HP, quo vadis?

[bluesun08]

Article

[David Hayden]

The finger pointing is astounding.

[Frank Boehm (Germany)]

OK, so they were tricked and the books were off by only 5.000.000.000.000 USD? How do you do that, when an army of HP accounting clerks check your books - and fail to notice this tiny missing amount?

I'd just call it a very poor business decision. Would HP have complained, when they instead had *earned* 5 billion USD? Unlikely.

So maybe it's about time to remember what HP *can* do and what they *shouldn't* do.

[Ken Shaw]

FYI, $5 billion USD means 5E9, not 5E12. It looks like the BBC has adopted the American usage of that word.

Not so much then, eh?

Edited: 20 Nov 2012, 6:29 p.m.

[Walter B]

Be it 5E9 or 5E12, each member here would be very happy with a tenth of a percent of it - and lots of money would remain for HP to use it for something sensible.

[Frank Boehm (Germany)]

Sorry, I probably have been in a flow of typing zeros ;)

Of course you are correct, we Europeans just get some more zeros for our billions :)

[Harald]

Quote:

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It looks like the BBC has adopted the American usage of that word.

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Yes, I am a bit confused by that as well. I thought in British English a billion would be 1e12 and in American English it would be 1e9. But recently I have only come across the American version, even in British media.
In German it certainly is 1e12

[Jeff O.]

According to wikipedia, which I do not claim to be a definitive source:

Quote:

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In 1974, the government of the UK switched to the short scale, a change that is reflected in its mass media and official usage.

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[Peter A. Gebhardt]

We'll surely never know ...

But from a view of a former German Telekom stock-holder it resembles very much the deal once "instrumented" by Ron Lebowitsch which bought Telekom a similar "money sink" - only with some billions more (51 billions US$).