[tptacek]

We all get that Oracle has literally the same naming provenance, right? Actually more so: they took the name from the Central Intelligence Agency project they started the company with.

Every time this comes up, I find myself asking, "what do you think a secret phase conjugate tracking system is for?" Maybe it's just that I'm older than the median here, but when I was a kid, the mere concept of a relational database was something that stirred disquiet in the press; people were worried databases were going to take over society. It was not a completely crazy concern!

[mdnahas]

One throughline of history is database-ization. Some of our older writings are records of ownership and tax liabilities. We keep moving information from the real world into a database. We have done it so much that the database is sometimes more important than the real world. Someone marked “dead” in a database can have a hard time living!

[mindslight]

"You could sit at home, and do like absolutely nothing, and your name goes through like seventeen computers a day." Seventeen. How quaint.