Yet. If they have 4B in the bank why raise another 3B unless they were going to start buying things. What can cost >3B? Other companies of course.
I don't look at Google as bad though. They are offering lots of cool products with little to no cost and making money at it. Now when growth starts to slow and the stock price begins to reflect it we'll get to see if they are still so nice.
Don't assume all 20 somethings haven't seen anything older than a nintendo. I'm in my late 20s and had an Atari 2600 while growing up. My grandparents actually owned an Odessey like was talked about in the review. Not to mention games like Pacman, defender, dig dug, etc... that we played at Pizza Huts, laundry mats or anywhere else where you had to sit for awhile.
WoW to me is a huge let down. I played it for 3-4 months and got a char to 58th level. The graphics were nice, but something just didn't feel right. Plus the kids, omg everywhere. So annoying.
I played DAoC for about 3 years (got it on release day) and I felt a real sense of community, character control ect... that I never got out of WoW. DAoC is by no means a perfect game, but playing WoW left me wondering why so many people do play it? I guess good marketing and the persistent diablo type world drew a lot of people in.
I left taxes out to try to keep the example simple. But if you keep taxes you still end up worse off. Mainly because you have to take money (that you could've kept tax free) and take it as earning to pay on your CC debt. If you keep a $20,000 CC debt and never pay it down you're not only losing the cost to service the debt, but also the opportunity cost of not being able to shove that money tax free into your 401k (which gets you a guaranteed return of your tax rate at least). So your 28% CC rate is actually much higher once you factor in that you could've taken that same money and kept it untaxed and with any luck gotten 5%-10+% on it.
Keeping a CC balance rarely if ever makes sense. Once the debt gets up into the $10k-$20k I have a hard time seeing any other investment to be worth more than not paying off the CC debt as priority one.
Just b/c you can get 100% investment return on a set small amount of money doesn't mean that your ahead of your 28% CC balance.
Be careful only looking at it with percentages. Your example always works only when you can take the full credit card balance and get an investment return better than the rate they charge.
For example, take someone making 50k/year and has up to a 5% match from their employer. So they put in 2500/year and get the 100% return from their employer to make it 5k/year. Looking at only percentages this person thinks their in good shape b/c they are only paying 28% on their CC loan and getting 100% return from thier 401k investment. What they fail to realize is that they have a 20k CC balance which while the rate is less the base principal is much higher.
By not paying down the CC this person is actually losing 600/year even with their 100% return from the employer match.
What is bullshit about the idea of design patterns? The book contains examples of 23 design patterns that the authors have seen. By no means are they the end all of all patterns. You could even argue (and the authors would probably agree) that there have been some better solutions found to the design problems posed in the book.
The main idea of the book is that there are common design problems that people run into over and over in software. A pattern is simply a proven solution to those problems.
However, in the real world, where customers want their software to run fast and use a minimum amount of system memory, these techniques, while instructive, are ultimately utterly worthless.
In the real world customers also want their software delivered in a timely manner. By recognizing common patters in a software design problem it allows the engineer to get to the unique problems more quickly.
What's funny is that you don't like the book, but if you are any good at software engineering you're already using patterns everyday. IE, you've seen this design problem before and this is how you solved it last time.
Think beyond just what's listed in the book and think about the ideas that were presented. Apply that thinking on a larger scale where you don't personally have to see and solve every design problem and then you can understand the usefullness of design patterns.
It's no accident that non object oriented langauges like Lisp and ML don't have quite so many design patterns.
OO langues provide some facilities that make implementation easier, but every language can have design patterns. All a design pattern is, is a solution to a common design problem. The only way a language would not have any design patterns is if it allowed you completely skip the design phase.
The price gouging claim comes from the idea that anything that is not a tangible object should cost nothing, since the costs of reproducing what is basically an abstract representation of information is nearly zero.
I can understand an idea being free. As in I thought of this doesn't it sound cool. Now let me spend 5000 hours of my time implementing my idea and just because the efforts of my work happen to be a piece of software it should be free also?
Think of it this way, if you took your car into the shop to get it fixed and the mechanic flipped a switch in a hidden compartment and then charged you $500 to fix it
Software is more like it taking the mechanic many hours to find and flip the switch the first time. Now hopefully he can duplicate his same effort in less time the next time. Being a bright mechanic he charges you less than it actually costs assuming he'll be able to charge the next person for the same action and take less time doing it.
