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Businesses Printer

Dell CEO Tells All 416

zapatero writes "The San Francisco Chronicle has an enjoyable read with new Dell CEO Kevin Rollins. He has quite a critique of the HP acquisition of Compaq: 'They had a great, profitable printer business before. They still have a great, profitable printer business. ... Their profits are 70 to 80 percent from the printer business. So that's the area where the profit pool still lives. It's where it lived before. It's where it still is now. So I just ask, what's changed?'"
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Dell CEO Tells All

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  • ON THE OFFSHORING DEBATE "You can't be a global company and you can't operate in a trade environment and say, 'But all of the jobs are going to stay in our country.' "

    Conversely, you cannot say "I want all of the tax breaks and government s ubsidies of a company that is giving Americans jobs" while at the same time cherry-picking your labor pool from the cheapest of third-world labor.

    If you want to be a "global company"? Fine. Then relinquish your cushy benefits you get for supporting American interests.
    • by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 19, 2004 @12:23AM (#9735689)
      Heh, I always wondered, why don't they outsource CEO's? I mean seriously, would it be that hard to find an Indian MBA who could do the same job as Mr. Rollins for 1/10th the price?
      Or is it offshoring is good cept when it effects my job, then it is the great satan...
    • by dekeji ( 784080 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @12:33AM (#9735727)
      Conversely, you cannot say "I want all of the tax breaks and government s ubsidies of a company that is giving Americans jobs" while at the same time cherry-picking your labor pool from the cheapest of third-world labor. If you want to be a "global company"? Fine. Then relinquish your cushy benefits you get for supporting American interests.

      Why don't you put some meat on your argument, demonstrating with actual figures that the tax breaks and "subsidies" (what subsidies?) Dell gets in the US are better than what they can achieve elsewhere.

      I suspect the primary reason companies like Dell stay in the US is that they want to be on a US stock exchange. For various historical reasons, the US stock market has been the most attractive for companies since WWII. However, that may be changing now, and companies like Dell may take you at your word.
      • Huh? (Score:5, Informative)

        by CaptainZapp ( 182233 ) * on Monday July 19, 2004 @03:59AM (#9736317) Homepage
        I suspect the primary reason companies like Dell stay in the US is that they want to be on a US stock exchange.

        You're not required to be a US company to be traded on a US Stock exchange.

        Telekom Austria, Swisscom, Novartis, UBS and a lot more foreign companies are traded at NYSE.

        You do of course have to follow SEC rules if you wish to be traded on an US exchange.

        • Re:Huh? (Score:5, Informative)

          by tgma ( 584406 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @04:40AM (#9736410)
          Although you are right that foreign companies can have a listing on a US exchange, the disclosure and corporate governance requirements for foreign listers are less than for US corporations. This in turn may disqualify some ERISA type accounts from investing in this type of security. So in order to maximise your exposure to a full range of US investors, you need the US registration and listing.

          I suspect that this is not the reason that Dell is onshore, though. As a US company, they can get orders from the US government, and their brand would probably be damaged if they changed their domicile or registration to a non-US one.
      • by tdemark ( 512406 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @07:51AM (#9736999) Homepage
        Why don't you put some meat on your argument, demonstrating with actual figures that the tax breaks and "subsidies" (what subsidies?) Dell gets in the US are better than what they can achieve elsewhere.

        IMHO, it's not tax breaks that piss me off. It's that these corporations are shirking their responsibility as a US entity.

        Both people and organizations pay taxes to support a government to protect them, provide service programs, and allow us to pursue happiness.

        People and organizations are taxed differently in the US. An American Corporation makes X dollars in a year, but, they spent Y dollars doing it. Thus, their tax basis is X - Y. If an American Worker, on the other hand, makes X, then he/she generally pays taxes on the whole amount.

        In a company with most or all American employees, this makes sense. Employees are paid and then need to pay taxes. Since salary is usually one of the largest portions of "Y", the corporation is "taxed" via its employees.

        However, if the employee is not an American citizen, no tax revenue is generated. For every corporate dollar of salary that gets sent overseas, we the people of the United States need to kick in another $.33 to cover the lost tax base.

        Why should I have to pay more taxes because Dell or IBM or Microsoft sends jobs to China, India, etc?

        I am not sure what the answer is, perhaps it is a tax plan that says you can offshore, but, the corporation will be assessed a tax for each job offshored equal to the amount of the taxes that would have been generated if the job stayed in the US. That, or maybe if Z% of jobs are offshored, Z% of X (revenue from above) cannot be "balanced" by expenses - ie - you must pay taxes on it.

        Who knows.... it's Monday morning and I am not 100% with it yet.

        - Tony
    • Hear hear (Score:5, Interesting)

      by SuperBanana ( 662181 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @12:35AM (#9735735)

      Did you know that corporations pay less than 5% of tax revenue?

      Used to be about 50%. In the last half-decade, it's shifted almost entirely onto the shoulders of the individual, because corporations have become experts at paying the least amount of taxes possible. Yay corporations!

      • Hi there,

        Could you cite a source for that, please?

        Thanks,

        Your 5th grade teacher
      • Re:Hear hear (Score:5, Informative)

        by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @12:57AM (#9735819) Homepage Journal
        The investigative body of Congress, the (nonpartisan) General Accounting Office, released a report [gao.gov] in February 2004 that revealed shockingly low corporate tax contributions. You can also have an analysis [americanprogress.org]. Some of the more disturbing details [thememoryhole.org]:

        • More than 60% of U.S. corporations didn't pay any federal taxes for 1996 through 2000
        • By 2003, [corporate taxes] had fallen to just 7.4% of overall federal receipts
        • most corporations that actually do owe taxes pay a rate less than 5%
        • 94% of US-controlled companies and 89% of foreign-controlled companies paid zero to 4% in taxes


        How much of the Bush $2T 2004 budget pays for corporations, and how much for humans? It's probably a lot better than 7.4% paid for corporate services. Especially when you include that $200B Iraq War.
        • Your math is bunk (Score:5, Insightful)

          by rufusdufus ( 450462 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @04:01AM (#9736326)
          I myself have corporate C, and guess what, it paid no taxes last year! How come? Because its a useless piece of paper with no income.

