Seems the Compagnie des Machines Bull SA fraud where computers sent for scrap ended up in discount shops has the makings of a major scandal: Le Canard Enchaine reckons 100 truckloads weighing 638 tonnes and worth at minimum $200m to the company are unaccounted for, and we are not talking 8088 or 80286 desktop micros here, these were 36-bit DPS-8 and 32-bit DPS-7 mainframes, and 16-bit DPS-6 minicomputers – and since they were all proprietary machines, each one sold meant that Bull lost a much-needed account; fortunately, the French taxpayer, who ultimately has to bear the cost of all this incompetence, seems remarkably sanguine about doing so.
