Will learning a Python framework (I am looking at Django) be more beneficial for me from both career and usability perspectives than PHP?
Depends;)
PHP's usability is clearly inferior (and looks worse, something that actually makes a difference if you look at code a few hours a day).
PHP is used in more in simpler CMS engines (with obvious exceptions like Drupal), so if you are targetting smallish local shops looking for a relatively simple website, then I would advise learning PHP. Python on the other hand is mainly used in more complex environments (see the CMS/web programming framework Plone). A bit more work to get in, but it's also easier to make more money later. Plus it's more fun to program, and you learned a real language that's useful in other contexts.
Re:Could Someone Help Me Out With This?
on
Debt Deal Reached
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· Score: 1
While a true statement, 95% of the time it is used as a hand-waving argument that means "I'll pretend I understand macro-economics by just making vague claims about it and not give the model I use". (not intended as a criticism of this post, just a general rant)
Absolutely:) It's the same in the discipline itself: There are at least two major opposing schools of macro economics, monetarists (like Friedman) and followers of the labor theory of value (like Smith, Ricardo, Keynes, Marx). A monetarist would strongly oppose my posts here, calling them utter crap because I argue for what he would probably see as monetary instabilty.
Re:Could Someone Help Me Out With This?
on
Debt Deal Reached
·
· Score: 1
The value of the Dollar plays no role in the US debt, because all loans are expressed in dollars.
If all dept is in the own currency, all the better, that's what I meant. If the state prints new money, inflation occurs. Let's ignore all other variables and assume an inflation of 100%. The result: Prices rise 100%, and eventually so do taxes. Therefore, the state gets nominally 100% more taxes, while the dept (in number of dollars) is still the same. Result: the dollar lost value, and so did the dept.
Re:Could Someone Help Me Out With This?
on
Debt Deal Reached
·
· Score: 1
So you are saying that the matter is so complex that you cannot make a guess that is closer than a few trillions of the actual expenses/taxes you make in 4 years?
I meant complex as in complex math (emergent behaviour, feedback loops and so on), but basically: yes. There are of course confounding variables, like the continued artificial creation of of fragile constructs like economic bubbles, as opposed to creating sustainable growth, which has to include growing salaries[1].The US has a very good and internationally respected macro economist for these topics: Robert Brenner.
[1]: While the private households in the US were still consuming, they did so through more private dept, as opposed to risen income. That was of course gambling on rising housing prices, which did not work out. The european economy most similar in this regard was Spain, and Spain got hit equally hard from the crisis.
Re:Then Why Are We Seeing the Same Negative Effect
on
Debt Deal Reached
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· Score: 1
What I'm asking is why, if people like Cheney said that "Reagan proved deficits don't matter" then why are we seeing negative effects? Suddenly we're concerned about our AAA rating? Why should we care? Deficits don't matter, right? If you're saying that a checkbook deficit and national deficit are two completely different things then why are we seeing a threat of losing our credit rating and other money problems that are associated with drowning yourself in debt on a personal level?
We are entering heavily disputed territory here, but I would say that the problem is not the dept per se, but the inability of the US state to turn the available ressources into something that generates wealth, hence repay in the form of taxes. Things like stimulous plans, science, education. Not things like war (especially not losing wars, ethics ignored for the sake of the argument). Also, the political climate in the US seems to heavily favor privatizing everything that has the option of generating profit (e.g. Running expensive universities to train people to be scientists, then pay them to be scientists. In case they research something profitable, they can create a start up and the profit goes into private pockets. While the researcher in case sure is happy, economically speaking that sounds insane to me).
Re:Could Someone Help Me Out With This?
on
Debt Deal Reached
·
· Score: 5, Informative
This is very basic math... so basic that when you're taught how to balance a checkbook in high school, they don't even teach it in Math class. It's a general life skill and our country is failing at life in general.
Yes, but when using your checkbook you take the value of the currency as a given. A state has (limited) control over the value of it's currency (by limiting or expanding the available sum of printed money), thereby it also has (again, limited) control over the value of it's own dept. Now you might say that playing with the value of the currency can have complex consequences, and that would be true. Still, macro economics work differently than micro economics.
Anarchy has never benefited a single country on the face of the planet.
I am not a fan of Anarchism as a political system, but that sentence is empirically wrong. In early 20th century europe there were at least two cases I know of, Ukraine and Spain, where Anarchism lasted for a while, and was pretty successful in economical terms. For Spain for example it's more or less proven that the anarchist period saw a sharp rise in worker productivity.
