The bewildered (and upset) programmer replied, "I can't fix 'sucks.' I need to know specifically what 'sucks' means."

The user was standing there, equally bewildered. I told the programmer, "The system performance level is unacceptable."

The programmer replied, "Well, the reason the system may run slow is that the semaphores inherent in the Unix operating system, as well as the overhead typically associated with a relational database management system, use a great deal of the processor availability."

The user turned back to me. I explained, "There's nothing we can do about it. It's as fast as we can make it."

The user said, "OK" and walked away "knowing" that we understood his concerns.