> "Q: How many IBM "

A: None, it's a hardware problem. ;-)

...and I've worked for IBM for 27 of those 100 years and must say, it is NOT the company that I joined nor the company that Thomas J. Watson Sr. would have wanted it to become but it's still one of the best companies to work for.

I'm looking forward to attending to the 100th anniversary celebration later today with my peers at IBM Research.

~jr

"Q: How many IBM programmers does it take to change a light bulb?"

A: None, it's a 3nd party service problem or more commonly known as building maintenance department issue. ;-)

IBM may not be the company that Thomas J. Watson Sr. would have wanted it to become but it's still one of the best companies to work for. But Thomas J. Watson Sr. would be impress with the IC research and development it has done and currently doing. The current success in the mainframe and large server tied with software and service is highly successful today in the business world, Watson Sr. would have liked that.

June 16th -- It's me birthday too!

Although I'm a few years younger than the venerable IBM. . . .

Q: How many IBM programmers does it take to change a light bulb?

A: none - all light bulb changing (and supply) is out sourced to india

Happy birthday to IBM and Musicvid!

I remember the days of DOS and the 8088. Then came OS2, which was pretty darn cool for its time . . . unfortunately it was as unstable as Windows ME : ).

Some IBM Famous Computer Quotes and some others.

"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
- Popular Mechanics, 1949

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

"I have travelled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processings is a fad that won't last out the year."
- The editor in charge of business books for Prentice-Hall, 1957

"But what...is it good for?"
- Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
- Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of DEC

Q: How many IBM programmers does it take to change a light bulb?

A: None, because it wasn't burnt out. So the new question is: how many Microsoft programmers do they have to hire in order to find the on/off bit?

Tim

From bigblueblues.wetpaint.com/

Q: How many IBM programmers does it take to change a light bulb?

A: 100. Ten to do it and 90 to write document number GC7500439-0001, Multitasking Incandescent Source System Facility, of which 10% of the pages state only "This page intentionally left blank" and 20% of the definitions are of the form "A ...... consists of sequences of non-blank characters separated by blanks."

"Ten to do it and 90 to write document number GC7500439-0001"Having finished my working career as a mainframe systems programmer, I can say that IBM manuals were the absolute worst at attempting to learn the software (the Redbooks weren't bad). However, they were the absolute best as resolving and configuring systems problems.

Note to Kimberly: I used and liked OS/2, didn't think it was unstable. IMHO, the problems were:

The operating system seemed always incomplete. You had to wait for a future release for each feature; "Presentation Manager" (i.e. graphical interface), "Database Manager", "Communication Manager", etc. Then when the release came, it was bloated - did all things for all people (except for the one feature you wanted - like Ethernet - TCP/IP but it had a great Token Ring - SNA implementation; heh, heh).

btw, there's a great documentary on the Windows-OS/2 battle hosted by Robert X. Cringely (think it was a PBS documentary, but I found it on Netflix).

That said, I loved the command language - REXX.

...Jerry

PS: Mainframe joke,
Q: What's a S0C4 (i.e. a System 0C4 abend code)?
A: To keep your feet warm (chuckle).

hint: pronounce the code rather than spelling it.

Q: How many IBM programmers does it take to change a light bulb?

A: 11, one to unscrew it, one to screw it up, and one to check the redundant binary converter array.

Tim

"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
- Popular Mechanics, 1949

Well, this turned out to be true, didn't it! My laptop definitely weighs less than 1.5 tons.

Q: How many IBM programmers does it take to change a light bulb?

A: The answer can be only 0 or 1

Jerry,

I am with you there...

OS/2 was the BEST! Until the Win95 hype killed it. And REXX!!

Wrote many scripts in REXX, REXX/SQL etc ...

Put in nearly 40 years there (starting with 1401s) and have to agree with JR - it wasn't the company I joined when I left.

Tom

I only had a few months of OS2 and then they took it away and brought Windows (version 3.0 or 3.1 I think?). From what I remember, OS2 was better than the early Windows.