Both didn't last long in the grand scale of things, but their military defeat does not relate to them being anarchist regions - they were just small and didn't have a chance against their much more powerful enemy (Spain: The spanish fascist movement with support from other fascist movements from all over Europe; Ukraine: the Red Army).
I see what you mean. The google way of doing eternal betas does indeed file like a joke sometimes. And what they are doing with google+ right now, with celeb invites and all that, is more marketing than anything. But I do wonder whether one can do a realistic load test on a social network software without significant numbers of real users.
I see what you mean, and I'm feeling the same. But by that reasoning deflation cannot happen, which, as history has shown, is not true. I'm not sure why, perhaps people always assume deflation will end soon, so they won't give away their coins until the end of deflation arrives.
I'm neither parent nor from the U.S., but a bit interested in macro economics. My take: the basic problem of the U.S. economy is lack of sustainable demand, and that's the case for some 30 years now. It wasn't so obvious before because it's so easy to get credit in the U.S. With real, sustainable demand there wouldn't have been a credit crisis. How to achieve that as an economy: Focus more on high quality jobs (with corresponding salaries) creating high quality products for businesses and people. That's what for example the northern european countries did (while they had social democratic governments, it remains to be seen how that develops now).
The article describes a business strategy that has been the root problem of the U.S. in the past 30 years: producing consumerist crap for the lower classes and finance that through advertising (which basically is creating artificial demand that can only be fulfilled through taking credits, as the profit for the most part doesn't get paid out as good salaries).
I don't know why people see religion class as something problematic. In Germany we have it and it's not like it's about indoctrination.
My eperience differs. Sometimes there was talk about other religions, but always from a christian perspective. The religious classes are one of the really bad pre-modern remains of indoctrination in german schools. They are purposely designed that way, for example you have to be a believer of the local christian sect to be a teacher for those classes.
I think you misread my post. I referred to cover-ups like the one linked in that wikipedia article: soldiers mistook civilians for soldiers, killed them, then tried to cover up that fact. Incidents like that one surfaced a few times in the last years. When a few surfaced, it's reasonable to assume that more incidents happened, but did not surface. Therefore, it's reasonable to conclude that there have been more killings of civilians than those documented in that wikipedia article. Where in that line of thoughts did you find proof that I "don't seem like someone who would believe anything good about NATO or anything bad about the Taliban" ?!
Actually, the Taliban kill far more civilians than NATO
Do you have sources for that (not trolling, really interested)? Documented direct killings of civilians by OEF troops are around 4000, according to wikipedia. Most probably more, as there have been numerous cover-ups that leaked to the public. I couldn't find sources for the number of Taliban killings, though.
It wasn't my intention to suggest incompetence on your part. I wasn't thinking about steam as the way to transport the energy, but rather molten salt. IIRC molten salt plants can generate electricity for a few days without sun.
I wouldn't overestimate the reliaility of nuclear plants, though. Last time I checked for the german ones, they had an average uptime of about 50% over one year. Still better than e.g. the 30-35% of 2MW+ wind mills, but not by _that_ much.
[...]And the "carpet every inch with solar panels"-thing conveniently leaves out solar thermal, [...]
Yes. Yes, it does. Since we're talking about electric energy here, and not hot water/central heating. I said power, not heat the world, if I wanted to heat it, I'd light it.
How do you think nuclear plants work? The principle is the same, just the heat source differs.
Your sentiment is noble, but unfortunately, media violence researchers are not interested in their own numbers -- just a political agenda. Objectively speaking, the burden of proof is on media violence researchers to show any type of causal link at all. They have failed for eighty years.
Your "political agenda" is a strawman. There are many different flavors of political interests at work here, and in my experience the US discourse has a solid majority of pro new media scientists.
Also, your information of a lack of causal relationship is outdated. That's pretty much proven these days, the discourse is 1. about the effect size and 2. about the role of other variables in combination.
A friend of mine who is a former defense lawyer mentioned that he would ask his young clients what they were doing before, for example, stealing a car. In most cases they were playing GTA or some similar game. Just because the statistics aren't collected doesn't mean they aren't there. (And yes, I know, correlation doesn't prove causation).
I think that's selection bias. Let's change perspective: How many (million?) kids where playing GTA and did not steal a car afterwards?
You are of course right: this won't work for all types of software. But if the software needes a non-free data set (for example a game), then the code can be Free Software, while still being sellable. And if you sell support, you can sell the code you are supporting free, too. I am sure there are quite a few options.
Slashdot Mirror
That's what a union is for. You collect money into a pool on a regular basis, which then pays those who are on strike.
