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On Thursday, March 18, 2004, at 10:17 AM, Joep Beckeringh wrote:
Ah, I wondered about that one. Must be Greek, then? And what's it mean?
Aramaic actually. Presuming I'm right (and I usually am :-) it is a
reference to:
Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin
which means counted, counted, weighed, divided. It comes from the Book
of Daniel (in the historical fiction known as the Bible) where a
disembodied hand wrote those words on the wall of King Belshazzar's
palace. Daniel interpreted the words to mean King Belshazzar wasn't up
to scratch, he'd get his arse kicked by the Medes and the Persians, and
his kingdom would be taken from him. Darius brought the prophecy to
fruition. Another case of "As it is written, so shall it be" (Rameses)
or "Make it so" (Jean-Luc Picard) if you prefer.
I could see the same message being sent to the managers at IBM (Armonk,
not Rochester because I think Rochester know what they want to do but
are hamstrung by the tossers upstairs).
See also The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam where Qatrain 51 refers to the
same story:
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
Unkind souls could find parallels between the above and the wishes of
OS/400 devotees (just to keep this marginally on track).
Quidquid id est, timeo IBM et dona ferens. (Or should that be
'ferentes'? IBM is plural, strictly speaking).
IBM is an organisation and is more properly referred to in the singular
because the acronym IBM is a proper noun. The best gift from IBM would
be to cut Rochester loose, but with a patent sharing arrangement, and
we could watch the cream rise to the top. Wouldn't that be
fun--developing and selling a system designed to make life easier for
the customer rather than generating services revenue for all and sundry.
Regards,
Simon Coulter.
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