It's not as easy as free market vs regulated market. Don't you see? It's the government policies that are creating the imbalances in the free market to cause this to happen. If the government didn't guarantee student loans, then banks would be far more careful giving out student loans, forcing universities to keep costs down. Instead, with cheap loans, universities are increasing tuition while building fancy gyms to attract students with their cheap loans. I went to university in Canada, and the gym was really crappy. But my tuition was affordable. Why? The government created a loans program AND implemented a tuition cap. Without both, you have what's happening in the US. Another way to keep things balanced is to let banks take on the full risk of student loans (ie - the free market), so not so many loans will be given out, forcing universities to lower tuition costs.
Why did the housing bubble happen? The Fed kept interest rates low, and Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac (gov't orgs) guaranteed the debt. In turn, banks just gave out loans to anyone that could breath. Then S&P and the other rating agencies (that the SEC appoints) made money by rubber stamping AAA on these junk products, so the banks could just sell them off to some other sucker. If the government and Fed stayed out of the market for housing loans, this would have never even happened in the first place. But once the bubble popped, it was the government and the Fed that bailed out those crooked banks! And the SEC, which should have been keeping an eye on this, was asleep at the wheel!
I'm not saying that we should move towards a free market or a regulated market. I'm just saying the government and the Fed is causing all this mess. What's really needed is SMART regulation. If you're going to guarantee housing debt, you have to put into place minimum standards, such as minimum down payment, to ensure a balance. If you're going to guarantee student loans, you have to put caps on tuition. The intention of these policies are good, the unintended consequences are what's wreaking havoc.
In Germany, education is free. But students tend to study longer, probably because students don't have the pressure to finish and get a job. So people don't get jobs until they are 25 or so, compared to 22 in the US. I think a low fee for education, maybe $2k per semester is reasonable.
Alan Greenspan is no economic mastermind. He's either stupid or evil. The proof is in this quote, in regards to the downgrade of US debt:
"The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that. So there is zero probability of default".
Think about it, this is the exact reason why US debt SHOULD be downgraded. The US will print money to pay off their debts, causing the value of their bonds to go down. With this logic, Zimbabwe bonds should be AAA.
I would bet if people stopped pirating and also stopped buying, the MPAA would try to pass legislation to force consumers to buy one movie a month. These companies just want easy money, and they're fighting hard for it.
I worked for a company where we HAD to use Source Safe because it was Microsoft, and we could only use Microsoft stuff. It was torture. Doing anything remotely over VPN was almost impossible. Every mouse-click resulted in having to wait for 30s for VSS to respond. Things that would take 1 minute to do in SVN would take 1 hour to do in VSS (I'm not kidding!). And there were many occasions where the VSS database corrupted itself. Why anyone uses VSS is a complete mystery to me, especially when SVN is available for free.
I bought an HP "business class" laptop (HP 8510p), and I find the hardware excellent (although HP had pre-installed so much crap, I re-installed windows from scratch). The laptop is really well built, durable, and the keyboard feels nice. Compare that to the laptop that my sister got from Dell, where the touchpad broke after a year or so. But I hate HP consumer-level inkjet printers, because the ink cartridges expire artificially early, and I can't refill them.
The real problem is the monetary union. Countries should be free to to spend themselves into oblivion, and their currency should be free to float to the bottom. This whole crisis has come out of the Euro. The PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain) should never have been allowed to join the Euro in the first place. The crisis would have been easier to manage without the PIGS in the Euro. The market would not have lent them so much in the first place. And the PIGS could just print their own money to pay off their debts and suffer the resulting inflation, which is a lot easier to do then to pass austerity.
Real-life Experience with functional programming?
on
OCaml For the Masses
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· Score: 1
I have no experience in functional programming languages, so I'm curious to hear from those who have developed real applications. How does functional programming do when having to create UIs? Or reading/writing to a database and dealing with transactions? Or creating a web-service? Or enforcing business logic?
Functional programming seems ideal for writing algorithms, but does it have any drawbacks?
