HP/CPQ: Getting nasty

Well, I suppose in this day and age nothing should be surprising. Politicians have run negative campaigns for years. But the execs at HP must be getting nervous to put out a letter attacking Walter Hewlett, attacking on a personal level that is. Really sad and looks way desperate. Stock was down 4% for the day.

Can you say ‘Oops!’?

Life is about making choices. Generally one tries to mak good ones and then stick with them. Sometimes, though, one has second thoughts. You can look back in regret, saying only if…, or you can try and act on those second thoughts before the decision is irreversible. Two good examples showed up in the press today, one of the former and one of the latter, from Marconi PLC and Kana Software respectively.

Marconi, a telecommunications company based in the UK, was approached for a merger that valued the company at about $35.8 billion nearly two years ago, according to an interview in the Financial Times with former company finance director and later chief executive-designate John Mayo. The company directors spurned the offer, with one director claiming “We didn’t give up on the beaches of Dunkirk, and we are not going to give up now.” Today the company stock is worth around $1.4 billion. You do the math, Bucky. If only…

Kana, running into major money trouble in this post-dotcom economy, arranged an infusion of cash from private investors. The business turned around a bit plus a reverse split was successfully engineered, Wall Street reacted well, and now the deal doesn’t look good. So the Kana directors are asking stockholders to reject the financing. The private investors are not thrilled but will get a consolation prize worth at least $4.5 million at today’s prices. Is it too late or will the directors be able to correct their mistake?

Dave is bored

Dave, sometimes known as the winer, gets oh so world weary in today’s Scripting News: “A soundbite: Microsoft bores me. Open source bores me. Sun bores me.” Sorry Dave. I know RU8 is neat and maybe even cool but for sure is not the only interesting thing going on in software these days.

Baseball is not the only sport facing a financial crisis

Soccernet, my favorite place to follow the Liverpool FC, has an excellent feature article today on the Italian crisis and the warning this provides to the Premiership. Clubs, in short, are far too dependent on TV revenues that may dry up in the very near future as ambitious contracts handed out by the broadcasters are falling far short of forecast. Clubs, though, are not necessarily getting the message–Real Madrid is seeking to sign Arsenal star Patrick Veira for a record UKP50 million.

Football coaching merrygoround: There’s humor, of course

The ESPN.com Page2 staff, in Ready, aim … fire!, has come up with their own parody of all the changes–the article gives a reason to fire all 31 coaches, even one day on the job Steve Spurrier! And in real though humourous turns, the Bucs have admitted they are on the prowl for some Tuna, 76 year young Marv Levy has contacted the Colts (Tony Dungy appears to be the frontrunner for that job), and Marty Schottenheimer, who one would think is ready for some fishing, and Norv Turner, who one would think just ought to know better, are both interviewing for the Charger gig that Tuna apparently has turned down.

Radio Userland 8 as a Blogger authoring tool

This post is a test, first of several I expect, to see how I like using RU8 as an authoring tool in place of/in addition to the others I already use.

Update: Blogger and RU seem to disagree over some formatting so this was hand-edited using the standard Blogger client.

Fascinating look at the Torah’s authorship

Of course, some will state unequivocally that the Torah is the literal word of God or at least that the text is divinely inspired. Others that Moses wrote the five books. Alternatively, Straight Dope reports in

Who wrote the Bible? (Part 1), there is an academic school of thought called Documentary theory which lays out a timeline of authorships. Part 5 lays out some information on how the Torah (and the Christian Bible) came to be standardized. Very interesting.

Forget the plasma TV, this is what I want

How about a flying vehicle that can carry a single person 120+ miles at 70 knots? That’s the promise of the SoloTrek XFV:

artist drawing of the test SoloTrek

The machine can handle a payload of 277 pounds plus fuel, so I best be dieting soon, cause this will surely be the way to avoid those damn 101 traffic jams. It is a vertical take off and landing device, so no runway is needed, and the version that goes on sale will include GPS so pilots won’t get lost and an ejector seat for when things go really wrong. The SoloTrek is still in the early test phase, so far the longest admitted flight is hovering three feet off the ground for 19 seconds and there is no published schedule for reaching production.

Millenium Jet, the company building this marvel, is over in Sunnyvale and I wonder when they’ll need a test pilot.

More on the East Palo Alto politicians

Following up on the previously mentioned stupidity, the City of Palo Alto terminated police seargant Robert Cole yesterday but no explanation of the reasoning behind this decision was made public. So the city has decided to defy a court order to rehire Cole, after already leaving themselves open to further liability for refusing to allow Cole to return to active duty. The city is appealing the court decision, spending more of the limited funds they have available in the Peninsula’s poorest city. Cole’s lawyer estimates his legal fees, which the city is almost certainly going to have to pay, at $250,000 and says the city has likely spent a similar amount for their lawyers. Now add a big chunk to both tabs for the appeal and possible damages and/or fines that will be assessed going forward and the East Palo Alto could easily be out a cool million. Dollars, that is. Bills. Bucks. Benjamins. Like they don’t need the money desperately for schools, roads, hell they have had to cut spending on their police force in recent years.

