[lbo-talk] Activistism piece

John Adams jadams01 at sprynet.com
Wed Feb 4 19:06:10 PST 2004


On Wednesday, February 4, 2004, at 02:17 PM, Dwayne Monroe wrote:


> Several of us believed however, it was just as important to instruct
> students in the underlying social theories guiding the way computers -
> the ultimate command and control tech - are put to use. The credit
> reporting system for example, contains in actionable code, certain
> ideas about class, race, residence and behavior which a combined
> systems and social theory analysis would reveal. Databases, to cite
> another example, viewed properly, can be studied both as software
> objects and as a reflection of the desire to categorize, monitor and
> control people and things.
>
> Many other rich opportunities for deep analysis are available.
>
> My colleagues and I were very excited about this approach, which
> would've gone beyond merely giving students the ability to configure
> Windows 2000 or Linux servers to help them understand the place of
> this technology within the larger capitalist maze. Why not combine
> theory and practice?

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/news/feuerstein_1000.html

Quote: The package specification holds no surprises; the transaction type is not evident here:

CREATE PACKAGE wcpkg AS

... PROCEDURE register (

culprit IN VARCHAR2, event IN VARCHAR2); END wcpkg; /

The package body, however, contains that new and wonderful pragma:

CREATE PACKAGE BODY wcpkg AS

...

PROCEDURE register (

culprit IN VARCHAR2, event IN VARCHAR2)

IS

PRAGMA AUTONOMOUS_TRANSACTION;

BEGIN

INSERT INTO war_criminal (name, activity)

VALUES (culprit, event);

COMMIT;

END; END wcpkg; /

And now when I call wcpkg.register, I am assured that my changes have been duly recorded:

BEGIN

wcpkg.register ('Kissinger', 'Secret Bombing of Cambodia');



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