Conference 7.286::digital

    This should be great to start the rumor mill churning again...
    just as the dust seemed to be settling a little bit.  I wish
    we could just give it a rest for a while.

> This should be great to start the rumor mill churning again...
> just as the dust seemed to be settling a little bit.  I wish
> we could just give it a rest for a while.

  I think it's important to know what people are saying about us,
  especially in highly-visible places like the goosip column in
  "PC Week".

  And, honestly (and I'll bet some folks already guessed this), I
  couldn't resist the fact that the references were all to "DEC".

                                   Atlant

    Don't get me wrong, I'm not a prude with blinders on.
    I agree it's good to be informed and sharing articles
    on DIGITAL is good.  
    
    All the resulting speculation about this, that, and the
    other gets to me sometimes, and can cause unnecessary
    "panic" in some.  That's all.

    Have you seen the cartoon in the 5-15 issue of Computerworld? (Sorry 
    don't know the page number).
    
    Shows a high speed car charging down the road squeeling to the left
    following a road sign labelled "NT" (with arrow to the left) and car
    knocking over a person labelled "UNIX" and license plate reads "DEC"
    and bumpersticker says "I (heart) Microsoft"
    
    Being on the NT side, I Love it!
    
    ken b.
    seattle
    

    
    
    
     NOStradamus predicts,
    
    1. IBM launches takover for DEC, DEC stock rises.
    2. Microsoft launches white knight move because of our solid
       relationship.
    3. Aliens land on the Sun, Scott McNeally returns home.
    4. Microsoft ships windows 95, exchange, Office 95, the msmail editor
       all in the correct sequence.
    5. Cray announces an MPP system based on the Z80
    6. Intel announces commencement of development of Massively Gargantuanly 
       Long Instruction Word Chip - "will run PA Risc, '486 and Z80 code in
       one package"
    7. Digital advertises software
    8. HP tells the truth in a sales situation
    9. Lotus Notes ships on Alpha
    10.IBM abandons massive investment in PowerPC for the renewed Z80
       effort, "someone from Digital phoned us and made a lot of sense but
       we'd never heard of alpha so we went with something with some software
       behind it!"
    11.Digital changes name of ALL-IN-1 to All_in-Brawl, sues anyone for
       misusing the tradebark.
    12.Solaris code line count finally outnumbers bug count.
    13. DDB-who-needs-em sued by epileptics association of America for
       Digital TV ads.
    14. Aliens abducted by Steve Jobs, Next ends up with Mcneally as CEO.
    15. Digital sued by reformed LSD addicts of America for Digital TV ads
    16. The schizophrenia association is considering its position, and
    another one.
    17. X-FILE opened on Silicon Graphics, "not drawn by a carbon-based
    lifeform". Steve Jobs disappears.
    18. Wang and DG take over Digital, then instantly file for Chapter 11
    19. Sun agrees with an OSF technology decision.
    20. Dave Cutler receives an opportunity to develop an exciting new
        32 bit operating system, leaves Microsoft.
    21. AT&T announce plans for an exciting new 32 bit operating system
    22. Digital receives bulk order for "VMS internals & Data Structures"
        from a telephone company.
    23. DGtal-twang, the reformed conglomeration of computer midgets, exits
        chapter 11, agrees that a turkey farm would be a good first investment.
    24. Next Corp. gives up after relentless pressure from competitors, 
        agrees to try and find Steve Jobs.
    25. Apple release a mouse with more than one button
    26. Entire Solaris  development team replaced by Linus Torvalds.
    27. Hell freezes over
    28. Bill Gates gives a competitor an inch

    Nostradamus predicts,

    1. HP calls up IBM and Digital, begging to embrace Alpha and PowerPC and
       Digital Unix and OpenVMS, after IBM and Digital cut the Alpha/PowerPC
       deal that makes both chips/systems open industry standards, and lower
       entry-level Alphastation prices to high-end-PC pricing levels.

    2. Digital's Alpha sales go through the roof overnight in an obvious way
       in workstations (much cheaper version of popular product), and a less
       obvious way in enterprise systems (IBM + Digital customers = a larger
       market, and IBM and Digital can both go after other vendors' customers
       with a sales pitch of open standards and investment protection).

    3. Compaq, Dell, and Gateway offer to sell Windows NT systems running on
       high-end-PC-priced AlphaStations.  (With a $7K Alpha "PC" dropping to
       a $4K Personal AlphaStation which has great appeal to the Unix market
       as well as to the Windows NT market, why not?  If Windows NT flops,
       you can always change your ads a little and package a $100-$300 copy
       of Digital Unix with your Alpha inventory in order to move it quickly.)

    4. CompUSA starts carrying Windows-NT-based AlphaStations for workstation
       buyers, in Digital, Compaq, and/or Dell flavors.

    5. Digital makes OpenVMS and Digital Unix shrinkwrap products, and starts
       negotations to merge NeXTstep with Digital Unix to obtain a desktop-to-
       datacenter Unix product that will sweep the Unix world.

    6. Windows NT/Alpha sales take off, making Bill Gates happier and richer.

    7. Software vendors port more shrinkwrap to Alpha/Windows NT, helping to
       overcome the limitations of slow Intel 286 emulation.  Digital sells
       more computers because of the availability of the new shrinkwrap.
       This shrinkwrap runs on our high-end, $tens-of-thousands-of-dollars
       workstations as well as on our PC-priced commodity workstations, or
       can as soon as we make them Windows-NT-compatible.

    8. Digital overcomes its aversion to the Macintosh and supplies Lechmere,
       Computer Town, and Computer City with brand-name Power Macintosh clones,
       as part of its deal to support IBM's PowerPC alliance.

    9. Digital discovers that you can sell Intel PCs, AlphaStations, and Macs
       at the same time, just as many computer stores sell both Intel PCs and
       Macs without difficulty to their own profit.  It also discovers the
       great manufacturing similarity between PCs, Macs, and commodity Alphas,
       and a formula for happy relations between the PC group and workstation
       groups in light of their new, overlapping functions.

   10. Digital embraces the above changes willingly because it sees how easy
       they would be relative to the huge profits to be obtained from them.

   11. IBM embraces the above changes willingly because Bob Palmer, myself,
       and other people at Digital convince them.  (And no, Bob Palmer does
       not know me, and I have no inside knowledge of his plans, which makes
       this particular prediction completely out of the blue!  I have yet to
       reach or convince him; for all I know, he doesn't like my ideas.  But
       I'm optimistic.)

   12. Nobody in Digital takes this seriously at first.    :-)

                             <Scarcity of electricity>
    
    
    Jan.  ;^)

When the IBM/Lotus thing was first announced, one thoght I had was: Who 
would we have to merge with to be a company that now resembles IBM?

Kinda interesting....

    r.e .9
    
    Q: Who would we have to merge with to be a company that resembles IBM?
    A: IBM
    
    Oh, and I agree, Newton's was funnier. But how can anyone with that
    name ever promote macintoshes?
    

      <<< Note 3944.10 by BIGUN::BAKER "Digital IS a software Company" >>>
       Oh, and I agree, Newton's was funnier. But how can anyone with that
       name ever promote macintoshes?
    


Indeed.  The future doesn't have much to do with large vacuum tubes on
desktops.

Eirikur