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The Maverick and His Machine
At age 40, Watson was thrown a curve ball that, like that first sentence says, nearly ruined him. In fact, it sent him so low that this shaped his character more than anything that had happened to him earlier in his lifetime. It sent him to the lower depths and resulted in him being given the reigns of an equally down-in-the dumps loser business just to get rid of him. He was banished to a corporate Siberia. He was considered a loser, and given a loser's position in a loser's business.
It's at this point that he reshaped and remade that company into what is today known as IBM. The blue suits and white shirts that were the uniform of IBM men became so because he wore one every day. There was no written rule that employees had to wear them; they did it because he did it. That says something: he led by example and his employees admired him.
Just as an aside, it seems that Watson's big thing was that things didn't happen (or went wrong) because people didn't think hard enough. To encourage employees to think he had big "THINK" signs put all over the company. This evolved into "Think" buttons, and employees were even allowed and encouraged to kick back and think. Eventually, small notepads were emblazoned with "Think" and they were called "Thinkpads." Hence, the name of the laptop.
THINK, by the way, is the reason that the company created so many technological innovations.
Now, just because Watson started IBM and largely shaped it into one of the most successful companies in the world doesn't mean he was a saint. Some of the most interesting parts of the book have to do with his home life and how he treated his wife and kids. It seems that he was somewhat of a manipulator who knew how to shape people by breaking them and remaking them.
One story about his son (who would later become CEO of the company) shows Watson's mean streak. It seems that, early in the younger Watson's career, after dinner together at home, the elder asked him what his impression was of one of his executives.
The younger Watson dutifully answered, seeking to impress his father with his skill at observing people. The elder paused and then berated the young man for daring to form an opinion about a seasoned executive who had years of experience behind him. Who did the young man think he was to judge someone who had been in the business since before he was born?
While this isn't the stuff of Ward Cleaver, Watson was, all the same, a courageous and enterprising individual who took risks and (most of the time) succeeded. Especially engrossing is the episode during the depression when IBM was in danger of bankruptcy and shutting its doors. Watson, contrary to what most intelligent people would do, gave a rousing talk to his top executives, telling them that instead of cutting back on manufacturing and personnel, they should increase both.
Luckily (for Watson), a few months later, Pearl Harbor happened and, with the sharp increase in troops, materials and logistics, the U.S. government needed "calculating machines" and needed them fast. While major competitors like NCR and Burroughs had to ramp up production to meet demand, IBM, with its ready stockpile of machines won the contract and delivered, saving them from possible bankruptcy.
There is a lot more I could say about the book but because I don't want to spoil anything, I won't go into it here. However, if you're a Big Blue fan (and I am), you might want to follow up this read with Lou Gerstner, Jr.'s book, Who Says Elephants Can't Dance. It's a great read about how, for the second time in its history, the company was saved from becoming history.
You can purchase The Maverick and His Machine: Thomas Watson, Sr. and the Making of IBM from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
also forget to close the italics tag?
The grandfather of 'business with a baseball bat' was NCR. IBM was the best practitioner of this until Microsoft took over the crown in the 1990's.
IIRC Thomas Watson learnt his art at NCR, where the ability to smash a rival's machines was one of the job requirements for an ambitious cash register salesman. These days, I'd guess that translates into being able to produce VR TCO studies proving that Windows is cheaper.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
I find it very funny that slashdotters are so in love with the company that only 20 years ago was the evil empire. If in 10 years Microsoft does a turn around and starts supporting Linux will we all forget the evils of the past? But then again I am sure many slashdotters are smokers and there is no more evil empire then Big Tobacco.
Yes, praise be to $DEITY for that event.
True story.
There is a lot more I could say about the book but because I don't want to spoil anything
IBM stands for International Business Machines. Ok, I just gave away the ending. sorry.
What would life have been like if the sign had read "INTUIT"?
"Can there be a Klein bottle that is an efficient and effective beer pitcher?"
Why would a geek care? Because IBM, its technological breakthroughs and Watson are very much the foundation of commercial technology as we know it today.
