Evan Kirshenbaum's web pages don't live here anymore

<rant>

Those of you who have visited my web pages recently have probably noticed that they have not changed much over the past year or so. Originally this was simply because I lacked the time, but for the past six months it has been because HP has decided to change the policy regarding personal web pages, among other things requiring them to adhere to the format you see here, like every other page on the HP corporate web presence. Since then, there has been lively internal discussion about whether this makes any sense at all, but the consensus seems to be that sense carries no weight and rules are rules.

When I was part of the small group that lobbied for allowing Labs employees to have external personal web pages, it was pitched as a place that could be clearly divorced from the "corporate" web and be completely unofficial, allowing researchers to show their individuality. The only concern was that the content not be anything that would, to paraphrase one executive, "result in an irate late-night phone call to (then-CEO) Lew Platt from a large customer". It was also seen as a way for HP to cheaply serve the community (one of our corporate objectives) by hosting content for organizations individual researchers participated in.

Now, we have an imposed style, required of all pages, which

1. is obviously official,

2. asserts that Hewlett-Packard holds copyright on all pages, even those hosted for other organizations,

3. implies that HP provides support and a means of ordering the things described. (And woe to anybody who clicks the links and tries to actually find them.)

4. is so awkward, with the required buttons on the side, that pages cannot be printed normally without losing text off the side, requiring visitors to scroll to the bottom of the page and notice the printing instructions which tell them that they have to figure out how to set up their printer in landscape mode, and

5. is so fussy that the pages cannot be edited using modern tools, but must instead be edited directly as HTML in a text editor, ignoring 350 lines of inscrutible HTML which set up the table the actual content is nested within.

In addition, I have recently been informed that the content I host risks "negatively affecting HP's business", because it contains "profanity". Specifically

• The Frequently Asked Question list for alt.usage.english, which I neither write nor maintain, contains a scholarly etymological discussion of a word I am not allowed to mention, but which, the entry demonstrates, is not an acronym for "Fornication Under Consent of the King" or "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge", and

• An archive (as far as I know the only one in existence) of filk songs written in the early '80s at Stanford's LOTS, contains lyrics which say things like "Oh, s--t. That program's due." (Though unexpurgated.)

I have yet to be told that there is a problem with the pictures of my son.

</rant>

For these reasons, I have decided to pull all of the content off of this site, and I apologize for any trouble this decision may cause people. I intend to find a new home for my personal pages, less fettered by corporate policy. When I do so, I promise that it will be updated far more regularly, and family and friends can follow the fascinating developments in the life of Josh. (Hey, Sus and I aren't that interesting.)

I will post new URLs when they become available.

Since there are so many external links to them, I will maintain the ASCII/IPA pages, both in HTML and PDF until I have a new place for them and can figure out a way to auto-forward requests.