Now if you want to argue that a piece of software should eventually become free after a company recoups it's development costs and some profit I could understand. Saying that software is intangible and it should be free from the start isn't keeping in mind the costs of creating it to begin with.
Great, that's one state down (assuming the state-wide median home price in California is $500K, which I doubt, San Francisco maybe, California, no way). There are 49 left.
Don't keep up much with the news? Last month the median price for a home sold in the entire state of Cali was $445k. Still think there isn't a bubble? There are similar stories in LV and all over the east coast.
From this article.Ten states and the District of Columbia have seen prices rise more than 70 percent over the past five years, and prices have more than doubled in 23 markets in California, Florida and Massachusetts, according to federal figures. In the same time frame, ordinary consumer prices have risen just 13 percent, and personal income has risen 23 percent. Guess it's still just in Cali...
From the rich people who invest in them.
Exactly. When people start defaulting other people lose their money and a chain of events occurs that can lead to a recession.
So credit cards should be illegal?
No, but I do think there should be and probably will be some regulations in place about how people can get cards. There was a report the other day about how a ~%30 of credit card companies revenues come from late fees and other random fees they charge. They are basically targeting people now who they expect to default and hope they will default. Ever heard of universal default? It's a new thing the credit card companies are doing since everything is now computerized. If you are late on any bill, not just a bill to the CC company, they will pick it up and then raise your CC rates. Basically taking someone who is in a tight spot and hammering them a bit more, but I digress.
Some people are in special situations where such a mortgage might make sense. Most people aren't, but I don't see the harm in offering people more choices.....That's certainly the risk, and someone who isn't going to have $2000/month to spare in 3 years shouldn't be taking it. Doesn't mean there aren't people who might benefit from such a deal.
You are correct, there are certain people who can benefit and use these types of debt instruments. The problem now is that they are being used by people who have no business using them. Loan places are selling them like houses will never stop going up and in 3 years you'll be $$$ richer. To think that there is no bubble and that there won't be some sort of pop is ignoring all of the information available. Similar to the "it's a new type of economy" people during the internets irrational exuberance.
Same place they always do, from loans. Interest rates are really low now, and that's why home prices are high. People can afford to pay more for the house, because they don't have to pay as much in interest.
Sure rates are low, but do they translate to the $500k+ median home prices in Cali right now? Where are these people working to pay 2000-3000/month mortgages (if they've taken a standard loan)? Where are they getting the 20% to put down?
The majority of loans are fixed interest rate. The fact that the price of the house goes down isn't going to change the monthly payment. Yes, some people with adjustible rate mortgages are going to get screwed over. I feel like I'm repeating myself here.
Repeat yourself all you want, but what you are saying just isn't true. Read the link I posted. Here is the relevant part During the second half of [2004], 63% of home loans were adjustable-rate mortgages with those so-called interest-only features, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. By all accounts I've found it's only increasing. To say most people are buying homes using the historically low fixed rates just isn't fact.
Unless the house drops by more than 20%, the difference is going to be paid by either the down payment or the PMI company. If the price drops more than that, and the home buyers didn't have PMI because they put more than 20% down, the lender might initially have to cough it up, but they can then sue the home buyer for the difference.
And where do you think the PMI company gets the money? They just can't create it and give it to the banks. Additionally, many people get out of PMI buy taking a short term loan on top their mortgage to cover the 20%.
Why should it be illegal to borrow more money than the value of your collateral? Would you also suggest that we make it illegal to borrow money without any collateral at all?
Again, you didn't even look at the type of loan I was talking about. A neg-am loan is the credit card of mortgages. It allows people to buy a home and not even pay all the interest each month. So at the end of 3-5 years you owe more than when you started. If house prices don't keep pace with how much you owe you end up upside down. So you may start the loan with a ~800/month payment. Within 3 years you could be up to 2000/month if interest rates move only 2%-3% upwards.
If housing prices stagnate then they won't owe more than the house is worth. Even if it prices go down a little most of the deficit will be covered by the down payment in most cases.
