Re: Sir WIlliam Ramsay Hazlemere Buckinghamshire
"Those who went to Ramsay should recall the hone econmics"
Did they have a knife problem? Just as well my children went to Lady Verney & John Hempden.
33095 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
"What else is there to cover?"
Loss of reputation.
After you've had your customers' personal data cast abroad over the interwebs you'll have seen the last of a good number of them. You may think you're sorting things out for them by letting Experian slurp more of their data for 6 months but it's unlikely they'll think that solves the problem and it's what they think that matters in the long run.
I expect the contract, when written, will require security clearance for everyone working on it. Whether they're looking for a contractor with previous intelligence work or not at present they're going to find someone with that background is going to have the staff to meet the requirement a good deal more easily than a company that hasn't.
I've spent a few evenings and weekends working on "high pressure terrorist investigations" without such aids. Terrorists attempt to overthrow the rule of law and its safeguards for the innocent. If, as a state, you decide to ditch those safeguards yourself you've gone a long way to admitting that they've beaten you.
There was often a third issue: 'I haven't got a paperclip'.
That's the paper-less office for you.
The HP tape drive needed a half straightened paperclip. When it forgot how to load tapes it had to be reset by using one as a jumper between two holes on the PCB next to the tape spool.
"I turned on the formatting code option and the screen filled with dots and <CR> symbols. It turned out that the secretaries placed text on screen using the spacebar and <enter> (aka 'carriage return'). "
Because, of course, they'd trained on typewriters and that's how it works there.
I usually end up overriding styles for particular headings and paragraphs to make small spacing adjustments to control pagination. The hardest ones were republishing out-of-print books where there were loads of spaces to "wrap" text round images and create tables without actually using tables plus the notionally identical font metrics aren't quite the ones the original version used. And no, I'm not going to leave the Comic Sans in there.
The prosecutions you mention aren't something I've been aware of until now. However, if previous ones have been as misguided as you say then I hope that Salesforce raise these issues as part of their defence. It shouldn't be necessary - as you say, unless there's a chain proving guilty knowledge on Salesforce's part they're simply selling a neutral product, although I'm not sure that matters much in US courts.
Perhaps, however, these people should go after Google. A quick check on soc.genealogy.medieval shows that there are still pimp postings on Usenet there and they always seem to come from gmail.
"But to improve here, autonomous vehocles don't need to be better than the best driver at their most attentive, they just need to be better than the average driver at their average level of attentiveness."
A couple of points here. To overcome distrust, let alone meet the hype they do need to be better than the best driver at their most attentive. And if you work out the number of vehicle miles per accident, at least per fatal accident, it will be a very challenging task to meet the average.
" Considering the awful driving I've witnessed driving in half a dozen different countries, and also considering how many people drive tired, drunk, while calling, or when trying to deal with screaming kids, jumping pets or their favourite scalding caffeinated beverage.... well, the bar to clear isn't really that high."
The bar you seem to be setting here is the worst driving you've seen, not the average.
There are two ways of valuing something. One is to add up the sum of the bits,which is the valuation being disputed now, and the other is what a willing buyer is prepared to pay for it which seems to have been the basis on which the deal was done.
The second valuation is essentially what the buyer thinks it's worth to themselves. One view of that would be what it could be made to earn for them when fitted into their wider operation. AFAICR there were arguments bandied about which spoke of "synergy" and the like.
If that were the case then (a) the previous management were wrong in that judgement or (b) the subsequent management are wrong and that if they'd got on with the job they could have realised that value. The realisable value could, of course, have lain in the middle and both HP managements were in error - never something to be discounted in an HP that no longer contains an H or a P.
An alternative view of what it was worth to them was that it was looked on as a trophy in a willy waving contest between HP management and Oracle (whether Oracle regarded themselves as being in such a contest is neither here nor there, it was sufficient that HP did) and they made what they thought was needed to win the bidding.
The fact that the KPMG report was ignored suggests it was the second valuation that was adopted and, for whatever reason HP have now suffered a severe attack of buyer's remorse.
Finally, don't forget that a lot of sentiment here is based on the huge respect in which HP was once held and disgust at successive managements who have brought it so low.
There's an old saying that it's easier to ask forgiveness afterwards than for permission beforehand. It looks as if far too many big corporations are following this. What they've not worked out that this is almost inevitably used in terms of rolling out some extra item that was bogged down in bureaucracy, not breaking what was already there.
"Why would anyone want to go to Northern Ireland?"
Well, we would have gone last year had it been feasible, My brother-in-law there died and there was no way of going to the funeral and, without being there, very few ways of helping his widow. If things really do make it feasible this year we'll go. At least the previous two years we (and our daughter) took our grandchildren for holidays so they at least had a chance to meet their great-uncle.
So shareholders at time T are aggrieved at behaviour of management appointed, at least notionally, by shareholders at T - 1 and demand compensation from shareholders at T + 1. If it succeeds the shareholders at time T + 1, who had no responsibility are still being harmed by the old management. What should they do? Sue the shareholders at time T + 2.
In what way, is that reasonable behaviour? By all means sue the management but a company is the collective property of its shareholders. Suits by shareholders are, at best, suits against themselves and at worst suits against another set of shareholders. They really should be deemed contrary to public policy.