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For Hire: Compaq’s iPaq Engineering Team

In the News 37 Comments

The Register writes: “Compaq’s iPaq PocketPC development team seems to be so unhappy with the upcoming merger with Hewlett-Packard, they have en masse offered their services to the highest bidder on the online job search site The Vault. Under the headline “iPaq PPC Engineering Team for Hire”, the “core iPaq engineering team” says it is “seeking new opportunities and want to design the next winning PPC for your company. This team is responsible for the original iPaq and other designs that are yet to be released. Our team will vault your company ahead of its competitors.” Our Take: I wonder if Palm will cancel the deal of the $11 million they would pay to Be, Inc. to just get the Be engineers and send offer letters and Palm Pilots as gifts (but this time, recent models with working batteries) to the iPaq engineers.

About The Author

Eugenia Loli

Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSAlert.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.

Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli

37 Comments

  1. 2001-09-11 7:13 am
    Anonymous

    Well if Palm doesn’t jump on the offer, then the iPaq squad could come over to Frizbe and start engineering and building “Li’l Frizbe” PDAs for Scott Bates and BeOS could finally take the market share if that is what they promise! Hmmm I wonder if you can fit that into a small PDA?… I guess not, but wishful thinking though.

    Hey it was just a thought

  2. 2001-09-11 7:13 am
    Anonymous

    >(but this time, recent models with working batteries)

    Did I miss something?

    flo

  3. 2001-09-11 9:54 am
    Anonymous

    >Did I miss something?

    Hehe..

  4. 2001-09-11 10:59 am
    Anonymous

    Whimsical…what are you trying to do ‘read between the lines’. It appears that you cannot read at all,and are merely speculating at an impossibility.

    “Our Take: I wonder if Palm will cancel the deal of the $11 million they would pay to Be, Inc. to just get the Be engineers and send offer letters and Palm Pilots as gifts (but this time, recent models with working batteries) to the iPaq engineers… ”

    Stop it, you are really of the beaten track with this ignorant specualtion.

  5. 2001-09-11 12:22 pm
    Anonymous

    This is not a speculation. This is purely and utterly, mocking, joking and sarcasm, all in one. Hah. My husband lost his job because of the Palm take over and we are currently in a big buriocratic mess. I will mock and laugh as much as I want with them. Fuck them.

    And if I sound too pissed off right now, it is because all the airports are closed here in US, I can’t make it to France to my own wedding. Thousands of dollars of preparation and people coming from Greece to France, all a waste. And such a shame for all these innocent lives lost today from the terrorist’s attacks… Again: Fuck everything. I am pissed off. Fuck straight journalism and fuck Palm.

  6. 2001-09-11 12:38 pm
    Anonymous

    That sucks that you can’t make it to your own wedding… This whole terrorist thing caused such a huge mess!! I hope things will work out somehow for the wedding.

  7. 2001-09-11 12:39 pm
    Anonymous

    And when I am talking about buriocratic mess, I mean the visa papers. While my husband found another job, soon after his lay off from Be-Palm, the visa papers were not ready in time. We are not allowed to exit the country while the visa is pending. So, we thought that we should go to France for our wedding and enter with our tourists visas and then file the petition. But guess what, the visa is already pending and it is illegal to enter the country while you have a pending petition. So, we are in such a mess with the visa stuff, even if we have planned our wedding for months now and Be knew about it. And now this terrorist attack closed all airports, we can’t go to France at all (most probably).

    FUCK all the fucking managers over there and all of them who have taken the decision to lay off my husband in such a *bad timing*. Do you hear me, you fucking Palm bastards and Be shareholders/investors? Fuck your ass hard. All you can do is destroy lives, not deliver products.

    My husband and me have given our lives to Be and BeOS respectively. And you paid us back like that. Fucking bastards. I have not talked at all all these months, I played it cool and everything, but enough is enough. >:(

  8. 2001-09-11 12:40 pm
    Anonymous

    Thank you Ryan. ;)

  9. 2001-09-11 12:51 pm
    Anonymous

    Hi Eugina,

    A few years ago a friend of mine was getting married in South Carolina. Two weeks before the wedding hurricane Hugo caused the church and recption hall to cease to exist. She still got married. She still had a nice reception. She wasn’t too happy during the events, but things worked out OK.