          The interesting number is, what percentage of the aggregate corporate income is taxed, not the number of corporations that are taxed. Most corporations are teeny non-revenue producing shells.

          The method and conclusion used here is deceptive.
          • by duffbeer703 ( 177751 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @07:45AM (#9736965)
            Well then, it's time for your shell corporation to pay it's fair share.

            Corporate executives like yourself are getting rich on the backs of children!
          • You have no math. The math is from the GAO. 7.4% of the IRS take is from corporations, while humans make up the difference. Your delusion is based on what informed people call "anecdotal evidence", or "selective statistics". Don't ignore the other facts that don't fit your proposition. Take it from someone with a profitable corporation that pays taxes, not someone with a worthless one that represents nothing but a theoretical construct.
        • Re:Hear hear (Score:3, Informative)

          by CaroKann ( 795685 )
          You might be interested in the following from Berkshire Hathaway's latest annual report [berkshirehathaway.com], which Warren Buffet uses as a soap box.

          I think this gives a good idea of how top-heavy the income tax system really is, especially in a society where wealth, and income, is very concentrated. This situation makes tax revenues very volatile, budgeting very difficult, and the top echelon very influential.

          In regards to these quotes, Buffet is defending Berkshire, which was caught up in a little bit of Washington politic
      • Re:Hear hear (Score:5, Insightful)

        by letxa2000 ( 215841 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @01:13AM (#9735870)
        Any why should a corporation pay any taxes. A corporation is a fictitious entity that allows a group of people to get together, produce a product or a service, and the profits of those earnings are then paid to them in salary and to their investors in dividends--both of which are taxed. The corporation just acts as a "pass-thru" entity.

        So why, exactly, do you think that a fictitious pass-thru entity such as a corporation should pay taxes which reduce the amount that it can pay in wages and dividends which, at the end of the day, are taxed anyway? Unless you approve of double-taxation and prefer the government gets your company's money instead of you, as an employee or investor, your complaint makes little sense.

        • Re:Hear hear (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Bold Marauder ( 673130 ) <boldmarauder@gmYEATSail.com minus poet> on Monday July 19, 2004 @01:20AM (#9735889) Homepage
          Ok, let's take your argument at face value, then. If we are to say that a corporation should not pay taxes by virtue of being a "pass-thru" entity, then they should not --for that exact reason-- benefit from grants or cash benefits [foreignpol...nfocus.org].

          As I said previously; you cannot have it both ways.
          • You have no idea how much corporations would love to give up grants and cash benefits and lose the taxation. It's simply more overhead to figure out what is taxable, what isn't taxable, what they qualify for, what they don't qualify for.

            Simply ditching the corporate tax code and grants and cash benefits system would make the entire corporate machinery more efficient. It'd also reduce overhead on the government side trying to figure out who's compliant with what.

            Getting rid of it all would be a huge boon.
        • Re:Hear hear (Score:5, Interesting)

          by IgnoramusMaximus ( 692000 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @01:30AM (#9735925)
          Any why should a corporation pay any taxes.A corporation is a fictitious entity...

          If that was indeed a case, you would be right. However in order to exempt themselves from all responsibility for their actions, people who hide behind this ficticious entity insisted that laws be drawn to make corporation a "person" in all respects of the law. That way that ficticious person is responsible for any damages caused by its actions and not those who actually make the decisions that lead to those actions. You cannot have it both ways. What you described is called in legal terms a "partnership" and is wholly distinct from a concept of a corporation which is in most respects a living person. (yes its stupid but thats how billionaires like to make sure that some grandma whose toaster exploded killing her grandchildren wont get hold of the CEO's yacht).

          So in a partnership, each individual is responsible for paying their share of taxes based on their slice of the revenue. In a corporation, the corporation itself is responsible for its own taxes and the CEO only pays tax on his "salary" which usually is $1 and he collects "dividends" and what not in convoluted transactions that result in his tax burden being nil.

          • Re:Hear hear (Score:4, Informative)

            by letxa2000 ( 215841 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @02:00AM (#9736004)
            I do understand that, and also understand that a partnership allows pass-thru income with no taxation. I also know that a corporation is a living person in the sense of the law. But even so it doesn't make any sense to make it a living person in terms of the tax code. It is illogical and reduces efficiency.

            That a CEO is not personally responsible because his corporation is willing to "buy" that freedom from responsibility is not a valid argument and, if anything, makes it look like the government is on the take... that the government is willing to excuse you from personal responsibility as long as you submit to double taxation.

            • Re:Hear hear (Score:5, Insightful)

              by IgnoramusMaximus ( 692000 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @02:54AM (#9736158)
              government is on the take...as long as you submit to double taxation

              Now you are starting to see the light. Government is not really on the take financially, however it wishes that corporations appear to contribute heavilly to justify their vast priviledges.

              In reality, corporations have really no right to exist in a civilised society. They are instruments created by the priviledged to make themselves immune from responsibility and at the same time to avoid any tax burden. The double taxation is a red herring since as others pointed out here, the corporation already has a vast range of ways to avoid any taxes at its disposal (offshore havens are just one of many) and its managers have yet another set of ways to avoid their personal income taxes. This of course applies only to corporations that count, i.e. those who are large enough to have the needed power. Anything small in our current, perverted version of capitalism is by definition powerless.

              In short, the corporation is (for those who have a clue how to play the game) the best of both worlds whereby no tax and next to no personal responsibility for one's actions can be achieved at the same time.

              And of course one has to admire the results of propaganda by the corporatists in corporate owned media that results in someone being so overhwelmingly naive that he proposes to make the underhanded tax crookery practiced by the corporation and its beneficiaries totally official and above board.

              You, Sir, are like a chicken that finds itself staring at its doom in a pot and so it helpfuly offers to pluck its own feathers so that those who are about to eat it need not to be bothered needlessly. Because plucking and cooking would constitute "double effort" and thus would be "unfair" to the cook.

        • So in your perfect world, I could simply avoid all taxes by getting together with a friend and call ourselves a corporation? Cool! Where do I sign up?

