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.
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