Word: ibm
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Wrong. Nothing, especially in the world of computing, is ever that simple. "It was the fault of everybody, just everybody," says Robert Bemer, the onetime IBM whiz kid who wrote much of COBOL. "If Grace Hopper and I were at fault, it was for making the language so easy that anybody could get in on the act." And anybody did, including a group of Mormons in the late '50s who wanted to enlist the newfangled machines in their massive genealogy project--clearly the kind of work that calls for thinking outside the 20th century box. Bemer obliged by inventing...
Programmers ignored Bemer's fix. And so did his bosses at IBM, who unwittingly shipped the Y2K bug in their System/360 computers, an industry standard every bit as powerful in the '60s as Windows is today. By the end of the decade, Big Blue had effectively set the two-digit date in stone. Every machine, every manual, every maintenance guy would tell you the year was 69, not 1969. "The general consensus was that this was the way you programmed," says an IBM spokesman. "We recognize the potential for lawsuits on this issue...
...extravaganza, expected to cost $1.5 billion, will be the most expensive Winter Games ever. Sponsors and broadcasters are expected to shoulder $1.1 billion of the cost, but Games promoters still have to raise $250 million from corporations. So far, none of the sponsors--among them Coca-Cola, IBM and SPORTS ILLUSTRATED (a Time Inc. magazine)--have indicated they will pull out, but the prospect worries local politicians. "If the Games don't break even," says Salt Lake councilwoman Deeda Seed, "we'll be handed a tax bill we can't afford." Already, US West has pointedly asked the Salt Lake...
...with concrete allegations of hyperaggressive businesses tactics streaming in from companies such as Sun, IBM, Netscape, Apple, Intuit, Packard Bell, AOL and now Disney -? on Tuesday the court heard testimony claiming that Microsoft had threatened the Mouse for getting too cozy with Netscape -- one can?t help but get the feeling something unpleasant, if not patently illegal, is going on. At the very least, Gates's image has undergone a downgrade that will take years to make over...
Microsoft? Maybe. On the other hand, being the biggest, toughest frog in the pond doesn't help if you're in the wrong pond. Some people have the idea that Microsoft is fated to dominate technology forever. They had this same idea about IBM, once admired and feared nearly as much as Microsoft is today. They had essentially the same idea about Japan's technology sector back in the 1980s and early '90s. It isn't quite fair to compare Microsoft to a large country yet. But Japan was on a roll and looked invincible--once...