Former eBay CEO and former California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman may be on deck for the top slot at Hewlett-Packard, if anonymous sources are correct.

The report stems from the tech site AllThingsD, which cites credible individuals close to the matter in a post. The move is not said to be a “done deal” by any stretch of the imagination, but the site says Whitman has been considering transitioning back to a role like the HP CEO spot- and that the company’s board has been trying to reverse its fortunes after a year during which its stock has tanked a scary 43%.

Current CEO Léo Apotheker has been at the post for about a year, but the company has had a run of bad luck in recent months. AllThingsD cites a suit against HP filed earlier this month in US District Court in Central California surrounding the company’s handling of the discontinuation of webOS software:

“HP shareholder named Richard Gammel alleged that comments by CEO Léo Apotheker — concerning the company’s earnings expectations, the importance of its personal computer business and plans to move ahead with devices running the webOS operating system — gave a vastly different indication of actions HP took on Aug. 18, when it killed the webOS hardware business and announced plans to spin off the PC business and spend $10 billion to acquire Autonomy.”

In addition to stock losses and the webOS problems, the company also had to lay off 100,000 workers in the Palm division. Prior to Apotheker’s appointment, former CEO Mark Hurd resigned under pressure after a sexual harassment investigation as well as various accusations about expense reports related to the claim. The board found no evidence to support the harassment claims.

Neither HP nor Whitman have acknowledged or commented upon the rumor.

Meg Whitman Eyed as New Hewlett-Packard CEO is a post from: The Inquisitr

Warning to people residing in America: this post contains swearing, or as some of you call it “cussing.” If you are easily offended, avert your eyes, or cover the screen with your bible. The headline is intentionally censored, the rest isn’t.

What is it with American’s and swearing? Here’s a country that produces most of the worlds porn, which creates the most violent and horrid cinema in the history of man kind, and yet a good portion of its residents carry on like school girls confronted by a flasher when someone says fuck. Even in the relatively hard world of tech, the same still applies. Normally reasonable people who likely swear themselves write bullshit tut-tut headlines over the use of the word, even when the context it was delivered was 1. humorous and 2. appropriate, for example Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz saying “fuck you” to Kara Swisher at the AllThingsD conference yesterday. The chances of Kara having taken offense: maybe 1 million to 1 and even the official AllThingsD live blog makes little mention of fuck you being said.

So why do we see shit like this (and this is only a small sample, take a look at the shot above as well):

Now I don’t know a lot about Carol Bartz, but I do know one thing: when she joined Yahoo, it was pretty much fucked. Whether it is still fucked today comes down to degrees, but you’d think that it might be a little less fucked than before. Bartz says it like it is, and if anything she’s actually being quite restrained, after all, most people trying to save Yahoo would be swearing a lot more than Bartz is.

But back to the main point: what’s the big deal here. Yahoo gets a competent CEO, and the best they can go her for is that she occasionally says fuck? Or is it because she is a woman, and only men can swear? Is there a sexist double standard coming from the white boys only club in Silicon Valley perhaps?

Most of all these reports make America look fucking stupid. American soldiers are raping prisoners in Iraq and the President won’t release the photos, but oh my fucking god, the CEO of Yahoo said fuck on stage. The people writing this tripe are usually reasonable people, but they need to stop embracing their 12 year old school girl side and grow the fuck up.

How some American tech blogs make America looking f*%king stupid is a post from: The Inquisitr

TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington has publicly named Valleywag, and AllThingD as leading the hate campaign that led to him being spat on in Germany, and stalked.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal (which owns AllThingsD) Arrington said that while no particular site urged him specific harm, “a handful of tech blogs… have published matter that damaged my site’s reputation, including AllThingsD.com” and Valleywag.

AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher, someone we hold in high regard here, denied any connection. “Our site is trying to raise ethical and reporting standards in the tech blogosphere but is in no way responsible for people stalking Michael Arrington. To say so is truly unfortunate on his part,” she said. “I am appalled he is being stalked, which is scary and disturbing, and am sorry for the strife it has clearly caused him and his family.”

I not long ago wrote a post where I’d hoped that Michael looked inward in regard to his current issues; that he continues to blame others is part and parcel of the problem.

Blog War! Arrington blames AllThingsD, Valleywag for hate campaign is a post from: The Inquisitr