I'm amazed at how crazy HP's PR handling has been about their transition in general (~ "we're going to jump ship a few miles from the destination to swim into uncharted waters") and this part in particular (~ "we couldn't sell it with a tiny discount off our insane pricing, so we'll just give them away instead"). It's nice to have a demonstration of the Osborne effect every once in a while.

Either HP's competence at marketing and pricing is similar to their competence at creating printer drivers, or there are some seriously perverse accounting needs and internal corporate politics at play here.

Aside, while I'm being cranky: Hey /., what was the hold-up on this story? (It's not just the next day, but in the afternoon the next day). I never would have thought back when I started reading /. in the 90's I'd ever have to say this, but you guys need to improve its story queue process so you can keep up with the turnaround time of... mainstream newspaper web sites.

Hey, take it easy buddy. You've got your work cut out for you just convincing those crazy people who made your netbook to put the apostrophe on the home row instead of that pesky waste-of-a-key semi-colon. While you work on that, I'll investigate this "over-sized iPod Touches for people with bad eyesight and big wallets" thing by heading for Starbucks to see if I can find some blondes.

Oh noes! Not on /. !

I think they have some time to deal with it. The only thing I can find that substantiates this is an old post:

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.time.tz/2822

I think I can speak for all software developers in expressing a certain amount of disappointment that we were practically one guy-hit-by-a-bus away from switching everyone to UTC once and for all and we missed our chance. =)

Ah, the "investigative" "reporting" from morons type post.

A while back, I planned to stop reading Slashdot, but it obviously didn't "take". Now it's time to remove the link from my bookmark bar.

Anyone with an updated list of alternatives?

The Bayesian network that now performs all Slashdot editing has come to associate "Australia" with the "Your Rights Online" category, due to what I will call "poor quality training data" from Australian lawmakers.

I can't imagine why the authorities would actually want or need to let anyone that they're authorized to monitor know that they're being monitored.

Sounds like someone with a spare answering machine / asterisk box who is trying out new strategies for getting the telemarketers off of their back, e.g.:
- Scaring them away (they're risk averse and sometimes gullible), or
- Getting a free expenses paid vacation to a place where they won't need to worry about answering any annoying phone calls (once someone tells the _real_ DOHS what they're doing).

-AT

"Finally, Gou's company hired the New York firm Burson-Marsteller to help devise a formal public-relations strategy, its first in more than 35 years of existence."

The concept of a company with almost 1M people without a PR strategy is refreshing, but reflecting a little bit more, what that also means is: now anything that we say about the employee suicides, even this, is being carefully managed.

LOL.. So, the most significant way schools distinguish themselves from jail is the decor? This represents a shift in thinking; traditionally, the main difference was that you had to commit a crime to be sent to jail, but you got sent to school for merely existing. Homeschooling: "It's not just for scary religious people anymore."

"Extended ASCII" LOL...

Sometimes I like to refer to my spam, eggs, sausage and spam as "extended spam", but whenever I try to order it that way in a restaurant all I get is funny looks.

I think you're talking about the "Windows-1252" Windows Latin for Western European Languages codepage.

Are you saying that a pirate is not a rebel just because they want 'stuff for free'? That's pretty sympathetic.

I appreciate that 2D Boy followed up with the details (i.e. a big methodological HDTISC). But I wonder: Did they understand that their reasoning was faulty in the first place and decide to release the stat anyway?

I'm interested to know whether you're using hardware that all Apple hardware is a joke compared to (e.g. 16+ cores) or hardware in a range that has vastly better price/performance than anything Apple offers (e.g. quad core desktops)

Sorry, I didn't really clarify: the outrageous claim I'm talking about is that the "the new owner is 3D Realms." 3D Realms is a company that recently cancelled the main project it had under development, laid off most of its staff, and is facing a breach of contract lawsuit from the publisher. I would have a hard time believing an announcement that 3D Realms acquired any company even if it was confirmed in 10 different major newspapers.

Oh, I get it... the hypocrite is you =)