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I used to think that Aussies were an overly layed-back lot. We prided
ourselves on something resembling such myths. A fair go. She'll be
right. They're a wierd mob ...

Considering a recent sample of two from c.o.v. I'm thinking I'd have
trouble convincing anyone (including myself) of that anymore.

Perhaps it's the recent, prolonged nation-wide drought, dessicating the
spirit and eviscerating the psyche.

Perhaps it's that relevant technologies have become so fractured with so
many competing niche skill-sets in so many populist markets that we
consider anything we might master to be so ephemeral as not to bother.

Perhaps a decade of being told one thing one day and another done the
next has led us to be uncertain of everything we hear.

Perhaps it's that OpenVMS has reached such a low critical mass locally
that we have unwittingly adopted a siege mentality.

Perhaps we were just confused when WMDs were not found in Iraq.

Perhaps it's that a sample of two is hardly representative.

Perhaps I just shouldn't post after barbecued steak and a bottle of red
(shared with the father-in-law I hasten to add).

--
To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then
one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer; not to
love is to suffer; to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love.
To be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy.
Therefore, to be unhappy, one must love or love to suffer or suffer
from too much happiness. I hope you're getting this down.
[Woody Allen; Love and Death]

On Aug 26, 5:19 am, Mark Daniel <mark.dan...@vsm.com.au> wrote:[color=blue]
> I used to think that Aussies were an overly layed-back lot. We prided
> ourselves on something resembling such myths. A fair go. She'll be
> right. They're a wierd mob ...
>
> Considering a recent sample of two from c.o.v. I'm thinking I'd have
> trouble convincing anyone (including myself) of that anymore.
>
> Perhaps it's the recent, prolonged nation-wide drought, dessicating the
> spirit and eviscerating the psyche.
>
> Perhaps it's that relevant technologies have become so fractured with so
> many competing niche skill-sets in so many populist markets that we
> consider anything we might master to be so ephemeral as not to bother.
>
> Perhaps a decade of being told one thing one day and another done the
> next has led us to be uncertain of everything we hear.
>
> Perhaps it's that OpenVMS has reached such a low critical mass locally
> that we have unwittingly adopted a siege mentality.
>
> Perhaps we were just confused when WMDs were not found in Iraq.
>
> Perhaps it's that a sample of two is hardly representative.
>
> Perhaps I just shouldn't post after barbecued steak and a bottle of red
> (shared with the father-in-law I hasten to add).
>
> --
> To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then
> one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer; not to
> love is to suffer; to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love.
> To be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy.
> Therefore, to be unhappy, one must love or love to suffer or suffer
> from too much happiness. I hope you're getting this down.
> [Woody Allen; Love and Death][/color]

Mark,

Getting philosophical after a good meal and some wine is to be
expected. Posting is indeed a different story (smile).

It is difficult to visualize the forest, and indeed, an entire
ecosystem from pictures of individual trees. I, for one, try to treat
examples as examples, not as recipes to be directly executed. I guess
that comes from seeing too many errors in well-established textbooks
from my undergraduate and graduate university days. I am not surprised
to find the occasional garble in a text. In fact, I discover errata in
published works all the time, including my own. Just the other day, I
found an error that had crept into a book chapter I wrote several
years ago (now fixed in the draft for the revision).

It is also true many are, often of necessity, narrowly focussed on a
particular job or its detailed requirements, and can miss more global
issues. When I work as a consulting systems and software architect, I
frequently encounter approaches that are overly narrow.

WASD is an excellent piece of work. That is not to say that is bug-
free (one of my undergraduate professors stated that that is an
impossibility for a non-trivial program), nor is it to say the
documentation is error-free.

- Bob Gezelter, [url]http://www.rlgsc.com[/url]
P.S. That Woody Allen quote is interesting, I will have to make note
of it. Sort of reminds me of an old theological tease, or the famous
1==0 proof from high school that one had a symbolically hidden divide
by 0)