benzayb

Cool. So when was the nail cutter/clipper invented?

"All that are useful are valuable; but not all valuable are useful." - Me.

I'd rather be useful than be valued but is totally useless. :D

“May Hegel's philosophy of absolute nonsense - three-fourths cash and one-fourth crazy fancies - continue to pass for unfathomable wisdom without anyone suggesting as an appropriate motto for his writings Shakespeare's words: "Such stuff as madmen tongue and brain not," or, as an emblematical vignette, the cuttle-fish with its ink-bag, creating a cloud of darkness around it to prevent people from seeing what it is, with the device: mea caligine tutus. - May each day bring us, as hitherto, new systems adapted for University purposes, entirely made up of words and phrases and in a learned jargon besides, which allows people to talk whole days without saying anything; and may these delights never be disturbed by the Arabian proverb: "I hear the clappering of the mill, but I see no flour." - For all this is in accordance with the age and must have its course.”

― Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays of Schopenhauer

"Hegel, installed from above, by the powers that be, as the certified Great Philosopher, was a flat-headed, insipid, nauseating, illiterate charlatan, who reached the pinnacle of audacity in scribbling together and dishing up the craziest mystifying nonsense. This nonsense has been noisily proclaimed as immortal wisdom by mercenary followers and readily accepted as such by all fools, who thus joined into as perfect a chorus of admiration as had ever been heard before. The extensive field of spiritual influence with which Hegel was furnished by those in power has enabled him to achieve the intellectual corruption of a whole generation."

-- Schopenhauer

When a DBMS that claims it is relational and yet it supports SQL's "features" that departs from the relational model, then that DBMS is not relational.

If a DBMS is "slow" or "fast", that is not because of SQL -- it is because of the specific implementation decisions that the makers of that DBMS took.

And that has nothing to do with what you just said.

To quote:

"The talks in this series will present ideas on either (1) making SQL go as fast as possible or (2) replacing SQL with something better."

How were you able to infer that the existence of the word "go" in that phrase refers to optimizers?

And 2nd idea/proposal of "replacing SQL with something better" really implies that they are talking about the language and not the optimizer.

In any case, if they really meant "optimizer" then their phrasing is very vague and imprecise; if they are talking about the "optimizer" -- then which specific optimizer? They have failed to mention that too.

"make sql as fast as possible" is a misnomer.

you cannot make a language fast, only its underlying implementation (i.e the specific dbms).

and this is the error I see 90% of the time. there is a confusion between conceptual (model) vs implementation concerns.

the problem with SQL the language is its conceptual foundations -- that it is not currently relational and yet it is used as the language of "relational" DBMSes in the market.

By having a default value (non-null) for each declared type of those columns.

Or, the user must define a default value in the query itself.

Yes, tedious; but, precise and forces the programmer to really prepare for the "unknown" scenario.

> If your signup form has an optional field for a full name which I don’t fill in, I still have a name. Just because a value is not known by your database doesn’t mean it isn’t defined.

There's the Closed World Assumption in a database.

Here in the Philippines, filing tax returns are not a problem.

If you're an employee, your employer does it for you.

The employer just deducts the tax owed by each employee, and pays it to the government every quarter.

The total tax amount owed per month may vary from 10k USD (10 to 20 employees) to 20K USD (20 to 50 employees).

But the catch is: If the taxman is corrupt (highly likely), and the officer-in-charge of the remittance of such withheld taxes is also corrupt (not improbable), do not expect that the full tax amount will end up in government's coffers. Both parties will pocket a "small" percentage of it, per quarter, every year.

This scenario is highly likely for offshore companies, where the real owners are outside (e.g. US, Europe) and there's a "trusted" individual (or group of people) that does the "administrative" stuff for the company.

Crazy.

Clearly explained. Thanks!

A few years back, I had a co-worker that was hostile to me. I won't go into the details why there's that hostility, but what happened was this:

- In the middle of a (chat) conversation that was going nowhere about a certain issue, he told me that I'm "difficult to talk to."

- I replied, "I can say the same thing to you."

This co-worker then complained to management, that I was being a bully and disrespectful. I provided the chat logs showing that the initial statement ("I'm difficult to talk to") was unprovoked, and I was civil all throughout our chat.

But this experience led me to wonder if there are legal concepts that I could have invoked in my defense.

The article mentions someone punching in the face.

What if this is the scenario: A punches B in the face. B punches A, as retribution. The physical and emotional damage to both parties are equal in nature. But A sues B for assault.

Will the case be dismissed? on what legal grounds? What are the applicable legal principles?

100. In a long list of advice, use numbers instead of bullet points. Makes it easier to share to others. :D

Most of the advise are really good though.

"people leave managers not companies"

Countless times I've heard or read this somewhere.

Quite untrue with my experiences. Who exactly is the "manager"? the "company"?

In my experience, most of my reports left because of low pay. I as their "manager" agreed that they receive an raise which is justifiable due to their output and our team's growth.

But the "company" is against it. In particular the CFO. Is the CFO the "manager" then?

In any case, a statement like that is almost always misleading.

The article is Ok though. I just wished that statement was not there.