ibm

3 definitions found

ibm - Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (26 May 2007) :

  International Business Machines
  big blue
  IBM
  
     <company> (IBM) The best known American computer manufacturer,
     founded by Thomas J. Watson (born 1874-02-17), known as "Big
     Blue" after the colour of its logo.  IBM makes everything from
     mainframes to personal computers (PCs) and has been
     immensely successful in selling them, chiefly to business.  It
     has often been said that "Nobody has ever been sacked for
     buying IBM".
  
     The IBM PC in its various versions has been so successful
     that unqualified reference to a "PC" almost certainly means a
     PC from IBM, or one of the many brands of clone produced by
     other manufacturers to cash in on IBM's original success.
  
     Alternative expansions of "IBM" such as Inferior But
     Marketable; It's Better Manually; Insidious Black Magic; It's
     Been Malfunctioning; Incontinent Bowel Movement, illustrate
     the considerable antipathy most hackers have long felt toward
     the "industry leader" (see fear and loathing).
  
     Quarterly sales $15351M, profits $689M (Aug 1994).
  
     (http://ibm.com/).
  
     (1999-04-07)
  

ibm - Jargon File (4.4.4, 14 Aug 2003) :

  IBM
   /I.B.M/
  
     Once upon a time, the computer company most hackers loved to hate;
     today, the one they are most puzzled to find themselves liking.
  
     From hackerdom's beginnings in the mid-1960s to the early 1990s, IBM
     was regarded with active loathing. Common expansions of the corporate
     name included: Inferior But Marketable; It's Better Manually;
     Insidious Black Magic; It's Been Malfunctioning; Incontinent Bowel
     Movement; and a near-infinite number of even less complimentary
     expansions (see also fear and loathing). What galled hackers about
     most IBM machines above the PC level wasn't so much that they were
     underpowered and overpriced (though that counted against them), but
     that the designs were incredibly archaic, crufty, and elephantine
     ... and you couldn't fix them -- source code was locked up tight, and
     programming tools were expensive, hard to find, and bletcherous to
  use
     once you had found them.
  
     We didn't know how good we had it back then. In the 1980s IBM had its
     own troubles with Microsoft and lost its strategic way, receding from
     the hacker community's view. Then, in the 1990s, Microsoft became
  more
     noxious and omnipresent than IBM had ever been.
  
     In the late 1990s IBM re-invented itself as a services company, began
     to release open-source software through its AlphaWorks group, and
     began shipping Linux systems and building ties to the Linux
     community. To the astonishment of all parties, IBM emerged as a
     staunch friend of the hacker community and open source development.
  
     This lexicon includes a number of entries attributed to `IBM'; these
     derive from some rampantly unofficial jargon lists circulated within
     IBM's formerly beleaguered hacker underground.
  

ibm - V.E.R.A. -- Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms (June 2006) :

  IBM
         International Business Machines (manufacturer, IBM)