False derivation of philosophical meaning

I have had the pleasure of meeting Laurent Schneider at last year's Oracle OpenWorld, and I have made a point of reading his blog, even though he has significantly more technical database knowledge than I do (considering that I have next to none, from a technical perspective).

But I was able to derive some knowledge from the post that he made earlier today.

What is the lowest and highest possible date in Oracle?

using trunc and round I cannot get lower than -4800 nor higher than 10001

Or, in other words, the earliest possible date in Oracle is Thursday 1st January 4800 B.C., while the latest possible date is Monday 1st January 10001 A.D.

Now, all of us who went through the Y2k thingie know that one should not attach much significance to date limitations on computers. After all, the technical people of the 1960s and 1970s knew that the world would last beyond the year 2000 - otherwise, how could the events of "2001: A Space Odyssey" take place?

No, one should not attach much significance to date limitations. But I'm going to do it anyway.

Is Larry Ellison a creationist? Enquiring minds want to know.

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