John [Buxton] and I later decided that Tom Simpson’s text would provide an appropriate, albeit somewhat irreverent, set of concluding remarks to the main part of the Rome report. However we were in the event persuaded by the conference organizers to delete this text from the report. This was, I am sure, solely because of its sarcastic references to a “Masterpiece Engineering Institute”. I have always regretted that we gave in and allowed our report to be censored in such a fashion. So, by way of atonement, I’d like to read Tom’s text to you now ... | brian randell, after dinner talk, ERTS [Embedded real time software] 2008, Toulouse.