18 lines
2.8 KiB
HTML
18 lines
2.8 KiB
HTML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" standalone="no"?>
|
||
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><title>dinosaurs mating</title><link rel="stylesheet" href="../../jargon.css" type="text/css"/><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.61.0"/><link rel="home" href="../index.html" title="The Jargon File"/><link rel="up" href="../D.html" title="D"/><link rel="previous" href="dinosaur-pen.html" title="dinosaur pen"/><link rel="next" href="dirtball.html" title="dirtball"/></head><body><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">dinosaurs mating</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="dinosaur-pen.html">Prev</a> </td><th width="60%" align="center">D</th><td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="dirtball.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr/></div><dt><a id="dinosaurs-mating"/><dt xmlns="" id="dinosaurs-mating"><b>dinosaurs mating</b>: <span xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" class="grammar">n.</span></dt></dt><dd><p> Said to occur when yet another <a href="../B/big-iron.html"><i class="glossterm">big iron</i></a>
|
||
merger or buyout occurs; originally reflected a perception by hackers that
|
||
these signal another stage in the long, slow dying of the
|
||
<a href="../M/mainframe.html"><i class="glossterm">mainframe</i></a> industry. In the mainframe industry's
|
||
glory days of the 1960s, it was ‘IBM and the Seven Dwarfs’:
|
||
Burroughs, Control Data, General Electric, Honeywell, NCR, RCA, and Univac.
|
||
RCA and GE sold out early, and it was ‘IBM and the Bunch’
|
||
(Burroughs, Univac, NCR, Control Data, and Honeywell) for a while.
|
||
Honeywell was bought out by Bull; Burroughs merged with Univac to form
|
||
Unisys (in 1984 — this was when the phrase <span class="firstterm">dinosaurs mating</span> was coined); and in 1991
|
||
AT&T absorbed NCR (but spat it back out a few years later). Control
|
||
Data still exists but is no longer in the mainframe business. In similar
|
||
wave of dinosaur-matings as the PC business began to consolidate after
|
||
1995, Digital Equipment was bought by Compaq which was bought by
|
||
Hewlett-Packard. More such earth-shaking unions of doomed giants seem
|
||
inevitable.</p></dd><div class="navfooter"><hr/><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="dinosaur-pen.html">Prev</a> </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="../D.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="dirtball.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">dinosaur pen </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="../index.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> dirtball</td></tr></table></div></body></html>
|