-273: 27 February 2002

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27 February 2002 - 2:28 am

The following letter to the editor was printed in the current BusinessWeek. My comments follow the letter, but I must say now that the guy who wrote it is an idiot.

I'm sure Louis V. Gerstner Jr. did a good job during his time at IBM, but I'm curious about why he and his team did not exploit the business potential of Deep Blue's software, which in May, 1997, beat Gary Kasparov, the then-champion of international chess. For Deep Blue to have defeated Kasparov without qualification, IBM would had to have developed a class of software that would be capable of eliminating the need for bar codes—an acheivement that would be worth several trillion dollars a year to its owners in the initial years and untold amounts as time went on. If the Kasparov defeat was unqualified, and IBM failed to transfer this success to business software, is Palmisano going to set this situation right?

Thomas Wulff

Stoughton, Mass.

A few points regarding this letter:

There was nothing special about Deep Blue's software. Chess programs have been around as long as computers have been around. Deep Blue's software just took advantage of Deep Blue's hardware capabilities to look many moves in the future when picking its move.

Deep Blue was an advertisement for IBM's hardware, not its software.

Deep Blue was custom-built with one purpose: to beat Gary Kasparov at chess. It's rumored that it doesn't perform nearly as well against other world-class chess players.

How the hell is Deep Blue's software supposed to help eliminate bar codes?

That last point bears repeating: Deep Blue has nothing to do with bar codes. It. . . has. . . absolutely. . . nothing. . . to. . . do. . . with. . . bar. . . codes.

I hope that there is some explanation, for example, the bulk of this guy's letter was removed by the BW editors, because as it stands he looks like an idiot.

Posted by on 27 February 2002 at 2:28 AM

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