A true geek doesn't necessarily care much about IBM. IBM is a lot more relevant to suits. In fact, IBM redefines the concept of "corporate culture" and "standardized outfit". They also embody the culture of centralized computing (or at least used to) and the company used to be seen as a "benevolent dictator", with its policy of renting computers instead of selling them.
All these things are quite opposite to the world of geeks. Of course, curious and open-minded geeks read about everything, and therefore should read this book as well.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
now my whole frontpage is italicized.
/i> tag?
does this book also teach one html 3.0? specifically the usage of the
Newsfactor
News.Com
Check the links in your post before submitting! This one is not working!
Because heaven knows one could never have an interesting book about a "dead white man".
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
... you might want to read Father Son and Company by Tom Watson Jr., who took over IBM after his father. Great book, managers could learn a thing or fifteen from Father and Son alike.
Objects in the blog are closer then they ap
I get the impression White is included because it supports being boring.
I fail to see how the White race is somehow inherently boring. If you consider conquering 80% of the planet and creating the greatest technological creations the human race has ever seen boring. I guess living in corrugated metal shacks in mexico, india, africa and china is exciting.
Poor boring dead White man, never knew what he was missing.
To encourage employees to think he had big "THINK" signs put all over the company
Dont forget, you're here forever!
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Luckily (for Watson), a few months later, Pearl Harbor happened and, with the sharp increase in troops, materials and logistics, the U.S. government needed "calculating machines" and needed them fast.
.30 cal M1 Carbines during WW2... the ultimate in international business machines (and relations).
Don't forget that IBM also manufactured
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
Another interesting read here is 'IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation' by Edwin Black. The title says it all, sort of.
Then there was the round-the-world tech support, which is so reminisent of today's outsource-to-India trend.
I like what I read about IBM these days, but haven't been in a position to buy from them lately, so don't have much current knowlege.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
For another take on the origins of IBM, read IBM And The Holocaust by Edwin Black. While I think it's true that any company could have been in IBM's place in WWII, I don't think we should ignore the fact that IBM played both sides.
yeah take out the two words that makes your comment rediculous and stupid. the real quote reads:
"Luckily (for Watson), a few months later, Pearl Harbor happened..."
now its not anti american, its just cashing in on the american love of war. which anyone who is anyone is doing these days.
also you'll note i know how to close my italics tags.
"Thomas John Watson began his life at age 40"
In a log cabin that he built with his own hands?
"Derp de derp."
you've just given a very bad name to every american who owns an xbox. i feel shame and am going to throw mine out as i don't want to be seen as ignorant as that.
"Luckily (for Watson), a few months later, Pearl Harbor happened ..."
Wrong! Long before that, FDR's New Deal and the new Social Security Administration were the source of IBM's turnaround during the depression.
... now back to the bit mines.
Think!
and
We forgive thoughtful mistakes.
They used to chant these at assemblies....
Need, sure. Hell, worldwide we only needed 0.
The world worked just fine for thousands of years without 'em.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
OK, so I admit that absolutely nothing about this book drew my attention EXCEPT the name of the author, Kevin Maney. Any devotee of his columns in USA Today knows his ability to tell a story. Yes, I knew I should be intrested in the life of Tom Watson -- he was, after all, one of the first "celebrity CEOs," although the term hadn't been invented. But I never thought I would be so fascinated by a man and his story.
This is a must read for anyone who wants to get a sense of what real leadership is all about. Watson was leading before there were books on leadership and studies on communictation. He was managing corporate culture before there were words for it. He saw his company -- and his employees -- through transitions that go well beyond mainframe vs. PC. When his technologies were rendered obsolete, he simply invented new ones.
Anyone with aspirations to lead should read this book. It's so action-packed that you may forget it's a true story. But it is. And I can't wait to see the movie.
What is wrong with you people??? They must be outsourcing moderators now.
When this comes out on audio book if somebody could go ahead and rip it for me then blog an announcement someplace so I can go pull it down onto my iPod, then I'll care. I tried reading a dead tree while driving to work one morning, damn near killed myself. Spilled my coffee in my lap and everything, had to tell my wife I'd call her back.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
My dad would love this book. Which is why I'll never read it.
--b
I think the reviewer got his facts a bit screwed up. The thing that saved IBM, after the depression started and it continued manufacturing, was the start of the Social Security System (I think in 1933; 1941 would have been a long time to wait...).
