bloom america

Chapter 251 The quagmire of system/360

"Okay, just put it over there."

Old White directed the servants to place the new models in his showroom.

It was a new set of corsets, and Old White was very satisfied.

But it is a pity that there are fewer and fewer women wearing corsets nowadays.

Excessive restraint of the body will deform the ribs and squeeze the space in the intestines and stomach. After hundreds of years of being restrained by corsets, women finally chose the latter between beauty and survival.

Moreover, the "miniskirt**" of "Angel Fashion Design Company" - as it was called in the newspaper - completely shattered people's traditional concepts.

From ancient whalebone corsets to later cloth corsets, as well as rare corsets like De Melo's, he has collected them all.

In the words of 50 years later, it is not an exaggeration to say that Old White was a "corset man."

"Mr. White, your phone number."

While Old White was looking at these corsets affectionately, a phone call came over.

"What...Soviet?"

Old White frowned after hearing the report.

It seems... things seem to be in some trouble.

As one of the directors of United Technologies Corporation UTC, Old White is still very concerned about the company's affairs.

Like other arms dealers, UTC also formed a mercenary group. This mercenary group acted as a logistics supply corps during the Vietnam War, greatly saving the US military's manpower, and the US military had more time to deal with the Vietnamese.

, and the arms dealers made money. There is nothing more outrageous than this.

But after making money, Old White had some other ideas.

Or not just Old White, but also other figures on the board of directors, and even other companies.

Soon, they set their sights on Africa.

Africa has just broken away from European colonial rule, and many countries have just gained independence. Many countries are not stable internally. There are also constant conflicts among various tribes, and wars often break out.

To make matters worse, because of the war in the Middle East in the past few months, Europe's attention has almost completely turned away from Africa. At this time, the situation in Africa has become even more chaotic.

At this time, these smart capitalists decided to take advantage of the situation and entered Africa.

These arms dealers became the protagonists of the mercenary camp, and Catherine's Umbrella Company became a foil. Umbrella also went to Africa, but did not intervene in the previous wars of the tribes, but became a soy sauce (diamond) player.

.

Just when everyone thought they could make a lot of money, a headache happened, and that was the Soviet Union.

The intervention of the Soviet Union forced these arms dealers to become cautious.

If Soviet spies had infiltrated the country, or if they had carried out two or three assassinations, it would have been a tragedy.

Old White left home in a hurry, and then went to the company to attend the board of directors...

…

In mid-October, Microsoft's first operating system for IBM began to go on the market.

This system is named phoenix-linux system.

Catherine is very satisfied with this system.

However, this system has also caused shock in the industry.

This is a killer application with all kinds of functions. For mainframes, this is undoubtedly a perfect program to unleash their full power.

Moreover, with the Microsoft II computer, it can also manage the mainframe more conveniently. I have to say that the combination of these two products is simply perfect.

As a result, the sales of IBM's 360 mainframe computer rose for a time, and the stock price also soared.

But gradually, some people began to feel uncomfortable.

——How can the performance of this 360 be so bad?

After using Catherine's phoenix-linux system, it does feel much more convenient.

What phoenix-linux emphasizes is "automation" and "simplification." For users, there are very few things they need to do, just control the machine.

When they first tried it, everyone thought that such a machine was very good. But as they used it, people began to become dissatisfied - the speed of the 360 ​​computer was too slow, and it would take them half a day to board the machine for just one command.

In fact, even if it takes half a day to climb, they can still save a lot of time compared to the original time. But the problem is that for a person, it takes ten minutes to concentrate on work compared to five minutes of waiting.

, which one is more unbearable?

Obviously, it's the latter.

So people were dissatisfied.

As a result, IBM's reputation became worse and worse. On the contrary, Catherine's products received unanimous praise.

For Catherine, this was good news, but for Xiao Watson, the news was not that comfortable.

360 computer performance is insufficient

Even its upgraded version 370 can hardly be said to save enterprises a lot of time.

