IBM

dave

I have a soft spot for IBM as the creator of the IBM PC, which in turn led to GW-BASIC and many hours as a kid tinkering. There was something very nice about the typeface and extended ASCII characters of the PC.

Heat death of the universe (Wikipedia) The heat death of the universe (also known as the Big Chill or Big Freeze) is a hypothesis on the ultimate fate of the universe, which suggests the universe will evolve to a state of no thermodynamic free energy, and will therefore be unable to sustain processes that increase entropy. Heat death does not imply any particular absolute temperature; it only requires that temperature differences or other processes may no longer be exploited to perform work. In the language of physics, this is when the universe reaches thermodynamic equilibrium. The Heat Death theory has become the leading theory in the modern age with the fewest unpredictable factors.

A snappy answer when asked about dressing casually at IBM (devblogs.microsoft.com) I noted in the past that Microsoft engineers had trouble fitting into the IBM corporate culture when on temporary assignment at IBM offices in Boca Raton, Florida. In particular, they struggled with so-called “security violations“. I noted that one such category of security violation was “wearing shorts to work.”
A dispute over the TAB key highlights a mismatch between Microsoft and IBM organizational structures (devblogs.microsoft.com) I’ve written in the past about the cultural mismatch between Microsoft and IBM during the collaboration on OS/2, with the Microsofties viewing their IBM colleagues as mired in pointless bureaucracy and the IBM folks viewing Microsofties as undisciplined hackers.