Should you, aging Reg reader, recall one of the papers to which he was referring, Metcalfe has an explanation of what he claims the profs were up to. "What they would do was develop a model," he said, "a mathematical model ... They would then move the model into regions of absurd parameters. They would say, 'There's a million users, and they're sending full-time, all the time.'" Those "absurd parameters" would cause the model to show that Ethernet would fail under those conditions. The papers would then conclude, "'See, that doesn't work here,'" Metcalfe said, adding, "But no system would ever be used 'here'. Duh."