
With Respect to Matters Concerning The Board of Directors of HP - raganwald
http://raganwald.posterous.com/with-respect-to-matters-concerning-the-board
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bsiemon
That is a good scene from Traffic.

It seems like HP had a good thing going. Then Wall Street decided HP should be
making more money. This insatiable need for increasing profits then forced a
group of people to make a series of increasingly bad decisions.

That is how it looks to me at least.

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raganwald
I haven’t seen “Traffic,” but I first heard this story told about Billy
Martin, who somehow managed to get fired and rehired by the Yankees five
times. It was also allegedly told about Yogi Berra. I would not be surprised
if there is a version in latin told about Ceasar.

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georgemcbay
Et tu, envelopes?

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nikcub
I love 'two envelopes'.

I have tried to track down the original joke. The first time I heard it was 20
years ago. I was 10 years old at the time and the old Soviet Union and the
Eastern Bloc were falling apart. My dad was a political refugee from Eastern
Europe who emigrated to Australia.

I asked him what was going on while we watched the news on TV, and he
explained that communism was a different system to ours and it was one where
the government controls the people.

He told me 'two envelopes', but with the characters being leaders of the
Soviet Union. It was an old joke he first heard in Russian, and had heard
repeated across the Eastern Bloc as a commentary on the situation they were
in.

I couldn't find an earlier reference than when I heard it - so I will assume
the joke originated in old communist East Europe. When you search for the
joke, a lot of websites reference it as a 'Russian joke' [1], which backs up
how I first heard it.

[1] <http://toperjokes.blogspot.com/2007/05/two-envelopes.html>

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DannoHung
Why doesn't HP just make a printer that I, the consumer, want to own?

~~~
fauigerzigerk
If I think about it, I really don't want to own a printer. What I really need
to do is to put my signature on letters and forms that are then faxed or sent
via email.

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Apocryphon
I dig the story, but why is the last message written in cipher?

~~~
bradleyland
Comedic timing. Hold back the punchline for just a little bit longer than you
think you should, and you'll kill 'em every time.

Unless your joke sucks, then you'll just suffer an awkward silence.

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wisty
In the original joke, there's three envelopes. The second says "reorganize".

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rsanchez1
He's not suggesting that the stock price fluctuated as wildly as it did, and
employees "revolted" against Leo solely because of webOS, is he? Did he forget
that Leo did announce one other thing that day: that the hardware division of
HP (which wasn't bleeding cash) would be spun off into a new company, and HP
would be taking a gamble with software services? Dump something that you
bought one year ago, who cares but the fanboys. Dump something that HP has
been doing for decades, and heads will roll.

If you ask me, they should've given their hardware division more time to come
up with a winning tablet, if not running webOS then running either Android or
Windows 8 (seeing how HP and Microsoft are "intimate" partners"). Give the
hardware division a chance to reverse course while it is still not a cash
drain on HP. Then, if HP can't break into the high-margin tablet market, dump
the hardware division.

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rbanffy
> Give the hardware division a chance to reverse course while it is still not
> a cash drain on HP.

I wholeheartedly agree with you. How many notebooks did Apple make before
having a hit? You build two phones and one tablet that are not hits and you
can the whole division?