    On the other hand we could have been on one of those planes, or we could have worked at the world trade center or pentagon. I thank god that my family hasn’t been affected by this tragedy. And I feel terrible for those who have been.

    geoff

    P.S. My wife and I wince when we think about how crappy our wedding was.

  10. 2001-09-11 12:59 pm
    Anonymous

    Yes, maybe I should be happy that me and my family are alive, but at this moment I am in an enourmous stress.

    It is just so many things. The wedding, the visa papers and our TWO house moves we have to do in October. And even if we make it to France, there is a possibility to not be allowed back in the country when we return if our visas are not get through yet. And we have to clear up our house and move to the new apartment by October so we have to be back in USA in the right time. So, as you see, we have a shit load of problems, all generated by the lay off and only by a second degree by the terrorists attacks.

  11. 2001-09-11 1:07 pm
    Anonymous

    yes, this is a trying time – with the terrorist attacks and the associated pandaemonium. I do empathise in regards to your current position. I hope you do make it to your wedding.

  12. 2001-09-11 3:14 pm
    Anonymous

    Eugenia and Jbq-

    I’m sorry your going to miss your own wedding, that really sucks! I hope you can get the problems worked out soon ;)

  13. 2001-09-11 3:40 pm
    Anonymous

    Sorry for you…

    nothing much to say….

  14. 2001-09-11 4:44 pm
    Anonymous

    Re the wedding: I am very sorry to hear that its been stuffed up, but I am sure things will work out (they usually do).

    As for the iPaq engineers, this actually crossed my mind the first time I read that they were for higher – if the ad is to be believed – it would be a nice fit considering Palm is moving to the ARM processors anyway.. Although I think they should keep the Be engineers too ;)

    LW.

  15. 2001-09-11 4:49 pm
    Anonymous

    I love so many things about the USA, but today I wish I was back in France or Brasil or anywhere. The USA is always in a conflict. I’m tired of wars and rumors of wars.

  16. 2001-09-11 5:04 pm
    Anonymous

    What Palm Inc. hired from Be Inc. are kernel developers.

    The Compaq Ipaq team are systems integration people, not kernel developers — Palm Inc. doesn’t need them.

  17. 2001-09-11 5:35 pm
    Anonymous

    eugenia, i hope everything works out. i, too, am jobless at the end of this week. all this terrorism will make it difficult for me to get work in the australian finance sector which is where i have been working since 1991.

    my heart goes out to everyone over there affected by this senseless attack

    peter

  18. 2001-09-12 12:37 am
    Anonymous

    Speaking of the terror today, I made a button for use on sites to remember this terrible day. Use mine or make your own. I don’t care. http://www.sumballo.org/images/remember.gif“

  • 2001-09-12 4:50 am
    Anonymous

    Eugenia… when JBQ got laid off I had a thought…

    Maybe he got sacked because of his connection to you, and you are a journalist, and as is seen in your previous message, you like to talk.

  • 2001-09-12 9:53 am
    Anonymous

    Thats a shame what happened to you and jbq. Sometimes all these f*cking laws miss the ones they were made for – the people. Instead the go against the people and cause so much anger.

    To the terrorist attack: I was deeply shocked when I saw the WTC burning and finally collapsing, i was standing on top only one year ago. I hope they will find the people who brought so much pain to all of us.

    I wish you and your future husband much luck now and in the future.

    Florian Lutz

    (still wondering about the battery thingie *g*)

  • 2001-09-12 10:34 am
    Anonymous

    >Maybe he got sacked because of his connection to you,

    You think so, hah? If they did that for this reason they will have to justify it in court and give examples of my “unfaithfulness” to the NDAs I have signed with them over the years.