The WW II connection is that IBM turned over its manufacturing plants to the government to make war materiel at a 1% profit. Carbines, gun sights, small cannons, other things, were all made in IBM's plants in Poughkeepsie, Endicott, and elsehwere.
I live in Dayton. I never thought of it as a particularly difficult place to live. Perhaps if I move, I can take over the world and you can all bow down and worship me.
But don't rush out to buy my septer and throne just yet... I'm kinda stuck with having a negative equity mortgage, so the escape velocity to overcome the sucking power of Dayton is a little out of my reach at the moment. ;-)
So IBM doesn't seem evil to us.
Intu what?
I don't want to go intuit right now.
Is that anything like a round tuit?
www.wavefront-av.com
Close the italics in the review please.
"the starry sky above and the moral law within"-Kant
It is unfortunate that Mr. Watson's views, perspectives, and ideals will be lost forever if the company continues on its current path of behavior. The company is not operated as it once was during the thriving 50's, 60's and 70's. Some portions of the company *are* innovative and forward looking, but much of the company is reigned by dinosaurs that prefer politics to innovation and change. Working here sounds like a wonderful opportunity, but it is not an opportunity, it is merely a job. We are pushing for new innovation, for example, for help systems on the web to be based on the Eclipse platform and XML. We are told by the dinosaurs that HTML 4.0 is good enough, and that we don't really understand that XML stuff anyways.
They wonder why the attrition rate is so high among the younger crowd.
My two cents: look for a younger company with younger management with open minds.
StyleChief
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government! -M. Python
Oops!
Should read 213 things Skippy's not allowed to do in the US Army
My bad.
While a "true geek" may not care about the history of IBM management, there are many interesting things that have been produced by IBM's scientists and engineers. Many of the neat features in today's microprocessors can be seen in IBM 360/370 series mainframes from the 1960s and 1970s. Today's microprocessors have yet to catch up with the reliability, availability and maintenance features of IBM's large systems. Anyone who is interested in computer architecture can learn a lot from studying the technical history of IBM.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I know the article didn't want to give away any spoilers, but I'm curious how Dayton nearly ruined him. I've been there a couple times. Seems like a nice place, probably a few wretched hives of scum and villany around but I didn't have time to find them, darn it.
So what was it? Did a woman do him wrong?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
If Microsoft did a turnaround and started supporting Linux, becoming part of the solution rather than the 800 pound gorilla of a problem then you're damned right I'd do business with them. You're a fool if you refuse to do business with a company because of what it did 20 years ago, provided that company has changed.
</i>
Especially engrossing is the episode during the depression when IBM was in danger of bankruptcy and shutting its doors. Watson, contrary to what most intelligent people would do, gave a rousing talk to his top executives, telling them that instead of cutting back on manufacturing and personnel, they should increase both.
Interesting. Even more interesting is this quote:
"No matter what the provocation, I never fire a man who is honestly trying to deliver a job. Few workers who become established at the Disney Studio ever leave voluntarily or otherwise, and many have been on the payroll all their working lives."
Guess who? Walt Disney.
These men built two of the most enduring companies in history, and neither of them endorsed mass layoffs. Coincidence? Guess not.
Will current middle management learn from this? Probably not. They're too "sophisticated" for that.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Watson was a salesman, and was at one point NCR's top salesman, working for Patterson, the head of National Cash Register. The whole Patterson/NCR story is worth understanding. NCR's entire top management was convicted of criminal antitrust violations. Their tactics make Microsoft look like small timers. NCR built defective duplicates of competing cash registers and sold them to make the competition look bad. Their sales reps were instructed on how to sabotage competing cash registers.
What's the alternative? Draw up a big list of "evil" companies who can never be redeemed for the sins of their past, and then hunker down and hate them for the rest of our lives?
I can certainly think of one company to have a permanent place at the top of such list.
The younger Watson dutifully answered, seeking to impress his father with his skill at observing people. The elder paused and then berated the young man for daring to form an opinion about a seasoned executive who had years of experience behind him. Who did the young man think he was to judge someone who had been in the business since before he was born?
