On Sun, 27 Oct 2024 09:52:07 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> But I wrote a C program in a couple of hours that would do the job, and
> do it in about an hour, so after three iterations to sort out the
> unpleasantness of town names like 'John O' Groats' and a few other
> issues, I had my database...

Ah, old John... We had a utility to export data to a SQL Server database.
It wasn't the mist important thing in the world so it was a couple of
months before someone noticed missing data. The utility would get to
"Pete's Garage", fail, rollback the transactions, and exit daily. It was a
persistent little bugger.

On Sun, 27 Oct 2024 09:39:37 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> And there are distinct signs that human nature is beginning to
> subconsciously decrease human populatins.

Unfortunately that's the segment that can see beyond their next meal. The
segment that is sometimes referred to as obsolete farm equipment do not
show a constraint.

According to rbowman <bowman@montana.com>:
>On Sun, 27 Oct 2024 09:52:07 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>
>> But I wrote a C program in a couple of hours that would do the job, and
>> do it in about an hour, so after three iterations to sort out the
>> unpleasantness of town names like 'John O' Groats' and a few other
>> issues, I had my database...
>
>Ah, old John... We had a utility to export data to a SQL Server database.
>It wasn't the mist important thing in the world so it was a couple of
>months before someone noticed missing data. The utility would get to
>"Pete's Garage", fail, rollback the transactions, and exit daily. It was a
>persistent little bugger.

Mandatory reference to Little Bobby Tables provided:

https://xkcd.com/327/

--
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly

On Sun, 27 Oct 2024 09:46:15 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> I never bothered learning the more arcane side of SQL because if I ever
> managed to get the query right, it was always so abysmally slow that it
> was quicker to use a series of simple queries and join them together in
> application code rather than SQL

We had a support person who spent days if not months crafting a query
using about every DB2 scalar function known to man. I forget the DB2
versions but it started to fail on an older one that only allowed a 4k
buffer but worked on the newer ones that handled 8k. Being a series of
CONCATs if anything in the chain returned null the whole thing failed.

It was a work of art that was copied from site to site unchanged because
nobody, including myself, could figure it out. When we needed an
equivalent for SQL Server which didn't have some of the matching scalars I
took the programming approach. I use joins sparingly but there reaches a
point where you're being too cute and it's unmaintainable.

In comp.os.linux.misc Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
> On Thu, 24 Oct 2024 21:46:56 -0000 (UTC), Marc Olschok wrote:
>
>> Unfortunately coffee was not available in those days.
>
> Pre-16th-century, was it?

yes, seriously pre 16th century:

hex CAFE BABE + . 185BC ok

--
M.O.

On Sun, 27 Oct 2024 09:46:15 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> I never bothered learning the more arcane side of SQL because if I ever
> managed to get the query right, it was always so abysmally slow that it
> was quicker to use a series of simple queries and join them together in
> application code rather than SQL

I have found quite the opposite. Remember that, the more information you
put in the query up front, the more clues you give to the query optimizer.

I was maintaining this application for a client, that had been created for
them by a prior developer who knew PHP, but not much else. They didn’t
seem to know anything about SQL joins.

There was a query page that returned timesheet records for a specified
range of dates. It did a separate query for each day in the range, so the
wider the range, the slower the report became. For example, asking for
records over a six-month range was quite painful, since it would be doing
about 180 separate queries.

I figured out a query that would return all the records in the specified
date range in a single sequence. Result: the page now appeared in a flash,
even for date ranges spanning six months or more.

Another possibly useful thing is to learn how to use the EXPLAIN statement
<https://mariadb.com/kb/en/explain/>. If a query is slow, this can be
helpful to figure out where the bottleneck lies.