        • Re:Hear hear (Score:3, Insightful)

          by 4lex ( 648184 )

          Unless you approve of double-taxation and prefer the government gets your company's money instead of you, as an employee or investor, your complaint makes little sense.

          I am sick of hearing and reading this nonsense. Governments do not "get" taxes, States do. Governments are citizens appointed by citizens to administer the State's money and the State's laws. I do like the State having money, that way I can get quality social care, medical care and education, everything for free, if I ever need it. (Even b

      • Re:Hear hear (Score:3, Interesting)

        by fname ( 199759 )
        What do you mean-- the percent of all taxes paid, or the tax rate paid by corporations; right now, your post is rather ambiguous. That lead to start typing the text below.

        No, I didn't know that, and it's certainly completely untrue. If corporations paid 5% of their revenue in taxes, that would be a very high number since net margins are typically 10%; you non-Math majors, that means the income tax rate would be 5%/10%=50%, a very high number.

        Regardless, even if corporations went from paying 50% of all tax
        • Re:Hear hear (Score:4, Interesting)

          by xsbellx ( 94649 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @03:00AM (#9736174) Homepage
          If corporations paid 5% of their revenue in taxes, that would be a very high number since net margins are typically 10%; you non-Math majors, that means the income tax rate would be 5%/10%=50%, a very high number.

          Speaking from first hand knowledge, 50% is not out of line when compared to individuals. Let's take a look at some REAL numbers (Canadian dollars and tax rates but concept should translate).

          I pay $1400 per month for rent. I buy groceries, $400 per month. I pay electric, water, cable, telephone, internet access, $350 per month. I have a car, lease payments $450 per month,maintence and gas add another $250. Household, car and life insurance adds another $250 and clothing, another $150. Let's add another $150 per month for entertainment. So basic expenses total are approximately $3400 per month or $40800 per year.

          I earn approximately $92,000, taxed at a rate 48% or $44160. Using your formula for corporations, I am really paying 86.25% in taxes (taxes paid / gross income - expenses or 44160 / 92000 - 408000).

          So now the question is, who should change the way taxes are calculated?

          • Re:Hear hear (Score:3, Insightful)

            by cosmo7 ( 325616 )
            I earn approximately $92,000, taxed at a rate 48% or $44160. Using your formula for corporations, I am really paying 86.25% in taxes (taxes paid / gross income - expenses or 44160 / 92000 - 408000).

            Unless you live in a very strange country you don't pay 48% of your income in tax. Most income tax systems are progressive, so you pay tax in bands, paying 48% only on the top band of your income. You can also deduct items from your income according to your circumstances.
      • Re:Hear hear (Score:4, Informative)

        by solarrhino ( 581267 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @02:19AM (#9736050) Homepage Journal
        You are simply wrong. Here [irs.gov] is the relevant data from the I.R.S.

        I would include a nice table showing everything for the lazy, but since stupid /. prevents that. How about this: over the last forty years, the Corporate Income Tax provided the following percentages of that years IRS collections:

        in 2003, 10%
        in 1993, 11.18%
        in 1983, 9.85%
        in 1973, 16.42%

        As you can see, the percentages have held fairly steady over recent years, including "the last half-decade" (nice try, Bush hater). The big change in percentages happened back at the end of the 70's.

        "+5 Interesting" my sweet fanny!

    • If you want to be a "global company"? Fine. Then relinquish your cushy benefits you get for supporting American interests.

      Yeah, get out of the US dell! Take all that goddam money that flows back into the US OUT OF HERE! We don't want your taxes! And we want you to keep US employees no matter what! It worked for Western Europe so it'll work for us! Oh wait...

      Globalization is rarely so cut and dried.
      • by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @12:46AM (#9735774) Homepage Journal
        Wrong, he said "relinquish your cushy benefits", not "get out of the US". There's lots of other benefits to a US HQ other than the corporate welfare. Don't cut and dry his arguments just to refute them - that's called a "straw man argument". It says nothing about his point, and something bad about yours.
      • Take all that goddam money that flows back into the US

        Could you enlighten me how exactly is that money flowing back into the US from the off-shore banks and tax havens that exempt the corporation from taxes, or perheaps from the workers making all the products Dell resells who collect their paycheques in China, Thailand etc and spend all their money in ... wait for it... China and Thailand (big surprise here).

    • Conversely, you cannot say "I want all of the tax breaks and government s ubsidies of a company that is giving Americans jobs" while at the same time cherry-picking your labor pool from the cheapest of third-world labor.

      If you want to be a "global company"? Fine. Then relinquish your cushy benefits you get for supporting American interests.


      Can you be more spesific. Or spesific at all?
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • What's changed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by afidel ( 530433 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @12:18AM (#9735667)
    Is that HP now has a MUCH larger enterprise offering, a larger services staff, and a line of decent x86 servers. This means that they can get into a lot more large enterprise support contracts where only IBM really played before. Dell is great at slinging boxes for a cheap price but they can't compete where the real money is, services. I don't know how much it's showing on HP's balance sheet yet but I can guarentee you that the only way HP was going to survive was to transform itself the same way IBM did in the 90's, thanks to Dell and all the Dell wanna-be's there's zero cash to be had in building boxes, so you either have to beat Dell at their own game or find another area where there's money to be made, and services are about the only area I see.
    • Re:What's changed (Score:4, Insightful)

      by mveloso ( 325617 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @01:41AM (#9735955)
      Dell makes more money selling PCs, etc at a low cost than HP does doing everything it does. In fact, Dell probably sells its PCs at a price lower than HP's acquisition cost...and still makes money.

      What you're saying is that HP couldn't compete on hardware, so it bought compaq to get into the higher-margin services business. If that was the case, then...why didn't HP just spin off the printer business (which is what Hewlett wanted) and keep going into services & hardware?

      Because, like the Dell guy says, printing is subsidizing everything else.

      Oh, and IBM didn't transform itself by buying also-ran competitors. It transformed itself by listening to its customers and providing what they needed & wanted.
      • Re:What's changed (Score:5, Informative)

        by killjoe ( 766577 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @01:56AM (#9735994)
        " Dell makes more money selling PCs, etc at a low cost than HP does doing everything it does. "

        Actually not true. First a couple of links.
        http://money.cnn.com/2004/05/18/technology /hp/inde x.htm
        http://money.cnn.com/2004/05/13/technology/ dell/in dex.htm

        Figured from may indicate that HP made 884 million and Dell made 731 million for the second quarter.

