Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 11:46:01 11/16/98
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On November 16, 1998 at 12:42:33, Jay Rinde wrote: >Well, after I read Mr. Hyatt's comments about the stock market and IBM's chess >victory over Kasparov, I decided to search the internet to see what I could >find. I used such words as (ibm deep blue "stock market") I got more information >than I bargained for. When people or organizations mention the subject, they >most agree that IBM made a PR and financial killing. Some sources go into this >much more than others and talk about the sales of the equipment associated with >the event. Since this information is rather easy to find (but time consuming in >going over it all)I would think anyone interest could look it up. I also would >think that the statements "PR and financial" killing would somehow affect the >stock market. Anyway, anyone interested should take a look. I found Alta Vista >had quite a bit, even though other engines did well. there are even better things to look at, assuming you have a fast connection and can stand getting color graphics sent to you. However, the "financial killing" is hyperbole. What they got was tons of free publicity, in places they wouldn't have been seen normally. IE when Cray was sponsoring me yearly, I was invited up to Cray for a conference they were holding, to give a chess demo. While up there and sitting at a table with the VP for marketing and a few others, someone walked up and asked "hey, why do you guys bother with this chess stuff? It is interesting, but it doesn't sell supercomputers." The VP offered a couple of explanations. First the easy one was "this guy (referring to me) crashes our multiprocessing operating system more than everyone else put together... he works with the unicos development guys, the fortran and C compiler guys, and the library guys, all the time, to fix bugs in the multiprocessing libraries. We get a lot of very good "beta-testing" out of him. But that's not the main reason... <pause while the VP left the room>... Here, look at this, and he drops this *huge* scrapbook on the table, about a foot thick. The visitor asked "what is that?" The VP said these are articles clipped from the Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, Byte, PC magazine, US news, every major newspaper in the world, all talking about "Cray Blitz did this, Cray Blitz beat Belle and is new world champion, Cray Blitz uses parallel processing to blow other supercomputers away, and so forth... how much would it have cost us to get this kind of publicity? and how much *did* it cost us? A few hours on one of our supercomputers? chickenfeed... It gave me a whole new perspective on marketing. The VP said "when I got on a flight from Minneapolis to New York, and pulled out a copy of "Flight Magazine" and found "Cray Supercomputer beats CDC Rival in computer chess," I *knew* I had made the right decision to support CB." Whether that led to more sales is anybody's guess. Whether DB led to any more sales or not is also a guess. But it certainly added some valuable PR. Not that IBM really has an unknown name... I mean punched cards have always been called "IBM cards" everywhere I've seen 'em... :) > >On November 16, 1998 at 04:24:16, Amir Ban wrote: > >>On November 15, 1998 at 21:27:27, Robert Hyatt wrote: >> >>> ... I ignored the stock business as that was silly but not >>>insulting in any way. >> >> >>Ever since Bruce commented on this stock issue I dropped it because it has no >>real importance, but I'm getting fed up with being flamed over this. >> >>As a point of fact, it's perfectly true that IBM stock rose 20% (actually more) >>in the timeframe of May 97. This rise was significantly over the S&P 500 index. >>No, it's not possible to prove that this is a result of the match, just as it's >>not possible to prove that any stock movement up or down is related to any >>concrete event. But: Yes, it is quite likely that the match affected stock >>prices, and companies stock has been known to move more than 20% in response to >>smaller events than gigantic media exposure of a success story. Such a rise, by >>the way, only indicates a public expectation of a 20% gain in future >>profitability (not revenue, Bruce), which may be wrong, but public expectations >>often are. >> >>To say that the rise is a result of the match is perhaps jumping to conclusions. >>To state as proven that it is not is foolish and ignorant. >> >>Sometime when the CCC charter will be revised I propose an item that says Bob >>can only post on topics he understands and bothered to check the facts. >> >>Amir
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