On 2024-10-27, rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:

> On Sun, 27 Oct 2024 09:52:07 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>
>> But I wrote a C program in a couple of hours that would do the job, and
>> do it in about an hour, so after three iterations to sort out the
>> unpleasantness of town names like 'John O' Groats' and a few other
>> issues, I had my database...
>
> Ah, old John... We had a utility to export data to a SQL Server database.
> It wasn't the mist important thing in the world so it was a couple of
> months before someone noticed missing data. The utility would get to
> "Pete's Garage", fail, rollback the transactions, and exit daily. It was a
> persistent little bugger.

The crux of the biscuit is the apostrophe.
-- Frank Zappa

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | We'll go down in history as the
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | first society that wouldn't save
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | itself because it wasn't cost-
/ \ if you read it the right way. | effective. -- Kurt Vonnegut

On 2024-10-27, John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> wrote:

> According to Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid>:
>
>> On 2024-10-27, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>> Short of building huge towers of nuclear illuminated hyrdoponics we can
>>
>> My back-of-the-envelope calculation tells me that if we continue
>> to double our population every 40 years, ...
>
> You might want to get some numbers for your envelope more recent than the 1950s.
>
> Here's a good place to start:
>
> https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/TOT/900

Thanks for the link. Let's see how hard the government works
(e.g. baby bonuses) to get that extra 0.5 child per household.
If they fail in the attempt, conservation might just become
feasible again.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | We'll go down in history as the
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | first society that wouldn't save
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | itself because it wasn't cost-
/ \ if you read it the right way. | effective. -- Kurt Vonnegut

On 10/27/24 5:30 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> On Sun, 27 Oct 2024 09:46:15 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>
>> I never bothered learning the more arcane side of SQL because if I ever
>> managed to get the query right, it was always so abysmally slow that it
>> was quicker to use a series of simple queries and join them together in
>> application code rather than SQL
>
> I have found quite the opposite. Remember that, the more information you
> put in the query up front, the more clues you give to the query optimizer.

Long back I did extensive development on a PICK-OS based DB
called 'Revelation'. It DID do an early version of SQL. It
was used for over a decade.

HOWEVER you never used the SQL beyond the top-level selections
because it was too slow. Thereafter you used the "advanced"
functions - hidden in the back of the manuals - to access the
indexes and sorting routines and such - because they were ten
or even 100 times quicker.

Oh, they still sell 'Revelation' - DOS based - for about
$300 ... but no support. Nice really, integrated WYSIWYG
text-screen form builder too.

Yes you CAN build a sophisticated query using SQL - but
the syntax is TERRIBLE, hyper-prone to error, oft just
un-readable - and the speed is still bad. Intelligently
join yer OWN damned sets with proper code.

On Mon, 28 Oct 2024 00:58:34 -0400, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:

> Long back I did extensive development on a PICK-OS based DB called
> 'Revelation'. It DID do an early version of SQL. It was used for over
> a decade.
>
> HOWEVER you never used the SQL beyond the top-level selections
> because it was too slow.

Pick wasn’t even a relational database.

Back then, it was quite common to support open standards like SQL with
“malicious compliance” -- deliberately make them look worse than your
proprietary interface, to “persuade” your users to lock themselves in to
your product.

On 2024-10-28, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

> On Mon, 28 Oct 2024 00:58:34 -0400, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
>
>> Long back I did extensive development on a PICK-OS based DB called
>> 'Revelation'. It DID do an early version of SQL. It was used for over
>> a decade.
>>
>> HOWEVER you never used the SQL beyond the top-level selections
>> because it was too slow.
>
> Pick wasn’t even a relational database.
>
> Back then, it was quite common to support open standards like SQL with
> “malicious compliance” -- deliberately make them look worse than your
> proprietary interface, to “persuade” your users to lock themselves in to
> your product.

Not just back then. Today it's evolved into the doctrine of
"embrace, extend, extinguish".

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | We'll go down in history as the
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | first society that wouldn't save
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | itself because it wasn't cost-
/ \ if you read it the right way. | effective. -- Kurt Vonnegut

On 26 Oct 2024 05:53:02 GMT
rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:

> Then there was the nightmare when I was tasked with extracting
> another division's data from FoxPro when we moved our bugs database
> to something a little more real and shot the fox.

