Rick Deckard wiped the sweat from his brow as he holstered his high-powered weapon. Lifting the communicator from his belt, he muttered several codes and closed the transceiver.

"Skin jobs," he said to himself, surveying the replicant sprawled on the floor, and amazed at the technology's ability to mimic the most complex entities on earth. He softly kicked the replicant's front panel, observing large hole his weapon had created in the technology's logo. The half-remaining "T" and the "ata" telling him he'd scored big. Another wannabee down for the count.

His communicator buzzed for attention. He lifted it, beeped-in and said "Deckard" like he really didn't want to be bothered, but knew such sentiments were useless. Apparently more replicants were on the prowl, having stolen their way into enterprises with myopic POCs, NDAs and a variety of other three-letter-acronyms. He so longed to go Solo.

"We've spotted another one," said the dispatcher on the other end, "People are dying."

"Dying?" Deckard raised an eyebrow. "That's new."

"Dying to get their jobs back after a misfired deployment with a replicant," said the dispatcher, "Get with the program Deckard. You were called from retirement, but you can't be this rusty. Not with this much at stake."

"You wanna come out here and be my backup?" Deckard shot back, irritated, "It's easy to criticize from behind a desk."

"Keep on talkin'," laughed the dispatcher, "But the day's slippin' by - and so will your replicant if you don't get on the stick."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," Deckard beeped out, sighed and replaced the communicator. The steam rising from the replicant's body reminded him of why his work was important. Stolen money. Stolen dreams.

Less than fifteen minutes later, Deckard found himself crouching behind a stack of crates, one eye on the replicant and one eye on his pistol as he wrested it from its holster. Time was, he could draw, shoot and replace it before a replicant could take one mechanical breath. Now, countless CPU clocks dishonored his rustiness, and he needed a new weapon if he ever intended to win.

Too late he realized that he'd spent too much time fiddling with the pistol, and upon looking up, found the replicant nowhere in sight. In that moment, he felt the replicant's mechanical breath on the back of his neck, and he whirled to confront it.

"Deckard!" shouted the replicant as he delivered a hard backfist, reeling Deckard over the crates to fall hard on the other side. "You should never have returned! You know I can't be beaten in toe-to-toe comparison!" He then split the crates apart and tossed them to each side.

Deckard had already reached for his pistol, but it had been just loose enough to fall from the holster when the replicant had ambushed him. Glancing around feverishly, the fear rose in his throat as the replicant took one step forward, grabbed him by the shirt and shook him once. He pulled his fist back and Deckard could hear it hitch, meaning that some special spring had latched in preparation for release, and if the replicant's fist now threw a punch, the impact would take his head clean off his shoulders.

"Sleep tight," said the replicant wickedly.

But the punch never came. Instead the replicant's eyes widened, his breath shortened and his strength seemed to instantly leave his body. He dropped Deckard like a sack of potatoes, and Deckard wasted no time in scrambling clear. The replicant fell to his knees with a bone-crunching impact, his eyes vacuous, and fell forward with a whump.

Deckard glanced around for his weapon, only to be met face to face with another, much younger Blade Runner, holding a smoking weapon, clearly more advanced than his own.

"I'm TwinFin," said the Blade Runner meekly, pointing to the twitching mass that was the replicant  "I see you've just run across a more advanced model than you're accustomed to."

"Stronger than before," Deckard rasped, wiping the sweat from his face with both hands, "It's been awhile."

"Yes," he said, "This one's name is A-Data. He is the most advanced of his kind. A front-loader and high-volume storage capability. Also fast response. Almost as fast as yours, even with age."

"Thanks," Deckard responded flatly, unamused, "A-Data, eh?" he smirked, tapping the replicant's leg with his foot, "Well, now he's just an ex A-Data."

"True," smiled TwinFin, "But you'll need more power if you want to stay ahead of them," he held out his weapon, a POC-killer if ever Deckard had seen one. On the weapon's barrel, in old-Gothic script, he read the weapon's name "The Closer."

"Nice," Deckard quipped.

TwinFin suddenly produced an auto-ject unit with the "enzee" logo emblazoned on it, snatched Deckard's hand, and before Deckard could object, injected the enzee accelerant into Deckard's bloodstream.

"What the?" Deckard now snatched his hand back, but suddenly felt the chemical's surge of power, "What's in that stuff?"

"Secret sauce," TwinFin smiled, "You'll be five-X or more faster response than they are. Your next replicant will go down for the count before the count even begins."

"Tight."

"You have no idea," he smiled, "And by the way, I'll be right behind you."

"I hear some of them are looking for their makers," Deckard posited.

"Wouldn't you?" TwinFin said, "I'd sure wonder why I was made that way. Changed from one purpose to another in the middle of my cycle."

"I wonder if anyone has noticed, that the replicants are always trying to be like us?"

"It's because we're the only standard they know, by which they are measured."

