Taiwan's Acer to buy Gateway, become No. 3 PC maker
PC maker says it will acquire the struggling U.S. competitor for $710 million and pass Lenovo in global market share. Mon Aug 27 04:44:00 PDT 2007 | Read the complete story
US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, embroiled in the row over the sacking of US
attorneys, has resigned, reports quoting US officials say.
For more details: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news
Nine Teams Sign Up To Compete for Lunar Lander Prize After just missing its chance to win the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge at the 2006 Wirefly X Prize Cup, Armadillo Aerospace Corp. founder John Carmack is confident of victory this year despite the fact that as many as eight other competitors are racing to get vehicles ready to challenge Armadillo.
Mounting Mysteries at Saturn Keep Scientists Guessing Humanity has known of Saturn since prehistory, but enigmas about this ringed world still abound-from new mysteries concerning a baffling hexagon of clouds on the planet to perennial puzzles concerning its famous rings. Low-fare, Long-Haul: Second Time Around In the past decade, low-cost airlines have sprung up throughout the world to revolutionize short-haul air travel. Now, following the success of low-fare carriers such as Europe's easyJet, Malaysia's AirAsia and Brazil's Gol on shorter routes, people are wondering if the same business model could work equally well for longer flights.
addenda
Notes for Binding Time: Memoirs of a Programming Man
NOTE 19
IBM Locations I Remember: Rochester, Minnesota. Number 1 in a Series
I joined IBM in the Spring of 1960 at the Atlanta, Georgia, Branch Office. After my initial interview in Atlanta, I went to White Plains, New York, for a final interview. There I was offered a position as a programmer either in White Plains or in Endicott, New York. My interview trip was my first visit to White Plains, and I did not particularly care for the area. I had never been to Endicott, but the name sounded OK, so that was what I chose.
I officially began work for IBM on Monday, June 6, 1960. I terminated after a fashion on June 30, 1987. (Since I was on the TACP (Technical Academic Career Program) for another two years, I did not go off the IBM payroll until August 1989 - and did some contract work after that.)
I reported for duty in Endicott initially to Earl Wheeler (for some black humor, see pp. 107-111 in Paul Carroll’s Big Blues: The Unmaking of IBM, where Earl is given much credit for the “unmaking”). I worked for Earl for only a couple of months and then was taken over by Jim Frame, who very shortly thereafter became my second line manager when Jim O'Brien arrived from New Orleans. Jim Frame was my “card holding manager”, off and on, mostly on, for my first ten years with IBM.
The following is the chronology of my assignments in IBM during the period June 1960, to June 1987:
Permanent: Endicott, New York, R&D Lab, June 1960 to December 1964 (General Products Division)
TDY: Wilmington, Delaware, Branch Office, August 1963 to June 1964 (Data Products Division)
TDY: Poughkeepsie, New York, R&D Lab, June 1964 to December 1964 (Data Systems Division)
Permanent: Poughkeepsie, New York, R&D Lab, December 1964 to March 1965 (initially Data Systems Division then Systems Development Division)
Permanent: Kingston, New York, R&D Lab, March 1965 to August 1965 (Systems Development Division)
Permanent: Research Triangle Park, R&D Lab (first two years physically located in Raleigh, then moved to RTP when building completed), August 1965 to August 1977 (initially Systems Development Division then Systems Communications Division)
TDY: Zurich, Switzerland, Data Communications Center, February 1972 to August 1977 (reported initially to the World Trade Corporation then to the Systems Communications Division but was paid by the Research Division -- did work for all)
Permanent: Rochester, Minnesota, R&D Lab, August 1977 to June 1982 (General Systems Division)
Permanent: Boca Raton, Florida, R&D Lab, June 1982 to June 1987 (initially General Systems Division then Systems Communications Division)
TACP: Killeen, Texas, Central Texas College, August 1987 to August 1989 (went off the IBM payroll, did not leave CTC until May 1992)
In addition to the assignments listed above, I traveled to IBM field, laboratory, and other business locations and to IBM customer locations in about 35 countries. During most of my time in IBM, I was on the road about 20% of the time. I spent about nine months at the La Gaude, France, R&D Lab; six months at the Hursley, U.K., R&D Lab; and several months each at the Boeblingen, Germany, R&D Lab and the San Jose, California, R&D Lab.
