Conference hydra::dejavu

    
    
    Hmmmm....it was sounding good until they mentioned UNIX and C.  How
    the heck can we trust them now?
     
    ;^)
    
    Carole

re: .0

	That's an interesting notion, but what about all the
	documentary evidence of Mr Bell's existence -- like his
	birth certificate, and *LOTS* of photos (from newspapers
	and other sources).  A.G.Bell is just close enough to
	contemporary times that there exists a lot of evidence
	proving his reality -- as well as the reality of his work 
	with telephony and with the deaf.

	Sounds like someone's imagination has been working overtime.

	By the way, the text of the famous quotation is:

		"Mr Watson, come here, I want you !"

	-Art

  Personally, I agree with you and find the story dubious. However the
  interesting point, for me, was that this story illustrates that if you
  or I *today* wanted to prove that Bell existed, we would have a tough
  time doing it. A determined and ingenious collaborative effort could,
  in principle, have created the history (and birth records) as it now
  reads in the books. Trying to disprove that such a hoax was
  perpetrated might be impossible. Possibly the strongest evidence you
  could come up with that Bell actually existed would be to find someone
  still alive today who had met him (and you'd still have to trust that
  person's word). Any evidence short of that could, in principle, have
  been fabricated. The probability is small today, but would increase in
  the future. Sort of the way, today, the entire Jesus story is
  considered by many to be fiction or at best highly distorted fact.

    Hey guys (and gals?) - how can you prove that anyone or anything
    existed if you didn't see it yourself?  You can drive yourself nuts
    with this line of thinking.
    
    The standard historical methods rely on birth/baptismal/burial records,
    correspondence, published papers and books, and other written records. 
    For someone as recent as Bell, this is easy.
    
    Occasionally, historical research causes a revision of known facts -
    witness the recent exhumation of (I forget which - oops) an earlier
    President who is now believed to have been poisoned.  But outright hoaxes
    and conspiracies are few and far between.  (Remember Piltdown Man?)
    
    As you go farther back in time, things get harder to prove.  Most proof
    rests on written records.  It's easy to research Roman emperors, but
    much harder to research a relative unknown at that time - as Jesus was. 
    Written records disintigrate, burn, and are otherwise lost.  And in the
    days before paper and printing, a lot less was recorded.
    
    Personally, I wouldn't get hung up on this theory.
    
    Laura  

Dateline: January 11 2001

			DIGITAL LIGHTS THE WAY

Today Digital demonstrated their faster than light processor, which has turned 
computing on its head. At the demonstration its inventor, Jeanne Atkinson, was 
able to put the new processor into perspective, as it completed the most 
complex bench mark tests in one thousandth of the fastest previous time.
A competitor was heard to remark that "this system is out of this world".


    8-)

  Hmmm, that reminds me of a rumor I heard many years ago about a
  soon-to-be-announced new processor from IBM ... "it's so fast, it
  executes infinite loops in under two minutes".

    I read a story about Alexander Graham Bell being sued for patenting the
    telephone by someone who claimed to have done all the initial
    research. I"ll have to dig up the book and find the name.  As the story
    goes, this guy couldn't get it to work and gave up.  Bell then took all
    of his research and added a one-quarter turn to a screw connecting the
    wires and presto! it worked.
    
    The judge ruled against the person suing because he said that the
    quarter turn was what made the phone work, not the initial research.
    
    ~vf

re: .3 

>  the future. Sort of the way, today, the entire Jesus story is
>  considered by many to be fiction or at best highly distorted fact.

	Except that here the situation is reversed:  The evidence from
	biblical archaeologists and various other historical sources
	tends to refute Christian accounts of Jesus' life -- the
	commonly accepted version apparently being a fabrication of 
	St Paul which was later codified by the Nicene council.  But
	that's a topic for another note....  ;-}

    RE: .7
    
    My (engineer) hubby's favorite engineer tale:
    
    The experts have gathered around the malfunctioning machine.  They've
    been working on it day and night, but no luck yet.  Finally the oldest
    expert walks up and looks at it carefully.  He gives it a swift kick in
    the pants, and the dang thing starts working.  He then asks for an
    enormous fee.  The customer pays.
    
    Later at the bar, the frustrated experts ask the senior, "How can you
    ask - and get - so much money just for kicking the machine?"
    
    The senior replies, "I wasn't paid for the kick.  I was paid for
    knowing where to kick."
    
    Laura
                                                 

    One wonders how the existence of the telephone has helped "the club" to
    guide human development.???

  I dunno, maybe the dial tone, ring tone, and busy signal have
  subliminal messages encoded in them ("buy pepsi").