        The analysts are worried because Dell's profit margins are shrinking while their revenue keeps growing.

        "Oh, and IBM didn't transform itself by buying also-ran competitors."

        Also not true. IBM bought lotus, informix, and a slew of other companies.
    • by Anonymous Coward
      Is that HP now has a MUCH larger enterprise offering, a larger services staff, and a line of decent x86 servers.

      But they just don't make those calculators like they used to.
  • HP's benefit ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nbvb ( 32836 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @12:20AM (#9735677) Journal
    I'll tell you EXACTLY what HP got.

    3 things:

    1) The "legendary" DEC service & support models. Nothing -- and I mean NOTHING, not even IBM -- can compare. Nobody's support is like DEC's. Their support is SO good, it's absurd. I can really consider the dedicated support team I've got as an extension of my admin staff.

    2) Two profitable businesses: Alpha/OpenVMS and NonStop (a/k/a Himalaya). As fashionable as it is to bash VMS, guess what, it's still around, and it's still VERY profitable.

    VMS shops will continue to use VMS for a long, long time. In fact, as I recall, DEC/Compaq/HP is obligated to continue support through at least 2017. Cool stuff. (Isn't that when the lights go out on Broadway? Ba-dum-bum.)

    NonStop is what runs, well, everything. Most SS7 networks are *highly* dependant on Nonstop. Yeah, sure, it's ridiculously expensive -- but it works. If you need 99.999%+ uptime, nothing else provides it --- not even the mainframe.

    If you look at this merger through PC eyeglasses, yeah, it probably doesn't make much sense. But then if you look at it with the enterprise market in mind, it makes LOTS of sense.

    Now, I'm not wild about the prospect of using the Itanium chips, but I have to say, the idea of running OpenVMS on the same systems with HP-UX, along with Linux, is definitely cool. Even nicer is that HP-UX (which is arcane in a lot of ways) will get some "real" features like TruClustering. Can't wait to see that!

    Interesting times are ahead with HP.... I think they're a real powerhouse, and especially now that the integration of both companies is really rolling along, they're going to be a Big Force in the enterprise space.

    I think it's going to come down to IBM and HP. Sun's just dropping the ball on SO many fronts lately (Bring back the Blueprints Engineers!!) that it's hard for me to count them as real players in the market right now .... It's a shame too, I really liked Sun equipment, and *especially* Solaris. But 33mhz PCI buses on your high-end SF25k servers? Give me a break!
    • Re:HP's benefit ... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Draknor ( 745036 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @12:35AM (#9735732) Homepage
      For the ignorant (like myself):

      SS7 [wikipedia.org] - Signalling System #7 is a set of protocols defined by ITU-T, specifically in the Q.7* set of documents, used to set up telephone calls. (from Wikipedia).

      Himalay / NonStop [pcmag.com] - The NonStop servers, which sell for an average of more than $1 million a piece, are highly valued for their ability to handle thousands of simultaneous transactions and their capability to continue operating even if hit with multiple hardware failures. The robust computing systems are particularly favored by financial institutions and are used to run 15 of the world's largest stock exchanges as well as automated teller machine networks for some of the nation's largest banks. (from PCMag, 2002)

      Parent is a very informative post - I didn't know about this other side of HP/Compaq!
    • Re:HP's benefit ... (Score:5, Informative)

      by ZenJabba1 ( 472792 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @12:36AM (#9735736) Homepage Journal
      As a "Regional Systems Support Engineer for Asia Pacific" some of the things we used to do for our customers were totally amazing in this day and age.

      One thing that I remember doing for one my customers is shipping a part on a hired helecopter because it was the fastest way to get me the part and the customer was on a "DEC Protect/Recover All" contract, which mean NOTHING was too much trouble.

      Those were the days.
      • Re:HP's benefit ... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by afidel ( 530433 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @12:46AM (#9735776)
        That's very cool. I know as an IBM field tech I used to get parts via Sonic Care all the time. If they didn't have the part at the local depot they would buy it a ticket on the next direct flight from whichever city they did have one in to where I was, then it would be driven by courier directly to me.
      • Re:HP's benefit ... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by nbvb ( 32836 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @12:48AM (#9735781) Journal
        Yep, gotta love that DEC support. It's amazing to me how many DECies are still around, now working for HP. In fact, we had a Superdome install about a month ago, and our onsite Alpha support guy ran into someone during the install that he hasn't seen in 10 years -- it was like a reunion!

        I'm a UNIX admin, and right now, I'm playing Sun and HP-UX. We've got the Alpha/VMS "Platinum" support model right now on HP-UX, and I have to tell you, it couldn't be better. That "NOTHING is too much trouble" thing is still true. You have to be a Big Fish, and you have to pay for it, but I'm still getting that "Whatever we can do to help means literally WHATEVER" support.

        Fantastic stuff; I'm happy to see that HP's willing to adopt that support model (at least for us, anyway) on the Superdome/HPUX side. I'm sure it's causing some infighting between ingrained HPers and DECies, but as the customer, that's not my concern. :-)
      • you know someone once told me about DEC's private helicopter pilots running between nashua and NYC (orsomething).

        this was not long after I was in new york with some friends, and a guy asked for some spare change to help with his helicopter repair.

        i think there's a connection.
    • I just wonder about something...

      If OpenVMS is so profitable, why is DEC no longer among us? and Compaq? and why is it being phased out?

      Don't get me wrong, I know it has been profitable for a logn time, I am just seriously doubting that it still is.
    • Ah VMS. The most stable and secure operating system every written. It had clustering in early 80s, ran thousands of pieces of software, was easy to learn and use, was rock solid and has never been hacked.

      Why this industry keeps discarding good technologies and adopting crappy ones I'll never know. I mean is advertising really that effective on management?
    • You are right on much of this, but.

      But 33mhz PCI buses on your high-end SF25k servers? Give me a break!

