Gail Shaw wrote:

> To quote a friend on SQL central. Cursors are RBAR (Row by agonising row)
> processing

I see. I think...

> SQL's a set-based language. It's supposed to process datasets, not
> individual rows.

Agreed.

> Here's a cursor syntax in T-SQL. My oracle's way too rusty
> for me to attempt to do the same in pl-sql.

I probably wouldn't recognise it if you did. *I* haven't done PL/SQL in 
ages either...

> DECLARE curSomething CURSOR FOR
> SELECT somecolumn FROM SomeTable
> 
> FETCH NEXT FROM curSomething INTO @AVariable
> 
> WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0 -- there are rows in the cursor
> BEGIN
>   -- Do something with the variable @AVariable
>   FETCH NEXT FROM curSomething INTO @AVariable
> END

Right. So is it that cursors are inherantly evil? Or just that people 
tend to misuse them to do row-based processing when they could and 
should do set-based?

I was under the vague impression that a cursor is a thing that allows 
you to, say, show 1 page of results, and then fetch the next page a bit 
later...

-- 
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http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v7 wrote:
> 
> [Well, no, I'd say that once everything you want is configured, Linux is
> actually quite easy to use. But every time you want to plug something
> new in... hmm.]
> 

It (being "easy") depends *purely* on the frontends (window managers,
desktops, languages etc) you choose to install.

The Linux on my personal laptop is pretty highly-configured, still I
know less than 5 people who actually could say that it's easy.

Freedom of choice <3. I just can't get the usability of Afterstep on
Windows-desktop, unfortunately.

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
   http://www.zbxt.net
      aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

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scott wrote:
> And you guys are trying to convince me my mum could use Linux .... ha!

you listening to a bunch of geek trying to show off their command-line 
skills.

Give you mom Ubuntu and she'll never ever touch a command-line, except 
for running "pppoeconf" and providing ADSL login and password on 
installation.

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Warp wrote:
> It was IE which
> introduced the concept of going to a website and getting your system
> infected with a trojan.

No it wasn't.

Netscape had code in their source that looked at a "telnet" link, moved 
past the "://" part, replaced the "://" with spaces, and passed the 
resulting string to the shell. Note the complete lack of checking for 
something like "telnet://127.0.0.1;rm -rf *"

I'm not disagreeing with the rest of your rant. Just with this bit of 
misinformation.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     On what day did God create the body thetans?

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Orchid XP v7 wrote:
> Er... Mono is an free reimplementation of M$ proprietry technology 

It's not proprietary any more. It's an ECMA standard. Certainly the part 
that Mono implements is.

> Isn't that like complaining that including a free Java implementation is 
> "crippling the system with Sun IP"?

Yeah, but people don't irrationally hate Sun. :-)

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     On what day did God create the body thetans?

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Jeremy M. Praay wrote:

>> That should keep Microsoft-themed hyperboles (and the relevance of the 
>> software industry compared to the banana shipping industry) in check I 
>> guess.
> 
> Fine, but we all know Microsoft is The Most Evil corporation ever to have 
> existed in recorded human history.

Uh, dude, isn't that...

> Then perhaps comes Walmart

...ah. ;-)

[In all seriousness, why do people think this? I've heard it said often, 
but I don't actually know who Walmart are, so...]

> Exxon

I thought Exxon were stupid rather than actually evil? [Although I'll 
admit I don't actually know where I got that from...]

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> On the other hand, Windows has been managing basic installs without user 
>> expertise for decades. :-)
> 
>   Yes, Windows is clearly superior.

Are you attempting to imply that a decade ago, it was easier to install 
Linux than it was to install Windows?

Why do you take every statement I make and try to overgeneralize it to 
something rediculous? That's called "straw man".

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     On what day did God create the body thetans?

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> but I don't actually know who Walmart are, so...]

sigh.

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scott wrote:
> So when she plugs in the camera (without installing any drivers or 
> special software), a box will pop up asking her if she wants to view a 
> slide show, open the folder or print some of the photos?

Linux installs already generic device drivers for all common hardware. 
As long as the device comply with major standards, like USB, it's pretty 
much covered.

You don't need to install anything to test it out, most install CD/DVDs 
these days are LiveCDs which run from memory, without touching the disk 
unless you click on some "Install to disk" button and pressing a few Nexts.

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Darren New wrote:
> Orchid XP v7 wrote:
>> Er... Mono is an free reimplementation of M$ proprietry technology 
> 
> It's not proprietary any more. It's an ECMA standard. Certainly the part 
> that Mono implements is.

The way I heard it, the ECMA standard (ISO also? maybe?) doesn't cover 
everything in the M$ .NET framework implementation. But without knowing 
what is and isn't inside, it's hard to say how important that is...

>> Isn't that like complaining that including a free Java implementation 
>> is "crippling the system with Sun IP"?
> 
> Yeah, but people don't irrationally hate Sun. :-)

No - when people hate Sun it's completely rational. :-D Like the square 
root of the product of 3 distinct primes...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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