read by which index? - cobol

In article <6mcegcFg7cmtU1@mid.individual.net>,
Pete Dashwood <dashwood@removethis.enternet.co.nz> wrote:

[snip]

>When people are under pressure they can often only see the problem.

Brings to mind the aphorism about alligators, gluteals and swamp-draining,
aye.

DD

In article <6me0fpFfvn5bU1@mid.individual.net>,
Pete Dashwood <dashwood@removethis.enternet.co.nz> wrote:
>
>
><docdwarf@panix.com> wrote in message news:gdsgop$i7h$2@reader1.panix.com...
>> In article <6mdf3jFg8j7lU1@mid.individual.net>,
>> Pete Dashwood <dashwood@removethis.enternet.co.nz> wrote:
>>
>> [snip]
>>
>>>The reason I said the conversation is surreal is because it is like being
>>>in
>>>the 1960s... I would never do ANY of this in this day and age...:-)
>>>(Assuming one had a choice of course...)
>>
>> If everyone did as you did, Mr Dashwood, then your skills would be just
>> plain and ordinary...
>
>Yes, I consider them so. I don't have any skill that anyone else could not
>(fairly easily) acquire.

I barely know what *I* can '(fairly easily) acquire', Mr Dashwood, let
alone anyone else... but you've reported being in situations where the
results you obtained were rather more successful than those obtained by
other folks. If you're to be believed then you have skills they didn't...
if you're not to be believed then... ooooooo, tell us a Story!

[snip]

>> Children whootle and tootle and chime on bells and whistles and the sound
>> disappears with the wind... Haydn (or maybe Leopold Mozart) writes the Toy
>> Symphony and it endures and gives delight for centuries.
>
>Angerer gets my vote on that. He'd be really annoyed if he didn't... :-)

Yes, it certainly might set him Orff.

DD

On Oct 24, 7:56 am, docdw...@panix.com () wrote:
> In article <6mcdk1Fg2id...@mid.individual.net>,
> Pete Dashwood <dashw...@removethis.enternet.co.nz> wrote:
>
> >The point is that it may not be the required record. Hence my question.
>
> 'The point' might be seen differently from different sides, Mr Dashwood....

Have ya' ever read the book _Flatland_, where the inhabitants are
geometric figures living in a two-dimensional plane? Line segments,
when they rotate, degenerate into a single point, at 180 degrees, then
lengthen again, and shorten again, until reaching a single point again
at 360 degrees. Sometimes ya gotta go round a couple of iterations,
just to get back to the same 'point', and understand that indeed, it
is the same 'point'. CLC good just as well stand for Circular Logic
Conventions :-).


>
> >>>Unfortunately, the contents of this field are updated AFTER access has
> >>>occurred so it doesn't help in any way to ensure that I get the specific
> >>>record (out of all the duplicates) that I actually want.
>
> >> Mr Dashwood, you did not ask anything about getting any particular record,
> >> you asked about 'what if the Alternate has duplicates?'.  If your question
> >> had concerned data, and how to get to them, you might have thought to ask
> >> about those.
>
> >I did. You simply didn't make the connection.
>
> It is considered, in some circles, impolite to point, Mr Dashwood; your
> question received a succinct, precise and accurate answer.

Circles are considered the highest royalty inhabitants in Flatland. In
Flatland, the number of sides you have indicate your status. Lines are
least (being only one-dimensional). Next come triangles with three
side, then squares, with four, then pentagons with five, etc., with
circles having an infinity of sides.

The impoliteness of pointing rises to injury in Flatland, since an
oncoming view of a line segment can degenerate into a vanishingly
small point, triangles on up are in danger of being pierced by
oncoming and unseen line segments at any time. We may consider
ourselves lucky, mayn't we, Mr. Dwarf, that in the 3-D land we live in
the impolitness of pointing is not in and of itself fatal? :-)

>
> >The clue was in READ... KEY
> >IS.
>
> This is most mysterious, Mr Dashwood, and in matters of data processing
> mystery can lead to... curious places.  Does a clue exist where it is left
> or where it is found?

If CoBOL practitioners survive by morphing into a Fellowship of
Craftsmen, does that not imply that we, as all Good Crafts should do,
adopt a certain amount of, uh, "mysterious and mystical esoterica" as
part of the Initiation of Members?

>
> >> (for those who aren't familiar with it... there is an Olde Joke about a
> >> fellow in a balloon asking something of someone on the ground; the oldest
> >> version I can find uses an 'Information Technology Worker' as the grounded
> >> one but the version I was taught had him as a Programmer.  See
>
> ><http://groups.google.com/group/alt.legend.atlantis/msg/b7ea3e01773a5b....>)
>
> >Unfortunately showing its age now... (like many of us...)

[begin gratituous excerpt to avoid changing Subject Line to OT :-)]
As I have said before, Mr. Dashwood, we are entering the End Game
here. Different players will enter the scene to help us with this
Passing. In the End Game the question is less about "Will CoBOL
Survive?" than it is "Who will out-survive the other, me or the
language?" :-)
[end gratitous excerpt]

>
> Getting older usually beats the alternative, Mr Dashwood... as the Olde
> Saying has it, 'Everyone wants to go to Heaven but nobody wants to die'.

Hmmmm... heard that line on a Country / Western station just this
week. Can't remember the artist. Do they have a C&W radio station in
Metro Wash-DC area, Mr. Dwarf, and if there is, do you listen to it?
It's OK if you do, and HeyBub might even respect you more for
it :-) ...

