And the key thing to realize here, was that the banks thought they had a no lose situation. Even the "disaster" of foreclosure still left the bank with a recoverable asset (the property). Instead of losing 135K on a loan, it was more like a 35K loss. The banks didn't count on a reversal of the housing markets, outright fraudulent lending, and how securitization would only mask the losses, not render the losses moot.
And mortgage securitization only breaks the small banks that specialized in it for their earnings. Investment banks like Lehman and Citigroup got wiped out from their derivatives manufacturing/gambling.
Here here! Too bad I don't have the points to upmod you.
Its Republicans looking for a Democratic scapegoat to pin the world banking meltdown upon. Its a preposterous argument, when you look at the numbers involved. It was flat out deregulation and neutralization of regulators that allowed the mess to come about.
Cut the crap. You're telling me that FMA and FRE caused the world financial meltdown??? That's like blaming Bernie Madoff for the world financial meltdown. FMA and FRE were improperly run, and neutralized regulators, and its going to cost taxpayers in the 11 digits. But they are only a small part of the mortgage market collapse. Residential housing is not the only construction sector being hit, and how many poor people could FMA and FRE subsidize to go bankrupt?
Look at how bank lobbyists were able to deregulate their industry. What happens when they go into financial competition with a gov't program? They scream bloody murder. Its like saying unionism caused the American economic collapse.
Here here. Its nice that someone is willing to take blame for the collapse of the world mortgage market, but the reality is that he has a ridiculously overinflated ego.
Unless he was also an degreed economist, there's no way he independently came up with the formulas used in order to write the software. He just took the spec from the people who paid him to write the software, and away he went.
Like a gun, its ridiculous to blame the collapse or death on the tool. Its a form of enabling, but certainly not the cause of the problem.
The problem was that the foxes were running the henhouse. and the guard dogs called the regulators were nowhere in sight, or chihuahuas. Instead of the foxes trying to skim off a self-sustaining scam, they let their trading run wild into bankruptcy, and with no regrets.
This is what happens when you let people with poor understanding of risk management, or its mathematical models, set policy (and I don't mean the politicians).
Also sad to see are the comments on this article. People apparently bought this guy's story hook, line and sinker.
MySQL will be the MyOracle cheapo product. They would take it off the market, but the genie is already out of the bottle. MySQL founders have already moved on to forked projects.
Re:Java is safe, mysql is safe...
on
Oracle Buys Sun
·
· Score: 1
*sigh* Oracle is buying Sun FOR ITS CUSTOMER LIST. Generally, its cheaper to buy your competitor's market base, than to invest money to overwhelm your competitor with a superior product. Oracle doesn't want Sun's hardware. They'll throw money at Solaris/Sun hardware as long as Sun's customers want it.
Re:I'm quite sure that IBM hates itself now
on
Oracle Buys Sun
·
· Score: 1
Sun has been tanking because it offers a blackbox product which no one want to buy anymore. IBM doesn't make money because of its hardware; it makes money off of its services. IBM has a more profit efficient market model; that's why Sun is dying.
You're looking at it all wrong. Oracle sells a database/services/consulting product, not an OS product. They would NEVER niche themselves into a complete black box product. They'll keep offering current products on Linux and on IBM. Oracle doesn't like RedHat because they think they can supplant RedHat's service offerings. The market is not going to move back to Solaris.
Re:Wow. Just Wow.
on
Oracle Buys Sun
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
No, what would Oracle gain from selling customized PCs? (I exaggerate, but that's what it is.) It costs money to invest in hardware development and marketing to get companies to buy the hardware package over a cheaper competitor. Companies didn't buy Sun equipment for its hardware. They bought it as a component of an enterprise high-availability system. Sun didn't sell a database product. They sold a platform product to run your database product on. Sun depended on OS lock in to move their hardware product. Sun couldn't survive on that model, and you expect Oracle to perpetuate it?
It costs money to keep modifying an OS with competitive improvements. Oracle is a database/services company. What do they gain by spending money on their own proprietary OS?
Oracle is not abandoning Linux because it may be the enterprise OS of the future. I have no idea what they plan to do with their RedHat agreements. Oracle short-term will keep Solaris to keep Sun's enterprise clients.
And who cares? Larry Ellison doesn't run Oracle anymore. (He is a prominent board member, but he doesn't steer the ship.) They may jettison OO if they go to a more web document style system.
My guess is that they'll put Solaris in maintenance mode until Linux becomes accepted as a high-availability, enterprise platform. At that point, there would be no reason to maintain Solaris; companies would move to Linux anyway.