Will learning a Python framework (I am looking at Django) be more beneficial for me from both career and usability perspectives than PHP?
Depends ;)
PHP's usability is clearly inferior (and looks worse, something that actually makes a difference if you look at code a few hours a day).
PHP is used in more in simpler CMS engines (with obvious exceptions like Drupal), so if you are targetting smallish local shops looking for a relatively simple website, then I would advise learning PHP. Python on the other hand is mainly used in more complex environments (see the CMS/web programming framework Plone). A bit more work to get in, but it's also easier to make more money later. Plus it's more fun to program, and you learned a real language that's useful in other contexts.
While a true statement, 95% of the time it is used as a hand-waving argument that means "I'll pretend I understand macro-economics by just making vague claims about it and not give the model I use". (not intended as a criticism of this post, just a general rant)
Absolutely :) It's the same in the discipline itself: There are at least two major opposing schools of macro economics, monetarists (like Friedman) and followers of the labor theory of value (like Smith, Ricardo, Keynes, Marx). A monetarist would strongly oppose my posts here, calling them utter crap because I argue for what he would probably see as monetary instabilty.
The value of the Dollar plays no role in the US debt, because all loans are expressed in dollars.
If all dept is in the own currency, all the better, that's what I meant. If the state prints new money, inflation occurs. Let's ignore all other variables and assume an inflation of 100%. The result: Prices rise 100%, and eventually so do taxes. Therefore, the state gets nominally 100% more taxes, while the dept (in number of dollars) is still the same. Result: the dollar lost value, and so did the dept.
So you are saying that the matter is so complex that you cannot make a guess that is closer than a few trillions of the actual expenses/taxes you make in 4 years?
I meant complex as in complex math (emergent behaviour, feedback loops and so on), but basically: yes. There are of course confounding variables, like the continued artificial creation of of fragile constructs like economic bubbles, as opposed to creating sustainable growth, which has to include growing salaries[1].The US has a very good and internationally respected macro economist for these topics: Robert Brenner.
[1]: While the private households in the US were still consuming, they did so through more private dept, as opposed to risen income. That was of course gambling on rising housing prices, which did not work out. The european economy most similar in this regard was Spain, and Spain got hit equally hard from the crisis.
What I'm asking is why, if people like Cheney said that "Reagan proved deficits don't matter" then why are we seeing negative effects? Suddenly we're concerned about our AAA rating? Why should we care? Deficits don't matter, right? If you're saying that a checkbook deficit and national deficit are two completely different things then why are we seeing a threat of losing our credit rating and other money problems that are associated with drowning yourself in debt on a personal level?
We are entering heavily disputed territory here, but I would say that the problem is not the dept per se, but the inability of the US state to turn the available ressources into something that generates wealth, hence repay in the form of taxes. Things like stimulous plans, science, education. Not things like war (especially not losing wars, ethics ignored for the sake of the argument). Also, the political climate in the US seems to heavily favor privatizing everything that has the option of generating profit (e.g. Running expensive universities to train people to be scientists, then pay them to be scientists. In case they research something profitable, they can create a start up and the profit goes into private pockets. While the researcher in case sure is happy, economically speaking that sounds insane to me).
This is very basic math ... so basic that when you're taught how to balance a checkbook in high school, they don't even teach it in Math class. It's a general life skill and our country is failing at life in general.
Yes, but when using your checkbook you take the value of the currency as a given. A state has (limited) control over the value of it's currency (by limiting or expanding the available sum of printed money), thereby it also has (again, limited) control over the value of it's own dept. Now you might say that playing with the value of the currency can have complex consequences, and that would be true. Still, macro economics work differently than micro economics.
Anarchy has never benefited a single country on the face of the planet.
I am not a fan of Anarchism as a political system, but that sentence is empirically wrong. In early 20th century europe there were at least two cases I know of, Ukraine and Spain, where Anarchism lasted for a while, and was pretty successful in economical terms. For Spain for example it's more or less proven that the anarchist period saw a sharp rise in worker productivity.
Both didn't last long in the grand scale of things, but their military defeat does not relate to them being anarchist regions - they were just small and didn't have a chance against their much more powerful enemy (Spain: The spanish fascist movement with support from other fascist movements from all over Europe; Ukraine: the Red Army).
I see what you mean. The google way of doing eternal betas does indeed file like a joke sometimes. And what they are doing with google+ right now, with celeb invites and all that, is more marketing than anything. But I do wonder whether one can do a realistic load test on a social network software without significant numbers of real users.
Google "LGPL".