Ah, FoxPro...VFP was the DBMS we used at my first real-world data-
munging job. I assume our head honcho (a real DIYer) had his reasons (I
think the terminal server we used - it was a call center handling
inbound telemarketing sales, real janky place - had native support for
it,) but even then it seemed like a weird choice.

John Ames wrote this copyrighted missive and expects royalties:

> On 26 Oct 2024 05:53:02 GMT
> rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
>
>> Then there was the nightmare when I was tasked with extracting
>> another division's data from FoxPro when we moved our bugs database
>> to something a little more real and shot the fox.
>
> Ah, FoxPro...VFP was the DBMS we used at my first real-world data-
> munging job. I assume our head honcho (a real DIYer) had his reasons (I
> think the terminal server we used - it was a call center handling
> inbound telemarketing sales, real janky place - had native support for
> it,) but even then it seemed like a weird choice.

I remember seeing reference to this one in Computer Shopper (which I bought
regularly while it contained Atari ST articles):

https://archive.org/details/WAMPUM45_ZIP

--
A baby is an alimentary canal with a loud voice at one end and no
responsibility at the other.

On Mon, 28 Oct 2024 11:33:32 -0400
Chris Ahlstrom <OFeem1987@teleworm.us> wrote:

> John Ames wrote this copyrighted missive and expects royalties:
>
> > On 26 Oct 2024 05:53:02 GMT
> > rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Then there was the nightmare when I was tasked with extracting
> >> another division's data from FoxPro when we moved our bugs database
> >> to something a little more real and shot the fox.
> >
> > Ah, FoxPro...VFP was the DBMS we used at my first real-world data-
> > munging job. I assume our head honcho (a real DIYer) had his reasons (I
> > think the terminal server we used - it was a call center handling
> > inbound telemarketing sales, real janky place - had native support for
> > it,) but even then it seemed like a weird choice.

It was superfast compared with/to A-T's dBase.
It compiled!

>
> I remember seeing reference to this one in Computer Shopper (which I bought
> regularly while it contained Atari ST articles):
>
> https://archive.org/details/WAMPUM45_ZIP

Whoa!

fu to afc only dropping c.o.l, as we're in DOS PC land here.

--
Bah, and indeed Humbug.

According to Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid>:
>On 2024-10-27, John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> wrote:
>>> My back-of-the-envelope calculation tells me that if we continue
>>> to double our population every 40 years, ...
>>
>> You might want to get some numbers for your envelope more recent than the 1950s.
>>
>> Here's a good place to start:
>>
>> https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/TOT/900
>
>Thanks for the link. Let's see how hard the government works
>(e.g. baby bonuses) to get that extra 0.5 child per household.

I have no idea what you mean by "the government" when talking about
world population, but national governments including China, Japan, and
many European countries have tried to get fertility rates back up.
They have all been complete failures.

--
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly

On 2024-10-29, John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> wrote:

> According to Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid>:
>
>> On 2024-10-27, John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> wrote:
>>
>>>> My back-of-the-envelope calculation tells me that if we continue
>>>> to double our population every 40 years, ...
>>>
>>> You might want to get some numbers for your envelope more recent
>>> than the 1950s.
>>>
>>> Here's a good place to start:
>>>
>>> https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/TOT/900
>>
>> Thanks for the link. Let's see how hard the government works
>> (e.g. baby bonuses) to get that extra 0.5 child per household.
>
> I have no idea what you mean by "the government" when talking about
> world population, but national governments including China, Japan, and
> many European countries have tried to get fertility rates back up.
> They have all been complete failures.

For which I am grateful. But it's still not going far enough.
Here in Canada, the federal government has been counting on immigration
to make up for the refusal of us selfish residents to breed fast enough.
Between 2000 and 2020, we brought in between 200,000 and 250,000
immigrants per year. Trudeau has increased that to 500,000 per year,
while making no provisions for what to do with them when they get here.
The province of Quebec is famous for their baby bonuses in an attempt
to get locals to breed more.

