Posted by bmcswain on 12/05/05 01:44

Bernard, Richard, and Martin:

You heading right down the path of this discussion. You are trying to
project where we will be in 10-25-50 years based on our vision of
today.

Quick Story: I worked for IBM as a manager of hardware field service in
the early 1980's. Our group serviced an IBM manufacturing plant in
Charlotte. The plant manufactured component boards for IBM and our
customers. When a board came off the manufacturing line, it had to go
through quality test. Part of that test was to connect it to a test
machine, a mainframe computer with special interfaces for that board.

You probably know that IBM invented the 360 line of computers in the
middle 1960's. The test machines were IBM 360 computers with special
software for testing.

When one of the testers failed, it was my group's job to fix it. In
1983 I had lots of talent to fix a box from the late 60's and early
70's. By the time I left the group in 1987, all the talent had retired
or resigned. There was no one to be found that fix them. There were
no spare parts. I expect in 2005 (only 20 years more) there is
nothing you can do to fix one or any software to run one. That's about
a total of only 40 years since the 360 was originally sold.

Is that an exact parallel to media and video? No. But I think the
analogy holds that as some point content that is not converted will be
lost.

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