Re: Fortune article and subsequent commentary

From: AEF (spamsink2001_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 01/30/05 

Date: 29 Jan 2005 22:07:09 -0800

John Smith wrote:
> Bill Todd wrote:
> > Top billing at OpenVMS.org today has been a Fortune article on the
> > failure of the HP/Compaq merger and follow-up industry commentary.
> > While the former is of course no news here (they do give a
> > well-deserved ovation to Walter Hewlett for the accuracy of his
calls
> > during the merger battle, and could have created a great one-two
> > punch by observing that Carly's abject failure to live up to the
> > expectations she herself set mirrors that of Itanic), one statement
> > in an interview with Rob Enderle ("The interview is an inside look
at
> > the thinking of one of HP's trusted confidants") stands out:
> >
> > "HP's weakness is in having so many operating systems. They're
trying
> > to exit from the operating system business all together."
> >
> > While that too was clear to at least some of us, others seem to
have
> > been reluctant to accept it.
>
>
> Seems to me that Carol J. Loomis, the author of the Fortune article,
has
> taken a position about carly(tm), and HP -- she certainly has the
platform
> from which to do it.
>
> I wonder if Ms. Loomis would care to hear about the gutting of a
> line-of-business at HP for her next story -- namelyVMS and the fall
in
> revenues, the mealy-mouthed 'no comment, it's the quiet period'
pre-merger
> when every product was commented on by HP except VMS, the lack of
> advertising and marketing of VMS, etc......
>
> Perhaps a well reasoned, well written e-mail, supplying information
is in
> order.
>
> How do I contact a Fortune editor or writer?
> Writers can be contacted using the following construction: first
initial
> plus last name@fortunemail.com.

Sounds like a great idea! It's certainly worth a try.

However, please note the following screwy twist on addresses: In the
new Google groups, all addresses in normal usable form are partially
munged, except, apparently, as I look above right now at it, in the
reply! (I don't as I write this if it will make it unmunged into the
posted reply!) Well, if one wants Usenet readers who use Google groups
to read a mail address without the munging and without having to fake a
reply to de-munge it, one will have to do the usual tricks -- like
changing person@place.bla to person (at) place.bla -- not to hide them
from spammers, but to reveal them to human readers!

Warning: Even further digression follows:

I still can't believe the new Google groups beta is as bad as it is.
The only improvements are greatly increased posting speed (seconds
instead of hours), the hiding of long quotes, and the less frequent
need to click a link to read the rest of the message. They finally
allow a global change to "fixed font", but it's still not as good as
the old version's use of fonts. Other things about it are worse. Oh
well. One step forward, three steps back!