
Viral Video: IBM Turns 100 - bjonathan
http://kara.allthingsd.com/20110201/viral-video-happy-100th-birthday-to-ibm/?mod=tweet
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wardrox
One of the strongest memories I have regarding IBM is from the United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum. I visited it on a school trip to Washington years
ago, I took with me quite a few very strong memories, and one, was of a
machine used by the Germans to help produce the Jewish Registry. It was sat
behind some glass, with the easy to recognise IBM logo stamped proudly in the
corner.

As I say it was a fair few years ago and I was quite young, but it made me
start to realise that business has basically no morals. It's probably shaped
the way I view business today. Not super dramatically, don't get me wrong, but
this video reminded me of that.

You can Google for IBMs involvement with the holocaust, it's quite
interesting.

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zoomzoom
What's amazing is that it was not just IBM - the germans got oil from Standard
Oil, their tanks were made by Opal (a GM subsidiary), and in many other ways
the German war effort was financed and enabled by "Allied" conglomerates.

Makes one wonder about the ways we are helping our enemies today...

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newt
_their tanks were made by Opal (a GM subsidiary)_

I came here to check that, but you seem to be right - see the wikipedia
article on _Opel_ (note correct spelling)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opel> _The company ... has been a wholly owned
subsidiary of General Motors Company since 1929._

 _Makes one wonder about the ways we are helping our enemies today_

You don't have to wonder - google "US arms sales" or "us arms sales to
dictators".

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Loic
This video is really, really nice. A must look. What is really incredible is
that the "Think" motto of IBM is nearly as old as the company and still very
up-to-date. Very few people know how involved is IBM in research in "hard"
sciences. This video is a good reminder (As a kid I was lucky to travel around
the world following my mother who did a lot of collaboration with IBM in the
field of Silicium/Germanium electronics, so I am biased).

The point I liked a lot, especially because quite controversial, a little kid
telling: "Patents, patents, patents, ..." (near the year 2000).

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thret
Great video, enjoyed it a lot.

At 11:53, A man says: "I've discovered a way to build curiosity into a
system". Does anyone know who he is and what he means by that?

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osipov
that's Jeff Jonas: <http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/>

i have no idea what he is talking about

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reirob
For me ThinkPad is the product that represents IBM best to public - the
"Think" in the logo, the feeling at the fingertips when you type, the timeless
design, the trackpoint. There was also OS/2 but IBM blew it up badly.

Now that ThinkPad belongs to Lenovo I am wondering if IBM will ever come up
with a product used by masses? Because other than this IBM is not visible any
more to end users.

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geuis
Even though the video is focused on IBM, it very much puts into perspective
the sheer amount of progress that has been made in computation in 100 years.
Its amazing.

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dantle
As it turns out, a history of IBM is basically the history of computers. Ever
hear the phrase "everything thats worth inventing already has been at IBM?"
They created RISC and out-of-order, superscalar processing, relational
databases, TCM, magnetic hard discs, DRAM, etc. You can bet there's a lot that
didn't make it into that video.

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Swizec
Wait, did I hear that correctly. They went from 5 cofounders to 1300 employees
_in a year_!?

This ... this makes me feel really bad about my entrepreneurial efforts.

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smackfu
There is no outsourcing, and everything is done by clerks and secretaries.
Every real employee probably has 5 or more support folks behind them.

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snguyen
Too bad they didn't talk about IBM's first invention: the cheese cutter.

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what-to-do
Way too long, must have been made by a 60 years old.

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abdd0e77
Marketing blather. IBM is irrelevant unless you're an old business. Also, I
was disappointed they didn't bring up the fact that Watson himself met with
Hitler in order to help him automate the Holocaust.

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callumjones
Do you call Medical research old business?

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abdd0e77
Grandfathered in so to speak.

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callumjones
How are they grandfathered in? Who else is going to solve medical research
that isn't a big company like IBM?

Do you expect Medical research to be all hip n cool and use Heroku? Or should
they choose IBM for their research into solving complex problems with their
custom software and their custom blades?

