IBM

International Buisness Machines

A multi-national corporation

	This is the JargonFile ^(V4.00) entry for IBM - Next: IBM discount, Prev: I see no X here.
:IBM: /I-B-M/ Inferior But Marketable; Its Better Manually; Insidious Black Magic; Its Been Malfunctioning; Incontinent Bowel Movement; and a near-infinite number of even less complimentary expansions, including International Business Machines. See TLA. These abbreviations illustrate the considerable antipathy most hackers have long felt toward the industry leader (see fear and loathing). What galls hackers about most IBM machines above the PC level isnt so much that they are underpowered and overpriced (though that does count against them), but that the designs are incredibly archaic, crufty, and elephantine ... and you cant fix them -- source code is locked up tight, and programming tools are expensive, hard to find, and bletcherous to use once youve found them. With the release of the Unix-based RIOS family this may have begun to change -- but then, we thought that when the PC-RT came out, too. In the spirit of universal peace and brotherhood, this lexicon now includes a number of entries attributed to IBM; these derive from some rampantly unofficial jargon lists circulated within IBMs own beleaguered hacker underground.
* (text is auto-included via JargonExtension by mutante using jargon with VERSION 4.0.0, 24 JUL 1996* - JargonFile by Eric S. Raymond is in the public domain)*