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Re: Impossible Database Design?

From: JOG <jog_at_cs.nott.ac.uk>
Date: 22 May 2006 10:40:38 -0700
Message-ID: <1148319638.513107.41390@j55g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>


Marshall wrote:
[snip]
> I express no opinion on the true nature of time: discrete vs.
> continuous. Whether time itself is discrete or continuous
> doesn't even matter in the context of how we represent time
> in the computer. We necessarily represent it discretely.

Even more than that, contemporary scientific thought shows there are physical limits to the size of the measurements _we can record_ (ultimately constrained by planck length). We hence at a base level can only record time discretely, nevermind representing it, so discussion of a continuum is pretty irrelevant. On top of this, zeno's paradox has trivial solutions associated with the corresponding infintessimal time it to cross infintessimally small distances, so I'm unclear why it would be of interest in db discussion. Received on Mon May 22 2006 - 12:40:38 CDT

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