Author Archives: gmcdavid

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About gmcdavid

Retired IT professional with a wide range of interests. Married. Three sons, two with autistic-spectrum disorders and the third being transgender with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. From Chicago but now living in the Twin Cities metro, Minnesota. Episcopalian. Carleton College (BA 1972, physics) and Stanford University (MS 1974, Applied Physics; MS 1976 Statistics).

Oracle for real

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More than two years ago I took an introductory class on the Oracle database management system. Oracle is used in my organization, but not nearly as much as SQL Server, which is where I had been spending almost all my time. My supervisor was an experienced Oracle DBA and handled such tasks as came up. However, she just left, to take a job in the private sector. I have inherited the role of Oracle DBA. She gave me a lot of information before she left, but there was only so much she could cover in the available time. So I have a lot to figure out on my own. Oracle is very different.

Oracle here at work runs on Linux (Red Hat and Suse). All the time I have spent working on Linux at home will now pay off. The Linux support team hers is small (three people), but very good. I am looking forward to working with them.

Apple turns the screws

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Apple wants 30% of Kindle App ebook sales

It’s quite amazing how unpopular the move is. Even people on Apple sites are against it.

It’s all rather strange – Unless you consider the fact that people who are reading are not doing things Apple wants them to do i.e. watch movies, grow stupid, become consumers, watch TV, etc.

Books turn brainwashed consumers into free thinkers, and that might be the last thing Apple wants.

More, including comments (many NSFW), at Apple responds: we want a cut of Amazon, Sony e-book sales.

Politics and the AntiVaccination Movement

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From Why the ‘Prius Driving, Composting’ Set Fears Vaccines

I talked to a public health official and asked him what’s the best way to anticipate where there might be higher than normal rates of vaccine noncompliance, and he said take a map and put a pin wherever there’s a Whole Foods. I sort of laughed, and he said, “No, really, I’m not joking.” It’s those communities with the Prius driving, composting, organic food-eating people.

The Long Divergence

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The Crescent and the company

IN 2002 a group of Arab scholars produced a brave report, under the auspices of the United Nations, on the Arab world’s twin deficits, in freedom and knowledge. A salutary debate ensued. Now Timur Kuran, a Turkish-American economist based at Duke University, has written an equally brave book on “how Islamic law held back the Middle East”. One can only hope that the result will be an equally salutary debate.