Re: WWW/Internet 2009: 2nd CFP until 21 September

From: paul c <toledobythesea_at_oohay.ac>
Date: Mon, 10 Aug 2009 19:45:15 GMT
Message-ID: <fN_fm.38515$Db2.11300_at_edtnps83>


Walter Mitty wrote:
...
> This reminds me of the years I used to teach database courses. Sooner or
> later, a little over halfway through the course, students would begin asking
> why there was so much politics around the databases back at their work site.
> I learned to answer them thus:
>
> Knowledge is power. So said Francis Bacon.
> Data is like knowledge in this regard.
> When a database is successful, data gets shared.
> When data gets shared, power gets shared.
> When power gets shared, that's politics!
> ...

A lot of people from more or less unrelated fields such as chemistry went into IT because the pay was much better. Plus, whenever bigger money is involved, plenty of charlatans are sure to show up and get away with outlandish promises. Plus, the people who sign the cheques often want to be told what they want to believe rather than what's actually possible. In that way, most executives are no different than the janitor who wanted the computer to pick the horses for him. The phenomenon you mention is partly the result of a secret conspiracy. Most don't really want simplcity, even though they talk about it.

If SQL won't support mutual foreign key references, the usual attitude is to introduce some other complication such as the recent nulls suggestion here, rather than do the obvious, namely toss the impossible requirement. Received on Mon Aug 10 2009 - 21:45:15 CEST

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