Governments and flying saucer nuts have a lot in common. UFOlogists are
counting on being saved by aliens from another planet, while governments
are counting on being saved by aliens from another country. The common
thread is an unwillingness to save ourselves by our own efforts. In
addition, our perceived need for skilled immigrants is an indictment of
our education system - which has been neglected in the name of cost savings.
But there are advantages to keeping the populace dumbed down, too.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | We'll go down in history as the
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | first society that wouldn't save
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | itself because it wasn't cost-
/ \ if you read it the right way. | effective. -- Kurt Vonnegut

On Mon, 28 Oct 2024 05:18:58 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

> Today it's evolved into the doctrine of "embrace, extend, extinguish".

Microsoft has met its match with Linux, though. It tried “extinguish”
first (remember “Linux is a cancer”? Or the infamous “Get The Facts”
campaign?), threw everything in its arsenal (both legal and not so legal)
at it, and failed miserably.

So how it has to embrace Linux. And interestingly, the “extend” part of
its strategy is being applied, not to Linux, but to Windows, to try to
make it more Linux like.

So guess what, if anything, is going to get “extinguished”?

On Tue, 29 Oct 2024 03:47:24 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

> In addition, our perceived need for skilled immigrants is an indictment
> of our education system ...

The lack of home-grown skilled workers is because of the lack of home-
grown babies. And that is because the women are less keen to be baby
factories once they get an education.

If you want to consider that “an indictment of [your] education system”,
then ...

John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> writes:
>According to Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid>:
>>On 2024-10-27, John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> wrote:
>>>> My back-of-the-envelope calculation tells me that if we continue
>>>> to double our population every 40 years, ...
>>>
>>> You might want to get some numbers for your envelope more recent than the 1950s.
>>>
>>> Here's a good place to start:
>>>
>>> https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/TOT/900
>>
>>Thanks for the link. Let's see how hard the government works
>>(e.g. baby bonuses) to get that extra 0.5 child per household.
>
>I have no idea what you mean by "the government" when talking about
>world population, but national governments including China, Japan, and
>many European countries have tried to get fertility rates back up.
>They have all been complete failures.

Which attempts fundmentally can be attributed to modern capitalist
theory that requires constant growth. Without new consumers,
how can the economy expand?

Is it time for a steady-state economy?

https://steadystate.org/discover/definition-of-steady-state-economy/

On 29/10/2024 15:18, Scott Lurndal wrote:
> Which attempts fundmentally can be attributed to modern capitalist
> theory that requires constant growth. Without new consumers,
> how can the economy expand?
>
> Is it time for a steady-state economy?
>
The problem is that most modern economies have a social care and debt
Ponzi scheme, that relies on more people earning more money to pay for it.

Stop the new people and the scheme collapses.

> https://steadystate.org/discover/definition-of-steady-state-economy/

Well it will have to come eventually, but the transition will be painful

--
"It was a lot more fun being 20 in the 70's that it is being 70 in the 20's"
Joew Walsh

On 2024-10-29, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

> On Mon, 28 Oct 2024 05:18:58 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>
>> Today it's evolved into the doctrine of "embrace, extend, extinguish".
>
> Microsoft has met its match with Linux, though. It tried “extinguish”
> first (remember “Linux is a cancer”? Or the infamous “Get The Facts”
> campaign?), threw everything in its arsenal (both legal and not so legal)
> at it, and failed miserably.

Then there was the TCO (total cost of ownership) fiasco, in which their
claims were soundly disproven.

> So how it has to embrace Linux. And interestingly, the “extend” part of
> its strategy is being applied, not to Linux, but to Windows, to try to
> make it more Linux like.
>
> So guess what, if anything, is going to get “extinguished”?

