AT&T Joining OSF

[James Jones]

In article <63717 at sun.uucp>, pope at vatican (John Pope) writes:
> In article <24355 at bu-cs.BU.EDU>, madd at bu-cs (Jim Frost) writes:
> >
> >[...] IBM became big by being reliable; they never
> >did anything really new so what they had was most likely going to
> >work.
> 
> Aren't you ignoring things like RISC and Virtual Memory?...

No doubt many people will point at the Ferranti Atlas and Burroughs large
systems (B5000 et seq.) as virtual memory systems predating the 370 by
quite a few years.

I think that a more accurate characterization of IBM is that they never
bring out anything new until they have to.  IBM "legitimatizes" innovations,
whether they are IBM's or somebody elses, entering the market years after
others have done so--look at personal computers, relational databases,
virtual memory, and now RISC machines for examples.

		James Jones
(whose opinions are his own, and not necessarily those of any other eukaryotic
creature or legal fiction)