    In fact, I have SHOWN my faith to Be in several times. I got calls from lawyers asking to find answers to possibly sue Be for several reasons, and all I did was to say “I don’t know anything” and then call Be immediately and notify the Be laywer about the problems. I notified them in another case as well, where another lawsuit was pedding. Exactly because I am a journalist people may thought that I know stuff, but even if I do know stuff, my faith was at Be, not to anyone else. And I have proven my faith to the BeOS and its community too. Do I have to be of length here?

    >and you are a journalist

    So what? I have a zillion NDAs with Be, I used to be even a BeIA partner. I brought business to Be, driving my ex-company (100 people ISP company) to work with Be. (not counting my services to them through BeNews, BeUnited and UKBug “working” for free for them marketing department). And not counting my 80 application I have ported to BeOS. (now think that, from the 2,200 apps on Bebits (the rest 300 apps on bebits are scripts and themes), 80 are mine.)

    >and as is seen in your previous message, you like to talk.

    I never talk when it comes to NDAed stuff. But as I said, enough is enough. I still have kept my NDAs, I am still faithful to them as I am legally bound to them. But when it comes to the company itself and its managers as people, yes, I have a fucking problem with them. Simply because they have created problems to me. Enormous problems that I don’t think that I deserved. This is why, they can go to hell.

    Last night (in 1 day) we had to put all our things in our house in boxes and tomorrow morning we are moving them to a public storage!!!!

    Think of that, we have to move our house and our things to a public storage because of the visa mess.

    IN CASE the airport opens tomorrmow, we will have a queue of 1500 people to fit in a 300 seat plane. Now, in CASE that we make it through to France for our wedding, we won’t be allowed back in the country if the VISA papers are still not ready. And we have to do two more house moves to our new apartment on exactly 14th of October (and this is why we have to put ALL our stuff to a public storage in case we won’t be allowed in the country to be here in time for our moving out). Mess, fucking mess. I am typing all that with my husband’s PC, while the whole room around me is empty.

    Bad timing for a lay off. I don’t have a problem with the lay off itself, I have a problem with the timing, and Be’s decision to put us in such in trouble, while my husband’s managers knew about our scheduled wedding. Right Cyril? Pierre? JLG? Steve? (I still like Pierre though, and Palm obviously had a “say” in the layoffs)

    Business is business I hear Be saying. Well, fuck your business. Toss them in your ass, as you did with BeOS.

  • 2001-09-12 10:45 am
    Anonymous

    >and as is seen in your previous message, you like to talk.

    I started talking harsh about them, just yesterday. Before that, I was the Saint Eugenia for them. Heh, not anymore though.

    Don’t get me wrong. I still love the BeOS, I am still in great terms with the Be engineers, I like them all. ;)

    What I have problem with, is the management.

  • 2001-09-12 11:53 am
    Anonymous

    What a terrible concatenation of events! I hope it works out for you both Eugenia. You’ve done a huge amount for the BeOS community indeed, no doubts there.

    Hope you make it to la France too. What date is it on?

    Just remember, life is just a piece of shit on the sole of Time. Human existance is the smallest, shortest footnote in the annals of (geological/evolutionary) time. “Revel in your time…”

    daz

  • 2001-09-12 11:53 am
    Anonymous

    Eugenia,

    Having been in the Be community for a while now (on the fringes for sure).

    I have enjoyed your hard work with Benews and all of the ports. But several times, particularly as the end was coming I was seeing your references to NDAs and such. I knew then you were placing too much loyalty to the company. In hind sight, I wish you’d leaned more towards the community that respected you far more than Be ever did. In fact, I have noticed that the BIGGEST hinderance was Be Inc. Not in terms of just not supporting BeOS, but in terms of being plain ASSHOLES to the people that enjoyed its product. I soon seperated the idea of BeOS (great) and Be Inc – piece of shit company. I have seen the story way too often, in the end the employee means nothing. A long time ago, I refused to associate with any NDA. When I left my last company they tried to get me to sign some for severance – I refused and threaten legal action and in the end I won. I have also been successful when hired or put on projects with modifying NDA’s. If they need you, then they will accommadate you, or else you take your services elsewhere. Granted I still respect corporate property, but I now insist they respect my intellectual property as well.