Fuck that 360 degree review process.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
link from parent
yes that picture is pretty damning, it was taken in 1937 though. Its kind of like someone being taken with bush now. if by some strange turn of events he starts up more concentration camps or something in the future that is. I rememebr reading somewhere that alot of people in the good ole USA were against going to war with germany until pearl harbour. I seem to remember that the mjority of americans had no problem with him being "cruel" to the jews. Anti semitisim was rampent at that time.
A book by Arther Tedlow, Captains of Enterprise talks about Watson and several other business titans of the 20th century. According to Tedlow, the senior Watson was quite sharklike. As an NCR salesman early in his career, he could walk into a store, modify the cash register to make it malfunction, and then "demonstrate" to the proprietor how his own company's product was better. Big Blue didn't get its reputation for ruthless business practices for nothing.
IBM's public persona has changed a lot over the last few decades, several times. My mother said it was a great place to work in the 50's, because they valued smart people. I wonder what it's like to work there now.
It doesn't take a long memory to recall the days when Apple went head-to-head with IBM for the desktop marketplace.
Just 20 years after the Superbowl ad where Big Blue was smashed by the Apple girl, the top-of-the-line PowerMac G5 sports an IBM-manufactured 64-bit processor.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
The WW II connection is that IBM turned over its manufacturing plants to the government to make war materiel at a 1% profit. Carbines, gun sights, small cannons, other things, were all made in IBM's plants in Poughkeepsie, Endicott, and elsehwere.
Not just IBM, either. You'll find M1s made by fGM and Rockola, as well.
Mechanical computers (which is what much of the mechanism of a gun, distributor, carburator, or jukebox of the era actually is), and the products that make them, are also very flexible - even if the actual products aren't easily field-reprogrammable.
GM, for instance, made M1s at Saginaw Steering Gear. (Seems the machine for drilling a hole down the center of the steering shaft for the horn wire is REALLY good at making rifle barrels. B-) )
The same tools that beat swords into plowshares can beat plowshares into swords.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The electric cash register was invented in Dayton to prevent theft.
The traffic light was invented in Cleveland.
Kettering brought the electric starter.
The self-contained refigerator was also from dayton.
Others? the parachute. movie projection. air bags. artificial heart, artificial kidney.
Your review makes Thomas Watson look like a saint,. Please go read _IBM and the Holocaust_ to read what Watson's "mean streak" really represented.
And if it had been about a dead black or yellow or red or orange man or even woman would that have made the book instantly interesting?
The inherent racism of the phrase "dead white man" is, in my opinion, worse that using the dreaded "N" word. But we all know that the "K" word if ok, just ask any rapper.
International Harvester and quite a few other "large machinery" type businesses also made carbines.
Funny thing is that a custom gunsmith who lives near me uses axels out of Ford pickups made between '47 and '52 for his rifle barrels because they are the right kind of chrome/moly steel.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
"a dead white man "
I guess it's a good thing he wasn't black. You'd
have had to use another phrase or the ACLU would
be after you....
The book the original poster refers to is painstakingly researched and basically correct. Not only did IBM supply machines to the Nazis, profit from it, and do everything they could to keep the German subsidiary (and its profits) under control, but Watson himself was quite an admirer of Hitler and praised him endlessly during the thirties. Not that he was unique in this regard among American businessman, but it is something that must be considered when the man is being venerated as some kind of computing icon.
"(Man) tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell." --Sartre
Now I don't have to rent it when it comes out in video.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
Edwin Black (the main proponent of IBM==Nazi supporter theory) lost a lot of money when IBM dropped OS/2. He has always been known to be quite aggressive .
Here's another "pretty damning" picture.
In desperation, the board brought in Lou G., who had no previous experience in IT, to take the helm. Lou remade the company, in particular, making it more customer focused. Employees were so scared of the company dying, that they pretty much went along with his plans. The IBM of today really is a transformed company from the IBM prior to Lou's remake.
Weeee I love IBM. Best company ever. Invented not only the modern computer but also invented the device that made it possible for the Nazis to organize to make the holocaust possible.
I'm probably just trolling but not everything IBm does or did comes in the form of Gold eggs that are powered by DC.
