Agreed.

When talking to execs, I refer to IT as an investment in competitive advantage. Get the lead to the sales person quicker, that's competitive advantage. "One customer view" is a competitive advantage. Allowing people to work remotely to have some semblance of work/life balance is competitive advantage.

But since this is hard to quantify, and seeing a payroll "expense" number (IT staffing cuts) go down is easy...guess what they often choose.

Not only that, but I would venture that the install base for 6.5 is large enough and will be around long enough that this is still relevant. I just migrated a 4.0 farm to 6.5, and year before last in training for 6.0 there were several participants still on older farms. Once working (and my experience is that 4.0 and 6.5 work well) these things tend to "linger" for a while.

I'll probably pick this book up because I doubt I have seen my last 6.5 farm

That is true. YMMV but in my case, over time (for reasons I don't fully understand) is that I found I could successfully play fewer and fewer PS2 titles (my stepsons had a STACK of PS2 games, thus the decision to go PS3 rather than Xbox360) over time. While I can't prove it was firmware updates, the only thing that changed was the firmware.

Also note that in some cases, if you had a unit with the hardware emulation but the unit broke (even under warranty) you could end up with a replacement unit that didn't have it. So even that was taken away from some people.

The primary point being that for me personally after my experience with the PS3 There will never be a PS4 in my home. And yes I realize that Sony doesn't give a crap what I think...I can assure you that over the years they have driven that point home.

That is true, but that is not the only functionality they removed. Also removed was backwards compatibility for PS2 games which was a HUGE selling point for the PS3 Considering the install base and game sales of the PS2.

Sony can say whatever they want now, it simply doesn't matter. They have lost a trust that you simply can't earn back overnight. Then put the data breach on top of that and of course they have to do or say whatever they can to generate interest.

I am confident in saying that more than 0.001% of their user base remembers these things.

FTA:

My take away from this is that while the historical hiring they did was "best candidates available" they realized that there were things they could do to expand the hiring pool that may change how many of the "best candidates available" are women.
Not surprising to see a company try to improve their hiring practices.

Doesn't mean they are going to discriminate against men.

And apparently what MS doesn't understand is that the best way to get someone to chose option B rather than option A is to create and demonstrate more value in B rather than A. Otherwise consumers may choose the "third way" which is to drop MS altogether and buy a Mac/Linux machine.

And building upon this point, I think their fatal mistake was in this case, for MANY users, there is no scenario in which a UI designed for smaller mobile devices can present more value than a proven UI design for laptop/desktops. For people who do more than just consume content (content creators, office worker types etc) the Win7 desktop UI experience IS the most value to them. And there is NOTHING in the new UI that changes that.

While I haven't used a Mac in some time, I have people around me that do. I notice that the Mac UI gives a "traditional" desktop experience and is fundamentally different that the UI experience on an idevice. I can't help but think that is intentional and that Apple figured out something that MS either has yet to learn or has forgotten.

I don't think they have any plans to wiggle out of it. This "always on" setup is by design:

http://www.geek.com/articles/games/ea-wont-green-light-any-single-player-only-games-2012095/

So the engineers were REQUIRED to do something that made it "social" and thus needing to be always online.

Can't believe none of the Yahoo leadership has seen this:
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1995-09-15/

I was actually the only member of the IT dept in the interviews for our Director of IT position some years back. I was also the only person involved in the process that was not on the existing executive management team.
I think a lot of it depends on who else is in the room. If there are any other department heads involved, note closely their interaction with YPNB (your potential new boss). I found that to be quite telling in that you see what is important to them, and if YPNB has any intelligence, they will pick up on what is expected of them and what the others are looking for. By being involved in this, I was able to pretty much garner what projects we would be working on during the first 6 months after he was hired.

As others have stated, HR or someone else may run the show. The only thing you might want to consider is this: if YPNB requests a laptop or projector for any type of presentation, hook it up, but do something wrong (leave a plug loose etc). See how YPNB reacts to the unexpected and how the interaction goes when either they or you "fix" the problem. I don't know of any other way to really get a read, because any questions from HR (or you) are likely to be met with "correct" answers.

Also, with the boss I ended up with, we had a laptop setup and he wanted to show something off a thumb drive. At that time, the NIC port was wide enough that you could put a USB drive in it. He did. And so I went to the laptop, noticed what he did, and quickly put it in a USB port without saying anything. He showed his stuff, and ended up getting hired. He was nervous about the interview, but was very gracious about the whole thing. He is still my boss today (6 years later) and while not perfect, we could have done a lot worse. He was a unanimous choice (they even let me vote).

So that's what did it? I can remember a time when HP stuff was rock solid. And then it seemed to go down hill both hardware and software (driver) wise (I mostly dealt with servers and printers).

I bought one, and only one, piece of hardware from Compaq...lesson learned with that piece of crap.

"or white collar crime is absurdly superior on a risk/reward basis compared to little people crime..."

Many years ago (so adjust for inflation) I had a friend of mine tell me that an attorney friend of his told him that if he ever stole/defrauded for less than a million, he was an idiot and would go to jail. If more than a million, call me and we will work something out. So, yes, the rules are different.

I agree completely...but they did at least make an effort:
From NYTimes story:

"...relied on Deloitte’s auditing of Autonomy’s financial statements. As part of the due diligence process for the deal, H.P. also hired KPMG to audit Deloitte’s work."

So how do you know in advance how many levels deep you need to go to get the truth? At some point you write it off to the inherent risk of doing a buy out.

FTA:

"Whitman said she regretted voting to approve the deal with Autonomy"

CEO, no. On the board that also approved the buy out, yes.

A safe bet when viewed through the prism of the Either/Or fallacy that is (in the US) our 2 party system of government. In fact, I would posit that you could combine the 2 fallacies and have a comprehesive explanation of why in the US we continue to shout about Ds and Rs while a small group of people continue to control all the money, to their benefit and at the expense of everyone else.

This would indictate, statistically speaking, that there are a large group of people that won't figure out either fallacy. So while not the best business plan, it is certainly not the worst either.

No line when I went in, very small line forming as I left (less than dozen people) No issues went smoothly.