dinosaurs mating 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 in 1991 AT&T absorbed NCR
(but spat it back out a few years later). Control Data still
exists but is no longer in the mainframe business. More such
earth-shaking unions of doomed giants seem inevitable.