"I also wonder," mused Deckard, "If these replicants dream of electric customers."

As a young lad, my Dad had purchased a 1946 Wyllis Jeep. For any of you who are Jeep aficionados, you know that this is a direct, post-war Jeep complete with starter button (war Jeeps didn't have car keys) and four-wheel shift gears). Dad had this thing re-fitted with a power take-off (a rear-gear for attaching appliances) and had purchased a bush-hog to attach to it. Off my Dad went on our property, Jeep in full tilt and bush-hog in tow, slicing and dicing bushes and small trees from our property like a veteran landscape engineer.

One day the trailer hitch had a an issue - the towing ball had somehow become bent and needed replacement. Yes, Dad worked these machines to their extreme. Now, if you feel a bit out of place with all these odd terms, imagine my hubris in thinking I knew everything about them just by watching my Dad work with them from the sidelines.

In any case, he took the Jeep in to a shop to get the thing fixed, and this mechanic started working on the trailer hitch to loosen it up. Strange thing, though, he was turning the bolt clockwise to get it undone. And everyone knows that in order to undo a bolt, you turn it counterclockwise, right? Of course, those in Australia and Brazil might not turn it this way, but that's an inside joke, too. So I quipped, "You're turning it the wrong way."

To which this mechanic simply replied, willing to engage an uppity kid while my Dad just offered me a hot stare, "Are you sure?". To which I responded, thinking that the mechanic actually thought I was a viable entity, "Yep, I'm sure." To which the mechanic said, "You want to bet ten dollars on it?" To which I immediately responded, thinking easy money - "You bet."

At this point my Dad simply leaned into me and said the words I would never forget, even to this day, as I share them with you.

"Never bet on the other man's game."

This initially had a hollow ring, considering that I was on the brink of winning ten dollars, but in that moment the mechanic wrested the object free from its mooring in spite of having turned it the wrong way all that time. And I learned something new, that some devices actually do unscrew in a clockwise direction. Lesson learned, and I did not lose ten dollars. The mechanic was merciful.

Licking my wounds and regarding my status of having dodged a bullet, I gained a new appreciation of knowledge, learned in a simple way, that the other man's game is something to approach with high trepidation and respect. If it really is the other man's game, he knows it better than I, so what business do I have on betting with it? It's a sucker bet at best. He knows the game better than I do.

So it is with the appliance wanna-bees who have attempted to bet on Netezza's game. That the appliance is the way to go, and they have invested many millions of dollars in attempting to topple Netezza, or at least steal the market share. But this is yet another case of betting on the other man's game, and nobody knows this game better than Netezza.

And now, Netezza has changed the game, leaving the competitiion in the dust to once again lick its wounds and wonder, why did they ever bet on the other man's game, and now, what game are they really in?

The new Netezza architecture has upped-the-ante on the existing game, and moved the game in another direction that in no uncertain terms, changes the game and the stakes to play it.

Apart from browsing the white papers and gathering your own general specification insights to the environment, I can say as a veteran who has worked with this technology extensively that I had a short wish list of things that I thought would be really nice to have. I had a short list of what I thought were functional shortcomings that I had found simple workarounds for, and could painlessly ignore. But now, with the new architecture, those few shortcomings were washed away. The short wish list was fulfilled, and so much more. And in the end, I am a happy clam.

On the short runway of things I am looking forward to - include the capacity to cache whole tables, Linux on the lower deck, the Intel-programmability of the parallel environment, and the additional capacity both in storage and in processing power. And these are just a few of my favorite things.

Once upon a time, I worked with real-time engines for embedded systems, and was enamored with one software vendor's ability to stay ahead of the pack by simply assimilating the innovations of other competitors. One has to imagine that once a vendor is out-in-front, they can maintain their position through this assimilation process. If they are not out in front, then assimilating other vendors' innovations doesn't have the same impact, because nobody is a frontrunner.

That Netezza can take the innovations of other (major) vendors such as IBM and leverage them through simple assimilation, is yet another testimony to Netezza's position as the well-in-front frontrunner. While other vendors attempt to duplicate or imitate, Netezza just moves on, changes the game and leaves them in the dust. Innovations from the vendor remain ensconced (and enhanced) in the new architecture, while other technologies are easily assimilated. That this has given the architecture a stratospheric boost is a testimony to the original architects and visionaries, as well as the existing ones.

All that's a lot of gushy sentiment, though, compared to the tailspins that the wanna-bee competitors have been in since they got their first news that the winds were changing. I could use a lot of sailor/sailing analogs here, but I'll spare you. The fact remains, the competitors are scrambling all-hands-on-deck to reset their goal for market share they never really achieved. Could this mean that they are sunk altogether and don't know it yet? Who has a crystal ball, except that we could now pump these quantities into the Netezza architecture and get an answer back faster than they could.

Right answer faster: Priceless.