At least it wasn't Oracle • Hacker News Board

Re: At least it wasn't Oracle

#141

Post by rwallace » Wed, Nov 07, 2018, 6:56 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #136

rwallace wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well within living memory, actually. IBM research labs made many contributions to human knowledge without necessarily expecting short-term profit. I still remember when their scientists used a scanning tunneling microscope to write the letters IBM in xenon atoms, five atoms tall. We have to adapt to today's world, but we should remember a better world, one in which it was not customary to treat life as a zero-sum gam…

I still remember when their scientists used a scanning tunneling microscope to write the letters IBM in xenon atoms, five atoms tall. That is what is known as “a marketing stunt”. Same as having Watson play Jeopardy.

Sure, but the underlying technological capability was genuine.

Re: At least it wasn't Oracle

#142

Post by atesti » Wed, Nov 07, 2018, 8:44 PM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #61

makecheck wrote: post #10

With Oracle/Sun it was pretty inverted...the first year was a huge cash infusion, and if anything Sun hardware projects had greater potential than before. And yet, within 5-6 years the entire hardware division imploded. And, meta-comment: this site layout is frustrating on mobile, the text runs off the left/right edges slightly and it refuses to allow pinch/zoom. Sites really need to stop writing code to intentionall…

Really? Oracle guys doing conference decks with sailboats cracking jokes about how they accidentally broke EMEA sales and shipping by shutting off a data center on schedule, but before the apps were migrated.

Do you have more information about this incidient? It sounds interessting

Re: At least it wasn't Oracle

#143

Post by ssalazar » Wed, Nov 07, 2018, 10:05 PM UTC

rwallace wrote: post #131

ssalazar wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At its heart though, IBM is just another company trying to do things to make the world a better place When has this ever been the prerogative of a multinational for-profit corporation?

Well within living memory, actually. IBM research labs made many contributions to human knowledge without necessarily expecting short-term profit. I still remember when their scientists used a scanning tunneling microscope to write the letters IBM in xenon atoms, five atoms tall. We have to adapt to today's world, but we should remember a better world, one in which it was not customary to treat life as a zero-sum gam…

> we should remember a better world, one in which it was not customary to treat life as a zero-sum game, did exist, not so long ago. Social problems only become unsolvable if everyone forgets they were once solved.

You’ll have to be more specific, as I’m not aware of any such world in recent memory.

Re: At least it wasn't Oracle

#144

Post by hinkley » Thu, Nov 08, 2018, 12:16 AM UTC

hinkley wrote: post #63

DonHopkins wrote: post #20

That's the opposite of what I thought when Oracle bought Sun. Q: What do you get when you cross IBM and Apple? A: IBM On the bright side, now RedHat employees can flash their new IBM business cards at International Brotherhood of Magicians shows in Las Vegas to get in for free, thanks to the terms of a trademark infringement lawsuit settlement from decades ago.

Didn’t Apple and IBM work on an OS boondoggle back in the Windows 95 time period?

Ah, I was thinking of Taligent, and it was Windows 3.1 timeframe:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taligent

Re: At least it wasn't Oracle

#145

Post by emmanueloga_ » Thu, Nov 08, 2018, 1:24 AM UTC

kevstev wrote: post #138

emmanueloga_ wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where does Clojure fit in the technology stack of Walmart? Cognitect has a few references that seem a bit old [1], but I see WalmartLabs release clj libraries from time to time [2], and I heard a podcast once where someone talked about working with Clojure remotely too [3]. 1: https://www.cognitect.com/walmart-case-study.html 2: https://github.com/walmartlabs/lacinia 3: http://blog.cognitect.com/cognicast/087

I knew these guys, IIRC, clojure originally came from an acquihired startup. This grew into a relatively small team working on an e-receipts project that was remote but largely based in Portland. The most interesting thing about that team was that it appeared that not just a beard, but an epic beard was required to on it. I keep in touch with one of them, but he has left the firm. The others... I should probably send…

Got it, that sounds kinda disappointing. Also, Jet was one of the bigger faces of F# when it comes to big companies using it, so I guess... double disappointment :-( (I'd love to see both F# and Clojure become more popular on the job market).

Re: At least it wasn't Oracle

#146

Post by programminglisp » Fri, Nov 09, 2018, 10:36 AM UTC

eksemplar wrote: post #55

programminglisp wrote: post #36

IBM aquisition is not bad in my point of view, it is big corporation which guarantees stability to the employees.

I’ve worked with IBM for the past 25 years of my life in public digitisation. They are the worst partner we’ve ever had, the absolute worst. They sell things they can’t deliver, they never drive technology forward unless you pay them to, and then they get angry and confused when you pick someone who didn’t stand still over them. Back in the day, almost everything we did ran in IBM mainframes, next year we’ll be signi…

I thought all big corporations provided employees the conditions for safety and security. I also thought that IBM was technology & inovation driven company like Google or Amazon, not only IT solution.