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Ross Perot, Billionaire Former Presidential Candidate, has Died at age 89:
Billionaire, philanthropist and former presidential candidate Ross Perot has died, CBS News has confirmed. He was 89.
Perot died in Texas, the state where he was born, surrounded by family.
[...] In 1992, Perot made a name for himself when he became the most successful non-major party presidential candidate in 80 years, amassing 19 percent of the popular vote, running against President George H.W. Bush and Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton.
As a boy in Texarkana, Texas, Perot delivered newspapers from the back of a pony. He earned his billions in a more modern way, however — by building Electronic Data Systems Corp., which helped other companies manage their computer networks.
Yet the most famous event in his career didn't involve sales and earnings; he financed a private commando raid in 1979 to free two EDS employees who were being held in a prison in Iran. The tale was turned into a book and a movie.
Perot first became known to Americans outside of business circles by claiming that the U.S. government left behind hundreds of American soldiers who were missing or imprisoned at the end of the Vietnam War. Perot fanned the issue at home and discussed it privately with Vietnamese officials in the 1980s, angering the Reagan administration, which was formally negotiating with Vietnam's government.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 09 2019, @05:48PM (1 child)
Perot sold EDS to General Motors with *mixed* results, that story is summarized by the big Detroit paper,
https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/general-motors/2019/07/09/ross-perot-gm-roger-smith/1682342001/ [freep.com]
We were working for the big Chevrolet Engineering Center in Warren MI at that time (north of Detroit). This building must have contained a hundred or more specialized test labs, imagine all the parts that have to be tested for durability and performance in all the different Chevys made--this was where much of that work was done. Imagine doors being opened and slammed shut automatically every few seconds, suspension being pounded with recordings of badly potholed roads, etc., etc.
Here's what I remember (although my memory may be off a bit):
Within a very short time after the EDS purchase, young clueless bucks with shaved heads from EDS lay claim to every computer in the building. This included many specialized systems with custom data acquisition that were used to run testing systems, many realtime, many dedicated to large expensive custom test rigs. It was a disaster, the EDS guys (don't think that I ever saw an EDS gal in that plant) were clueless outside their main business of accounting systems, but Perot had told them to take charge. It was like the Marines came in to shut the test labs down, the place came to a standstill.
We gave up on making progress on the project that we were working on, and did other things for awhile. Months later, a truce must have been negotiated and engineering could once again control their own computing resources. The original GM engineers (some IT, but mostly computer science types with mechanical engineering background) that were still there (some left in disgust) got back to work and brought everything back up.
So that's my Perot story -- a bull in a china shop. Sometimes having a bull is a good thing, but not always!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by istartedi on Tuesday July 09 2019, @11:45PM
I'm sure that sucked, but I doubt the "IT department must control everything, even engineer's machines" mentality originated with Perot. I never actually had it happen to me, but I've been within earshot of an admin a few cubes over who was plotting this very thing, and I figured it would have cut my productivity in half at least.
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