Look at current housing prices, now look at current wages. Where are all these people getting the money to pay these prices for houses? From crazy types of loans like interest only ARMs, neg-am ARMs, etc... Downpayments, rofl. I'd love to find some stats on how many people are putting 20% down right now. Heck, I'd love to know how many people are putting anything down right now.
If housing prices stagnate and/or interest rates go up people are going to be stuck. This will lead to people who have to sell because they couldn't ever afford the house they were in to begin with. As more people get caught in this situation prices will fall and then people end up owing more than the house is worth. Then you have people just walking away, and lender take it in the gut. IMHO, some lenders need to take a good hit on the head with the aweful loans they are pushing on people. Look up the Freedom Loan for an example of something that should be illegal, and I'm usually one who's all for personal responsibility!
Sure, there will be some exceptions, but I don't think it'll be as widespread as you're suggesting.
With >50% of new mortgages being some sort of interest only ARMs there are a lot of people who will get caught when rates tick up. Even Alan Greenspan is warning about the housing market. IMHO, the US is on the edge of recession, that when we look back will be linked directly to the crazy loans they are letting people take out. I remember reading that the last time this many interest only loans were being taken out was right before the stock market crash of 1929 and the great depression.
Simply moving a balance from card to card because you can't pay it off is a big negative on a credit score. Applying for a new card every 90 days to get a better rate shows up as excessive credit inqueries which is also a negative.
If you're paying your card off every month the rate shouldn't matter.
You can juggle from credit card to credit card, but that makes your credit look like shit. Then again, in todays lending environment credit scores don't really seem to matter much.
Real estate prices tend to stagnate rather than crash, except in very limited areas.
The problem is that in this current market so many people are buying houses that they simply cannot afford. These people are expecting the value of the house to go up and cover their ass in 3-5 years when their low payment loans run out. If housing prices stagnate then these people are stuck. They can't afford the monthly payment and they can't sell because they owe more than the house is worth. As this starts to happen something will have to give.
I agree. Another symptom to point out is the amount of debt americans are in right now. I heard on a radio program that the average american is $8000 in credit card debt. Credit cards, with ~20% interest! Makes you wonder how much of this economy right now is completely driven on debt.
It has gotten so bad in the housing market now that people are having to do negative amortization loans. The problem is that the housing market creates a domino effect. One stupid person gets a neg-am loan and can offer more than someone who isn't. It ends up forcing everyone to take risky loans to compete on price.
Maybe at this point, the people that are majoring in computer science REALLY want to do it.
Exacly. When I was in college getting my CS degree (graduated in '99) many people were in the program because that's where they could make money. The ones I still know about are struggling for work, but I haven't had any issues staying employed. Work hard and with a passion and people will notice and things will work out okay.
I'll always have a soft spot for VB6. When it comes to throwing up data entry screens for a low number of users system it really couldn't have been much easier. Of course if you have lots of users web based is pretty much the way to go regardless of your tool stack.
With VB.Net I'm not really sure why someone would use that over c#. One of the main strengths of vb6 imho was that it was quick and dirty and was a good tool for some jobs.
To play devils advocate here: How is Intel supposed to know which code paths work perfectly on an AMD chip? I would think Intel writes their compilers to take full advantage of their chips. Should they also be examining the AMD chips to make sure that all the optimizations that work on Intel will continue to work properly on AMD?
I don't really think so. Let people do what they want as long as it provides no harm to someone else and let them live with the consequences of that action. Basically stay out of peoples bedrooms. That is my idea of socially liberal.
You're probably thinking that socially liberal means gov. programs. Well I guess it could so that's why it must be linked to fiscal conservatism. To sum up, I could care less what anyone else does to themselves, I just don't want to pay for it.
It would be great if a bunch of the libertarian ideas could be moved more into the mainstream. There really is no place for someone to vote who is for personal responsibility, fiscal conservatism, and social liberalism.
Actually the ruling is doing what I hoped it would. Lawmakers are now scrambling to put specific laws in place to prevent this type of eminent domain. At the end of the day it'll end up being harder to eminent domain someones property than before the ruling.
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I haven't heard those notes from Google.
Yet. If they have 4B in the bank why raise another 3B unless they were going to start buying things. What can cost >3B? Other companies of course.
