Dinosaurs Mating
/dī-nə-ˌsȯrs mātiŋ/
n. Said to occur when yet another big iron
merger or buyout occurs; reflects a perception by hackers that
these signal another stage in the long, slow dying of the
{mainframe} industry. In its glory days of the 1960s, it was
'IBM and the Seven Dwarves': Burroughs, Control Data, General
Electric, Honeywell, NCR, RCA, and Univac. RCA and GE sold out
early, and it was 'IBM and the Bunch' (Burroughs, Univac, NCR,
Control Data, and Honeywell) for a while. Honeywell was bought out
by Bull; Burroughs merged with Univac to form Unisys (in 1984 -- this
was when the phrase 'dinosaurs mating' was coined); and as this is
written AT&T is attempting to recover from a disastrously bad first
6 years in the hardware industry by absorbing NCR. More such
earth-shaking unions of doomed giants seem inevitable.