Re:Wow. Just Wow.
on
Oracle Buys Sun
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Its highly unlikely Oracle will maintain Sun's hardware aspect of the business. Sun already has put SPARC into legacy mode. Oracle will probably keep or sell off the hardware products that can sustain itself. It will probably maintain the legacy server stuff, to keep its high-end ticket customers who buy Sun for high-availability systems.
An accepted tactic to grow a customer base is to buyout another company's customer base. Its usually considered to be a cheaper route than investing in taking away a competitor's customer base. This is probably the reason Oracle went for Sun. Oracle has become more services/consultant oriented. It can't really break into IBM's territory, partly because of IBM's hardware components for "complete solutions" or enterprise market. This allows Oracle to grab all the customers IBM hasn't already taken away.
The bigger question is what Oracle plans for Sun's software products, like Solaris, MYSQL, and Java.
Its not just the mythical "mission critical" aspect that keeps businesses dependent on COBOL. MANY of those programs required either financial analysts to "vet" the COBOL program, or lawyers to "vet" the COBOL program complied with laws (privacy, methods of determinations, etc.).
Not just are you putting in the cost to refactor the program from scratch, not just are you risking a bug costing your company hundreds of millions to billions of dollars, but you also have to take in the costs of expensive NON-programmers to "bless" the new program.
Then also realize that the new whizbang technologies like SQL and java will RUN LIKE A DOG compared to the COBOL program. That's because mainframes are optimized data I/O machines. They're not great for making intense calculations or retrieving indexed relationships, but they are a BEAST when it comes to pulling out gigabytes of user data, and then making simple calculations and updates to each. It also sounds like top notch COBOL programmers programmed to the machine for efficiency. That's not really done anymore by generic programmers.
New shops don't have to consider COBOL. But any large company (and gov't) could potentially take a huge hit on their finances (in legal issues) if refactor project has a bug. You can roll the dice, or you can just pay another couple million/year and hope nothing ever forces you to consider replacing your legacy COBOL programs that no one knows how they work, or how to change them.
You also forget the reason for English's predominance in the computer world. Luck had it that most of the personal computer's history originated in the United States, which spoke English. The first minicomputer kits came out of the US, back in the late 70's. The first commercial PCs came out of the US (Apple II, TRS-80, later on IBM-PC, C-64, Atari). (Yeah, I know, you GB'ers were there too. But you weren't commercially dominant, and surprise, you speak English too.) Pretty much, if you wanted to actually *touch* a personal computer back in those days (1980's), you were bound to get one that used ASCII & an English oriented DOS. Furthermore, if you wanted to use "kuell" software and games, they weren't written in Swahili. And most of the PC users in the world to exchange ideas with, at that time... spoke American.;) The Internet pretty much originated in the US. American English speakers alone dominated PC usage and Internet presence until the mid to late 1990's.
The Francophones, Chinese and North Korean Nationalists, Aztlan idiots, and perhaps the Russians may get whiny over English speakers "luck", but perhaps we should be thankful at least a default, universal lingua franca exists for computers geeks in this world.
OF COURSE, open standards are more desirable than closed ones, EXCEPT when the open standard doesn't outperform the market standard OR, in OpenCL's case, DOESN'T EXIST.
There are capitalists now that want to make their buck NOW, not wait two years just to find out that they STILL have to wait another X years for something to roll out. If you want to do GPU offload processing, mathematical processing, or the state-of-the-art game NOW, you're stuck with CUDA. If you want to wait for the ideologically pure, send your resume to 3-D Realms. They may want to add someone to their Duke Nukem team. Why don't you help out with GNU Hurd? I hear they can use some help.
As for Nvidia making noises about helping out OpenCL, that's all it is, hot air. They're not deferring to OpenCL, they just don't give a crap about marketing the niche CUDA market. Why do a Microsoft and front? Just smile, make polite noises to keep everyone happy, and just keep moving CUDA forward. They win if CUDA's the standard. They don't lose if CUDA loses relevance.
Dopeyish question, but are there any comprehensive or seminal texts dealing with the field of imaging (image resolution improvement) algorithms? This does not have to be limited to astronomy or still graphics.
As a side note, I find it kind of frustrating that tools like photoshop/gimp exist, and yet there doesn't appear to be texts dedicated towards using them to help resolve images that would otherwise not be apparent.
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And the key thing to realize here, was that the banks thought they had a no lose situation. Even the "disaster" of foreclosure still left the bank with a recoverable asset (the property). Instead of losing 135K on a loan, it was more like a 35K loss. The banks didn't count on a reversal of the housing markets, outright fraudulent lending, and how securitization would only mask the losses, not render the losses moot.
