Mike:
Interesting that you bring that up. I was working at the IBM
Poughkeepsie lab at the time and was charged with comparing Fujitsu
documentation with the IBM equivalent manuals. I don't recall which
specific manuals those were, but I do remember that the English version
seemed to be written by a non-English speaking person (at least for a
first language), but that the contents of the paragraphs appeared in the
same order as our (IBM) manuals. Looked like a really poor example of
plagiarism. As you say, there were a lot of good laughs and I wish I too
had saved some of those manuals. I don't recall what came from the
results of our study (probably some ineffective lawsuits), as I soon got
reassigned to something more interesting, like the design of Data In
Virtual.
Mike Myers
Mentor Services Corporation
On 02/23/2017 09:43 AM, Mike Cairns wrote:One of the funniest things I
recall was attempting to understand the documentation. I wish I had kept
some of the old manuals just for a laugh. Apparently they had been
translated from the IBM documentation into Japanese, and then translated
back into English. They were both awful, difficult to read and
understand, and sometimes very funny in the poorly translated phrases
that appeared regularly.
I also recall that there was a serious dispute between my then employer and
IBM, which led to the buying of Fujistu at the time. IBM tried to get the
decision reversed. The story I heard was that the local head of IBM took the
government minister responsible for the organisation out for a round of golf
together... This may have been just be a rumour though, the people involved
are long ago retired.
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