The news that IBM is suing AST Research for alleged copyright infringement for the use of /2 or slash two in the names of its Rampage/2 and Advantage/2 add-ons for the IBM Personal System/2 recalls the last time that the symbol became an issue: when Harris Corp arrived on the UK market back in the […]
The news that IBM is suing AST Research for alleged copyright infringement for the use of /2 or slash two in the names of its Rampage/2 and Advantage/2 add-ons for the IBM Personal System/2 recalls the last time that the symbol became an issue: when Harris Corp arrived on the UK market back in the mid-1970s, it announced its family of 24-bit minicomputers as the Slash series – /2, /4, /6 and so forth – to muffled schoolboy sniggers; only Keith Jones of Computer Weekly had the guts to point out to the brash Harrises that the word had unfortunate slang connotations in English, and after a hasty conference the name was changed.
