On 6/8/2011 5:14 PM, Francois Labreque wrote:

>>>>> Why would it be a surprise that IBM is more profitable than Apple?
>>>>
>>>> Because, last I heard, the company was in severe financial trouble and
>>>> was close to being liquidated. To go from that to being one of the most
>>>> profitable companies on Earth is a pretty big turn-around.
>>>
>>> "Last you heard" was in the 80s, and you heard wrong.
>>
>> OK, fair enough. But given that they were once a big name that everybody
>> knew and talked about, and now nobody ever mentions their name, it's not
>> surprising that I got the impression that they weren't doing so well.
>
> They're still a pretty big name. Just because you haven't heard from
> them doesn't mean no one has. You've heard of Thinkpad latops, haven't
> you? They spun off that division 5 years ago because, while it was
> profitable, it wasn't profitable enough... This means their server
> divisions, application divisions, as well as their service offerings
> were even more succesful.
>
> Every single developped country's government uses IBM mainframes.
> Every single bank in the world still uses IBM mainframes.
> Every single insurance compnay in the world still uses IBM mainframes.
> Every single airline in the world still uses IBM mainframes.
> Most of the Fortune 1000 companies have IBM mainframes (Google is
> probably one of the very few exceptions)
>
> Most of the above will have hundreds of P-Series (AIX) servers, AS/400s,
> And intel-based servers made by IBM. Not to mention use various Tivoli
> monitoring tools, Websphere applications platforms, and in many case,
> Lotus Notes for internal e-mail.
>
> Also, watch this, when you have 15 minutes of spare time.
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39jtNUGgmd4
>
The reason for that is that its often cheaper to keep running 
mainframes, than go to blade servers. Mind, blades are IBM too, in some 
cases, so.. lol But, in general, too much software, archaic file 
systems, no easy means to convert, even if you can run the application 
on a new system, etc.

>>
>>> Survived what? The Exxon Valdez disaster was a mere footnote in their
>>> history.
>>
>> One of the worst, most infamous ecological catastrophes in human
>> history, and it's a "mere footnote"?? How did it not end their
>> existence? How did they not get sued off the face of creation?
>>
>
> You've heard of appeals courts? Exxon has yet to pay a single cent of
> what they were fined, and even when they finally do, it will not harm
> them in the long run. Their fine has been capped at $507M, which is
> roughly their profits for one week (they made $30B in profits last year).
>
> Oh, and by the way, the Bhopal disaster hadn't killed Union Carbide
> before they were bought out by Dow Chemicals, and last summer's
> Deepwater Horizon tragedy will not kill BP, either. It's sad, but it's
> the truth.
>
Gee, and it couldn't be because of the vast number of Rethuglicans 
trying their damnedest to a) stop them paying what they **offered** to 
pay themselves, never mind, b) pay more, instead of being left free and 
clear by the government.

The thing that pisses me off though is the morons, like some at work, 
who fail to grasp that the "small companies" in the US that actually do 
their own refining (in theory), and don't funnel all their oil through 
foreign systems first (this is legal, under the agreements we have to do 
precisely that?), provide a stupidly small amount of the oil in the 
country (or certainly a stupidly small amount), and haven't the 
equipment, personnel, or the financial resources, even with billions in 
government help, which they don't currently get, unlike the 
multi-nationals, to have a hope in hell of making up the other 90% 
(yeah, made up number), if we "drilled more". Oh, and that is without 
even mentioning that 90% of the "prime" oil production areas are 
licensed to/owned by, the multinationals, so you would have to divest 
them of those assets, to give them to the small US companies. Oh, yeah, 
and the even more stupid fact that all those multi-nationals, and really 
big ones, are **sitting on** thousands of unused licenses, even as they 
whine about needing more of them, so they can drill more wells.

Its like claiming that house hold farmers, with less than 10 square feet 
of land, can "replace" 500 acre farm lands, if those same farmers where 
busy only planting 20 acres, sitting on the rest, and whining that they 
didn't have 1,000 acres.

Its completely mad, and the people that believe we can just drill more, 
to fix the problem, are complete morons. The first thing we would have 
to do, before anything else, is build more refineries, so we are not 
being overcharged for fuel, because they have to retool every bloody 3 
months to "change which sort they make". Second, throw out all non-US 
drilling companies. Finally, stop selling oil to the outside markets *at 
all*, by which point we might be self sufficient, for at least until we 
end up having to squeeze it out of the ground, like someone getting the 
last drop of water from a damn sponge, while the foreign sources are 
still able to scoop the shit up in buckets, because they can't keep it 
from leaking out of the damn ground, without even drilling for it.

We need to reduce its use to shit where we have no other options, not 
sell 50 more licenses to companies that are not using the ones they 
have, and drill more holes in the ground, so that we are producing 2 
times almost nothing from *purely* local companies, instead of merely 
almost nothing.

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