[Just Shut Up and Do What I say]
There was a treaty between Europe and the US which essentially said that the US isn't allowed to meddle in European affairs unless it is attacked by one of the combatants first. The US was sorely looking for a way into the war - one could arge, purely for economical reasons (and future world-influence). Japan was allied with Germany and that connection is what allowed the US to enter the war after they attacked. Why weren't the aircraft carriers in Pearl Harbour again? Boy that's convenient, no?
A true geek doesn't necessarily care much about IBM. IBM is a lot more relevant to suits.
What the hell are you talking about?! IBM employs so many Ph.D. researchers in math, computer science, materials engineering, etc. that it's an amazing place for geeks to work or aspire to work.
Have you ever noticed how many IBM researchers publish papers on the geekiest things, never to see the light of day as a product or revenue stream? Geeks love pure research. That keeps the marketing types out of their hair.
I did a contract for an IBM lab in Toronto. My group did both compiler design and "novel data retrieval" research (this was 8 years ago, before you called it "object databases" versus RDMS). We were geeks in the truest sense of the word, and IBM respected us (and paid us well) to be geeks. Market share, revenue, or even "products" were never the goals. Innovation and, eventually, publishing our research was the sole deliverable.
They're still around. Strange you don't hear much about them anymore.
Unknown host pong.
And now we have a bunch of ex-Nixonites
pulling the strings of The Draft Dodger
Regards,
Kilgore Trout
TJ Sr. learned a lot about corporate paternalism from old John Patterson, who was very much the kingmaker in Dayton. Hero to most (but villan to some), he led the company that was king of the heap until they were too late adapting to the "disruptive technology" of computers. The areas where the big old factories sat are now parking lots and beautifully landscaped lawns. NCR survives, but it is a shell of its former majesty.
First off, there is no such thing as "the White race". In fact, the idea of "race" as commonly assigned to humans has no scientific or biological validity whatsoever.
That, combined with the fact that you see fit to capitalize "White" but not the names of countries, and the fact that you choose to post as an anonymous coward, strongly suggests that you're a piece of Neo-Nazi trailer trash. Perhaps next time you might choose to give your comments at least a veneer of respectability.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I'm an IBM web developer, and I know for a fact that the internal web standards mandate XHTML 1.0, which is based on XML 1.0. The standards also mandate Mozilla compatibility and Dublin Core metadata. Seems forward-thinking enough to me, given that XHTML 2.0 isn't a standard yet and isn't implemented by any browser, and XML 1.1 was only approved last week. Sheesh.
Sure, there's lots of bureaucracy and politics in some parts of IBM, but the company's not generally a slouch when it comes to technical standards.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I can't believe how acritical this review was. There are several books (and magazine articles and personal anedoctes and so on) documenting how IBM is bad and was even worse, and how they incubated Microsoft and its culture.
The best I ever read was "Big Blue: IBM's Use and Abuse of Power", by a DoJ's economist who actually worked fighting IBM's monopoly. He tells us some interesting facts like Thomas J Watson being a convicted monopolist for practices at NCR that'd make Bill Gates blush, and once at IBM how he refined his practices to try to escape justice.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
Why is this a troll -- its true.
A new asshole to lick! Yum yum yum!!! Howcome no one told me that IBM is the new asshole of the month to lick? As a typical /bot, I like to be kept abreast (even though I've never seen one because I'm a big homo) of these things. Well... here I go. I'm getting my tongue nice and wet and long and skinny so I can dig WAYYYY up into that sweet funky anus. Mmmmm... oh yeah!
From here. Half way down the page.
Try reading IBM & The Holocaust.
Amazon.Com Link
It tells the story of how Watson moved from NCR to IBM and used his ruthless skills to crush competitors, as well as get governmental support for enabling Nazi Germany to gather extremely accurate census data on the people they were trying to exterminate. There was no way Germany could have done what they did without Watson and his wonderful IBM.
And that is a scary world to live in!
... are still excellent bastards.
We once (~2 years ago) had a customer asking us to modify our product so that it would run on IBM's Portal Server.
Reason?
IBM tricked them to buy their Portal Server, and now they needed something to run on it to justify the purchase.
