Amazing goings-on at Hewlett Packard, once one of the best and the nicest companies in the world. Here’s the report from Good Morning Silicon Valley…

Hewlett-Packard, long known for its open and egalitarian corporate structure, is making headlines today for an astonishing lapse in judgement that may forever tarnish the the core values established by its founders some 50 years ago. According to reports, HP Chairwoman Patricia Dunn ordered the surveillance of HP board members in an effort to out a director who was leaking information to the news media. On her sayso, a team of security consultants gathered board members’ private telephone records and used them to finger longtime HP director George Keyworth as the source of the leaks. Dunn outed Keyworth and demanded his resignation at a May 18 meeting which quickly went bad when she revealed her surveillance scheme. (Keyworth will not be renominated to the company’s board.)

Enraged at Dunn’s methods, well-known venture capitalist Tom Perkins abruptly quit the board and stormed out of the meeting. HP announced his resignation the next day, but without explanation. Since then, Perkins has been after HP to make a full and accurate report of the circumstances surrounding his departure. HP refused, so Perkins forced its hand, going public in an irate letter to company directors attached to which was a memo from AT&T’s general attorney confirming an unauthorized review of his phone records. “As the Company failed to make a full and accurate report (as required by federal law) and having given the Company several opportunities to correct the record, I am now legally obliged to disclose publicly the reasons for my resignation,” Perkins wrote. “This is a very sad duty. My history with the Hewlett-Packard Company is long and I have been privileged to count both founders as close friends. I consider HP to be an icon of Silicon Valley, and one of the great companies of the world. It now needs, urgently, to correct its course.”

Dunn ought to be fired. Pronto.

Ironic footnote: “First and foremost is that privacy is actually a core value at HP. As a company, HP is 100 percent committed to excellence in consumer and employee privacy…”

— Scott Taylor, Chief Privacy Officer, Hewlett-Packard, June 20, 2006

Hmmm… This is from the Daily Mail, so I’m not sure I believe it.

After walking the Great Wall of China and making plans for a trip to Russia, Shirley Greening-Jackson thought signing up for a new internet service would be a doddle.

But the young man behind the counter had other ideas. He said she was barred – because she was too old.

The 75-year-old would only be allowed to sign the forms for the Carphone Warehouse’s TalkTalk phone and broadband package if she was accompanied by a younger member of her family who could explain the small print to her.

Mrs Greening-Jackson, who sits on the board of several charities, said: “I was absolutely furious. The young man said, ‘Sorry, you’re over 70. It’s company policy. We don’t sign anyone up who is over 70.’

“Later a young lady said company policy is that anyone over 70 might not understand the contract. She said, ‘If you would be prepared to go to the shop in town and take a younger member of your family we might give you a contract.’

From John Simons’s Blog…

On my recent trip back from India on British Airways, I was inspired by Julieanne Kost’s recent book, Window Seat (not to be confused with another book of the same title by Dicum) to snap some landscape photos at 35000 feet. I think we were over Iran at the time. After taking several shots, imagine my surprise when one of the BA attendants closed the window shade and informed me that it was against British Airways policy for passengers to take such photos for security reasons. I thought she was kidding, but the head attendant confirmed what I had been told. And that it had nothing to do with where we were flying.

Hmmm… The ‘security’ hysteria gathers pace. This from an item in the Huffington Post…

U.S. authorities are advising women not to wear gel bras on airplanes as information developed in the foiled London plot points to an expanding role for women in smuggling explosives on to an aircraft.

So, no transatlantic flights for breast-cancer patients who have had mastectomies, then?

Honestly, you couldn’t make this up. Investors in Betonsports.com are threatening to sue Baker Tilley, the accountants who drew up the prospectus on which the company was founded.

I remember reading said prospectus at the time. It said, quite clearly, that some aspects of the company’s business were illegal in the United States. I also remember that this didn’t stop ‘respectable’ City institutions and their clients from stampeding to buy the shares. I was naively astonished at the greed implicit in this. It seemed that there were limits to the “due diligence” about which venture capitalists make such a fuss. If there was a sure-fire bet in prospect, then it seemed that due diligence could be jettisoned as fast as yesterday’s newspaper.

But now that the company’s CEO has been incarcerated by the Feds, and it’s clear that Betonsports will be worthless shortly, those poor investor lambs are crying foul and looking for someone to blame for their woes. Ye Gods!

From SFgate.com…

Three hundred National Guard troops were ordered Thursday to airports in San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles and San Diego as state and local officials ramped up security measures around California in response to the arrests of suspected terrorists accused of plotting to blow up airplanes headed from Britain to the United States.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger assigned troops to the three largest airports that regularly receive flights from Europe in the first such deployment of the California National Guard since the Sept. 11 attacks five years ago. Uniformed troops carrying guns were to arrive at airports this morning and will stay in place for at least a week, according to Adjutant Gen. William H. Wade II, the head of the state’s National Guard.

“I can assure the people of California that we’re doing everything to keep them safe and to return our airports to normal operations as quickly as possible,” he said. “We need the public’s help and their patience.”

“I see”, says Cory Doctorow,

“Governor Schwarzenneger has deployed 300 National Guardswomen and men to California’s airports to ensure that if liquid/gel/iPod terrorists escape from a British prison and fly to San Diego (without blowing up the plane), and then get off and start hijacking the entire airport, they can be shot.”

TMZ has obtained a letter from a prominent Los Angeles Rabbi asking Mel Gibson to speak at his temple on Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement.

In the letter, David Baron, the Rabbi for the Temple of the Arts, the largest entertainment industry synagogue in the United States, wrote: “…I wish to invite you to come and speak in order that you might directly express to the Jewish community your remorse. I feel that Yom Kippur, Day of Atonement, would be an appropriate time.”

Rabbi Baron added: “In our faith we are commanded to forgive when the offending party takes the necessary steps and offers an apology from the heart.”

[Source]

PS: Summary of The Gibson’s tirade against the arresting officers here.

Today is the 90th anniversary of the battle of the Somme, on the first day of which the British suffered 57,470 casualties, including 19,240 dead — the bloodiest day in the history of the British Army.

Max Hastings has a thoughtful piece about it in the Guardian. It begins:

Captain WP Nevill of the 8th East Surreys was a complete ass. In the line in France, he liked to stand on a firestep of an evening, shouting insults at the Germans. Knowing that his men were about to participate in their first battle and keen to inspire, he had a wizard idea.

On leave in England, he bought footballs for each of his four platoons. One was inscribed: “The Great European Cup. The Final. East Surreys v Bavarians. Kick-off at Zero.” Nevill offered a prize to whoever first put a ball into a German trench when the “big push” came.

Sure enough, when the whistles blew on July 1 1916, and 150,000 English, Scots, Welsh and Scottish soldiers climbed ladders to offer themselves to the German machine-guns, Nevill’s footballers kicked off.

One of the few eye-witnesses to survive described watching a ball arch high into the sky over no-man’s-land, on its way to the German trenches near Montauban. No winner collected Nevill’s prize, however. Within minutes the captain was dead, as were most of his men…

Later… James M emailed:

Every time I read about the Somme and other battles, in which the trials of the British and allies are described; when I visit Duxford or Bletchley or Madingley American Cemetery – my mind is always drawn to how it must have felt to have been on the other side. It’s almost never discussed. Does Germany have Somme-fests every modulo-10 years? So I was pleased to see this.