      From the systems handbook,

      "Up to 72 hot-swappable PCI+ I/O slots: 54 slots are 66 MHz; 18 slots are 33MHz"

      Think about it - do you really need 66Mhz for all your slots? no - not for you cluster interconnects, etc.

      Alex
  • by Mr. Vandemar ( 797798 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @12:24AM (#9735695) Homepage
    I live near a large HP facility (Boise, Idaho) and I've seen first hand the changes at HP. Brilliant engineers are being fired, and what used to be an emphasis on innovation and creativity has been replaced by a lust for short term profit to please the investors. I used to think HP was the most admirable company in tech, and maybe it was, but now... What goes around comes around though, I'm not expecting HP to succeed in the long run.
    • I live near a large HP facility (Boise, Idaho) and I've seen first hand the changes at HP. Brilliant engineers are being fired, and what used to be an emphasis on innovation and creativity has been replaced by a lust for short term profit to please the investors.

      Check out this book: Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 [amazon.com]

      It's a comparison of the tech culture that exists in both Silicon Valley and the area surrounding Boston. HP, originally a company based upon the i
    • by poofmeisterp ( 650750 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @10:09AM (#9738042) Journal
      You're lookin' at the comment of someone who was laid off my HPAQ/HPQ/HP/Compaq/what-the-fuck-ever.

      To sit there and listen to the propaganda campaigns at work.... we're focused on innovation... we have the brightest people.... blah blah blah. Then, to see the innovative, bright, industrious people Carly was praising escorted out of the building because someone else could do it in India for 1/10 the cost.......

      It still infuriates me. I have no words.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 19, 2004 @12:24AM (#9735702)
    I'm calling the guy out on his hyperbole. It would be corporate suicide to sell printer ink for the price of calf batter, er, bull jizz.
  • by FLoWCTRL ( 20442 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @12:24AM (#9735703) Journal

    The printer joke regarding HP got old when Dell was young.
  • by Lars T. ( 470328 ) <.moc.liamelgoog. .ta. .regearT.sraL.> on Monday July 19, 2004 @12:26AM (#9735705) Journal
    Nothing. You still can't make a profit selling PCs if you don't sell as much as DELL. Unless you are Apple.
  • by SuperBanana ( 662181 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @12:27AM (#9735713)
    "They still have a great, profitable printer business. ... Their profits are 70 to 80 percent from the printer business. So that's the area where the profit pool still lives. It's where it lived before. It's where it still is now. So I just ask, what's changed?"

    Executranslator output:

    "HP had a great printer business, and especially when we saw Queen Fiorina doing the merger dance, we thought, 'Hey. We're Dell, we rule, dude! We can make printers, kill cHomPaq's profit center, and then TAKE OVER THE WORLD!' But even after their sucky merger, they still make awesome printers, everyone still buys 'em, and we can't sell our printers. I hate her. Damn you, Carly! Oh, and our pothead spokesteen who got arrested for dealing pot, I hate him too."

    It's even more fun if you picture him half-drunk at a bar, 10 o'clock shadow, disheveled suit- telling all this to another drunk guy at the bar.

    • by Technician ( 215283 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @01:22AM (#9735899)
      Executranslator output:

      We don't want to comptete. We want to take the market and the profit margins.

      Enter the ship a printer with a PC program. We also include a ship us your old printer free box and pre paid UPS.

      The idea is to get you to send them your old printer before you find out the new printer has postage stamp size cartridges for the same price + S&H as the old printer. Visit their website. THERE IS NO DATA ON CARTRIDGE VOLUME OR PAGE YEILD. They provide no way to figure cost of operation. They don't want you to know.

      My wife bought a new DEL PC and got the companion all in one printer. I was skeptical with the recycle your old printer program. I checked into the prices and sources of ink for the new printer. The lack of information was apalling. When installing the cartridges, I was astounded the big all in one printer/fax/copier used such tiny cartridges. I was even more upset by the price for replacements.

      My other printers are networked and work with my other PC's. The Dell printer has drivers for Win 2K and Win XP only. As such, none of my other PC's can use it, even if it were networked. Needless to say, we'll probably "recycle" the new printer when it runs out of ink instead of sending a good printer.

      The printers on my LAN are a HP Laserjet III (cheap operation) HP 720c (cheap web page color printing) and a HP 950 (nice photo prints, but expensive color cartridges) The black cartridges are easly refillable as well as the Laser. The Dell will be replaced with a flatbed scanner when it runs out of ink. There is no info on refilling it. The ink is from Dell only with shipping and handeling costs. Yuck.

      I love the Hawking print servers. They support both Windows and Linux.
      • by Lumpy ( 12016 )
        you want a printer that doesnt bend you over and try to make you squeal when you buy ink?

        only one choice...

        Canon.

        my most recent canon is the photo R300. seperate ink-wells that are $9.00 each prints as good as all the others and prints directly onto CD's which kicks the arse out of everything that DELL might sell.

        if you must have an inkjet, get a canon. cheapest ink cartridges out there.

        And yes, other than the CD print operation, it works in linux.
        • you want a printer that doesnt bend you over and try to make you squeal when you buy ink?

          only one choice...

          Canon.


          To be honest, I've been looking at the Cannon i850. I just can't buy another inkjet while the HP's are working so well and use the same easily refilled black cartridge.

          Due to the cost of the color cartridges for the HP950c, it hasn't been plugged in for 6 months. I get my photo printing done at Costco instead. 8X10's on real film print is $2. Results look like 35mm prints, not glossy inkj
  • What's changed.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JessLeah ( 625838 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @12:28AM (#9735714)
    ...is that HP has completely lost sight of its sound roots in the engineering/geek world. HP used to be known as the producer of such geek icons as the HP48 [area48.com] series of calculators, the fantastic old LaserJets (not to be confused with the modern versions) and, of course, the venerable DeskJets. Today, their calculator business is a ghost of its former self, the new calculators are almost uniformly agreed to suck, and their once-vaunted printer business has devolved into the "drug dealer" model of doing business-- hook 'em with cheap printers, then sell them ink at obscene prices [bbc.co.uk]. (I remember reading a quote on SlashDot in the recent past saying that ink, ounce for ounce, is worth more than rare old wines now? Or something to that effect...)

