> "It would be like taking apart a brand-new 747 and discovering that the fuel line is held in place by a coat-hanger and the landing gear is attached with duct

> "It would be like taking apart a brand-new 747 and discovering that the fuel line is held in place by a coat-hanger and the landing gear is attached with duct tape." At the museum of flight in Seattle there is a 747. It's the first 747 that was built and partially taken apart (or never put together in the first place). Halfway down the interior fuselage you can seen the terrifyingly small cable pulleys that transfer pilot commands laterally to the wing control surfaces. The track in which the cable runs seemed not much deeper than the cable itself. If, say, a suddent jolt of turbulence dislodged the cable, something not good might happen. I'm sure aero engineers would say this is how airplanes have always worked and there's no chance the cable will fail. Programmers do the same thing: This is the way the database/web service/storage has always worked and there's no chance it will fail.