“Connected World” – hopefully Paul Allen won’t call from the 1990s and ask for his strategy back.

“…its vision to provide seamless, secure, context-aware experiences for the connected world” – it probably sounds better in the original German.

“…continue delivering unparalleled value” – that sounds suspiciously like more of the same actually.  So much for the break from the Hurd era.

“…well positioned to win through a compelling combination of financial strength, unmatched scale and global reach, and market-leading positions that span from the consumer to the enterprise” – translation: we’re big and not entirely sure what we do either.

“…convergence” – the 1990s may just want to put HP on speed dial.

“Powerful trends like consumerization, cloud computing and connectivity are redefining the way people live, businesses operate and the world works.” – I’d always use ‘live, work and play’ when composing this sentence.  It rolls off the tongue a little better.

“…massive, agile and open” – massive and agile so often go hand-in-hand.

“…leveraging” – once.

“Meanwhile, the cloud is combining with mobility to create ubiquitous connectivity.” – ’meanwhile’?  Evidently you have to follow multiple plotlines.

“…leverage” – twice.

“…trusted partner” – naturally.

“…continue enhancing HP’s offerings across its broad hardware, software and services portfolio to meet evolving customer demands while also leveraging its core strengths to develop the cloud- and connectivity-based solutions of the future to meet the needs of consumers, small and midsize companies and large enterprises.” – this should really help employees with what NOT to do.

“…trusted leader” – is leader an upgrade from partner?

“…a four-point strategy” – the big decision was whether to have a three or four-point strategy.

“…leveraging” – thrice.

“…core strength in cloud” – you can’t spell Heffalump without the letters H and P.  But ‘cloud’, not so much.

“…trusted partner” – on second thought, partner was better.

“…delivering the connected world” – can I get that delivered to my house overnight?

“…leverage” – not sure what comes after thrice.

“…build a robust developer community that is eager” – you can lead a horse (or insert your own CAML joke) to water, but you can’t make him eager.

“…leveraging” – starting to think this is coded reference to printer cartridge business.

“…unmatched” – true, no other company looks even remotely like HP.

“…a multitude of initiatives” – so more than four then?

“…three strategic areas” – uh, oh, now we’ve lost one. 

“…leverage” – at this point we can just call him Leo Archimedes.

“…higher-value” – higher than what?

“…greater strategic value” – ah, higher in strategery.

“A device-aware HP cloud…” – eServices lives!

“…a leader in the area of connectivity” – look out AT&T?

“The focus on performance will come through a program focusing on growth, operational excellence and quality.” – looking forward to reading the white paper on this. 

“At HP, our mission is to deliver seamless, secure, context-aware experiences for a connected world.” – repeated just in case anyone didn’t memorize it up front.

Here is the word cloud if that helps. 

In HP’s defense, the only thing worse than reading this kind of press releases is writing them.  It is next to impossible to put a coherent and concrete story together that spans all the provinces of vast technology conglomerates, so you’re left with sweeping platitudes.  Been there, done that.

Disclosures: a delighted seller of all my HPQ at $49.

Not to endorse Senator Shakedown’s grandstanding, but I do think Apple’s reality distortion field has worn off and everyone knows it except Apple.  Dave Winer nails it.  Companies are always the last to internalize they’re not the plucky little upstart any more and public expectations have changed.

Our runner-up in inanity emanating today is the New York Times’ apparently un-ironic call for the government to manage Google’s search algorithm.  Fortunately, this has been comprehensively addressed by Danny Sullivan.

Reaction however fell short of Soviet-era universal acclaim:

But some people in the affected regions believe Medvedev should have been doing something else with his time.

An online petition opposing the Samara region’s change gathered nearly 13,000 signatures.

…

“In the winter, darkness will come almost at lunchtime, which isn’t convenient and is psychologically quite hard,” the petition said.

Immediately prior to ordering their relocation to the Siberian worker’s paradise of Gulaggrad, Medvedev rebuked the ungrateful kulaks of Samara for standing in the way of Russia’s 21st century global information infrastructure ambitions:

But Medvedev said the change would help some far-flung regions have more efficient communications with the central authorities, ease travel and even improve the country’s international position.

“It’s possible that this could also aid the strengthening of Russia’s position as a link in the global information infrastructure,” he said at a meeting this month with ministers and regional leaders.

And Medvedev, without explicitly mentioning the fact economic dynamo and fellow BRIC nation China has but one time zone, is considering further decisive action if increased agricultural production quotas are not met:

Medvedev has suggested that the number of Russia’s time zones could eventually be reduced to just five.

He has also told government experts to study whether to continue the practice of shifting summer to winter time and back every year.

Somewhere, Thomas Friedman is no doubt furiously scribbling yet another sequel to The World is Flat extolling geopolitical origami and the fourth dimension applications of Mad magazine fold-ins.

Pravda has nothing to say on the matter.

I mean, what exactly is “the landscape of the dispossessed” and how do you win the Nobel prize in literature for writing about it?  Why isn’t there more discussion of this bizarre choice?  I know there is a long history of controversy around prize winners, but this is a new low.  How can you possibly mention Herta Müller in the same breath as previous winners and immortal literary titans like Sully Prudhomme or Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson?  (Imagine the link juice from that last one…).

Appareo decet nihil munditia?

Ad absurdum?

Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres.

Luke sum ipse patrem te.

Most of the nearly two billion children in the developing world have inadequate access to dinosaurs. Some receive no paleontology training at all. One in three has never even seen a dinosaur in person.

UPDATE: I am a little embarrassed by this post.  First, the title should have been just “Closing the Dinosaur Divide”.  Second, as one correspondent pointed out, there should have been a mainframe joke.  Platformonomics regrets this lapse.