    Anyhow, HP used to be an engineer's company-- a geek's company. Didn't the Woz [woz.org] used to work there? And he was a geek's geek. Even as recently as my high school education (I'm 25), HP was a touchstone of geek culture.

    And now that it's merged with Comcrap, its devolution into yet another mindless "cheap plastic crap computers" business has been completed.

    There seem to be only two companies nowadays with solid geek-friendly engineering-- Apple (excepting many of their first-generation products) and IBM (think: ThinkPads... solid engineering and a simple, robust design virtually unchanged in 10 years). HP is now just Compaq wearing a tie. DEC is long gone ("Compaq Tru64 Unix", anyone?), swallowed by the Compaq beast. SGI is going out with a whimper instead of a bang. Sun sold their soul to Redmond and is now producing x86 [sun.com] and x86-64 hardware that are Windows-certified [theregister.co.uk].

    And, as usual... no one gives a damn. We're all too damned addicted to ShinyPlasticCrap(TM) to care about the lack of sound engineering.

    As far as I'm concerned, Carly Fiorina's head should be on a stake somewhere, the damned sellout. She robbed us all of a good, solid, geeky company in favour of more anticompetitive, mindless, corporate, plastic crap.
    • by telemonster ( 605238 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @12:35AM (#9735734) Homepage
      As far as the laserjet office printers, I believe they are still fairly strong. Granted the physical unit might not be quite as heavy as a 4SI was, they still live up to the HP duty cycle.

      As far as home printers and inkjets, yea you gotta sell shit to compete in that market because all your competitors are doing it. Ink jet printers are a rip off. Simple solution is to avoid them.

      Just bring home a 600dpi or 1200dpi (RET) HP from eBay or the local thrift store, it will last another 30 years or so. If the fuser blows up, they are like $20 for a replacement. Same with the pick up rollers.

      You can get a good deal, with one of the huge mailbox sorters. Every member of the family gets their own output tray!

      • Inkjet printers with 3rd party refills can be quite ok.. Yeah, you better be carefull with the refills you use, but when you do have the proper ink, they can be fairly cheap to operate.

        The crappy PSC 1200 I have here (printer/copier) was like 60 euro.. I also spent 45 euro on a refill kit, and after a year I did manage to use up my original cartridges and approx 2/5 of the refills (2 out of 5 refills)

        Ah, how many pages did I get out of the initial cartridges and the 2 refills? Around 1200.
        So... if it woul
    • by Anonymous Coward
      Well, in a way HP's legacy as a good geek company is still around, but it now goes by the name Agilent.

      Agilent is a spin off of HP (from 1999) that basically took everything but HP's computer/printer business.

      Agilent today does what HP did in the 70's, such as test and measurement equipment, semiconductors, life science equipment, etc. Sadly, this is minus the calculator division, HP kept (then killed) that. Most cell phones today use parts made by Agilent.

      One important piece is the R&D labs division
      • I too had given up on HP beign a serious player in the calculator field any more (discontinuing the HP32SII - WTF was up with that. The thing is bulletproof, light on memory but an interface that was quick and useful) but my brother (also an engineer) bought a new one for work and tells me that it isn't as awful as I'd thought they had become.

        I may not have to give up knowing RPN and get a TI when my precious dies a long time from now.
  • Haven't read the article yet... can't wait to see what he has to say about his company's shoddy products and horrific support thanks to utilizing global workforce.

    HPaq DL380 G3 > Dell.

    To the OpenVMS fan - you guys sure are a die hard bunch! As a member of the hobbyist program from Montagar, I gotta say VMS is a odd cookie. Friends and myself have been playing with it as time permits on an older alphaserver 2100RM hooked to a Portmaster for remote serial access. Steep learning curve for us Unix p
  • Dell = old HP? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by darnok ( 650458 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @12:30AM (#9735721)
    As an ex-HP person who left on happy terms several years ago, I'm continually impressed by what I read from and about Dell's execs. They seem to be doing a lot of the things that HP seems/seemed incapable of doing; establishing new markets (as distinct from new products), managing people upwards as well as downwards, keeping focus on their core products, managing change, excellent marketing, etc.

    A lot of that existed in the "old HP" (except the excellent marketing!), and seems to have gone from HP over the past several years. It's remarkable how short a time it took for HP to transition into the company it is today. HP's status as a leading engineering company seems to have all but disappeared now.

    Many years ago, I went to HP as I thought it was the best training ground on offer; these days, I'd probably go to Dell for the same thing.
  • by Ubergrendle ( 531719 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @12:34AM (#9735731) Journal
    HP benefits more from the merger than Compaq, for the following reasons:
    1. One less commodity x86 company to deal with on the Wintel side.
    2. Acquisition of DEC, aka Compaq Alpha, and Tandem, aka NonStop. Instant credibility and long term customer base in the high-end transactional space. For non-enterprise Slashdotters, Tandems are almost as prevalent as MVS (mainframes) in the financial services sector.
    3. iPaq and hand held technologies. HP's offerings weren't so hot until they got Compaq's mindshare.

    Ironically, HP is massacring it own customer base in the HP-UX space. The Itanium relationship has been a disaster. "Hey, port to Itanium as its our long term unix strategy. Well, yes the processors underperform...and yes, no ISVs have ported over. And, well, no, we'll keep supporting HP-UX as long as its possible.." Of course, HP-UX customers are questioning the future of PA-RISC now in light of Itanium. So basically what's happened is no one is picking up Itanium nor PA-RISC at this point, and the PA-RISC space is slowly declining as people move to the P-Series (IBM) or Sun or linux clusters. Look at the latest sales and install base charts. I figure PA-RISC jumped the shark about 3-4 quarters ago, and its descent is accelerating month-by-month. (Mostly at the expense of IBM P-Series it seems)

    I find it amazing that HP can make money some days...
  • by ky11x ( 668132 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @12:36AM (#9735739)
    Reading this interview just made me realize how much I dislike Dell.

    Dell CEO: So what? Did customers benefit? Did employees benefit? Did shareholders benefit?

