Sunday, September 25, 2005

Air traffic control

Back in 1998 or thereabouts when I worked for Unisys the sysadmin guys on our project discovered a spiffy new screen saver, complete with audio. It mimicked a radar console with random air traffic appearing and disappearing at irregular intervals. A soundtrack of random official sounding phrases accompanied it and I have to admit that hearing it running in the background it did seem realistic.

Every so often someone would approach sysadmin with some random request or other; usually on the level of 'my computer doesn't work, what's wrong with it?'. Just the approach calculated to get an instant and correct answer! Most of the time they'd become aware of the soundtrack and ask 'what's that?'. And the sysadmin guys would answer 'we're monitoring the internet.' 'Really?'. And the supplicant would wander off with a bemused expression on the face.

4GL programmers aren't the brightest pennies in the purse.

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