Xref: utzoo misc.invest:1861 comp.misc:2514 comp.lang.lisp:914 comp.ai:1874 comp.sys.xerox:220 Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ukma!gatech!bbn!bbn.com!pineapple.bbn.com!barr From: barr@pineapple.bbn.com (Hunter Barr) Newsgroups: misc.invest,comp.misc,comp.lang.lisp,comp.ai,comp.sys.xerox Subject: Re: Symbolics stock Message-ID: <870@papaya.bbn.com> Date: 1 Jun 88 22:21:46 GMT References: <57@daitc.ARPA> <33064@linus.UUCP> <692@esl.UUCP> Sender: news@bbn.com Distribution: na Lines: 46 In article <692@esl.UUCP> ssh@esl.UUCP (Sam) writes: >->marsh@mbunix (Ralph Marshall) sez ->I'm no investment expert, but it looks to me like you have Symbolics confused with LMI. LMI hung on at the edge of bankruptcy for a very long time, whereas Symbolics seems to gave plenty of cash to see them through this development cycle and into the next one. All the indications are that the coming batch of hardware and software is very solid. Symbolics is taking exactly the right steps to get out of the "box" business, by putting their effort into the Ivory chip and their software development. As someone who uses Symbolics Lisp Machines regularly (as well as VAXen, SUN workstations, and other machines), I can tell you that their latest release of software (Genera 7.2) shows that they are responsive to the demands of the market: It contains many popular improvements and enhancements. It was delivered on time. It marks the return of the "source included" policy, with a very reasonable price. It actually contains more of the source than 7.1 even without the fee! I don't have enough money to outfit my VAX or SUN like a Lispm; the memory, software, and OS source-code licenses are far too expensive. Moreover, it is obviously going to be a couple of years until the development tools on these machines catch up to where Lispms are now. (I am betting on Saber C, but maybe SUN's SPE will surprise us.) If I did have that much money, I would buy more Symbolics stock. I think the only way they are going out of business is if they are bought by Sony, or DEC, or a very big defense contractor. In almost every large project on which I've worked, there has been some component which was best implemented on Symbolics machines, usually for its development environment, but sometimes for the unique hardware itself. I will continue to recommend them where they are the best solution, which I expect to be often. ______ HUNTER