I don't look at Google as bad though. They are offering lots of cool products with little to no cost and making money at it. Now when growth starts to slow and the stock price begins to reflect it we'll get to see if they are still so nice.
Don't assume all 20 somethings haven't seen anything older than a nintendo. I'm in my late 20s and had an Atari 2600 while growing up. My grandparents actually owned an Odessey like was talked about in the review. Not to mention games like Pacman, defender, dig dug, etc... that we played at Pizza Huts, laundry mats or anywhere else where you had to sit for awhile.
WoW to me is a huge let down. I played it for 3-4 months and got a char to 58th level. The graphics were nice, but something just didn't feel right. Plus the kids, omg everywhere. So annoying.
I played DAoC for about 3 years (got it on release day) and I felt a real sense of community, character control ect... that I never got out of WoW. DAoC is by no means a perfect game, but playing WoW left me wondering why so many people do play it? I guess good marketing and the persistent diablo type world drew a lot of people in.
I left taxes out to try to keep the example simple. But if you keep taxes you still end up worse off. Mainly because you have to take money (that you could've kept tax free) and take it as earning to pay on your CC debt. If you keep a $20,000 CC debt and never pay it down you're not only losing the cost to service the debt, but also the opportunity cost of not being able to shove that money tax free into your 401k (which gets you a guaranteed return of your tax rate at least). So your 28% CC rate is actually much higher once you factor in that you could've taken that same money and kept it untaxed and with any luck gotten 5%-10+% on it.
Keeping a CC balance rarely if ever makes sense. Once the debt gets up into the $10k-$20k I have a hard time seeing any other investment to be worth more than not paying off the CC debt as priority one.
Just b/c you can get 100% investment return on a set small amount of money doesn't mean that your ahead of your 28% CC balance.
Be careful only looking at it with percentages. Your example always works only when you can take the full credit card balance and get an investment return better than the rate they charge.
For example, take someone making 50k/year and has up to a 5% match from their employer. So they put in 2500/year and get the 100% return from their employer to make it 5k/year. Looking at only percentages this person thinks their in good shape b/c they are only paying 28% on their CC loan and getting 100% return from thier 401k investment. What they fail to realize is that they have a 20k CC balance which while the rate is less the base principal is much higher.
By not paying down the CC this person is actually losing 600/year even with their 100% return from the employer match.
GOOGs officers have already cashed out what they want to. Their waiting period expired long ago.
I agree. I would have thought games like Lemonaide Stand and some of the tycoon games would be much more educational than The Sims and NWN.
What is bullshit about the idea of design patterns? The book contains examples of 23 design patterns that the authors have seen. By no means are they the end all of all patterns. You could even argue (and the authors would probably agree) that there have been some better solutions found to the design problems posed in the book.
The main idea of the book is that there are common design problems that people run into over and over in software. A pattern is simply a proven solution to those problems.
However, in the real world, where customers want their software to run fast and use a minimum amount of system memory, these techniques, while instructive, are ultimately utterly worthless.
In the real world customers also want their software delivered in a timely manner. By recognizing common patters in a software design problem it allows the engineer to get to the unique problems more quickly.
What's funny is that you don't like the book, but if you are any good at software engineering you're already using patterns everyday. IE, you've seen this design problem before and this is how you solved it last time.
Think beyond just what's listed in the book and think about the ideas that were presented. Apply that thinking on a larger scale where you don't personally have to see and solve every design problem and then you can understand the usefullness of design patterns.
It's no accident that non object oriented langauges like Lisp and ML don't have quite so many design patterns.
OO langues provide some facilities that make implementation easier, but every language can have design patterns. All a design pattern is, is a solution to a common design problem. The only way a language would not have any design patterns is if it allowed you completely skip the design phase.
The price gouging claim comes from the idea that anything that is not a tangible object should cost nothing, since the costs of reproducing what is basically an abstract representation of information is nearly zero.
I can understand an idea being free. As in I thought of this doesn't it sound cool. Now let me spend 5000 hours of my time implementing my idea and just because the efforts of my work happen to be a piece of software it should be free also?
Think of it this way, if you took your car into the shop to get it fixed and the mechanic flipped a switch in a hidden compartment and then charged you $500 to fix it
Software is more like it taking the mechanic many hours to find and flip the switch the first time. Now hopefully he can duplicate his same effort in less time the next time. Being a bright mechanic he charges you less than it actually costs assuming he'll be able to charge the next person for the same action and take less time doing it.
