Ibm

International Business Machines Corp. stock took another fal yesterday after the company announced a special board meeting next week, at which analysts believe directors could cut the dividend. Also, Standard & Poor's cast doubt on IBM's ability to maintain a triple-A rating on $6.8 billion in debt. (Article, 19D)

James C. Constable, a retired businessman and World War II veteran, died March 7 of heart failure at his Essex, Conn., home. He was 96. James Cheston Constable, the son of the founder of the Baltimore law firm Wright, Constable & Skeen and a homemaker, was born in Baltimore and raised in Roland Park. One of his ancestors, James Black Groome of Elkton, had been a U.S. senator and was governor of Maryland from 1874 to 1876. Mr. Constable, who was known as Cheston, attended Gilman School and graduated in 1935 from the old Tome School in Port Deposit.

NEW YORK -- IBM reported its first quarterly profit in more than a year yesterday, a sign that the struggling computer company may be starting to recover.Fourth-quarter earnings of $382 million at IBM were in line with analysts' expectations. But IBM executives and analysts stressed that any recovery at IBM would be a gradual process.Louis V. Gerstner Jr., who became chairman last spring, said yesterday that after he joined IBM the company began a "two-part plan" to return to profitability and develop new strategies for each of its businesses.

Baltimore's Board of Estimates rejected Wednesday a $7.4 million contract with IBM for a new phone system that has been at the center of a City Hall turf war — a dispute that city officials said they would have to resolve before they could move forward with a deal. The spending board voted 3-2 against the contract. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, who voted against it, later said the city could still award the deal to IBM if her technology office and Comptroller Joan M. Pratt could reach an accord over implementing the system.

The largest manufacturer of semiconductors in the world has never sold a single chip.But after almost 30 years of making chips exclusively for its computers and other products and -- more recently -- serving as patron and de facto R&D center for the entire U.S. chip industry, International Business Machines Corp. is looking for a payback.The Armonk, N.Y., computer giant is hoping its $6.4 billion semiconductor operation has developed technology -- and products -- it can finally make some money on. And its first real customer may be Apple Computer Inc., its old desktop #i computing rival.

Driven by surprisingly high revenue from product sales and its service businesses, IBM posted record earnings yesterday, surpassing analysts' expectations by a wide margin.Net income for the first quarter nearly quadrupled to about $1.3 billion, or a record $2.12 per share, compared with $336 million, or 54 cents a share, for the comparable period a year earlier.The results add luster to the reputation of IBM Chairman and Chief Executive Louis V. Gerstner.He was brought in two years ago, after multibillion-dollar losses, to transform the company, then a bloated giant, back into an industry leader.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Top executives of Apple Computer Inc. will be visiting IBM headquarters in Armonk, N.Y., today to discuss a far-ranging technology alliance that could have a major impact on the computer industry, industry executives say.One part of the talks, according to these executives, is a proposal for International Business Machines to license from Apple, and perhaps even to help develop, basic software for a new line of Apple computers that will...

Many corporate buyers, companies that sell computers and computer industry consultants say they welcome the new machine that IBM and Apple Computer Inc. are planning to make together, which will be officially announced today. Some broad details of the plan leaked out last week.Intended to be a computing chameleon, the jointly developed computer will be able to run several operating systems, including IBM's OS/2, Apple's Mac OS, and Sun Microsystems Inc.'s Solaris, taking on the appearance and functions of each, as well as the most commonly used operating system, DOS, and its friendlier helper, Windows.

As a first step toward establishing a joint software development company with Apple Computer Inc., IBM announced today it would buy Metaphor Inc., a Silicon Valley software developer.Metaphor is reported to be the focal point of the two computer makers' plan to create a joint software system that will redefine desktop personal computing in the second half of the decade. Terms of the proposed purchase by IBM were not disclosed.IBM and Apple have proposed pooling their development efforts to create an alternative to a similar new desktop standard being proposed by an industry consortium made up of Compaq Computer Corp.

IBM announced a portable computer yesterday that is controlled with a pen instead of a mouse pointing device or a keyboard.Though it is not the first company to introduce a pen-based computer, International Business Machines Corp. is entering the market more quickly than it has approached other new computing markets.Although its new machine, at 6 pounds, is slightly heavier than some of its competitors', IBM is expected to play a significant role in the new market.The machine, dubbed the Thinkpad, will be available in July.

