Who didn't see that coming after the embarrassing fiasco with Anonymous? I've been following this story pretty closely via Salon.com and the excellent series at Ars Technica and it seemed to be only a matter of time for Barr to make an exit.
HBGary Federal CEO Aaron Barr Steps Down
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Re: HBGary Federal CEO Aaron Barr Steps Down
#42Stieg Larsson's new book would be, The Boy Who Stuck His Penis in a Hornet's Nest.
Re: HBGary Federal CEO Aaron Barr Steps Down
#43This is wildly irrelevant, but I have to ask: does anyone else experience profound irritation at the name "HBGary"? Every time I read the name, my reading flow stops and I stare at the name. HBWhat? Does that stand for something? Are they initials? Who is Gary? Are they from Indiana? It triggers this bizarre, deep-down irritation like nothing else I've ever seen.
Likewise for GoDaddy, hhgregg, and scores of startup names. It's like my brain is looking for a meaningful word and halts briefly when it can't find one. Textual basilisks? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Langford#Basilisks
GoDaddy just always makes me think porn before DNS. I can't imagine what thoughts were going through their heads when they thought "GoDaddy. Yeah. That makes me think 'major DNS server'. Lets go with that."
To make matters worse, they've got women wearing shirts that say "GoDaddy" on their front page. Gotta wonder what their target audience is, with that featuring so prominently.
Re: HBGary Federal CEO Aaron Barr Steps Down
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
The name comes from the three co-founders. The H is for Hoglund (Greg). The B is for Bracken (Shawn). The Gary is for Jon Gary who left the company shortly after it was founded.
My question is what did Jon Gary do to get his whole name in there?
Leave the company shortly after it was founded?
Re: HBGary Federal CEO Aaron Barr Steps Down
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Likewise for GoDaddy, hhgregg, and scores of startup names. It's like my brain is looking for a meaningful word and halts briefly when it can't find one. Textual basilisks? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Langford#Basilisks
GoDaddy just always makes me think porn before DNS. I can't imagine what thoughts were going through their heads when they thought "GoDaddy. Yeah. That makes me think 'major DNS server'. Lets go with that." To make matters worse, they've got women wearing shirts that say "GoDaddy" on their front page. Gotta wonder what their target audience is, with that featuring so prominently.
Have you seen their TV and magazine ads? Their ads are the only reason I do not use them.
Re: HBGary Federal CEO Aaron Barr Steps Down
#46Pwned from the outside and then barred from within. Nice.
Anon's comments under that article really rub it in. No mercy at all.
Re: HBGary Federal CEO Aaron Barr Steps Down
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Likewise for GoDaddy, hhgregg, and scores of startup names. It's like my brain is looking for a meaningful word and halts briefly when it can't find one. Textual basilisks? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Langford#Basilisks
GoDaddy just always makes me think porn before DNS. I can't imagine what thoughts were going through their heads when they thought "GoDaddy. Yeah. That makes me think 'major DNS server'. Lets go with that." To make matters worse, they've got women wearing shirts that say "GoDaddy" on their front page. Gotta wonder what their target audience is, with that featuring so prominently.
GoDaddy is the largest ICANN-accredited registrar in the world, so their target audience of "everybody with a functioning libido" seems to have worked out well for them. I think it was the Super Bowl ads starting in 2005 that basically got their brand stuck in the head of anybody considering starting a website. There's a lesson in there somewhere.
Inc magazine did a segment on Bob Parsons: http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090101/the-way-i-work-bob-pars...
Re: HBGary Federal CEO Aaron Barr Steps Down
#48The most disturbing thing about this episode is that DOJ referred BoA to HBGary. It is truly scary when government is in the business of targeting its own individuals. One has to wonder how it is different from Ben Ali or Gaddafi targeting their own people. Sure the scale is different, but the principle is the same.
Actually, DOJ recommended the law firm that ended up talking to HBGary and Palantir and ... whoever the third one was.
Not that it isn't egregious for the DOJ to recommend reputation fixup to Bank of America because BoA is presumably about to get hammered by Wikileaks disclosure.
Re: HBGary Federal CEO Aaron Barr Steps Down
#49Some of the stuff he was doing was pretty clever, and he'll have no shortage of customers if he continues down that path. Taking on Anonymous for advertising purposes however has turned out to be not too bright. His former clients are distancing themselves as fast as possible, but next time they'll just make sure their payments can't be traced to them. "Oh, we didn't know he was doing such things". Bullshit....most companies don't care about ethics, and the US government certainly doesn't at a fundamental level either.
He'll do just fine.
Re: HBGary Federal CEO Aaron Barr Steps Down
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
GoDaddy just always makes me think porn before DNS. I can't imagine what thoughts were going through their heads when they thought "GoDaddy. Yeah. That makes me think 'major DNS server'. Lets go with that." To make matters worse, they've got women wearing shirts that say "GoDaddy" on their front page. Gotta wonder what their target audience is, with that featuring so prominently.
Have you seen their TV and magazine ads? Their ads are the only reason I do not use them.
I've been using GoDaddy for quite some time now. Their user interface is atrocious, and much of their business model seems to be "let's hope they don't notice extra services we conveniently added." I put up with it for years, though, because of low prices.
Lately, though, I'm bothered in a different way. It seems like they want to create an image of celebrating empowered women. Their execution, however, revolves around turning them immediately into sex objects. My conclusion is that Bob Parsons has a fetish about putting women under his control, he made it his corporate image, and it creeps me out.