Sunday, July 22, 2007

Internet Crash ?

Check out this video on Youtube. It's hilarious :)

Sunday, July 15, 2007

IBM branded macine guns?

Wikipedia at it again. It's strange how you come across such interesting trivia ,

This article on Wikipedia

In particular, this piece looks the most interesting to me.
After America entered World War II, IBM played an active role in the U.S. war effort. According to the IBM archive website:

When World War II began, all IBM facilities were placed at the disposal of the U.S. government. IBM's product line expanded to include bombsights, rifles and engine parts – in all, more than three dozen major ordnance items. Thomas Watson, Sr., set a nominal one percent profit on those products and used the money to establish a fund for widows and orphans of IBM war casualties.[5]

In particular, IBM manufactured the Browning Automatic Rifle and the M1 Carbine. Allied military forces widely utilized IBM's tabulating equipment for military accounting, logistics, and other war-related purposes.


In fact,some time back there was an interesting discussion as to how most of the things related to the development of the internet were funded and supported by defence bodies, as the sole aim of them was to use them to improve their strength on the military side. I wonder sometimes what would have happened if they had used the same money for similar purposes minus the war. I guess it could have been both ways, maybe we would have had more peaceful results out of these things, maybe we would have never had these things :)

Among other news, saw the Indian Ocean concert at Hayward yesterday...It was too good.