Actually that is a beta test. A beta test tests a feature complete application's behaviour under load. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Software_release_life_cycle
I see what you mean, and I'm feeling the same. But by that reasoning deflation cannot happen, which, as history has shown, is not true. I'm not sure why, perhaps people always assume deflation will end soon, so they won't give away their coins until the end of deflation arrives.
There is no point in saving something you don't ever spend. All bitcoins now hoarded will come back on the market eventually.
Why should they? As there can be no inflation by design, the value of a bitcoin can only increase. There is AFAICS zero incentive to not hoard them.
I'm neither parent nor from the U.S., but a bit interested in macro economics. My take: the basic problem of the U.S. economy is lack of sustainable demand, and that's the case for some 30 years now. It wasn't so obvious before because it's so easy to get credit in the U.S. With real, sustainable demand there wouldn't have been a credit crisis. How to achieve that as an economy: Focus more on high quality jobs (with corresponding salaries) creating high quality products for businesses and people. That's what for example the northern european countries did (while they had social democratic governments, it remains to be seen how that develops now).
The article describes a business strategy that has been the root problem of the U.S. in the past 30 years: producing consumerist crap for the lower classes and finance that through advertising (which basically is creating artificial demand that can only be fulfilled through taking credits, as the profit for the most part doesn't get paid out as good salaries).
I don't know why people see religion class as something problematic. In Germany we have it and it's not like it's about indoctrination.
My eperience differs. Sometimes there was talk about other religions, but always from a christian perspective. The religious classes are one of the really bad pre-modern remains of indoctrination in german schools. They are purposely designed that way, for example you have to be a believer of the local christian sect to be a teacher for those classes.
Thanks for that link, a good start to dive deeper into the topic.
I think you misread my post. I referred to cover-ups like the one linked in that wikipedia article: soldiers mistook civilians for soldiers, killed them, then tried to cover up that fact. Incidents like that one surfaced a few times in the last years. When a few surfaced, it's reasonable to assume that more incidents happened, but did not surface. Therefore, it's reasonable to conclude that there have been more killings of civilians than those documented in that wikipedia article. Where in that line of thoughts did you find proof that I "don't seem like someone who would believe anything good about NATO or anything bad about the Taliban" ?!
Actually, the Taliban kill far more civilians than NATO
Do you have sources for that (not trolling, really interested)? Documented direct killings of civilians by OEF troops are around 4000, according to wikipedia. Most probably more, as there have been numerous cover-ups that leaked to the public. I couldn't find sources for the number of Taliban killings, though.
taking any ideology to extremes is fascist.
Taking any ideology to extremes is extremist. Fascism is something different.
It wasn't my intention to suggest incompetence on your part. I wasn't thinking about steam as the way to transport the energy, but rather molten salt. IIRC molten salt plants can generate electricity for a few days without sun.
I wouldn't overestimate the reliaility of nuclear plants, though. Last time I checked for the german ones, they had an average uptime of about 50% over one year. Still better than e.g. the 30-35% of 2MW+ wind mills, but not by _that_ much.
[...]And the "carpet every inch with solar panels"-thing conveniently leaves out solar thermal, [...]
Yes. Yes, it does. Since we're talking about electric energy here, and not hot water/central heating. I said power, not heat the world, if I wanted to heat it, I'd light it.
How do you think nuclear plants work? The principle is the same, just the heat source differs.
Your sentiment is noble, but unfortunately, media violence researchers are not interested in their own numbers -- just a political agenda. Objectively speaking, the burden of proof is on media violence researchers to show any type of causal link at all. They have failed for eighty years.
Your "political agenda" is a strawman. There are many different flavors of political interests at work here, and in my experience the US discourse has a solid majority of pro new media scientists.
Also, your information of a lack of causal relationship is outdated. That's pretty much proven these days, the discourse is 1. about the effect size and 2. about the role of other variables in combination.
A friend of mine who is a former defense lawyer mentioned that he would ask his young clients what they were doing before, for example, stealing a car. In most cases they were playing GTA or some similar game. Just because the statistics aren't collected doesn't mean they aren't there. (And yes, I know, correlation doesn't prove causation).
I think that's selection bias. Let's change perspective: How many (million?) kids where playing GTA and did not steal a car afterwards?
Careful now, you don't want to be offending them thar Muslim-ish folk for inferring their "holy book" might lead to genocidal thoughts etc.
What makes you think he wasn't talking about christianity?
You are of course right: this won't work for all types of software. But if the software needes a non-free data set (for example a game), then the code can be Free Software, while still being sellable. And if you sell support, you can sell the code you are supporting free, too. I am sure there are quite a few options.