What is that parable about the man who asked the genie for the life of
a thousand years but then mourned that he forgot to ask that they all
be years of youth? So getting older beats the alternative, hmmmm...,
up to a 'point', but that's what got this thread going anyway, isn't
it?

Ken

In article <4dcf63dc-894d-47e7-ba32-e47632b84581@l64g2000hse.googlegroups.com>,
klshafer@att.net <klshafer@att.net> wrote:
>On Oct 24, 7:56 am, docdw...@panix.com () wrote:
>> In article <6mcdk1Fg2id...@mid.individual.net>,
>> Pete Dashwood <dashw...@removethis.enternet.co.nz> wrote:
>>
>> >The point is that it may not be the required record. Hence my question.
>>
>> 'The point' might be seen differently from different sides, Mr Dashwood...
>
>Have ya' ever read the book _Flatland_, where the inhabitants are
>geometric figures living in a two-dimensional plane? Line segments,
>when they rotate, degenerate into a single point, at 180 degrees, then
>lengthen again, and shorten again, until reaching a single point again
>at 360 degrees.

The book written in the latter part of the 19th century by Edwin Abbott?
My memory is, admittedly, porous but I seem to recall reading it... well,
a few decades closer to its original publication than I find myself to be,
now.

[smip]

>> >>>Unfortunately, the contents of this field are updated AFTER access has
>> >>>occurred so it doesn't help in any way to ensure that I get the specific
>> >>>record (out of all the duplicates) that I actually want.
>>
>> >> Mr Dashwood, you did not ask anything about getting any particular record,
>> >> you asked about 'what if the Alternate has duplicates?'.  If your question
>> >> had concerned data, and how to get to them, you might have thought to ask
>> >> about those.
>>
>> >I did. You simply didn't make the connection.
>>
>> It is considered, in some circles, impolite to point, Mr Dashwood; your
>> question received a succinct, precise and accurate answer.

[snip]

>The impoliteness of pointing rises to injury in Flatland, since an
>oncoming view of a line segment can degenerate into a vanishingly
>small point, triangles on up are in danger of being pierced by
>oncoming and unseen line segments at any time.

This was one of the bits where Abbott runs afoul of Euclid, Mr Shafer, and
in matters of Geometry it is Euclid who, rather frequently, is considered
first. Euclid defined a point as that 'which has no part' (transliterated
as 'semeion estin ou meros outhen'); as 'sharpness' is an attribute of a
part of something (a needle's point, a knife's edges, a bit of wit other
than mine own) Abbott seems to have taken a bit of artistic license.

(Flatland being subtitled 'A Romance in Many Dimensions' this might be
almost appropriate... what better place than a Romance for a bit of
licentiousness?)

>We may consider
>ourselves lucky, mayn't we, Mr. Dwarf, that in the 3-D land we live in
>the impolitness of pointing is not in and of itself fatal? :-)

For some reason this reminds me of the line spoken by Tom Cruise in the
movie 'Collateral', when hearing the exclamation 'You killed him!', of
'No, I shot him. The bullets and the fall killed him.'

>
>>
>> >The clue was in READ... KEY
>> >IS.
>>
>> This is most mysterious, Mr Dashwood, and in matters of data processing
>> mystery can lead to... curious places.  Does a clue exist where it is left
>> or where it is found?
>
>If CoBOL practitioners survive by morphing into a Fellowship of
>Craftsmen, does that not imply that we, as all Good Crafts should do,
>adopt a certain amount of, uh, "mysterious and mystical esoterica" as
>part of the Initiation of Members?

Answering a question with a question, Mr Shafer, is no answer at all. The
clue carried by Theseus seems to have had its existence in both the
leaving and the finding.

[snip]

>> Getting older usually beats the alternative, Mr Dashwood... as the Olde
>> Saying has it, 'Everyone wants to go to Heaven but nobody wants to die'.
>
>Hmmmm... heard that line on a Country / Western station just this
>week. Can't remember the artist. Do they have a C&W radio station in
>Metro Wash-DC area, Mr. Dwarf, and if there is, do you listen to it?

There is a program or two on the NPR station of American University (WAMU)
that is hosted by Dick Spottswood, a fellow with whom John Fahey combed
the back-country of sundry Southern states, going door-to-door and
offering to buy 78-rpm records. Me, I think 'country music' began to go
downhill when Bill and Charlie Monroe broke up.

>It's OK if you do, and HeyBub might even respect you more for
>it :-) ...

My tastes in music are not motivated by the earning of respect, they are
motivated... well, perhaps that has not been determined. From the
aforementioned John Fahey (described in a Rolling Stone magazine review as
being 'as introverted a guitarist as one can be and play more than one
note' and described by me as 'music which has been known to drive people
out of the room, screaming') to Charlie Poole to sundry orchestral
works... with an occaisional ocarina solo tossed in, just to keep things
mixed up really gourd, I never know what will strike my ear in a fashion
that makes an 'Ahhhhh!'.

>
>What is that parable about the man who asked the genie for the life of
>a thousand years but then mourned that he forgot to ask that they all
>be years of youth?

I believe you refer to the story of Tithonus... ahhhh, gotta love this Web
thingie, http://www.questia.com/library/encyc...a/tithonus.jsp .

>So getting older beats the alternative, hmmmm...,
>up to a 'point', but that's what got this thread going anyway, isn't
>it?

What got it going might not be where it arrives... or at least that's the
case with the 12:35 train from Kaunas to Vilnius.

Might as well enjoy the ride, I guess.

DD