They had nothing to run on it, they dont needed it, but they had bougth it anyway.
And they were ready to pay us the developpement cost for porting it, just to keep their faces.
(And IBM Portal Server is expensive : 100 000$+ per CPU at the time)
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof for my post which this sig is too small to contain.
Actually, Leonardo Divinci invented the parachute, as well as the tank, machine gun, helicopter, and more.
It's silly to hold a mutable group of persons responsible for the sins of past members of this group.
If tomorrow, MS board kicks Ballmer into the used car salesman career for which he's born, and they tie Bill Gates on a chair in his 3-acre rec room, and they reform MS corporate culture, and they stop being bastards, then MS will probably become a decent corporation. Provided they get rid of the people who ooze the current MS culture, of course.
However, such a strategy might have drawback. For example, people will be so disoriented they'll probably swamp MS' tech support for call about how to make a donation because they'll think it has been bought by the Salvation Army.
There is no danger for now, though. If anything, MS would buy the Salvation Army, distribute antifreeze-laced booze to all the hobos and homeless, and auction their body parts.
Meanwhile, the gouvenment would investigate about their unfair practices of volume-purchasing antifreeze.
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
The civic folklore in Dayton revolves around the legacy of "Boss Kettering", NCR & John Patterson, the Wright Brothers, and other early innovators. Kids in school (at least in my age range, attending in the 1960s) were taught this "legacy".
In the context of the current scene this is an *incredible* irony.
Having been raised in the town but also having moved around the country quite a bit for a few years after college, I have come to a tentative conclusion: there are probably few places as xenophobic and conservative as Dayton and Cincinnati, Ohio if you're in the technology field. This is not the place to be if you want to work for a world class development organization and if you want to advance your career.
I've worked in environments in this area where co-workers (in programming, etc) were literally driven screaming out of the building by incessant management sanctioned badgering. Working as a permanent employee in this area in technology feels like being a contractor anywhere else - you have to have an "exit strategy".
Anyone here pissed about being considered a "code grunt", a commodity? Dayton's been that way consistently since I can recall (late 70s). Growth of tech jobs in this area has been abysmally stagnant.
Employers, management and companies here almost go out of their way to express lack of respect for programmers and other IT people, and engineers. I have yet to witness one company here where a non management techie is not in some kind of fear for his job.
This isn't a new thing. Decent development jobs were very hard to come by here even in the boom years of the late 90's. What I read was happening on either coast in terms of pay scales sounded like science fiction.
My theory is that there is kind of a reverse economic incubator phenomenom going on in this part of Ohio. Just as Silicon Valley attracted top talent and became a growth engine because it was the place to be: Dayton drives out anyone in this industry who wants to work with new technology, or who even wants to simply be respected for their contribution.
Basically, only someone in a technology career who is a dumbass or someone who is politically motivated will be satisfied with the range of opportunities here. This jibes exactly with the managers and owners I've dealt with here. Turds and morons all, trying to sell and make do with obsolete technology and running the technlogy side of their shops either like kindergarten or like a gulag.
Oh, and many management people here are bred in the worker-hostile, unionized auto industry mold; they consider programmers line workers that they get to dick with in ways that they are restrained from abusing unionized blue collar workers.
A special word about NCR now: it's a nexus of stupid thinking on a local and instutional level. NCR has run its once-proud name into the craphole. Its managers are known as top bureaucrats, in the mold of the old Soviet Union.
And Lexis-Nexis, staffed by former NCR managers and execs? It *was* online content in the late 1980s. It *could* have owned the internet. Why not? The local Dayton stupdity field effect at work. Utterly stupid management that treated the internet in an old line "DP department" way as a sideshow, while trivial upstarts like Yahoo far surpassed them. The local culture would simply not permit the type of innovation that would have allowed Lexis to be a player.
I believe the local civic leaders are clueless about these issues. "World class" and Dayton do not belong on the same sentence. Only mindless commodity industries belong here.
PS: I am a contractor and I am constantly watching my ass... gave up on the local perm jobs (lies, all f***ing lies) 11 years ago.
