Robert writes:

> Just a comment on the directors salary, he probably did not set it. Most
>  likely it was set by a governing body, maybe the board of directors.
>  That amount may have been authorized to get and retain a qualified
>  individual.  This is all supposition on my part.

In the end, it doesn't matter how his near quarter-million dollar salary was
set, it was all out of proportion to his worth, and it was unwarranted.

There is nothing in the world that I hate more than being lied to, and it's
been obvious for a great long time now that Interex and HP have been lying to
us. For more than the past decade I've been asking for a complete public
accounting of Interex's finances, including all staff salaries and benefits.
Interex's response has been "that we used to give out that information but no one
seemed interested."

That statement is the classic misdirection and disssembling of someone who
clearly has something to hide, and it is a completely unacceptable answer.

I became disgusted with Interex in 1988-1989, when it became obvious that
they were in the backpocket of HP and began strongly advocating that people move
off of the HP3000 and onto HP-UX. Interex was originally formed as an HP3000
users' group, but they never made a peep of protest when HP first wanted to
kill the HP3000. It was only after the "Boston riot" of 1990 that did Interex
take on the mantle of an "advocacy group" after getting a sense of anger in the
user community over HP's decision, but they had absolutely nothing to do with
the advocacy themselves.

By the late 1980's it was clear that Interex saw themselves as nothing much
more than a marketing and exposition services organization, another Greyhound
Exposition Services, and they would have "promoted" anything so long as it
worked to save their own skins.

I hate lies, and I have absolutely no use for liars. In a very similar vein,
Winston Prather's statement that the decision to kill the HP3000 was his alone
still infuriates me. It clearly wasn't true, and it was part and parcel of a
fundamentally dishonorable act on his part. As general manager of CSY, he
should have fought the decision to the point of resignation -- or he should have
told the unvarnished truth. The death of the HP3000 was part of the Compaq
merger program, a deliberate trimming of the product lines. Either tact would have
sufficed. Instead, Winston lied for upper management, and as a result, he was
given a substantial "retention bonus" (essentially a bribe) to serve on the
committee to decide who was to be fired as a result of the merger.

This form of "loyalty" is rarely rewarded however, and I would not be
surprised to hear that Winston is looking for another job in the near future.

I've also gotten very tired of marketspeak. Google recently announced "that
in order to serve its advertisers better, it was going to "simplify" the rules
as to how its advertisements were placed." I knew from the outset that that
"simplification" meant that they were going to raise their rates, and this last
week, they did that, doubling, tripling, or quadrupling their costs at a
minimum, and in some cases by 100 times.

Slathering bullshit is no way to win loyal customers, especially when the
truth is so plainly obvious.

HP is currently lying to OpenMPE as well. While it was gracious of CSY to
host the "virtual Interex" meeting a week ago, it was also obvious that OpenMPE
has become a fool's errand. HP is not going to cooperate in any meaningful way.

What's the best way to lie to somebody? Use a patsy, and Mike Pavinen is
currently that patsy. I don't know Mike particularly well, but the sense I have of
him is that he is someone who tries quite hard to do the right thing, thus he
makes the perfect foil.

What signs exist that HP is just stringing the users along? Mike's slides
haven't been updated in two or three years. And they still say the same thing: NO
source code and NO release of the SSCONFIG. Those two items alone are death
to the long-term support of the HP3000, and while OpenMPE has grand plans for
people contributing significantly large amounts of money to its further
operation, I wouldn't invest a nickel (either literally or figuratively) in betting
on its future success.

After listening all day to last week's "virtual Interex" meeting, I became
only more convinced that the HP3000 has no future, and that if you're not
planning to be off the platform by 2010, or are intent on holding out just long
enough until you retire, you're not doing your organization any favor.

Wirt Atmar

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