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Carly Fiorina Destroys Katie Couric on Climate Change
It’s from May but — just in case you missed it — it’s here for your viewing enjoyment:
Published in Politics, Science & Technology
Katie>> “ISIS, the economy, Iran and nukes, blah blah blah. Yes we know all that Carly (insert eye roll), but is global warming BAD (switches to serious concerned look)?”
Can these people even hear themselves?
The fundamental question is whether Man is driving the CC or GW. Both CC or GW can, and a lot of folks believe, is happening (largely) independent of Man’s effects.
You’re working under certain cultural limitations, kmt. It’s a joke.
What do you mean “destroyed”? Did Couric resign? Admit defeat and apologize?
I’ve been fooled too many times by web video headlines that say “destroyed,” only to find out no such thing happened in any sense of the term. Not going to watch this one without more specifics.
Of course it’s all mob everywhere, but she’ll use it to avoid getting on a stage with Carly. “I refuse to lower myself to debate with a person who throws ad homonym personal attacks, who destroyed the lives of umpteen thousand families”. “Hee called us peegs— us!”
What happened to the sound? I’m not having this problem with anything else.
I was reading Dan Hanson’s comments as you suggested and I noticed what you said here. You’re right. Also, however, the phrase, “focus on innovation” has the connotation of a national (at-least-federally-guided, if not -led) effort, whereas “we’ll adapt” connotes, I believe, individual, private efforts. We ought to make sure that the latter is what we’re pushing for and not the former.
Depends. I’m not adverse to federally-funded prizes for certain innovations (though privately funded ones are superior).
Yeah. THEIR game board. I want us to have a game board, doggone it. I want us to sweep their game board off the table, then kick the table over, then move from the parlor to the drawing room, build our own table there, set up our own game board on it and make (well, not MAKE make) everyone play THAT for a change.
Nor I, IF we can manage to give liberty a chance first. We could fall back on the fed. prizes for innovation if things start looking dire.
Social media has destroyed our brain, and this international phenomenon.
And maybe I’m western chauvinist and killjoy, but carly is not charming enough to be real option. Too many plastic surgeries and even when she “destroys” or is right she is a Witch for too many.
So, I read several of Dan’s comments. If you meant his first one (#9): well, dang it. He makes sense. So, when do I ever get to hear what I want to hear from her? I suppose when she’s President and has the bully pulpit, maybe then she can more directly and less obliquely point out to the American people that we’re not all going to die from global warming?
But if she persuades the country that this is an arcane scientific topic that really does not matter to our daily lives and should not matter to our government, will she even need to do that? It seems to me that taking the issue out of the realm of politics is an even bigger win.
I don’t get this.
HP’s history is in electronic instrumentation. Then calculators. Then printers. Then PC clone. Commodities.
When I think of Carly Fiorina at HP, I think of two gambles: the IA-64 microprocessor architecture, and HP’s acquisition of Palm and development of webOS. These were both future-focused efforts in 64-bit architecture and mobile OS technology. Neither were obvious dogs: IA-64 was not the first 64-bit RISC chip; Palm was a known quantity that had fallen on hard times, and got infused with quite a bit of new blood, including former colleagues of mine who had worked on MacOS, iOS, General Magic’s platform, Apple’s Pink project, etc.
Unfortunately, both of those big gambles failed to pay out commensurately with their investments. IA-64 is at least still gamely chugging along, but whether we like it or not (and I don’t), x86_64 owns the 64-bit microprocessor space, and meanwhile ARM came along and ate the burgeoning embedded low-power space right from under Intel, never mind HP. I told a developer friend webOS’ HTML5 platform wouldn’t overcome “the revenge of the (native) app,” and I called it.
None of this is Carly Fiorina’s fault. On the contrary; she made decisive bets. She just lost those bets.
This is great! More, please. (Getting out checkbook.)
People critical of Carly’s tenure at HP are usually referring to the Compaq acquisition.
If she had won those bets she and her ego would be too involved in business to run for President. What we need in politics is people who failed at business. Teddy Roosevelt for example, lost half his inheritance in a bad bet on North Dakota cattle. But he learned a lot from that bet, and said he couldn’t have become president without that experience.
Note: I like TR, but not his politics.
The Compaq acquisition was to get the DEC Alpha microprocessor, generally considered the best RISC processor architecture at the time, and the already shipping AlphaServer system. Still not an obvious dog, especially at a fire sale price.
Yes and at the time it was clear the Compaq acquisition was a dangerous Hail Mary to save her job as HP CEO.
I didn’t remember that, but it rings a bell now. Still, the acquisition is understood by most laymen (rightly or wrongly) as a move to consolidate market share in the desktop PC market. The subsequent integration of the two companies sucked up all the attention of management, crippling HP for some time afterward (some would argue forever).
The DEC Alpha came with the acquisition and was not the purpose of the acquisition. HP never used it deliver competitive UNIX computers which they should have done.
You say “Hail Mary to save her job;” I say “sensible hedge against difficulties delivering IA-64.” All engineering companies struggle with buy vs. build, and HP was already hedging by co-developing IA-64 with Intel. Acquiring the DEC Alpha technology, wrapped in the envelope of a PC clone builder HP could cheaply merge into its own clone business with obvious efficiency gains, was a shrewd move. It just turns out neither IA-64 nor Alpha won the 64-bit processor wars. That’s all. What was Ms. Fiorina supposed to do, march over to Intel’s fab facilities, do her best Tim Gunn impersonation, and tell the engineers:
If the DEC Alpha was what HP wanted, they could have bought the technology from Compaq – who wasn’t using it – crossed licensed for it .. there were a lot of less expensive options than swallowing the ticking time-bomb of the Compaq PC business. The Compaq acquisition was announced after intense Wall Street pressure to replace Carly as CEO.
Some interesting comments about innovation and adaptation. Once we own the microphone we can address the fundamentals. We can’t even talk about adaptation which of course is what all species must do whether we get colder, warmer, dirtier or just more crowded. Innovation comes from freedom and competition and we can’t know what it will be. Any state sponsored effort in this direction will support old technology because old technology is represented on k street and the future technology doesn’t exist anywhere let alone on k street.
In general, companies pursue mergers when they are out of ideas. Role of thumb: bet against anyone who says something is a good idea because of “synergy.”
HP and Compaq were a disaster. That said, I doubt any president in living memory would have clearly been a superior CEO to Carly…
Cheney ;-)
I know this sounds appealing but these are issues of power politics. It seems to me that we need to go head on against these blatant power plays. I just don’t see where this approach with the present Democratic Party and the Left in general have been successful.
Trying to reason with community organizers suckers us in and trimming on an issue won’t work. They don’t lose focus — they double down.
Do you have any examples where your advice has worked recently?
I’m sorry, but this doesn’t hold up to historical scrutiny.
jetstream: I already linked to the AlphaServer machines that Compaq was purportedly not selling and that I apparently didn’t see 100 of in the Titanic render farm when I interviewed at Digital Domain. ;-)
You do realize you lost the generic voter at Alpha Server Machines and IA-64. They might be more attentive when you mention Titanic or clones, along with catchy tunes, and some emotive photos. ;)
The vitriol I heard about Carly was she laid off 30,000 workers. Now, I’m sure that was a difficult decision with lots of backstory. Does that anecdote add or detract from her tenure as HP CEO?
edit: but I am grateful for the detail, because in the end, the devil is in the details.