-UX, UNIX means HP-UX. Source: Dataquest
> > (HP 3.8 billion $, Sun 3.6, IBM 2.3, DEC 1.1, SGI 1.1).
>
> Could it be that the numbers reflect combined hardware and software sales?
As far as I know, for all the mentioned vendors, the numbers indeed
reflect combined hardware and software sales.
I can not comment on the rest of your posting in any somewhat objective
way, so I won't.
George Stachnik
: Real standards are things that work across vendors - things like POSIX and
: X/Open.
...and we even support those on the 3000. And that's not
even a UNIX box.
Vociferous Mole
George Carter <gca...@infoserv.com> wrote:
>In <36uftj$o...@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM> ste...@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM (Vociferous
>Mole) writes:
>>Unlawful (in both countries) actions by private individuals (in both
>>countries) do not consititute "acts of war". And whether or not you
>>believe it, the Columbian government is fighting the druggies as
>>hard as it can. The main problems are that the druggies are
>>probably wealthier than the government, and that there are no
>>serious alternatives for many (most?) of the rural people who
>>grow the stuff. Except starvation.
>
>George Carter writes:
>
>It is an act of war because the Colombian government refuses to
>stop it, and they are involved. Yes, they will jail a drug kingpin
>periodically for show, but this does not interfere with cocaine
>production as the leadership is quickly assumed by someone else.
_Some_ Colombian government officials (CGOs) are no doubt involved.
But I don't think it is fair to say that they are refusing to stop
it. A lot of CGOs are working very hard, literally at the risk of
their own lives, to reduce/stop drug production and exportation.
Yes, the arrested/jailed cocaine producers are quickly replaced,
because the demand is still there. Just as in the US,
the drug dealers we arrest and jail are quickly replaced, because
the demand is still there, and the huge profits are still there.
(Hey, maybe putting people in jail _isn't_ answer...but of course,
it's easy!)
None the less, acts of individuals, without the support of the
government, are _not_ acts of war. Terrorism maybe, but not war.
>Your next implication, that somehow we should be sympathetic
>to cocaine production on humanitarian grounds, because it
>provides income to poor South American farmers, is outrageous.
Sorry, that's not what I said. I said that one of the reasons it
is going to be difficult for the Colombian government to eliminate
drug production is that drug production has become the only reasonable
livelihood for a large portion of the population. Just as the US
will have trouble eliminating tobacco production, even though the
overall public health damage by tobacco is much greater than that
caused by illegal drugs.
>This sort of weakness will destroy the United States. We need to
>protect this country. In the early part of this century we were
>even willing to steal the canal zone from Columbia by aiding
>Panama, because building this canal was of vital importance to
>this nation at that time, and it would take forever for an indolent
>and corruption-ridden nation like Columbia to build such a canal.
Oh, crap. This is the sort of "ends justify the means" thinking
that will destroy the United States. We need to protect the ideals
by which this country was created, chiefly "equal protection under
the law". If the only way we keep the US going is by violating our
own laws, then it deserves to go under.
And many of the current problems in Central America can be traced
back to interventions by the US government and US corporations in
the 19th and early/mid 20th century.
>>believe it, the Columbian government is fighting the druggies as
>
>The President of the "Columbian" (with a u) government is Bill
>Clinton, although this term is not used much anymore.
>
You're right, George, the country we are talking about is spelled
Colombia. Sorry. But if you're going to correct my spelling, you
should correct yours as well. (See the paragraph about stealing the
canal from Colombia.)
Frank Slootweg
> Well, you should write in the Industry standards like Solaris for Sparc,
> Solaris for Intel, and Solaris for PowerPC. Then you will not need
> #ifs!
As other people wrote, *one* manufacturers product on different
hardware platforms hardly qualifies as an industry standard, and Solaris
hasn't the installed base to qualify as an industry standard. But those
are really moot points, because *industry* standards are "out" in the
UNIX world these days, even the System V owner has officialy confirmed
that. So you will have to get used to real de-jure standards.
With regards to your recent posting style: Please stick to facts and
personal opinions and refrain from flames, insults, personal attacks,
rude language, etc..
Ken Green
> George Carter writes:
> While Jason feels his band is legendary, I can assure him that
> even though I worked for HP for 12 years, I never heard of him
> or his HP jazz band while at HP.
To have worked at HP for that long and not to have heard of Jason, seems to
suggest that you took little or no interest in what was going on around
you, as certainly during my brief 2 year tenure at HP in the UK Jason was as
active in the hp. groups as he now in the public groups. Perhaps this total
disinterest in matters technical goes someway to explain why you are no longer
an HP employee.
--
__________________email Ken....@kgcc.demon.co.uk _____________________
Ken Green Computer Consultancy
Bodega, Jasmine Cres. Princes Risborough, Bucks. HP27 0AB, U.K.
Spiros Triantafyllopoulos
>In comp.sys.hp.misc, George Carter writes:
>: ... you will hear a lot of complaints that marijuana results
>: in a lot of limp-dick guys that don't perform between the sheets
>
>Wow, I had no idea. Do you have first-hand information on this?
Actually it works better without sheets.
Spiros (Solaris porting does strange things to one's mind)
--
Spiros Triantafyllopoulos Kokomo, IN 46904 (317) 451-0815
Software Development Tools, AD/SI c2...@kocrsv01.delcoelect.com
Delco Electronics/GM Hughes Electronics "Reading, 'Rithmetic, and Readnews"
Thomas V. Myers
> George Carter writes:
I disagree on your analysis of HP-UX tactics. Each major release (I started
at 7.x) has been more standards compliant and easier to work with (IMHO).
The next major release has been touted as fully compliant but also backwards
compatible with the current release, something SUN failed to do with the
SunOS to Solaris transition. As someone else mentioned, most people bitch
because HP-UX isn't SunOS. They probably also bitch that Solaris isn't
SunOS. It's a 'religious' issue more than a technical one.
Thomas V. Myers
> >
> >Simple test: Does your machine have /bin/ksh and Motif 1.2 on it ? If not,
> > don't use it :-)
> Mine does have it, /bin/ksh and Motif 1.2. Oh it also has Solaris 2.4...
> Does that mean Ican use it?
Solaris has been out for HOW LONG and it's finally approaching a usable
state? SPARC processors have existed for HOW LONG and MAYBE the UltraSPARC
will ship in 1Q95?
Posting pro-Sun, HP bashing comments in an HP newsgroup is merely inviting
flames (like this). Try a religious newsgroup if you want to preach your Sun
gospel.
Oliver Giem
My HP Deskjet 500C does very well (in the Moment).
But if it gives up any day, I'll try to repair it myself before sending
it back to the dealer.
At the othe hand I'm interested in developping some
hardware-applikations for this printer. So I opened it and found al lot
of well-knows electrinc components.
Now I search for the technical documentation for this printer.
If anybody has got any ideas or adresses where I can get this: please
send a mail...
TNX in advance
Oliver
have fun everybody
Oliver
--
Diese Nachricht wurde von einer elektronischen Datenverarbeitungsanlage
erstellt und ist daher auch ohne Unterschrift gueltig.
!! MsgBase 1.6i
Greg Cagle
>
>George Carter writes:
>
>While Jason feels his band is legendary, I can assure him that
>even though I worked for HP for 12 years, I never heard of him
>or his HP jazz band while at HP.
Well, I've heard of it and I don't even work for HP. Sounds to me like
George was pretty out of touch. Of course, it's probably Lew's fault
for not telling him about it.
- Greg
--
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Greg Cagle Mentor Graphics Corporation
greg_...@mentorg.com (503)685-1570
Someday we'll look back on this and it will all seem funny.
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