(It's Friday.) All analogies fail because no two things are alike. OTOH an analogy may help someone understand an issue by drawing (an imperfect) parallel to something else a person may be more familiar with. Or it may be used as a tool to persuade someone to take action in a realm where they are otherwise clueless.
I offered the auto analogy for the second reason. Where I live in the West, everyone has a car and can relate to the issue. If someone in the corporate boardroom actually took umbrage to the comparison, then that person could probably be reasoned with on technical grounds. There aren't a lot of those folks in the management ranks. . . J.O.Skip Robinson Southern California Edison Company Electric Dragon Team Paddler SHARE MVS Program Co-Manager 323-715-0595 Mobile 626-302-7535 Office robin...@sce.com -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of Greg Shirey Sent: Friday, November 25, 2016 7:03 AM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: (External):Re: A true discussion in today's world (at least here) Personally, I think the analogy is quite appropriate and I appreciate Skip sharing it. I’m sure most analogies, “in some circumstances” can be proven to fail, but car maintenance is a fairly typical consideration for most people in the US. If you live in an area with a dense population that mostly relies on public transportation, then modify the analogy to the subway system or the busses, or point to the Alaska Airlines wiki article to show the dangers of delaying maintenance. My 2 cents, Greg Shirey Ben E. Keith Company From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of Tony Harminc Sent: Wednesday, November 23, 2016 1:21 PM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Re: A true discussion in today's world (at least here) On 23 November 2016 at 12:33, Jesse 1 Robinson <jesse1.robin...@sce.com<mailto:jesse1.robin...@sce.com>> wrote: > When I get flak about the churn of staying current with maintenance, I climb > my soapbox. Look, I say, I've calculated that on balance it's cheaper to > drive your car as long as it runs rather than take in for periodic > maintenance, which is both time consuming and out-of-pocket costly. Most > likely it will fail somewhere down the road ;-) but getting it fixed then > will be cheaper and quicker overall. > > Well, I say, if you wouldn't think of managing your car that way, why would > you think it makes sense for a computer system? The analogy is cute, but I think it fails The problem is that in some circumstances that's a perfectly reasonable way to manage a car. Depending on the age, how much you depend on it, whether you ever drive a significant distance from home, etc. etc. there may be nothing wrong with deferring or not doing some maintenance. I live in a city, mostly walk or use transit, and I have very little need for reliability in a car. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