The Object-Relational Impedence Mismatch has nothing to do with OOP vs Functional programming. There's an intrinsic difference between how data is represented in a database, and how it is represented in code. For example, what type would you use for a 32-bit integer in Oracle? NUMBER(10) would fit all 32-bit integers, but it can also contain numbers that are larger than a 32-bit Integer. NUMBER(9) will guarantee that anything in the database will fit into a 32-bit Integer, but will not be able to store all possible values of 32-bit integers. There are a ton of other issues, but I don't see how functional programming would solve any of them.
It's curious why Microsoft chose to use HTML5/Javascript for Windows 8 apps instead of Silverlight. It makes me wonder if MS will drop Silverlight in a few years. It also makes me wonder if it's worth bothering with Silverlight if MS will just drop it in a few years.
From what I read from the article, it looks like they turn on one core at a time, as needed. Also, their chart indicates significant power reductions too. I'm curious to see how it does when reviewers get their hands on it. I currently have a Tegra 2 phone (LG Optimus 2X), and with Cyanogenmod 7, I love it. This is my first smartphone, so the one thing I'm not happy about is having to charge my phone every day.
I don't even have 4 cores in my main PC, what am I going to do with 4 cores on a phone? The companion core is an interesting idea to increase battery life. But I have the feeling that as soon as the 4 main cores kick in, I would be left with a dead battery and burns on my hands. I also wonder how smooth the transitions between the companion core and the main cores will be...
From Wikipedia: "Foldit is an experimental video game about protein folding, developed as a collaboration between the University of Washington's departments of Computer Science and Engineering and Biochemistry (many of the same people who created Rosetta@home)."
Most likely, there will be a scientific paper containing the results, and as far as I know, scientific research papers are public (or maybe require a fee to read). Now drug companies can use these results to try to come up with a drug to fight HIV, which would then not be public domain. Am I off on this?
Regardless of whether CBS is right or wrong, getting involved with a lawsuit is too expensive. CBS wins. Big corporations and lawyers win. The rest of America loses.
You see, TARP was just a tiny part of the bailout. Here's what most people don't know. The Federal Reserve set interest rates at almost 0%. The Banks borrow money for ~0% (btw, only specially selected banks have this privilege), then buys Treasury bonds, which yield maybe 2-3% and the banks get to keep the difference. And who pays for this difference? The tax payer.
This free money is essentially printed out of nothing causing inflation. There's a reason why gold and silver are making record highs. And ever wonder why gas prices are going up even though unemployment is very high? Last time I checked, unemployed people aren't buying more gas then before.
These Banks also use their free money to skim the market using high-frequency trading. Essentially, they act as the unwanted middle-man taking a small cut of your trade, without you knowing it. Don't listen to those people who say high-frequency trading is good because it increases liquidity. They are either in on the scam or are brainwashed.
These big banks don't operate in a free market, they are an oligopoly with special privileges and immunity from the law. The sub-prime mortgage crisis was a result of pure fraud. The people who caused it are not in jail, but getting big fat bonuses.
BTW, this is something the US has executed brilliantly. America gives China paper with numbers printed on it, in exchange for real goods. And no problem, because America can just print more paper! Don't believe me? Look at what Alan Greenspan said.
"The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that. So there is zero probability of default"
You have to look at the US manufacturing sector as a percentage of GDP. This has been declining for years. In 1950, 50% of the GDP was used for making goods. Now it's under 30%. These so-called "service" sector jobs are jobs at walmart and McDonalds. Hooray. Also, it's just a matter of time before the design, engineering, and research will be moved offshore too. It makes sense to have the engineering and research close to the factory, because those are closely related.
This should be no surprise to anyone. The banks, rating agencies, and the government officials are all in bed together. Otherwise the sub-prime crisis would have never happened. There are two sets of rules, one for the rich, and one for the rest of us.
And the word processor was a step backwards to the typewriter. I remember the times when I would type something in the typewriter, I could place each character exactly where I wanted it on the paper... and since it was already on paper, I didn't need to print it out! No need to hook up a printer, install the driver, then fiddle with the ink, then get the word processor to print it the way I wanted it.
I'm actually interested in the solutions proposed by the Slashdot community, because it's an interesting problem. What would a professional recommend in this scenario?