Now if you want to argue that a piece of software should eventually become free after a company recoups it's development costs and some profit I could understand. Saying that software is intangible and it should be free from the start isn't keeping in mind the costs of creating it to begin with.
Great, that's one state down (assuming the state-wide median home price in California is $500K, which I doubt, San Francisco maybe, California, no way). There are 49 left.
Don't keep up much with the news? Last month the median price for a home sold in the entire state of Cali was $445k. Still think there isn't a bubble? There are similar stories in LV and all over the east coast.
From this article. Ten states and the District of Columbia have seen prices rise more than 70 percent over the past five years, and prices have more than doubled in 23 markets in California, Florida and Massachusetts, according to federal figures. In the same time frame, ordinary consumer prices have risen just 13 percent, and personal income has risen 23 percent. Guess it's still just in Cali...
From the rich people who invest in them.
Exactly. When people start defaulting other people lose their money and a chain of events occurs that can lead to a recession.
So credit cards should be illegal?
No, but I do think there should be and probably will be some regulations in place about how people can get cards. There was a report the other day about how a ~%30 of credit card companies revenues come from late fees and other random fees they charge. They are basically targeting people now who they expect to default and hope they will default. Ever heard of universal default? It's a new thing the credit card companies are doing since everything is now computerized. If you are late on any bill, not just a bill to the CC company, they will pick it up and then raise your CC rates. Basically taking someone who is in a tight spot and hammering them a bit more, but I digress.
Some people are in special situations where such a mortgage might make sense. Most people aren't, but I don't see the harm in offering people more choices.....That's certainly the risk, and someone who isn't going to have $2000/month to spare in 3 years shouldn't be taking it. Doesn't mean there aren't people who might benefit from such a deal.
You are correct, there are certain people who can benefit and use these types of debt instruments. The problem now is that they are being used by people who have no business using them. Loan places are selling them like houses will never stop going up and in 3 years you'll be $$$ richer. To think that there is no bubble and that there won't be some sort of pop is ignoring all of the information available. Similar to the "it's a new type of economy" people during the internets irrational exuberance.
Same place they always do, from loans. Interest rates are really low now, and that's why home prices are high. People can afford to pay more for the house, because they don't have to pay as much in interest.
Sure rates are low, but do they translate to the $500k+ median home prices in Cali right now? Where are these people working to pay 2000-3000/month mortgages (if they've taken a standard loan)? Where are they getting the 20% to put down?
The majority of loans are fixed interest rate. The fact that the price of the house goes down isn't going to change the monthly payment. Yes, some people with adjustible rate mortgages are going to get screwed over. I feel like I'm repeating myself here.
Repeat yourself all you want, but what you are saying just isn't true. Read the link I posted. Here is the relevant part During the second half of [2004], 63% of home loans were adjustable-rate mortgages with those so-called interest-only features, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. By all accounts I've found it's only increasing. To say most people are buying homes using the historically low fixed rates just isn't fact.
Unless the house drops by more than 20%, the difference is going to be paid by either the down payment or the PMI company. If the price drops more than that, and the home buyers didn't have PMI because they put more than 20% down, the lender might initially have to cough it up, but they can then sue the home buyer for the difference.
And where do you think the PMI company gets the money? They just can't create it and give it to the banks. Additionally, many people get out of PMI buy taking a short term loan on top their mortgage to cover the 20%.
Why should it be illegal to borrow more money than the value of your collateral? Would you also suggest that we make it illegal to borrow money without any collateral at all?
Again, you didn't even look at the type of loan I was talking about. A neg-am loan is the credit card of mortgages. It allows people to buy a home and not even pay all the interest each month. So at the end of 3-5 years you owe more than when you started. If house prices don't keep pace with how much you owe you end up upside down. So you may start the loan with a ~800/month payment. Within 3 years you could be up to 2000/month if interest rates move only 2%-3% upwards.
If housing prices stagnate then they won't owe more than the house is worth. Even if it prices go down a little most of the deficit will be covered by the down payment in most cases.
