Junk Notes

[nobody@REPLAY.COM (Anonymous)]

New York (AP) -- For the first time in years, there were
no major trouble spots in IBM's vast product line. Both
personal computers and large systems sold well and Lotus
Development Corp., which IBM acquired last summer,
shipped an astounding 1.2 million copies of its Notes
program. "Our fundamental strategies are working," IBM
chief executive Louis V. Gerstner Jr. said in a
statement.  ...

Changes in the general export laws seemed unlikely so
Lotus negotiated an interim solution. "This protects
corporate information from malicious crackers 
but permits the government to retain their current
access," Ozzie said.

Simson Garfinkel, author and computer security expert,
said he's not sure international buyers of Notes will
like the solution. "Foreign companies don't want the U.S.
government to spy on their data any more than the U.S.
government wants foreign companies to be able to spy on
theirs," Garfinkel said.  ...

But IBM said nothing about the future, causing some
nervousness among the investors who have seen other
technology companies project a flat performance in the
next few months. "It was a good quarter but the bad news
is we've got to go and find out what's going to happen in
1996," said David Wu, analyst at Chicago Corp.  

Questions have been raised about the timing of IBM's June
acquisition of Lotus -- a $3.5 billion deal that was the 
software industry's largest ever -- because World Wide
Web-related programs seemed to be eclipsing the need for
Lotus' Notes, a communications and database program.