Slashdot Mirror
It's not as easy as free market vs regulated market. Don't you see? It's the government policies that are creating the imbalances in the free market to cause this to happen. If the government didn't guarantee student loans, then banks would be far more careful giving out student loans, forcing universities to keep costs down. Instead, with cheap loans, universities are increasing tuition while building fancy gyms to attract students with their cheap loans. I went to university in Canada, and the gym was really crappy. But my tuition was affordable. Why? The government created a loans program AND implemented a tuition cap. Without both, you have what's happening in the US. Another way to keep things balanced is to let banks take on the full risk of student loans (ie - the free market), so not so many loans will be given out, forcing universities to lower tuition costs.
Why did the housing bubble happen? The Fed kept interest rates low, and Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac (gov't orgs) guaranteed the debt. In turn, banks just gave out loans to anyone that could breath. Then S&P and the other rating agencies (that the SEC appoints) made money by rubber stamping AAA on these junk products, so the banks could just sell them off to some other sucker. If the government and Fed stayed out of the market for housing loans, this would have never even happened in the first place. But once the bubble popped, it was the government and the Fed that bailed out those crooked banks! And the SEC, which should have been keeping an eye on this, was asleep at the wheel!
I'm not saying that we should move towards a free market or a regulated market. I'm just saying the government and the Fed is causing all this mess. What's really needed is SMART regulation. If you're going to guarantee housing debt, you have to put into place minimum standards, such as minimum down payment, to ensure a balance. If you're going to guarantee student loans, you have to put caps on tuition. The intention of these policies are good, the unintended consequences are what's wreaking havoc.
Everyone has to face that the fact that in the US, legal rights are only available to those who can afford to hire a good lawyer.
In Germany, education is free. But students tend to study longer, probably because students don't have the pressure to finish and get a job. So people don't get jobs until they are 25 or so, compared to 22 in the US. I think a low fee for education, maybe $2k per semester is reasonable.
"The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that. So there is zero probability of default".
Think about it, this is the exact reason why US debt SHOULD be downgraded. The US will print money to pay off their debts, causing the value of their bonds to go down. With this logic, Zimbabwe bonds should be AAA.
I would bet if people stopped pirating and also stopped buying, the MPAA would try to pass legislation to force consumers to buy one movie a month. These companies just want easy money, and they're fighting hard for it.
I worked for a company where we HAD to use Source Safe because it was Microsoft, and we could only use Microsoft stuff. It was torture. Doing anything remotely over VPN was almost impossible. Every mouse-click resulted in having to wait for 30s for VSS to respond. Things that would take 1 minute to do in SVN would take 1 hour to do in VSS (I'm not kidding!). And there were many occasions where the VSS database corrupted itself. Why anyone uses VSS is a complete mystery to me, especially when SVN is available for free.
I bought an HP "business class" laptop (HP 8510p), and I find the hardware excellent (although HP had pre-installed so much crap, I re-installed windows from scratch). The laptop is really well built, durable, and the keyboard feels nice. Compare that to the laptop that my sister got from Dell, where the touchpad broke after a year or so. But I hate HP consumer-level inkjet printers, because the ink cartridges expire artificially early, and I can't refill them.
The real problem is the monetary union. Countries should be free to to spend themselves into oblivion, and their currency should be free to float to the bottom. This whole crisis has come out of the Euro. The PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain) should never have been allowed to join the Euro in the first place. The crisis would have been easier to manage without the PIGS in the Euro. The market would not have lent them so much in the first place. And the PIGS could just print their own money to pay off their debts and suffer the resulting inflation, which is a lot easier to do then to pass austerity.
I have no experience in functional programming languages, so I'm curious to hear from those who have developed real applications. How does functional programming do when having to create UIs? Or reading/writing to a database and dealing with transactions? Or creating a web-service? Or enforcing business logic?
Functional programming seems ideal for writing algorithms, but does it have any drawbacks?
The Object-Relational Impedence Mismatch has nothing to do with OOP vs Functional programming. There's an intrinsic difference between how data is represented in a database, and how it is represented in code. For example, what type would you use for a 32-bit integer in Oracle? NUMBER(10) would fit all 32-bit integers, but it can also contain numbers that are larger than a 32-bit Integer. NUMBER(9) will guarantee that anything in the database will fit into a 32-bit Integer, but will not be able to store all possible values of 32-bit integers. There are a ton of other issues, but I don't see how functional programming would solve any of them.
