How Satire Makes a Difference (Private Eye)

A Lego Bike Lane

Explaining Oracle's NoSQL announcements

When Michael Stonebreaker said that SQL was Intergalactic Dataspeak I believe he implied that SQL was going to be the future language for accessing databases. Recently there has been a movement to implement NoSQL databases - these are often simpler: they don't implement SQL, they may have only support key-value pairs. These database systems are used a lot in social networking systems, which often have extravagant performance demands. Now Oracle has announced a couple of NoSQL products, and Daniel Abadi has written an excellent explanation of them which I urge you to read. Be sure to read the comments as they include some from the implementers of one of the new systems, including Margo Seltzer.

The Chora(s)san Time-Court Mirage (Catherine Christer Hennix )

Just listen to this.

A good description is here.

The Chora(s)san Time-Court Mirage - 14. August 2011 - second set @ grimmuseum by cchennix

My list of lists of lists of lists

It is short:

• Wikipedia's List of lists of lists

Yobs

Two Tolstoy quotes about learning

I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.

The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him

Source: boing boing article and discussion.

Olympic Rehearsal (Private Eye)

School starts today