IBM didn't start with Thomas Watson. IBM was originally the Computing-Tabulating-Recording (CTR) Company, founded by Charles Flint in 1911. CTR was made up of three acquisitions:
The latter is most important; it was founded and owned by Herman Hollerith, who invented the electric tabulating machine made famous by the 1890 U.S. Census. Thomas J. Watson wasn't hired as CTR's president until 1915, and the name change did not come until 1924.
Book suggestion: Austrian, Geoffrey D. Herman Hollerith: Forgotten Giant of Information Processing.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.
Spekkio Master of War
Why all this dirty racism against dead men? Dead men deserve a place in the Sun, too (although they might get "jerked").
This is totally unfair!
Hey, all my dead comrades, all of you which have been victim of undue racism, raise a hand now!
Eeek, that's scary! (* runs away crying *)
Zombies: "Brain! Brain! Wane!"
Because every so-called communist government has in practice been an Oligarchy. Contrary to American knee-jerk anti-communist propaganda there are no commies and never will be.
Yeah, we've heard that all before.
Real communism hasn't been tried yet. The people calling themselves communists are actually x.
Real socialism hasn't been tried yet. The people calling themselves socialists are really y.
Real capitalism hasn't been tried yet. The people calling themselves capitalists are really z.
Real Christianity hasn't been tried yet.
Real Islam hasn't been tried yet.
and on, and on, and on.
I could care less about what a system is SUPPOSED to be IN THEORY, if only people would do what the theory says. Some people will always be selfish, corruptable, and/or prone to ideological confusion. And you're not going to change that - at least not for several lifetimes (after which there's the question of whether it even matters, since what you're dealing with is no longer human beings). So the HOLES in the theory, and the ways it can be subverted, are all part of the system.
From my standpoint, real FOO is what you get when you try to implement system FOO with real people.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I'm old enough to remember the late 1960's, when IBM was at the peak of its Evil Empire phase. They were convicted of (for instance) pre-announcing a machine they had no intention of developing, just to reduce CDC's sales. They got a wakeup call in the 70's when Amdahl produced a compatible mainframe, and they had to stop inflating their prices.
IBM did (and does) innovate, unlike Microsoft. What the cases have in common is that monopoly corrupts.
You may alos want to read "IBM and the Holocaust" Publisher: Crown Publishing Group; (February 12, 2001)ISBN: 0609607995 Here's some blurb... Was IBM, "The Solutions Company," partly responsible for the Final Solution? That's the question raised by Edwin Black's IBM and the Holocaust, the most controversial book on the subject since Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners. Black, a son of Holocaust survivors, is less tendentiously simplistic than Goldhagen, but his thesis is no less provocative: he argues that IBM founder Thomas Watson deserved the Merit Cross (Germany's second-highest honor) awarded him by Hitler, his second-biggest customer on earth. "IBM, primarily through its German subsidiary, made Hitler's program of Jewish destruction a technologic mission the company pursued with chilling success," writes Black. "IBM had almost single-handedly brought modern warfare into the information age [and] virtually put the 'blitz' in the krieg."
IBM
UBM
We all BM
(circa 1981?)
OK, to summarize, a great man that was seriously flawed that created a massive monopoly and was bailed out of the depression when WWII broke out and the government paid IBM to send everyone left alive to work for very little and even though IBM only charged !% profit to the govt. they mysteriously ended the war having doubled in size.
Yes they helped the nazis and get the money from it, yes IBM paid women the same rate as men (years ahead of its time), yes he was a charismatic figure who predictably clinged onto power too long and was eventually outsed by his own son...so all in all, you can't agree with some of the politics involved but you can say it makes a great "reality soap opera"...very interesting and lessons to be learnt for all who gain from other history...then again, Billy G never did read much.
-- Sig meltdown immine...
I don't have any thing for or against the Swiss, but am pretty sure that this is rampantly specious. Those ovens were famously built by German corporations.
Like I said, I don't have anything for or against the Swiss, and neither the Germans, but mis-information is always harmful.
Why should I argue rationally with someone being irrational? I'll just mock them instead.
I'm going to be picky on this one...
Main Entry: Pearl Harbor Function: noun
going to takes a verb in infinite mode, something quiet, but not altogether, different from a noun.