    Funny he should ask that question of HP/Compaq. I could ask the same question of him and Dell's activities over the last two years. Quality has plunged across the line. The Inspiron series is now a joke. I've yet to meet a single customer of those laptops who did not have a problem within the first year (failed hard drive, fried motherboard, you name it). Outsourcing of support has made it impossible to get problems resolved in an efficient/competent manner. Who's benefitting? Not the customers, not the employees, and if they keep this up, people will stop buying Dells and the shareholders don't benefit either.

    Obsolescence and just wearing out. You have to upgrade your PCs. You have to do that at some point in time because they just fall apart. They don't last forever.

    Glad that he's so honest. Sorry, the ThinkPads I own do NOT just "wear out" within a year -- six years now and my ThinkPad still works great. I wish I can just shake all the companies that are buying Dells and tell them to wake up. This is a company that is deliberately building crappy products that fall apart in six months because their business model is to automatically "wear out" their machines so you can buy again. God, Dell makes my blood boil.

    Yeah. They're selling very well. Absolutely. Because you all want them.

    Please don't use "you all" as if you really are born around here. You are no more entitled to say this than Kerry's wife is entitled to say she's an "African American."

    (Chief information officers) were holding some of these things with duct tape because they have been around for so long.

    No. It's because you built them so poorly. Again, my company's Compaqs and IBMs are NOT wearing out. Only Dells. Guess who we are NOT buying from again?

    o, I can't comment on that. But I can tell you, categorically, we're not going to buy Sun. There's just no strategic reason to be doing that.

    Thank God. I never want Dell anywhere near a company with some real integrity and solid products.

    • by Cecil ( 37810 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @01:25AM (#9735908) Homepage
      I agree with all the rest of your post, but what the hell? Did you misread this line or something?

      Yeah. They're selling very well. Absolutely. Because you all want them.

      ---

      Please don't use "you all" as if you really are born around here.


      What? I don't know what nationality you are, or where you mean by "around here". I can see an American perhaps taking credit for "y'all" (although personally I consider it an embarassment). But "you all" is just two arbitrary English words next to each other in a sentence. How can anyone claim it? Is it no longer allowed to say "Wow, you all came to my birthday party! Thanks!"

      I'm Canadian, and while we are proud of our "Eh?" we don't claim exclusive rights to it.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 19, 2004 @12:39AM (#9735748)
    Michael Dell was always taking shots at Apple, now this new guy is ripping HP? It's like some kind of inferiority complex with these guys, I swear.

    I guess they just feel a little short in the pants because all Dell does is repackage other people's technology and slap a logo and a low price sticker on it. When everyone else is doing the innovating for you and all you do is shave your prices to run your competitors out of business, the business pretty much runs itself. That must leave a lot of free time to criticize other companies.

    The question I'd like to see these fucks answer in an interview is, "Using only your fingers, can you tell us how many people have traded in an iPod for one of your shitty Digital Jukeboxes?"
    • Are you suggesting that Dell was the inventor and exclusive practicer of being critical of their competitors? Seriously? No, seriously, is that what you are suggesting? And you mentioned Apple in the same sentence?

      What is wrong with the DJ? Sure, trading in a working iPod that costs twice as much doesn't make sense. But how is this a knock on the DJ? I'm very happy with mine. Yes, it is a little bigger than the iPod, but I can live with that at almost half the price (DJ 20GB was recently on sale for $
  • by aardwolf204 ( 630780 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @12:44AM (#9735766)
    This interview was especially interesting, and I'm usually one to read a hardware review over a CEO interview any day. Its amazing to see how dells business has grown and spread out over the last few years. I think they're corporate image and branding have had a lot to do with it.

    When I think "HP" the first thing that comes to mind is "Printers". When I think "HP PCs" the first thing that comes to mind is "junk". Now when I think of dell I think of a reputable company, I think of laptops, desktops, servers, handhelds, printers. I think of solid machines that work very well, last a long time, and are a plesure to work ok (I love the screwless entry and layout of the Deminsion Desktops). My great experience with dell desktops and servers makes dell a good choice for a pocket pc or printer in my view.

    My company primaraly buys dell. We have a Dell NT4 server thats been in the company for 7 years now and its still ticking. Its not as easy to get inside of as the desktop workstations but I've actually never had to open it up to replace anything. We had a different CEO a few years ago that was a Gateway fanboy. A couple of gateway laptops were ordered but have since broken down. The feeling around the office when it comes to hardware is, "just go to dell". I know it seems like the "nobody ever got fired for buying microsoft" thing but the bad experiences with gateway and the solid ones with dell have really impacted our thinking when it comes to hardware

    I thought the "Tell Dell" part of the interview was especially interesting. Twice a year dell gives the employees a way to speak their mind about their boss and it directly effects their bonus, and this goes all the way to the top. I think that is a wonderful way to give employees a sense of belonging. It gives lets them know that they have a say in the way the company operates. The company I work for does employee performance reviews twice a year. Its like the same thing dell does but the other way around. Now considering the fact that my company is small in comparison (100-150 employees) I'm not sure something like "tell dell" would work in my company. There are tons of things I could say about how my CIO "doesnt get it" (but then again I'm thinking like an engineer not a manager), but saying them on paper and turning that in to my boss is a completely different story.

    Does anyone else hear work for a company that does performance reviews, or boss reviews? I'd like to hear some testimony, and this has really intreged me so I'm wondering if something like this would work in a small company like the one I work for.

    Slashdot needs spellcheck. Maybe I should get that firebird spellcheck extension
    • by Anonymous Coward
      HP does yearly "management evaluations". They call them the "voice of the workforce", or "the VOW", and they send out cheesy e-mails that say "Take the VOW!". A month or two after the surveys the anonymous results are handed out and the managers go over them. At a certain level of management there has to be a set number of responses before they can get the report -- so if you're a manager with one or two people reporting to you, you won't be getting any results -- they'll be handed to YOUR manager. They
    • Oddly, having years of working with the damn things, the first thing that comes to my mind when I hear "HP" is "crappy printers."

      Whether its bugs in the drivers -- and I've had to code around a lot of them -- or "optimizations" like Quick Layout, or just paper trays breaking or jams, I've never had a good experience with an HP printer.

  • by Bill_Royle ( 639563 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @12:57AM (#9735818)
    Darl McBride, SCO - from Brigham Young University.

