You know you work at a geek company when...
Ok, we've had some snow recently here in Virginia. Normally when it snows - you might think of people making snowmen:
or maybe even snow angels:
But no, here at Oracle, they like to make statements. Here is the view from my window this fine morning:
sigh....
On a different note, I've commented about Seth Godin's blog before - but this one just struck me this morning. It was about preciseness in language. I wrote about that same thing a while ago. It is so true - preciseness in language is pretty important if you want to get your points across - or even read!
posted by Thomas Kyte at 10:02 AM
16 Comments:
Hah! Awesome, why not
sqlplus "/ as sysdba"
:D
haw
Hey... you can see the building I work in, but I'm on the first floor. Hidden by the parking garage.
Just wonder why they put SAP and not MSFT (or M$)...
operator overloading
Have Oracle in your daily life.
Frankly Tom, don't you have more interesting things to do instead of drawing huge pictures in the snow? ;D
So what does the "SAP" command on instance ORCL do?
http://tinyurl.com/2vey9f
doesn't show much difference between
ORCL and SAP
read it as a programmer would.
Oracle is greater than SAP
(well, you could look at market cap too...)
Hi Sokrates, try year on year http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=SAP&t=1y&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=ORCL
re: precise language
I always liked the way C.S. Lewis described preciseness of language but at the same time he put it into context as one among a number of the incredible ways we can use language.
There is ordinary language: "It was very cold"
Then there's precise or scientific language: "The temperature was -2 degrees Celsius"
But this precise language does not conveys an idea as to how they day felt. It's quantity not quality.
Ordinary language does better here: "Your fingers will be numb!"
But to go further to convey quality, the feel and the experience he gives the example:
"Ah, bitter chill it was! The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;
The hare limped trembling through the frozen grass,
And silent was the flock in wooly fold: Numb’d were the Beadsman’s fingers."
This does not have precision in the sense that it can be quantified and tested but the information conveyed is quite striking and cannot be achieved with scientific language.
Of course precision is the order of the day in our technical world where we make our living but I did enjoy seeing it put in its place!
Sorry for the diversion !
Don't be sorry for that diversion, that was excellent! I really liked that.
I'm not going to comment on the snow graffiti, other than to suggest that once upon a time it would have been database and not application vendors that ORCL compared themselves with.
I will comment on Seth's blog - and your implied approval. Precision in language is important for technical communication, it is absolutely not the case for all communication - "shall I compare thee to a summer's day, thou art hotter than before and it's a clear result of your emissions". Here the writer was describing a concert
"The building was full — though not completely full — of cheerful teenagers, singing along to every funereal word"
A more technical description might have been
"The building was reasonably full of people, largely under the age of 20 and mostly of cheerful disposition, singing along to the words they knew with reasonable accuracy".
It wouldn't have described the concert well though. I particularly like the use of funereal, since I don't know the artist I get a sense of what the music is like from that, I can't believe every word is funereal though - or that it was just the funereal words that were sung along with.
So I'd agree that it was important to use language well, I'd disagree that this implied preciseness on all occasions.
Cute- funny because I used to work for SAP once upon a time as an SAP and Oracle consultant.
As for geek concepts, maybe I could create a special roast of coffee called the Oracle blend. That would be cute.
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