Can we only develop new machines?

Xiao Watson was wondering.

But there is another problem. The other party has put restrictions in the program. These restrictions allow this software to only run on 360. If you develop new software... you must know that the current code is copyrighted.

The software is written in C language, so if Xiao Watson uses it casually, it will be an infringement.

It was impossible for Xiao Watson to make such a mistake. He even suspected that the other party did this just to dig a hole for him to jump into.

However, Xiao Watson still revealed news about the development of a new mainframe to the outside world.

A new generation of machines is necessary. This is also the company's development strategy. Xiao Watson decided to remain unchanged in response to changes and see what the other party is planning to do...

Although there is such not-so-good news, in addition, there is another news that makes Xiao Watson a lot happy - the research and development of IBM's personal computer has entered the final stage.

Because of time constraints, IBM's computer CPUs were ordered from Fairchild rather than developed by them themselves. Some other equipment was also customized from third-party manufacturers.

IBM adopted a completely different architecture from Microsoft's Type II computer, which IBM called PC-S.

Apple is now in the spotlight in the United States. If IBM rushes forward rashly and gets entangled with the other party, even if IBM can win, the price it pays will be too high.

So this PC-S is aimed at Japan.

Although hardware problems are easy to solve, for now, there is no easy-to-use operating system on the market, so the company must develop it as soon as possible. As long as this aspect of the work is completed, then oneself

The product can be launched on the market.

Early advertisements had already begun to be launched in Japan at this time. IBM was a behemoth and had absolutely no rivals in Japan.

Worry and expectation are entangled in Xiao Watson's heart...

Catherine had no idea what Xiao Watson was thinking at the moment. At this time, Catherine was playing the Age of Discovery game in the office.

The game is now more complete than it was a few months ago.

Although the current Japanese artists are not as strong as those in the 1980s, they are still very powerful. Although this is a game with only è, under the leadership of Aniya, they cleverly used various color combinations to create

Various terrains including forests, sand, ice fields, oceans, etc.

In this beta version of "The Age of Discovery", there are already complete plots for the two characters.

Originally, Catherine also considered adding a 2D anime-style cutscene, but due to technical reasons, the capacity is only a maximum of 70mb, which cannot store a long animation scene, so Catherine finally gave up.

The next generation of optical drives will be 210mb capacity optical disc devices.

At least until this time, the application of your own cutscenes will be possible.

"Well, that's really good."

Catherine smiled and closed the game.

Since the last time she let Lyreira have a massage, Catherine has let Lyreira come a few more times.

After practicing this kind of massage on your own, you will feel very relaxed and comfortable.

"Ms. Edson, the operating system we developed for IBM has been launched." Olson reported to Catherine, "The sales volume is very good."

"Well, this is really good news...what is IBM's reaction?" Catherine asked.

"So far they have not expressed any opinions on our products. But the sales of IBM mainframes suddenly increased by more than 30%. I think this should be because of our products. This is not good news."

Olson somewhat disagreed with Catherine's idea.

"Trust my judgment, Olson."

Catherine smiled.

"Yes, this is very good news for Microsoft, but it harms the overall interests of our company. I am worried that IBM can develop some software with the same functions as our software. In this case,

The advantages of our operating system will disappear. Although the phoenix-linux system we released can be said to be a killer application and has high value for 360 control, IBM can also imitate our products.

…”

"Yes, but the copyrights and patents are ours, and there is no way IBM can catch up." Catherine gave Olson a "reassuring" look: "Even if they develop these software, it will not matter to us.

Any questions.”

Even if they do it, so what?

The performance of 360 will still not be sufficient. If 360 loses IBM, they will also lose one of their largest financial resources.

At this time, IBM's new machine plan has just begun, but Catherine's company has already begun research and development of a new generation of supercomputers/mainframes. If there are no accidents, the company will definitely be able to launch new products first, and at this time

, IBM's gap was filled by itself.

And at that time, there was nothing going on with IBM...