    Kevin Rollins, Dell - from Brigham Young University.

    Coincidence? I think not!

    Now - where did I put that tinfoil hat?
  • by Ralph Spoilsport ( 673134 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @12:59AM (#9735825) Journal
    It had to do with 2 things (a Close Friend works at HP, so I get to hear things...)

    1. Carly Got Paid. She wanted to make a few million and shore up her shaky position with the board. She got both wishes.

    2. COMPAQ PAY CURVES

    Compaq paid their people less, gave them fewer benefits, and shorter vacation. By applying Compaq Pay Curves, most of the people at HP suddenly found themselves at the top of their pay curve. They won't get a raise for decades. On top of that, if you were getting 5 weeks vacation because you had slaved for HP for 15 years, you now only get 4, thanks to the adoption ofthe Compaq HR regs. There was a whole raft of HR changes in HP that saved the company hundreds of millions of dollars on an ongoing basis. So not only did it chop X jillion bucks off their expenses this year, they wouldn't see it coming back the next.

    Those left stateside who are not in management and not outsourced, are doing the work of three or four people.

    This is NOT a sustainable situation and it is going to come crashing down in fairly short order.

    Carly's HP is a disaster. She led Lucent gliding into a death spiral, and she's going to sink HP. And weep all the way to the bank. Plutocratic leeches like her must be stopped.

    RS

  • by DAldredge ( 2353 ) <SlashdotEmail@GMail.Com> on Monday July 19, 2004 @01:20AM (#9735890) Journal
    He said "The bulk of our employees are still in the U.S. "

    That is a LIE.

    ROUND ROCK, Texas (AP) - Computer maker Dell Inc. has more workers overseas than it does in the United States, reversing the makeup of its work force of just a year ago. Round Rock-based Dell said it was allocating resources where growth has been fastest, including China and Japan.

    "We have great opportunities outside the U.S., and as such we have built our employee base in areas that best reflect our strong growth areas," Dell spokesman Bob Kaufman said Tuesday. "Our jobs have grown all over the world, including here in the U.S."

    Dell had 46,000 employees as of Jan. 30. About 22,200 of those, or 48.3 percent, were in the United States, while 23,800 people, or 51.7 percent, worked in other countries, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday.

    A year ago, 54.2 percent of Dell's workers were in the United States, according to company filings. Dell's work force grew 17.6 percent during 2003.

    Dell said overseas job growth in the past year ran the gamut, from sales and manufacturing to call center support.

    Last year, Dell stopped routing corporate customers to a technical support call center in Bangalore, India after a flood of complaints. Tech support for Optiplex desktop and Latitude notebook computers are being handled from call centers in Texas, Idaho and Tennessee instead.

    Shares of Dell were down 23 cents to $35.56 in afternoon trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

    FROM: Associated Press ^ | Apr 13, 2004

  • by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 19, 2004 @02:30AM (#9736087)
    I'm really surprised that Dell (or anyone else) hasn't come up with the best way to knock out HP's main profit center - the printing business.

    All the non-HP companies have to do is to actually create a standard for the printing cartridges. A standard which allows backward compatibility. One which gets used by everyone (though HP will no doubt balk at first).

    All of a sudden, the cost on cartridges drops significantly. And people will be more inclined to buy printers which adhere to the standard.

    I can think of no better way to hit HP at its weakest spot; and provide a lot of value to customers too. HP had better hope that its competitors don't try to pull this off. But being at the mercy of your competition is usually not spmething which is desireable.

  • by goMac2500 ( 741295 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @02:48AM (#9736144)
    It used to be all my PC using friends recommended Dell. No one does anymore. At the word Dell everyone thinks crap. They are overpriced and underpowered. My friend ordered his Dell and it took 3 seperate attempts to actually get the thing to his house. They lost the computer twice. When he finally got it the cmos battery died within a week and the DVD drive failed. He hasn't gotten it fixed because, unlike Apple, you can't simply send the machine back in. They must come to you (as far as I'm aware), and being a high school student, he isn't home when techs are on duty. Don't get me started on the crap know as the Dell servers we have at work. The RAID array cards on those enjoy failing, and the repair techs don't actually work for Dell and have to do repairs for us we could very well do on our own.
    • by craenor ( 623901 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @09:00AM (#9737401) Homepage
      When he finally got it the cmos battery died within a week and the DVD drive failed. He hasn't gotten it fixed because, unlike Apple, you can't simply send the machine back in. They must come to you (as far as I'm aware), and being a high school student, he isn't home when techs are on duty.

      If you are able to repair the system yourself, you can always just ask for the parts. Dell will be happy to not have to pay the on-site tech and will just send you the parts. Also, if you have a portable system you can get a return to depot warranty, but honestly, if you view having a technician come out to your house the next business day and repairing your computer to be an inconvenience, then is there any pleasing you?

      Oh...they can also come out after 4 or even 5 o'clock well after High School lets out. And if the problem happened in the first 21 days, you could just demand a replacement computer.

      ...the repair techs don't actually work for Dell and have to do repairs for us we could very well do on our own.

      The repair techs used by Dell are contracted pretty much from the companies that everyone elses uses also. Banctec, Qualxserv, Unisys...there are others. Those companies do a thriving business because companies like IBM, Dell, HP/Compaq, Sony and the like contract them. And again, if you think you can handle the repair yourself, Dell will just send you the parts. Of course, if you break the computer while trying to repair you, then you are liable for paying to repair what you damaged, but that's just fair.

      Also, if you are a larger company you can have someone certified for Premier Access, then you can just order your own parts, do your own repairs and you aren't liable for breaking a computer while trying to repair it...unless it was intentional.

      Honestly...get your facts straight. I wouldn't even normally have bothered to respond, but since someone mod'd you up to Informative...*shrugs*
  • What has changed? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by X-Nc ( 34250 ) <nilrin@@@gmail...com> on Monday July 19, 2004 @09:02AM (#9737419) Homepage Journal
    > So I just ask, what's changed?

    It is probably a redundant reply but it can't be stressed enough. What changed is the death of one of the better CUP architectures. The death of the Alpha is one of those great mistakes in the history of computers.

The best defense against logic is ignorance.

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