The Masters golf tournament, held annually at the Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia, is on a collision course with reality. Here's the dilemma: The tradition-rich club is, and always has been, a men-only venue. One of their three main sponsors, IBM, has a female CEO, Virginia Rometty. This is the part where it gets a bit sticky. The four previous CEOs of IBM, all obviously males, held memberships at the club. To add a bit of fuel to the mix was Augusta National's Chairman Billy Payne's deflection of questions posed to him about the club's stodgy, antiquated rules of admission.

Digital Harbor High School was teeming with IBM employees preparing to educate middle-school students Wednesday morning about the supercomputer known as "Watson," made famous by its appearance on the TV show "Jeopardy!" IBM President and CEO Sam Palmisano, a Baltimore native and Johns Hopkins University graduate, sponsored and attended the event, which was part of a worldwide "Celebration of Service" day to promote math, science and technology throughout the world. Students who attended the event were introduced to Watson through videos and activities in which they learned about ambiguity, or words that might confuse the computer.

It was fascinating to watch the recent Jeopardy! television programs that featured a competition between two former Jeopardy! champions and IBM's computer, Watson. The human contestants were beaten pretty badly but did OK considering their on-board computers were much smaller than Watson's overall size. In spite of his intelligence, Watson will never experience the many joys of being human. Alas, poor Watson is destined to live a lonely life, except for the companionship of his cooling unit.

Are you ready for Watson to join you and your doctor in the examining room? That could be the outcome of a collaboration under way between Watson's creators at IBM and experts at the University of Maryland's School of Medicine. They have begun work on merging the speech recognition and question-answering skills of Watson — the computer that beat two humans on "Jeopardy!" this week — with the vast stores of clinical knowledge and analytical skills in the medical profession.

Jeopardy! seems the least complicated of game shows: simple questions and straightforward answers, made to order for the kind of person who files facts away with the relentless precision of a computer. But hold that buzzer. The joke is on us. It turns out that America's favorite TV quiz show is a lot more complicated than you might think, demanding not just facts and quick recall covering a broad range of topics but also analysis of subtle meaning, irony, riddles and other complexities, skills at which humans excel and computers stumble over.

Robert W. Bender, a retired IBM executive who had a leadership development consulting firm, died Sunday of pneumonia and sepsis at Georgetown Hospital in Washington. The Annapolis and Silver Spring resident was 77. Born in Philadelphia, he grew up in College Park. He earned a degree in horticulture and food technology from the University of Maryland and belonged to the Theta Xi fraternity. He joined IBM in 1959 as a salesman and quickly advanced into sales management, working in Baltimore and Washington.

The coming exodus of baby boomers into retirement may draw down the nation's Social Security coffers and overload its golf courses, but to International Business Machines Corp. it looks like a gold mine. IBM plans to announce today an initiative to help enterprises cope with brain drain as large waves of employees near retirement. "Aging population will be one of the major social and business issues of the 21st Century," said Mary Sue Rogers, an executive with IBM's human capital management group.

Robert W. Bender, a retired IBM executive who had a leadership development consulting firm, died Sunday of pneumonia and sepsis at Georgetown Hospital in Washington. The Annapolis and Silver Spring resident was 77. Born in Philadelphia, he grew up in College Park. He earned a degree in horticulture and food technology from the University of Maryland and belonged to the Theta Xi fraternity. He joined IBM in 1959 as a salesman and quickly advanced into sales management, working in Baltimore and Washington.

glennmcnatt: writing about the new unemployment stats. anyone have a friend or relative who's lost a job or fears losing one? mrscarpediem: Dad called me wanting the "scoop" on situ w/ spouse not working, etc & is now upset I didn't open up on call. At work. At my desk. mrscarpedium: Very sad - passing little bridge today there was a new tent set up underneath. $2-5M homes all around it. Wiznutz: it's NEVER too early to fire someone. chrisrk: Sick of this recession, lost job at Nissan in Jan just got another for half of the salary i was on and everything is still going up in price.

Phelps cancels speech at IBM event in Las Vegas swimming Olympic champion Michael Phelps canceled plans to attend and speak yesterday at an IBM conference in Las Vegas, CNBC.com reported, and representatives for the Fells Point resident said he, not the company, made the decision. "Michael is concentrating on swimming this week," CNBC said a spokesman from Octagon, Phelps' management company, told the media outlet. Phelps is serving a three-month suspension from USA Swimming after a photo of him presumably smoking marijuana was published in a British tabloid.