    With Be Inc, I saw the characteristics of a company that did not care; about users, developers, or even employees. I cheered the buyout, but now I am worried about the survival of my favorite OS. I don’t know what the future holds, but it has to be better than the future at Be Inc. JLG? Man, I could go on forever telling him ways to piss off.

    For you and your husband – I hope things will work out for you. The darling of the Be community is getting married and that’s cool! Years from now you guys will look back at all of this and laugh, toss a beer, and then proceed to throw the darts and the dartboard with JLG’s cheezy mug pinned to the bulls eye.

  • 2001-09-12 12:04 pm
    Anonymous

    >Hope you make it to la France too. What date is it on?

    We are supposedly leaving tomorrow (if we get in that plane…). The wedding is next week’s Saturday, but already starting from this Saturday, I have lots of appointments about my wedding dress to be ready in time, rehearsals etc, so I have to be there in time.

    >For you and your husband – I hope things will work out for you.

    Thank you Joe, Daz. ;)

  • 2001-09-12 10:16 pm
    Anonymous

    What’s your problem, Eugenia ?

    Lost your grip ? Moaning about visa, ruined wedding – sounds very selfish…

    How many friends in your life did you bury ?

    It’s real world, real life, you are just not prepared to it.

    Your husband lost his job and found another one in a couple of weeks.

    Good for him, not everybody is so lucky.

    The worst case – you get your wedding postponed for a month and will have only half guests. You will not get your visa renewed and you will find another job back at France. Is it all that bitching is about ?

    Your news are quite good but this thread is fucking rediculous.

    Dead batteries… Tell this joke in Columbia, Venezuala, Poland or 100 other countries and see their reaction. You may call yourself Greek but you’re one fatty gringo.

    Anyway, enjoy your wedding

  • 2001-09-12 10:52 pm
    Anonymous

    Everyone has his/her problems in this life. And the problem I have right now is a major pain in the ass right now for me.

    It has taken over my life the last 3-4 days especially. Why should I not shout? We will not have a second wedding if this one can not take place. This wedding was prepared for several months by the parents of Jbq, they have made big preparations, and I know that if we miss that flight, kiss this particular wedding bye bye.

    Look, you I-have-lived-everything-kind-of-guy, I have seen death too. From earthquakes in Greece, and from the time I used to work as a nurse in Greece. I have burried friends too.

    But my problem right now is that I don’t have a house to live in, all my property is in a public storage, I don’t know when I will be allowed to get back in the country and I don’t even know if I will be get out of the country in time either. So, I say that my situation is pretty screwed too. Of course there are worse situations in the world, but for me now, this is an already bad situation.

  • 2001-09-13 6:31 am
    Anonymous

    Here’s my layoff story. It happened quite a while ago and things worked out for the best.

    I used to work as a TEMS contractor. What that means is I worked in an AirForce program office along side the AirForce folks on engineering stuff. (The AirForce folks were some of the nicest people I’ve ever worked with.) Every two years we had to rebid the contract. Well one year we went from having 100% of the contract to 0%. The division of the company had to trim down from 150 to about 50. So they handed out a bunch of layoff notices. They were 6 week notices. I did NOT get one.

    When the AirForce found out who was getting laid off they said, “No, don’t layoff, that group of people, layoff this group of people.” The company recinded all the notices and gave out a new set of notices. Two week notices. The manager who gave me my layoff notice had tears running down his face. He knew I was probably the smartest engineer they had. In fact almost every supervisor in the division told me that the company was making a mistake in laying me off.