And mortgage securitization only breaks the small banks that specialized in it for their earnings. Investment banks like Lehman and Citigroup got wiped out from their derivatives manufacturing/gambling.
Here here! Too bad I don't have the points to upmod you.
Its Republicans looking for a Democratic scapegoat to pin the world banking meltdown upon. Its a preposterous argument, when you look at the numbers involved. It was flat out deregulation and neutralization of regulators that allowed the mess to come about.
Cut the crap. You're telling me that FMA and FRE caused the world financial meltdown??? That's like blaming Bernie Madoff for the world financial meltdown. FMA and FRE were improperly run, and neutralized regulators, and its going to cost taxpayers in the 11 digits. But they are only a small part of the mortgage market collapse. Residential housing is not the only construction sector being hit, and how many poor people could FMA and FRE subsidize to go bankrupt?
Look at how bank lobbyists were able to deregulate their industry. What happens when they go into financial competition with a gov't program? They scream bloody murder. Its like saying unionism caused the American economic collapse.
Here here. Its nice that someone is willing to take blame for the collapse of the world mortgage market, but the reality is that he has a ridiculously overinflated ego.
Unless he was also an degreed economist, there's no way he independently came up with the formulas used in order to write the software. He just took the spec from the people who paid him to write the software, and away he went.
Like a gun, its ridiculous to blame the collapse or death on the tool. Its a form of enabling, but certainly not the cause of the problem.
The problem was that the foxes were running the henhouse. and the guard dogs called the regulators were nowhere in sight, or chihuahuas. Instead of the foxes trying to skim off a self-sustaining scam, they let their trading run wild into bankruptcy, and with no regrets.
This is what happens when you let people with poor understanding of risk management, or its mathematical models, set policy (and I don't mean the politicians).
Also sad to see are the comments on this article. People apparently bought this guy's story hook, line and sinker.
MySQL will be the MyOracle cheapo product. They would take it off the market, but the genie is already out of the bottle. MySQL founders have already moved on to forked projects.
It means ZFS goes back into the closed, licensed products. Wave bye bye.
Java is more of a question mark. I wonder if Oracle already has a business model for it.
Because IBM kept low-balling the buyout price. Its was under $9.50 before IBM bailed out.
Damn. What an awesomely apropos statement.
*sigh* Oracle is buying Sun FOR ITS CUSTOMER LIST. Generally, its cheaper to buy your competitor's market base, than to invest money to overwhelm your competitor with a superior product. Oracle doesn't want Sun's hardware. They'll throw money at Solaris/Sun hardware as long as Sun's customers want it.
Sun has been tanking because it offers a blackbox product which no one want to buy anymore. IBM doesn't make money because of its hardware; it makes money off of its services. IBM has a more profit efficient market model; that's why Sun is dying.
You're looking at it all wrong. Oracle sells a database/services/consulting product, not an OS product. They would NEVER niche themselves into a complete black box product. They'll keep offering current products on Linux and on IBM. Oracle doesn't like RedHat because they think they can supplant RedHat's service offerings. The market is not going to move back to Solaris.
No, what would Oracle gain from selling customized PCs? (I exaggerate, but that's what it is.) It costs money to invest in hardware development and marketing to get companies to buy the hardware package over a cheaper competitor. Companies didn't buy Sun equipment for its hardware. They bought it as a component of an enterprise high-availability system. Sun didn't sell a database product. They sold a platform product to run your database product on. Sun depended on OS lock in to move their hardware product. Sun couldn't survive on that model, and you expect Oracle to perpetuate it?
You think your opinion really means anything, Coward Troll?
You're not looking at the environment properly.
It costs money to keep modifying an OS with competitive improvements. Oracle is a database/services company. What do they gain by spending money on their own proprietary OS?
Oracle is not abandoning Linux because it may be the enterprise OS of the future. I have no idea what they plan to do with their RedHat agreements. Oracle short-term will keep Solaris to keep Sun's enterprise clients.
Hate brain farts. No, Ellison is still the CEO, but he doesn't steer the ship anymore (CBO).
And who cares? Larry Ellison doesn't run Oracle anymore. (He is a prominent board member, but he doesn't steer the ship.) They may jettison OO if they go to a more web document style system.
I'd head out to Sun's website and grab Solaris 10 (10/2008) while its still free. I should get a recommended patch set while I'm at it as well...
My guess is that they'll put Solaris in maintenance mode until Linux becomes accepted as a high-availability, enterprise platform. At that point, there would be no reason to maintain Solaris; companies would move to Linux anyway.