Look at current housing prices, now look at current wages. Where are all these people getting the money to pay these prices for houses? From crazy types of loans like interest only ARMs, neg-am ARMs, etc... Downpayments, rofl. I'd love to find some stats on how many people are putting 20% down right now. Heck, I'd love to know how many people are putting anything down right now.
If housing prices stagnate and/or interest rates go up people are going to be stuck. This will lead to people who have to sell because they couldn't ever afford the house they were in to begin with. As more people get caught in this situation prices will fall and then people end up owing more than the house is worth. Then you have people just walking away, and lender take it in the gut. IMHO, some lenders need to take a good hit on the head with the aweful loans they are pushing on people. Look up the Freedom Loan for an example of something that should be illegal, and I'm usually one who's all for personal responsibility!
Sure, there will be some exceptions, but I don't think it'll be as widespread as you're suggesting.
With >50% of new mortgages being some sort of interest only ARMs there are a lot of people who will get caught when rates tick up. Even Alan Greenspan is warning about the housing market. IMHO, the US is on the edge of recession, that when we look back will be linked directly to the crazy loans they are letting people take out. I remember reading that the last time this many interest only loans were being taken out was right before the stock market crash of 1929 and the great depression.
Simply moving a balance from card to card because you can't pay it off is a big negative on a credit score. Applying for a new card every 90 days to get a better rate shows up as excessive credit inqueries which is also a negative.
If you're paying your card off every month the rate shouldn't matter.
You can juggle from credit card to credit card, but that makes your credit look like shit. Then again, in todays lending environment credit scores don't really seem to matter much.
Real estate prices tend to stagnate rather than crash, except in very limited areas.
The problem is that in this current market so many people are buying houses that they simply cannot afford. These people are expecting the value of the house to go up and cover their ass in 3-5 years when their low payment loans run out. If housing prices stagnate then these people are stuck. They can't afford the monthly payment and they can't sell because they owe more than the house is worth. As this starts to happen something will have to give.
Actually it's a credit bubble,
I agree. Another symptom to point out is the amount of debt americans are in right now. I heard on a radio program that the average american is $8000 in credit card debt. Credit cards, with ~20% interest! Makes you wonder how much of this economy right now is completely driven on debt.
It has gotten so bad in the housing market now that people are having to do negative amortization loans. The problem is that the housing market creates a domino effect. One stupid person gets a neg-am loan and can offer more than someone who isn't. It ends up forcing everyone to take risky loans to compete on price.
Maybe at this point, the people that are majoring in computer science REALLY want to do it.
Exacly. When I was in college getting my CS degree (graduated in '99) many people were in the program because that's where they could make money. The ones I still know about are struggling for work, but I haven't had any issues staying employed. Work hard and with a passion and people will notice and things will work out okay.
I'll always have a soft spot for VB6. When it comes to throwing up data entry screens for a low number of users system it really couldn't have been much easier. Of course if you have lots of users web based is pretty much the way to go regardless of your tool stack.
With VB.Net I'm not really sure why someone would use that over c#. One of the main strengths of vb6 imho was that it was quick and dirty and was a good tool for some jobs.
To play devils advocate here: How is Intel supposed to know which code paths work perfectly on an AMD chip? I would think Intel writes their compilers to take full advantage of their chips. Should they also be examining the AMD chips to make sure that all the optimizations that work on Intel will continue to work properly on AMD?
Anytime someone mentions "my girlfriend" in an online setting I always assume chick on chick. I think I have a problem ;-)
As soon as someone starts offering music to download that has been compressed with a lossless compression technique I'll bite.
I don't really think so. Let people do what they want as long as it provides no harm to someone else and let them live with the consequences of that action. Basically stay out of peoples bedrooms. That is my idea of socially liberal.
You're probably thinking that socially liberal means gov. programs. Well I guess it could so that's why it must be linked to fiscal conservatism. To sum up, I could care less what anyone else does to themselves, I just don't want to pay for it.
It would be great if a bunch of the libertarian ideas could be moved more into the mainstream. There really is no place for someone to vote who is for personal responsibility, fiscal conservatism, and social liberalism.
Actually the ruling is doing what I hoped it would. Lawmakers are now scrambling to put specific laws in place to prevent this type of eminent domain. At the end of the day it'll end up being harder to eminent domain someones property than before the ruling.