Today’s movie: Lord of the Rings

Awesome. Amazing. Great movie. Should not be missed by anyone, young or old. One might quibble over things left out or changed from the book but I think Peter Jackson deserves some freedom for the translation. The gorgeous New Zealand countryside makes a superb Middle Earth. Elijah Wood makes the transition from child actor (Radio Flyer, North, The Ice Storm) to adult in playing intrepid hero Frodo Baggins. Ian McKellen is craggy and strong as Gandalf, love the fight scene with Saruman (Christopher Lee is still going strong at 80). Viggo Mortensen breaks out as Aragorn and what can I say about Liv Tyler and Cate Blanchett? I love that the film is tops at the box office too. Can’t wait for The Two Towers next December, will it be the best film of 2002?

Football coaching merrygoround: Dungy out at Tampa Bay

We must just not be able to understand the pressure at this rarified level. Tony Dungy was the most successful coach Tampa Bay ever had, he had the respect of his players, and he took them to the playoffs every season. So what’s his reward? The boot.

Football coaching merrygoround: Spurrier to Redskins

Wow! Being Daniel Snyder must be great. To be able to write off a coach like Marty Schottenheimer and the $7.5 million he will get on a contract payoff after being fired and then turn around and pay Spurrier $5 million a year for five years. At least with Schottenheimer, the Redskins owner got a coach and general manager; part of Spurrier’s attraction is that he is not interested in controlling that aspect of the club. Is he worthy of being the NFL’s highest paid coach? Opinion, in the first few hours, is mixed. Hey, does Snyder need an official weblogger?

Journalism: Where’s the news?

Having worked and lived out here in Silicon Valley through most of the recent Internet boom and bust, I learned along time ago that there is very little money to be made off cute toys if those toys don’t deliver real solutions. I expect this is an old lesson that people discover over and over again. The Boston Globe, in a naive article titled Financial exchanges try to deal with dark days, is demonstrating this to be so. Okay, they have a few local companies to write about, including one, Debt Exchange, that appears to understand this lesson and so survives. The story quotes one customer: ”I don’t even care if he uses the Internet,” Loeber said. ”I just want the job done quickly and well.” Exactly. But tell me, Beth Healey of the Boston Globe, how exactly is this news? There is a good article in what you’ve written but you ought to ask your editor why he didn’t let it out.

Spin flings a bunch of crap

I suppose one could put The Smiths in a list of best rock bands. The Beatles would surely be number one almost any criteria. But to leave out Bruce Springsteen, well, these people have to be morons. Springsteen doesn’t have a history changing sound, he doesn’t raise the roof? What concert have you been at lately? I guess the lesson is not to expect to much from the son of one of America’s least creative pornographers.

Imagination takes many forms

Back in 1978, David Drake published the novel Hammer’s Slammers, a story of a future mercenary unit that travelled from star to star fighting the good fight for a paycheck. Drake followed that one up with about seven more Slammer books and another one should be out in July. Like many a science fiction series, the Slammers have inspired a fan following of their own. These fans, part of a very popular UK hobby, create and paint miniatures of the regiment’s vehicles and other equipment, as well as those of competing regiments, and this website has great photos, information, and instructions for building your own. What do they do with the miniatures after they’ve spent so much time in construction? They fight them against each other according to very strict rules, which are also posted on the website. And they get all this from some very cool books.

Another reason to love the Internet: Informed debate

Steven began the conversation with a post on the US dollar, the money supply, and the dollar’s status as global currency in respect to this Washington Post article on the Argentinian situation in which he (Steven) points out some scary future possibilities if certain trends continue. Russell Leslie, an informed Australian phycisist, started a discussion M3 and other monetary aggregates which was just great, going from monetary statistics to the benefits of a gold-based currency to delineation of the difference between the Keynesian and Austrian schools of economics. (Which comes down to a difference in goals, apparently.) Not mention the possibility of other to put commentary into their own blogs. Sort of what I’m doing here.

More on the Enron/Andersen stupidity

Time Magazine, in the article Who’s Accountable?, reveals that the shredding of documents by Enron auditors Arthur Andersen was done under instructions delivered in a memo from one of the company’s lawyers. Expect criminal charges to come in the not-too-distant future from the Dept. of Justice task force but because of Enron’s extensive political contributions, the entire Houston U.S. Attorneys office as well as Attorney General/Emporer-wannabe John Ashcroft had to recuse themselves from the investigation.

Another blaring example of the need for campaign finance reform, too. Look at the huge numbers of congresscritters who got donations from Enron and the number of Bush administration officials who were shareholders. Although corporations certainly have an interest in a large percentage of the business before governments, one has to think that a democracy is about the people and, legal fictions aside, corporations are not people. The people who comprise a corporation’s stakeholders should surely be allowed to donate to politicians with whom they agree but not the corporations themselves. By the way, the same ought to hold true for labor unions although in that case I might make an exception that allows unions to collect and aggregate donations from members. Still, the likelihood of reform is about the same as my odds of winning the next three Lottos.