Its highly unlikely Oracle will maintain Sun's hardware aspect of the business. Sun already has put SPARC into legacy mode. Oracle will probably keep or sell off the hardware products that can sustain itself. It will probably maintain the legacy server stuff, to keep its high-end ticket customers who buy Sun for high-availability systems.
An accepted tactic to grow a customer base is to buyout another company's customer base. Its usually considered to be a cheaper route than investing in taking away a competitor's customer base. This is probably the reason Oracle went for Sun. Oracle has become more services/consultant oriented. It can't really break into IBM's territory, partly because of IBM's hardware components for "complete solutions" or enterprise market. This allows Oracle to grab all the customers IBM hasn't already taken away.
The bigger question is what Oracle plans for Sun's software products, like Solaris, MYSQL, and Java.
Its not just the mythical "mission critical" aspect that keeps businesses dependent on COBOL. MANY of those programs required either financial analysts to "vet" the COBOL program, or lawyers to "vet" the COBOL program complied with laws (privacy, methods of determinations, etc.).
Not just are you putting in the cost to refactor the program from scratch, not just are you risking a bug costing your company hundreds of millions to billions of dollars, but you also have to take in the costs of expensive NON-programmers to "bless" the new program.
Then also realize that the new whizbang technologies like SQL and java will RUN LIKE A DOG compared to the COBOL program. That's because mainframes are optimized data I/O machines. They're not great for making intense calculations or retrieving indexed relationships, but they are a BEAST when it comes to pulling out gigabytes of user data, and then making simple calculations and updates to each. It also sounds like top notch COBOL programmers programmed to the machine for efficiency. That's not really done anymore by generic programmers.
New shops don't have to consider COBOL. But any large company (and gov't) could potentially take a huge hit on their finances (in legal issues) if refactor project has a bug. You can roll the dice, or you can just pay another couple million/year and hope nothing ever forces you to consider replacing your legacy COBOL programs that no one knows how they work, or how to change them.
You also forget the reason for English's predominance in the computer world. Luck had it that most of the personal computer's history originated in the United States, which spoke English. The first minicomputer kits came out of the US, back in the late 70's. The first commercial PCs came out of the US (Apple II, TRS-80, later on IBM-PC, C-64, Atari). (Yeah, I know, you GB'ers were there too. But you weren't commercially dominant, and surprise, you speak English too.) Pretty much, if you wanted to actually *touch* a personal computer back in those days (1980's), you were bound to get one that used ASCII & an English oriented DOS. Furthermore, if you wanted to use "kuell" software and games, they weren't written in Swahili. And most of the PC users in the world to exchange ideas with, at that time... spoke American. ;) The Internet pretty much originated in the US. American English speakers alone dominated PC usage and Internet presence until the mid to late 1990's.
The Francophones, Chinese and North Korean Nationalists, Aztlan idiots, and perhaps the Russians may get whiny over English speakers "luck", but perhaps we should be thankful at least a default, universal lingua franca exists for computers geeks in this world.
OpenCL fanboy religion.
OF COURSE, open standards are more desirable than closed ones, EXCEPT when the open standard doesn't outperform the market standard OR, in OpenCL's case, DOESN'T EXIST.
There are capitalists now that want to make their buck NOW, not wait two years just to find out that they STILL have to wait another X years for something to roll out. If you want to do GPU offload processing, mathematical processing, or the state-of-the-art game NOW, you're stuck with CUDA. If you want to wait for the ideologically pure, send your resume to 3-D Realms. They may want to add someone to their Duke Nukem team. Why don't you help out with GNU Hurd? I hear they can use some help.
As for Nvidia making noises about helping out OpenCL, that's all it is, hot air. They're not deferring to OpenCL, they just don't give a crap about marketing the niche CUDA market. Why do a Microsoft and front? Just smile, make polite noises to keep everyone happy, and just keep moving CUDA forward. They win if CUDA's the standard. They don't lose if CUDA loses relevance.
Really. What's the ISO #?
Put up or shut up.
No, the topic lacks an evildoer to demonize to mythological proportions, and the accompanied zealotry to the point of cognitive dissonance.
G.W.Bush destroyed America might count, if it weren't factually correct.
Dopeyish question, but are there any comprehensive or seminal texts dealing with the field of imaging (image resolution improvement) algorithms? This does not have to be limited to astronomy or still graphics.
As a side note, I find it kind of frustrating that tools like photoshop/gimp exist, and yet there doesn't appear to be texts dedicated towards using them to help resolve images that would otherwise not be apparent.