<company> (IBM) The best known American computer manufacturer,
	founded by Thomas J. Watson (born 1874-02-17), known as "Big
	Blue" after the colour of its logo.  IBM makes everything from
	{mainframes} to {personal computers} (PCs) and has been
	immensely successful in selling them, chiefly to business.  It
	has often been said that "Nobody has ever been sacked for
	buying IBM".

	The {IBM PC} in its various versions has been so successful
	that unqualified reference to a "PC" almost certainly means a
	PC from IBM, or one of the many brands of {clone} produced by
	other manufacturers to cash in on IBM's original success.

	Alternative expansions of "IBM" such as Inferior But
	Marketable; It's Better Manually; Insidious Black Magic; It's
	Been Malfunctioning; Incontinent Bowel Movement, illustrate
	the considerable antipathy most hackers have long felt toward
	the "industry leader" (see {fear and loathing}).

	Quarterly sales $15351M, profits $689M (Aug 1994).

	{Home (http://www.ibm.com/)}.

	(1999-04-07)

<language, compiler> (JDK) A free {Sun Microsystems} product
	which provides the {environment} required for programming in
	{Java}.  The JDK is available for a variety of {platforms},
	but most notably {Sun Solaris} and {Microsoft Windows}.

	{Home (http://java.sun.com/products/jdk/1.1/index.html)}.

	[Version?]

	(1997-09-04)

<data> A data structure holding many values, possibly of
	different types, which is usually accessed sequentially,
	working from the head to the end of the tail - an "ordered
	list".  This contrasts with a (one-dimensional) {array}, any
	element of which can be accessed equally quickly.

	Lists are often stored using a cell and pointer arrangement
	where each value is stored in a cell along with an associated
	pointer to the next cell.  A special pointer, e.g. zero, marks
	the end of the list.  This is known as a (singly) "linked
	list".  A doubly linked list has pointers from each cell to
	both next and previous cells.

	An unordered list is a {set}.

	(1998-11-12)

<software> Instructions for a computer in some programming
	language, often {machine language}.  The word "code" is often
	used to distinguish instructions from {data} (e.g. "The code
	is marked 'read-only'") whereas "{software}" is used in
	contrast with "{hardware}" and may consist of more than just
	code.

	(2000-04-08)