There was a very interesting article in the Economist about this. The gist of it is that 24% is indeed steep, but bear in mind that:
a) These are very small sums of money, so the proportional overhead is much higher
b) Microfinance loans represent about 30% of loans, the rest coming from local loansharks, who typically charge around 2-300% apr (and have more violent debt collection procedures). Any cap on rates will lower that percentage, and so make things worse.
While I agree with your general gist, "Capitalism and free enterprise produced everything good" is a bit of an exaggeration. Capitalism didn't "produce" labour rights, it didn't "produce" national parks, the sexual revolution or the abolition of slavery. I don't think we can simplistically say that captialism is the cause of all that is great in this world, even though it's a pretty major component.
"It's not quite true that no mass market product uses Lisp. Microsoft's "Bob" environment for naive computer users was developed (and delivered) in Lisp."
xubuntu became very bloated very fast. From v8 onwards I never saw any advantage over vanilla ubuntu. I think at one point they even announced that they weren't aiming to be "light ubuntu" any more.
Lubuntu, however, is the best thing since sliced bread. I've got a 7 year old 1.2Ghz, 256Mb ultra-laptop that starts faster than my workstation.
huh? Tons of people have changed their name for their facebook account (e.g. "Rob FromManchester" instead of "Rob Smith"), so they don't pop up in employer searches. I've never seen or heard of a verification system.
Lots of European countries have very powerful teachers' unions and tenure (off the top of my head France, Germany, Sweden, Norway). Yet their results (for secondary education of course) are far better than NYC. So I doubt that's the major cause.
I agree with your point, but we shouldn't forget that this article is clearly sympathetic to the kid. Maybe he isn't quite as cute and cuddly as they make out.
I don't see the point of your argument. You say Java developers should intentionally cripple themselves, because they're losing "important steps". What does that even mean? I don't see why I'd lose rename, automatic inherited method shells, auto imports, generate constructors/getters/setters etc... When you buy a car, do you insist that it has manual windows and no power steering?
This system also exists in other fields, such as estate agents. Each house on the market will be listed by about 10 different agencies, yet only sold by one. So work is multiplied tenfold, and so commissions are high, because you're also paying the agent for the 9 other houses he didn't sell.
This seems to be a problem that isn't easily solved by market forces: If a new player enters the field, he has to put margins high, because he will only be able to close a small fraction of deals. The only solution would be for someone with sufficient cash reserves to launch a "hard-discount" agency, that would start making money once its market share starts growing.
Not only that, but "passionate" people aren't always a good fit. I prefer to work with someone who may only regard software engineering as a job, but who has common sense etc.. instead of some hacker kid who is going to try to make things as complicated as possible just for kicks.
His comment was playing on the article's analogy to make another one, that everyone should see this coming. It was a fair point, I found. Your comment, however, added absolutely nothing to the discussion.
I don't agree with his comment about the stove - Sure it's more fiddly than a real button or dial, but the ease of cleaning more than makes up for it IMHO.
Not that it's a DVCS, but I remember ClearCase had this brilliant "dynamic" mode which would hook into explorer and simulate a drive with the entire contents of a repo, but only download the files you need when you needed them. I haven't seen that anywhere else
I'd go further and say this is a big problem for any supply-demand system where there is significant latency. Farming, Degrees etc. Wave effects seem inevitable in this case
It's funny how until you are in a business, you don't realise how monstrously complicated it can be. I work for another GDS (if Sabre is an "800 pound gorilla", I suppose that makes us a small elephant), and the amount of work that goes into a cutover is just mind-boggling.
And if you think this type of transition is dangerous, consider the fact that this is a switch of the reservation system, not the DCS (departure control). That's when things can get really messy...
On most systems, reservation is more or less independent from departure control. The kiosks might be plugged straight into the DCS, in which case there would be no issue son that side.
The problem is that we're having to keep perfect compatibility with stuff that was done in the seventies. So you quickly end up with something just as (if not more) horrendous as the Windows or Office codebase. Take EDIFACT for example...
For "regional" airlines such as SouthWest or Ryanair, managing your own system is fine. But if you want to be able to do code-sharing, ground-handling and all the rest of the madness that comes with being a global airline, you don't have a choice.
The single website solution also means you're cutting yourself off from people who are using fare search services.
And let's not forget that in some regions (Asia notably), travel agents with their "cryptic" terminals and "valuable" tickets are still the norm.
That seems the most logical solution to me. But I think corporate taxes are also aimed at "pushing" companies to invest/spend more of their revenue than they would if they could funnel all profits straight into accounts in the Cayman islands or wherever.
In fact, there was a dodgy moment a few years ago when Wikipedia pages would display an advert for Virgin Unite. The argument was that since it's a charity, it doesn't count as advertising, but for me there's a big difference between the charitable arm of a corporation and a "true" charity. The main one being that Unite is obviously at least partly an attempt to improve the Virgin brand. He didn't call it The Branson Foundation or just Unite.
In Canada (and Europe), the gate agents check your BP against their list (in fact they just scan the 2DBC and it boards you in the DCS system) and your ID. So you would get stopped at the gate.
I remember the security nightmare at IGI: The entire airport was surrounded in soldiers who wouldn't let you in without a ticket. The whole concept of electronic reservations seemed to go right over their head, until I managed to convince a very kind BA stewardess to go in a print an e-ticket confirmation and then bring it outside to me (I'm sure even Al Qaeda could fake one of those). What a bunch of muppets
The figures aren't just for the US. So they include many countries where bundling phones and contracts is either illegal (some Nordic countries) or dying fast (e.g. France since Free)
I don't get the figures. He says "all dollar figures in thousands", but then puts "US$" before them. Surely in this case you should say "all figures in thousands of dollars" and not put any units in the cells?
I think this point of view is due to your definition of success. You have a very "Protestant Work Ethic" angle (not that that's a bad thing in any way).
To play Devil's Advocate, I would say the best example you could set to your kids is show them that what counts in life isn't money or a career, that to be happy you shouldn't sacrifice your family life or work yourself to the ground. That what is important is spending as much of the little time we have on this planet with the people we love. Even if that means not having the corner office or the biggest house or the newest car on the block.
a) These are very small sums of money, so the proportional overhead is much higher b) Microfinance loans represent about 30% of loans, the rest coming from local loansharks, who typically charge around 2-300% apr (and have more violent debt collection procedures). Any cap on rates will lower that percentage, and so make things worse.