Other IBM non-field locations that I visited on multiple occasions included: various HQ locations in North American and Europe (Armonk, Toronto, Paris, etc.); the IBM Research Labs in Yorktown, New York, and Rueschlikon, Switzerland; the IBM ASDD (Advanced Systems Development Division) Lab in Mohansic, New York (where I spent the night of the great blackout of 1965); the Santa Teresa, California, Programming Lab; the Boulder, Colorado, R&D Lab; the Austin, Texas, R&D Lab; the Uithoorn, The Netherlands, R&D Lab; the Swedish R&D Lab (I forget the exact location); the IBM EU Relations Office in Brussels, Belgium; the Time-Life Programming Center in New York City; the Systems Research Institute in New York City; the European Systems Research Institute in its first location in Geneva and its second location in La Hulpe, Belgium; and various Scientific Centers in North America and Europe.
Of all of the above, I found the IBM operation in Rochester, Minnesota, the most memorable -- and in some ways the one I enjoyed the most. (I think the DCC, a small and not overly significant part of IBM, and where I had an unlimited travel and entertainment budget, cannot be compared to other locations.) IBM Rochester had more autonomy than any location with which I am familiar. (This will be discussed in more detail below, but one reason was that they produced more revenue per dollar invested than any other IBM development lab.) IBM politics there were "small town". In no other location to my knowledge did what church you belonged to (not religion or denomination so much as "street address church") and what fraternal lodge you belonged to make any difference in your IBM career. In Rochester it did. And very few people, comparatively speaking, left Rochester (I am speaking here of IBMers, but I think true in general).
I re-entered IBM domestic in Rochester. I had three offers: one in Kingston (cleaning urinals, i.e. scut-work on SNA), one in Austin (doing God knows what), and one in Rochester (to work on FS). The choice was made on the basis of the school system. We still had two boys in school, and the Rochester public school system is one of the best in the U.S. On my own, of course, I would have chosen Rochester for the chance to work on FS.
Re-entering domestic is painful, but it was probably less painful in Rochester than it would have been elsewhere (based upon both comments from my friends returning and internal IBM studies I have seen).
Despite the fact that I had three teen-age sons (the oldest of whom was at the time circumnavigating the world surface, and solo, at the age of 18) and went through a very painful divorce while in Rochester, I love the place -- apart from taxes, both state and local, which are really bad. The purpose of this note is to try to say why.
As mentioned above, I arrived in Rochester August 1977 and left in June 1982. I worked for Glenn Henry on Pacific (FS) August 1977 to February 1979, and for Walt Schaffer (of Endicott DDC fame) in Advanced Technology (sometimes known as “The Old Folk’s Home” or as the “Post Office”) February 1979 to June 1982. I enjoyed both of these assignments: they were technically interesting, provided a fair amount of autonomy, and both Glenn and Walt were good people (as were all of my colleagues in Rochester, the only location in which I worked where this was true to such an extent).
(I was moved from FS to Ad Tech. Glenn wanted me out of his area for at least three reasons: he wanted his Mormon buddy to replace me; I was not doing a good job (because of home problems among other reasons); I was the only member of Pacific management to oppose the announcement of Pacific. Anyway, after 14 years in management, I went to Walt Schaffer's area as a technician (twice before finally leaving IBM I was offered (almost ordered) to go back into management, but being older and wiser, I refused).)
Perhaps future notes will cover Pacific and Glenn Henry and my ad-tech work with Walt Schaffer at "the old folks home". As readers of these memoirs will probably have gathered by now, Glenn was/is my number one data processing hero. The computer operations manager in the movie "War Games" is his spitting image -- obviously an "in" joke. (The classified tour at Cheyenne Mountain before it was shut down included a lengthy exposition on "War Games".)
I visited Rochester a number of times over the years, including the visit on the Honorary European Task Force where I first learned about FS/Pacific. I do not remember my first trip to Rochester, but I do remember my trip to interview with Glenn for a job. It was April 1977, and the temperature was in the 80's -- people were literally (not figuratively) having heat strokes. Another commentary on life in Rochester.
Rochester was a town then of about 65,000 inhabitants. It is 65 miles south of "The Twin Cities" and is widely known for being the home of The Mayo Clinic. It is surrounded by cornfields and at one time was a major center for the canning industry -- the town water tower was then painted in the image of an ear of corn. IBM (initially only manufacturing – the lab was added later) arrived in 1956, and my two sons in high school said that kids divided themselves into "Bmers, Pills, and Dirts".