It's curious why Microsoft chose to use HTML5/Javascript for Windows 8 apps instead of Silverlight. It makes me wonder if MS will drop Silverlight in a few years. It also makes me wonder if it's worth bothering with Silverlight if MS will just drop it in a few years.
From what I read from the article, it looks like they turn on one core at a time, as needed. Also, their chart indicates significant power reductions too. I'm curious to see how it does when reviewers get their hands on it. I currently have a Tegra 2 phone (LG Optimus 2X), and with Cyanogenmod 7, I love it. This is my first smartphone, so the one thing I'm not happy about is having to charge my phone every day.
Workflow Foundation 3.5
I don't even have 4 cores in my main PC, what am I going to do with 4 cores on a phone? The companion core is an interesting idea to increase battery life. But I have the feeling that as soon as the 4 main cores kick in, I would be left with a dead battery and burns on my hands. I also wonder how smooth the transitions between the companion core and the main cores will be...
From Wikipedia: "Foldit is an experimental video game about protein folding, developed as a collaboration between the University of Washington's departments of Computer Science and Engineering and Biochemistry (many of the same people who created Rosetta@home)."
Most likely, there will be a scientific paper containing the results, and as far as I know, scientific research papers are public (or maybe require a fee to read). Now drug companies can use these results to try to come up with a drug to fight HIV, which would then not be public domain. Am I off on this?
Regardless of whether CBS is right or wrong, getting involved with a lawsuit is too expensive. CBS wins. Big corporations and lawyers win. The rest of America loses.
It's probably just sloppy code. In Europe, you can buy a phone, then choose a carrier. This is the way it should be. Carriers are just dumb pipes.
You see, TARP was just a tiny part of the bailout. Here's what most people don't know. The Federal Reserve set interest rates at almost 0%. The Banks borrow money for ~0% (btw, only specially selected banks have this privilege), then buys Treasury bonds, which yield maybe 2-3% and the banks get to keep the difference. And who pays for this difference? The tax payer.
This free money is essentially printed out of nothing causing inflation. There's a reason why gold and silver are making record highs. And ever wonder why gas prices are going up even though unemployment is very high? Last time I checked, unemployed people aren't buying more gas then before.
These Banks also use their free money to skim the market using high-frequency trading. Essentially, they act as the unwanted middle-man taking a small cut of your trade, without you knowing it. Don't listen to those people who say high-frequency trading is good because it increases liquidity. They are either in on the scam or are brainwashed.
These big banks don't operate in a free market, they are an oligopoly with special privileges and immunity from the law. The sub-prime mortgage crisis was a result of pure fraud. The people who caused it are not in jail, but getting big fat bonuses.
Do you still think they deserve their bonuses?
BTW, this is something the US has executed brilliantly. America gives China paper with numbers printed on it, in exchange for real goods. And no problem, because America can just print more paper! Don't believe me? Look at what Alan Greenspan said.
"The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that. So there is zero probability of default"
You have to look at the US manufacturing sector as a percentage of GDP. This has been declining for years. In 1950, 50% of the GDP was used for making goods. Now it's under 30%. These so-called "service" sector jobs are jobs at walmart and McDonalds. Hooray. Also, it's just a matter of time before the design, engineering, and research will be moved offshore too. It makes sense to have the engineering and research close to the factory, because those are closely related.
This should be no surprise to anyone. The banks, rating agencies, and the government officials are all in bed together. Otherwise the sub-prime crisis would have never happened. There are two sets of rules, one for the rich, and one for the rest of us.
And did you tell him it was a feature, not a bug? :P
Are you saying that software developers may be coding on a touchscreen? Sounds like torture to me.
And the word processor was a step backwards to the typewriter. I remember the times when I would type something in the typewriter, I could place each character exactly where I wanted it on the paper... and since it was already on paper, I didn't need to print it out! No need to hook up a printer, install the driver, then fiddle with the ink, then get the word processor to print it the way I wanted it.
I'm actually interested in the solutions proposed by the Slashdot community, because it's an interesting problem. What would a professional recommend in this scenario?