    My wife was 6 months pregnant at the time. Unemployment wouldn’t pay my mortgage never mind the COBRA insurance that my wife HAD to have because she was pregnant. My wife tried to get WIC. They said that we had made too much money that year. If I had been laid off in January instead of August we could have gotten help. They told us that once we had lost our house and cars we could get some food stamps. <sigh>

    Our families helped us out and after three months I managed to get a job at digital writing Macintosh software. THANK YOU DIGITAL! It was bad at the time, but getting laid off was one of the best things that ever happened to me. It forced me to change industries and careers to something that I really enjoy, writing software.

    geoff

  • 2001-09-13 8:37 am
    Anonymous

    EOM

  • 2001-09-13 8:38 am
    Anonymous

    I’m sure Eugenia means the same, though.

    –jbq

  • 2001-09-13 7:59 pm
    Anonymous

    Eugenia, I felt you’re not an ordinary housewife.

    So I asked – “did your lost your grip”.

    If you feel that shouting loud your problems give you some relief do it. Just it’s sound a bit silly here on East Coast.

    JBQ – enjoy the wedding too.

  • 2001-09-13 9:57 pm
    Anonymous

    You guys are geeky enough to set a “virtual wedding” . I remember that we left all our parents to celebrate 2 hours after start. They had their own fun, we had ours.

    on the other side – get the fuck out of this country, it’s just a beginning.

    Those were professionals, probably some military fighter pilots. And some of Middle East countries have nuclear weapon now. This may turn really ugly.

    Have fun.

  • 2001-09-13 10:20 pm
    Anonymous

    >Eugenia, I felt you’re not an ordinary housewife.

    I am not really. ;-)>So I asked – “did your lost your grip”.

    I did and I do. My flight was canceled today, I lost the plane to France. My fear came true… Now, we are in a waiting list… if we make it through… Oh, well..

    >If you feel that shouting loud your problems give you some relief do it.

    It was the time to write about it. All these months I did not say anything, but this last week, things have turned really bad. Therefore, and because I know that some Be people read OSAlert, I wanted to let them know what they put us through.

    BTW, Thank you Allen Brunson (ex-Be engineer, who also wrote Pineapple News) and Dmitry, kernel engineer at Be. Without you guys we would not be able to pull this house move off today!! Thank You again!

  • 2001-09-13 10:37 pm
    Anonymous

    BTW, this wedding means A LOT for me and my parents. I could say, that it may means a lot more to my parents than to me (as we had already the formal wedding in an office on March). My parents were not attenting at the time, as they live in Greece, but the reason that why the whole thing is important to them is because they want to see me as a bride.

    Why you ask? Well, because I am 28 years old, all my cousins and friends are already married, while I decided to go abroad all alone, which is something UNHEARD OF in Greece. Women they just don’t leave their parent’s houses and go to work, especially abroad.

    I created a terrible to my parents, because some (older) people would even think that I am a “cheap” woman (for the Greek village standards) because I left. Especially my father, for the last 9 years is REALLY upset with me, he sees me as a failure (what I do for my career or on the Internet is not matter for him, I should have children and such by now).

    One of these days I may write my “true” story of who I really am and where I am coming from. Then you may understand a bit more why this wedding has to be done. It is the only way to bring peace to my family. The only way.

  • 2001-09-14 8:21 am
    Anonymous

    Move to The Netherlands, man. Contrary to what most people seem to think, the huge taxes here are not used to subsedize weed growing or prostitution.

    Cheers,

    Sander (putting another tax dollar in the basket, with an understanding smile)

  • 2001-09-17 8:49 am
    Anonymous

    Move to The Netherlands, man. Contrary to what most people seem to think, the huge taxes here are not used to subsedize weed growing or prostitution.

    ———————

    Well, there go my plans for my trip to the NL.

  • 2001-09-18 9:21 pm
    Anonymous

    I know what you mean. And I’m pretty sure that wedding alone is not enough.

    The presure to have children is probably the worst.

    And you are a “failure” – his failure to grow a woman who will sit home, cook and raise children. “Fiddler on the roof” failure.

    Don’t rush to write your ‘true story’ until you get old and useless.

    I’d suggested to fly from Canada (it’s about a day of driving I guess) but you probably need Canadian visa.