:-) Nice fantasy, though.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | We'll go down in history as the
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | first society that wouldn't save
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | itself because it wasn't cost-
/ \ if you read it the right way. | effective. -- Kurt Vonnegut

On 2024-10-29, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

> On 29/10/2024 15:18, Scott Lurndal wrote:
>
>> Which attempts fundmentally can be attributed to modern capitalist
>> theory that requires constant growth. Without new consumers,
>> how can the economy expand?
>>
>> Is it time for a steady-state economy?
>
> The problem is that most modern economies have a social care and debt
> Ponzi scheme, that relies on more people earning more money to pay for it.
>
> Stop the new people and the scheme collapses.

Don't stop the new people and the scheme collapes a bit later due to
resource exhaustion. It's no different from any other Ponzi scheme.

>> https://steadystate.org/discover/definition-of-steady-state-economy/
>
> Well it will have to come eventually, but the transition will be painful

Perhaps - but it might be less painful than a Malthusian crash.

Keep in mind that the decision makers do a good job of insulating
themselves from the consequences, no matter what. Any promised
benefits accrue to them, not us - but there are plenty of suckers
out there who will support it to the end.

"They _lied_ to us!"
-- Don't Look Up

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | We'll go down in history as the
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | first society that wouldn't save
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | itself because it wasn't cost-
/ \ if you read it the right way. | effective. -- Kurt Vonnegut

On 2024-10-29, Scott Lurndal <scott@slp53.sl.home> wrote:

> John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> writes:
>
>> According to Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid>:
>>
>>> On 2024-10-27, John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>> My back-of-the-envelope calculation tells me that if we continue
>>>>> to double our population every 40 years, ...
>>>>
>>>> You might want to get some numbers for your envelope more recent
>>>> than the 1950s.
>>>>
>>>> Here's a good place to start:
>>>>
>>>> https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/TOT/900
>>>
>>> Thanks for the link. Let's see how hard the government works
>>> (e.g. baby bonuses) to get that extra 0.5 child per household.
>>
>> I have no idea what you mean by "the government" when talking about
>> world population, but national governments including China, Japan, and
>> many European countries have tried to get fertility rates back up.
>> They have all been complete failures.
>
> Which attempts fundmentally can be attributed to modern capitalist
> theory that requires constant growth. Without new consumers,
> how can the economy expand?
>
> Is it time for a steady-state economy?
>
> https://steadystate.org/discover/definition-of-steady-state-economy/

Thanks for the link. I've believed for some time that we need to
transition to a steady-state economy; I'm glad to see that there
are others who agree.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | We'll go down in history as the
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | first society that wouldn't save
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | itself because it wasn't cost-
/ \ if you read it the right way. | effective. -- Kurt Vonnegut

On 29/10/2024 15:18, Scott Lurndal wrote:
> John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> writes:
>> According to Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid>:
>>> On 2024-10-27, John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> wrote:
>>>>> My back-of-the-envelope calculation tells me that if we continue
>>>>> to double our population every 40 years, ...
>>>>
>>>> You might want to get some numbers for your envelope more recent than the 1950s.
>>>>
>>>> Here's a good place to start:
>>>>
>>>> https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/TOT/900
>>>
>>> Thanks for the link. Let's see how hard the government works
>>> (e.g. baby bonuses) to get that extra 0.5 child per household.
>>
>> I have no idea what you mean by "the government" when talking about
>> world population, but national governments including China, Japan, and
>> many European countries have tried to get fertility rates back up.
>> They have all been complete failures.
>
> Which attempts fundmentally can be attributed to modern capitalist
> theory that requires constant growth. Without new consumers,
> how can the economy expand?
>
> Is it time for a steady-state economy?

Long past time.

--
Bill F.

On Tue, 29 Oct 2024 18:35:18 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

> Thanks for the link. I've believed for some time that we need to
> transition to a steady-state economy; I'm glad to see that there are
> others who agree.

Capitalism shares some attributes with cancer. I have no idea how it could
be toned down or replaced though. Schumacher's 'Small Is Beautiful' was
interesting but had no effect.