Finance is quite interesting, since you can leverage loans to the point that you can make money on borrowed money. Although a number of comments say that any existing loans should be paid down over keeping the money in the bank, careful consideration should be placed on three factors: access to cash, interest rate variability, and tax impact on earnings. Do a cost/benefit analyis to see if it would make more sense to hang on to the cash.
* Access to Cash - Taking out a loan of any type and dumping the proceeds into a short-term savings account gives access to cash on a short notice. If the interest revenue on the deposit matches (taking into account taxes) or is close to the interest expense for the loan, then you can use this deposit to assure that cash will be available when needed without the worry of securing a loan in more-stressful situations (e.g., between part-time jobs). Having a loan balance can also help establish a credit history.
* Interest Rate Variability - Loans and investments can have fixed or variable rate interest. You want to acquire variable rate loans and fixed rate investments when you expect market interest rates to go down, while fixed rate loans and variable rate investments are better when market interest rates are likely to go up. For example, those who acquired variable rate mortgages three years ago are paying much more in interest now than those who acquired fixed rate (and at the time more expensive) loans.
* Impact of Taxes - Remember that you have to pay taxes at your marginal tax rate (e.g. 15% or 25%) for any interest or unqualified dividends you earn. One who pays income taxes at the 25% rate will only net 3% on a 4% yield investment. Likewise, only some types of loans will give you a tax break on interest you pay. A student loan at 6% only costs you 4.5% when you factor in the tax break, but 6% credit card interest costs you a full 6%.
I recommend Vanguard's Prime Money Market Fund. It currently yields 5.04%, you virtually can't lose money since the share price is fixed at $1, and you can write checks out of the account for immediate access to the funds. You'll earn higher rates than in a bank, but you need a $3000 minimum deposit.
I once worked at a game company. I asked on my first day what the dress code was. My supervisor said, "eh... you could show up naked and no one would care." He was right! Much to my astonishment, I saw someone walking down the hall with nothing but boxers on. He had been working out, and decided it would be easiest to just air-dry.
If you did go the Oracle route, you might take a look at Data Guard. It may be a cheaper option than RAC. It lets your site run in an active/standby mode. I'm not a DBA, but I think you can configure Data Guard with different levels of reliability. Guaranteed synchronization is one of those levels. I'm thinking that it would let you automatically fail over to the standby site if the active site goes down, but you'd have to look at the docs for sure.
The nice thing about this route is that you could have a remote disaster recovery site.
BTW, "master/slave" is not "politically correct." I have actually heard of people having to reword documentation becuase of some policy that said those terms couldn't be used.
Re:So the concern is.....
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SHA-1 Broken
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· Score: 1
I guess my question is: Would the attacker be able to craft a message that could REASONABLLY pass as a legitimate message? It seems that so much additional "junk" padding would need to be added to the message so that it would hash to the same value. Are there not ways to detect these seemingly obvious alterations to the message (e.g. including the message length as part of the message) that would make an actual attack of this sort significantly harder.
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Finance is quite interesting, since you can leverage loans to the point that you can make money on borrowed money. Although a number of comments say that any existing loans should be paid down over keeping the money in the bank, careful consideration should be placed on three factors: access to cash, interest rate variability, and tax impact on earnings. Do a cost/benefit analyis to see if it would make more sense to hang on to the cash.
s hot?FundId=0030&FundIntExt=INT
* Access to Cash - Taking out a loan of any type and dumping the proceeds into a short-term savings account gives access to cash on a short notice. If the interest revenue on the deposit matches (taking into account taxes) or is close to the interest expense for the loan, then you can use this deposit to assure that cash will be available when needed without the worry of securing a loan in more-stressful situations (e.g., between part-time jobs). Having a loan balance can also help establish a credit history.
* Interest Rate Variability - Loans and investments can have fixed or variable rate interest. You want to acquire variable rate loans and fixed rate investments when you expect market interest rates to go down, while fixed rate loans and variable rate investments are better when market interest rates are likely to go up. For example, those who acquired variable rate mortgages three years ago are paying much more in interest now than those who acquired fixed rate (and at the time more expensive) loans.
* Impact of Taxes - Remember that you have to pay taxes at your marginal tax rate (e.g. 15% or 25%) for any interest or unqualified dividends you earn. One who pays income taxes at the 25% rate will only net 3% on a 4% yield investment. Likewise, only some types of loans will give you a tax break on interest you pay. A student loan at 6% only costs you 4.5% when you factor in the tax break, but 6% credit card interest costs you a full 6%.
I recommend Vanguard's Prime Money Market Fund. It currently yields 5.04%, you virtually can't lose money since the share price is fixed at $1, and you can write checks out of the account for immediate access to the funds. You'll earn higher rates than in a bank, but you need a $3000 minimum deposit.
http://flagship2.vanguard.com/VGApp/hnw/FundsSnap
I did not know about that. Thanks... I'll take a look at it. :-)
I once worked at a game company. I asked on my first day what the dress code was. My supervisor said, "eh... you could show up naked and no one would care." He was right! Much to my astonishment, I saw someone walking down the hall with nothing but boxers on. He had been working out, and decided it would be easiest to just air-dry.
If you did go the Oracle route, you might take a look at Data Guard. It may be a cheaper option than RAC. It lets your site run in an active/standby mode. I'm not a DBA, but I think you can configure Data Guard with different levels of reliability. Guaranteed synchronization is one of those levels. I'm thinking that it would let you automatically fail over to the standby site if the active site goes down, but you'd have to look at the docs for sure. The nice thing about this route is that you could have a remote disaster recovery site. BTW, "master/slave" is not "politically correct." I have actually heard of people having to reword documentation becuase of some policy that said those terms couldn't be used.
I guess my question is: Would the attacker be able to craft a message that could REASONABLLY pass as a legitimate message? It seems that so much additional "junk" padding would need to be added to the message so that it would hash to the same value. Are there not ways to detect these seemingly obvious alterations to the message (e.g. including the message length as part of the message) that would make an actual attack of this sort significantly harder.