Dear SIGCIS Friends, Mike Williams weighs in! Dag -- Dag Spicer Senior Curator Computer History Museum Editorial Board, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 1401 North Shoreline Boulevard Mountain View, CA 94043-1311 Tel: +1 650 810 1035 Fax: +1 650 810 1055 Twitter: @ComputerHistory Begin forwarded message: From: "Michael R. Williams" <m.williams@computer.org<mailto:m.williams@computer.org>> Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Virtuality versus transprency -- trying to locate a quote about the difference Date: October 30, 2014 at 12:33:30 PM PDT To: Dag Spicer <dspicer@computerhistory.org<mailto:dspicer@computerhistory.org>> Dag, I wish I had said this, but I am afraid that this is the first time I have heard it. Mt memory is not as good as it once was, but I am quite sure that I should not take credit for this one. I am not a member of the SIGCIS (I am already a member of too many things) so if you would pass this not along to that group it would be nice - Hi to you all Mike Michael R. Williams, BSC, PhD, DSc Original Message From: Dag Spicer Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2014 10:48 AM To: Michael Williams Subject: Fwd: [SIGCIS-Members] Virtuality versus transprency -- trying to locate a quote about the difference On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 9:24 AM, David Hemmendinger <hemmendd@union.edu<mailto:hemmendd@union.edu><mailto:hemmendd@union.edu>> wrote: I heard it from Mike Williams, when he had his professor of computer science hat on! Here's how he said it: If it is there, but you can't see it, it is transparent. If it isn't there, but you see it, it is virtual. If it is there, and you see it, it is real. For the purposes of symmetry, what if something is not there and you can't see it? If it isn't there and you can't see it, you're ok. David _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org<mailto:members@sigcis.org><mailto:members@sigcis.org>, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members I heard it from Mike Williams, when he had his professor of computer science hat on! Here’s how he said it: If it is there, but you can’t see it, it is transparent. If it isn’t there, but you see it, it is virtual. If it is there, and you see it, it is real. For the purposes of symmetry, what if something is not there and you can’t see it? Paul From: members-bounces@sigcis.org<mailto:members-bounces@sigcis.org><mailto:members-bounces@sigcis.org> [mailto:members-bounces@sigcis.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Haigh Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2014 7:01 PM To: members@sigcis.org<mailto:members@sigcis.org><mailto:members@sigcis.org> Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Virtuality versus transprency -- trying to locate a quote about the difference Hello SIGCIS, I am trying to locate a quote I remember reading circa 1998. It is something along the lines of “Something virtual isn’t really there but looks as if it is. Something transparent is really there but looks as if it isn’t.” That is of course the computer science sense of transparency as making the work of software invisible a user or process – for example how the network stack shields applications from whatever network media the data is travelling over to present the illusion of a connection. Google is not helping me. Does anybody know the source and correct wording? Thanks, Tom