> -----Original Message-----
> From: [log in to unmask] 
> 
> > --
> > Any sufficiently advanced technology is undistinguished from magic.
> >    - Aurthur Clarke
> 
> Arthur C. Clarke got it wrong.
> 
> It's not the newness that makes it seem like magic; it's the 
> familiarity. So
> any sufficiently old technology also looks like magic. Just 
> ask anyone in
> any shop that has lost their assembler program. Then 
> assembler looks like
> magic. "We kind of know what it does, and we're all afraid to 
> touch it, but
> no one knows how it works."
> 
> Unless of course that technology is completely reliable. Then 
> it becomes
> invisible, and entirely taken for granted. Just ask any MPE shop.
> 
> Greg Stigers
> http://www.cgiusa.com


Wait a second, Arthur C. Clarke's quote below says nothing 
about newness, it just refers to "advanced technology".

Therefore, if a shop has "retrograded" to the point where
no one can understand assembler, then obvously, the
the technology is still "advanced" beyond our mortal 
powers and the quotation stands.  (rim-shot.)

BT
NNNN
Tracy Johnson
MSI Schaevitz Sensors 

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