4 ms·

IBM is a financial services company that dabbles in tech.

vegabook 11y ago
you're funny. Probably half of the tech you use every day has an IBM enabling technology behind it, thankfully paid for, directly or indirectly, by this "financial services" company. let's not forget that x86 itself could have been a Motorola 68000 if this company had not decided in Intel's favour. That's the extent to which this company defined the computer era. The notebook you're using right now will boot DOS, commissioned by IBM. And I'm not even starting on the fact that almost all programming language roots go back to languages for the IBM 360 mainframes. I'll gloss over the extent to which the architecture of your modern computer is essentially a scaled down version of what was invented by IBM in its mainframe business. Disk? Check. Processor cache? Check. Asynchronous bus? Check. GPU (IBM 8514) check. It's not unfair to say that this company invented modern computing's engineering, and even if it has (very sadly) lost its way, one can hope that some of the culture of well-financed innovation remains, and this Watson business might be one of those.
- sithadmin 11y ago
  Found the IBM employee
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - vegabook 11y ago
    I have never worked for IBM.
- Afforess 11y ago
  I'm an IBM employee, was self-deprecating humor, actually. ;)
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - johnward 11y ago
    IBM has always been driven by finances
- jazzyk 11y ago
  No disagreement here - but it is all in the past now. With the possible exception of Watson/supercomputing, IBM is a shadow of its old self.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - vegabook 11y ago
    It seems to be a pattern that even great companies don't last much longer than the average human lifespan. Even if IBM is a 130 year-old company, its glory days lasted somewhere between 40 and 80 years.
    - yeukhon 11y ago
      Nothing can last forever. When you are big, you are doomed for aging. Empire, dynasty, country, all bow to age. IMO, keeping your company rich, powerful but small (in terms of the number of products and employees) might last longer. But this seems unrealistic for real business in the real world. Reason is, the undead like AT&T (my colleague always talks about his experience working there and comments the Lab in NJ is a ghost town) will continue to live because of the deep root of AT&T in our American life. It's a paradox and sarcastic. You either prosper and everyone admires, or you remain undead and disgusted by many. And to both you have to be big... -- EDIT -- To the commenter: Most of the empires and dynasty power degraded after 50-100 year. That's the life span of one or two emperors. Almost all of these empires continue to split until full conquer. During splitting, you may have a couple more strong emperors in place. This is like HP splitting, or IBM selling its desktop and laptop division to Lenovo. They are merging or cutting arms to survive. Roman might be one that last longer before a big split than the rest. In the ancient Chinese history, most dynasties you have heard of would lose dominance and prosperity after about 100 years, mostly due to incompetent leadership. In the case of the Mongolians, they conquered half of the world in less than a decade, but they divided into several ruling regimes to avoid big civil war. The one that controlled ancient China (called Yuan dynasty) went defeated to the Han people in less than a hundred years. The last dynasty in China, the Ching dynasty, did enjoy its dominance for four different emperors, and then rapidly declined due to foreigner invasion, corruption and severe political conflict, and unaccountable spending from the previous administration (plus many social issues).
- zeckalpha 11y ago
  > let's not forget that x86 itself could have been a Motorola 68000 if this company had not decided in Intel's favour. That's the extent to which this company defined the computer era. Except if IBM had it's way, we'd be using PowerPCs, not x86 and ARM. IBM existed for 50 years before any of the products you mention. It did financial services before that. Edit: I slipped and said Intel instead of IBM!

you're funny. Probably half of the tech you use every day has an IBM enabling technology behind it, thankfully paid for, directly or indirectly, by this "financial services" company. let's not forget that x86 itself could have been a Motorola 68000 if this company had not decided in Intel's favour. That's the extent to which this company defined the computer era. The notebook you're using right now will boot DOS, commissioned by IBM. And I'm not even starting on the fact that almost all programming language roots go back to languages for the IBM 360 mainframes. I'll gloss over the extent to which the architecture of your modern computer is essentially a scaled down version of what was invented by IBM in its mainframe business. Disk? Check. Processor cache? Check. Asynchronous bus? Check. GPU (IBM 8514) check. It's not unfair to say that this company invented modern computing's engineering, and even if it has (very sadly) lost its way, one can hope that some of the culture of well-financed innovation remains, and this Watson business might be one of those.

sithadmin 11y ago
Found the IBM employee
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- vegabook 11y ago
  I have never worked for IBM.
Afforess 11y ago
I'm an IBM employee, was self-deprecating humor, actually. ;)
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- johnward 11y ago
  IBM has always been driven by finances
jazzyk 11y ago
No disagreement here - but it is all in the past now. With the possible exception of Watson/supercomputing, IBM is a shadow of its old self.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- vegabook 11y ago
  It seems to be a pattern that even great companies don't last much longer than the average human lifespan. Even if IBM is a 130 year-old company, its glory days lasted somewhere between 40 and 80 years.
  - yeukhon 11y ago
    Nothing can last forever. When you are big, you are doomed for aging. Empire, dynasty, country, all bow to age. IMO, keeping your company rich, powerful but small (in terms of the number of products and employees) might last longer. But this seems unrealistic for real business in the real world. Reason is, the undead like AT&T (my colleague always talks about his experience working there and comments the Lab in NJ is a ghost town) will continue to live because of the deep root of AT&T in our American life. It's a paradox and sarcastic. You either prosper and everyone admires, or you remain undead and disgusted by many. And to both you have to be big... -- EDIT -- To the commenter: Most of the empires and dynasty power degraded after 50-100 year. That's the life span of one or two emperors. Almost all of these empires continue to split until full conquer. During splitting, you may have a couple more strong emperors in place. This is like HP splitting, or IBM selling its desktop and laptop division to Lenovo. They are merging or cutting arms to survive. Roman might be one that last longer before a big split than the rest. In the ancient Chinese history, most dynasties you have heard of would lose dominance and prosperity after about 100 years, mostly due to incompetent leadership. In the case of the Mongolians, they conquered half of the world in less than a decade, but they divided into several ruling regimes to avoid big civil war. The one that controlled ancient China (called Yuan dynasty) went defeated to the Han people in less than a hundred years. The last dynasty in China, the Ching dynasty, did enjoy its dominance for four different emperors, and then rapidly declined due to foreigner invasion, corruption and severe political conflict, and unaccountable spending from the previous administration (plus many social issues).
zeckalpha 11y ago
> let's not forget that x86 itself could have been a Motorola 68000 if this company had not decided in Intel's favour. That's the extent to which this company defined the computer era. Except if IBM had it's way, we'd be using PowerPCs, not x86 and ARM. IBM existed for 50 years before any of the products you mention. It did financial services before that. Edit: I slipped and said Intel instead of IBM!