According to legend, Tom Watson, Jr., flew with one of the Mayo doctors during The Big One. In the 1950s IBM decided to "spread-out" to minimize problems after the first atomic war. Rochester was one of the major beneficiaries (San Jose was another). In 1956, a manufacturing site was set-up to handle EAM stuff. When I arrived in 1977, EAM was still producing over $100M in annual revenue, but there was real concern that we were losing the capability to repair them. Later, other stuff was included. In the early 1960s, a lab was set-up to handle EAM and banking. Banking then was mainly the 1060. Another aspect of the legend holds that it was thought that there would be a lot of reproduction going on between the nurses of the Rochester medical industry (the Mayo Clinic, the Methodist Hospital, and St. Mary's Hospital) and the male IBMers. The legend does not provide a follow-up.
During my time there, Rochester was a small town with almost no minorities and no crime. There were a few Native Americans (my youngest, Hamlin, was classified as a Native American when he entered school there) but almost no Blacks. Most everyone was of North European ancestry, particularly Norwegian. There were many Swedes and Swiss too. IBM kept trying to bring in minorities, particularly Blacks, but they wouldn't stay.
But to think of Rochester as only a small, white town of the Middle Border is wrong. Because of the Mayo Clinic, there was a large transient population. I think about two million per year – and they brought in a LOT of money. The major hotels in town provided enemas as part of room service. And when I was there BA, before AIDS, there were about 15 cathouses in town. At one time, a cathouse was located in the basement of the Downtown Holiday Inn (Rochester and Fort Lauderdale are the only two places where I have seen such). All of the cathouses were listed in the “Yellow Pages” and advertised in the “Personals” section of the newspaper.
In addition to the medical industry, IBM, farming, and the transient service industry, Rochester had a large Catholic Nunnery and a sizeable CIA detachment (the CIA used coming to the Clinic as a bribe for third world dignitaries). The "Mother House" was the location of the IBM S/3 announcement kick-off in 1969 and had a hardened hospital and command post about 200 feet underground (St. Mary's Hospital also had hardened facilities at about the same depth -- plus their "Floor 8" where the CIA housed most of its nuts). The Rochester airport was big and in the middle of a lot of flat cornfields, so it was frequently used to train pilots on large commercial planes. It was common to see 747s with strange devices shooting landings there.
IBM Rochester produced an amazing line of computers. The S/3, a small business computer, was their first. It and the S/360 Model 20 were the successors to the 140x line of machines. They followed that with the 5100 (the first true personal computer for engineers), the S/32 (the first true personal computer for small business men), the S/34 (a S/32 for multiple users), the S/36 (an unplanned follow-on to the S/3 and S/34 --I think the best small business machine ever built), the S/38 (FS), and the AS/400 (successor to the S/38 and FS).
The S/3 was supposed to be a S/360 compatible small business machine but wasn't because Rochester said that it was not price competitive to use that architecture. The S/3 was a major success, and nobody can argue with success; however, one can set up a task force. So, IBM did -- my buddy Bill Vermilion was one of the members. The task force finding was that Rochester had knowingly lied -- that a S/360 compatible machine was fully price competitive. As a result, IBM Rochester became a "sort of" member of the IBM community post 1970. They were not trusted and received little direction, but as long as they produced outstanding ROI, they could use the IBM logo. IBM is not an easy organization to understand.
The 5100 was not a big success as IBM was adamantly opposed to killing the goose that laid the golden egg. It was a single user microcomputer designed for scientists and engineers to use APL, and only APL. It emulated a S/360 running APL interpretively, and, as a result, was blindingly slow. Mission accomplished. However, it was a nice machine for running "Breakout".
The S/32 was the commercial analog of the 5100, though a totally different machine hardware and software wise. It created a lot of excitement but was not successful. It was on the S/32 that Glenn made his name as a developer. Previously, in IBM Boca, he was an ad-tech manager known for his eccentric brilliance. All of the system programming was done by him and about 40 people who reported to him.
The S/34 was the follow-on to the S/32 and was very successful (less than 200k copies, but good for its day). Pacific, the S/38, was originally supposed to be the successor to the S/3 and to the S/32/34 but got kissed by a frog (John Opel) and turned into FS. And became later, and later, and later. So, the S/36 came out as a stopgap, an outstanding stopgap (I think about 700k copies).
It is interesting to note that none of the machines described above is internally compatible with another. Whatever Rochester's foibles, they did good work – and were consistently inconsistent.
Trailer: 'The Golden Compass'
Gonzales thanks Bush 
