Trends in software migration.

We had some decent tools at work. Tools like TOAD to write queries and do some analysis on Oracle databases. We had the tool until the company jacked up the prices of the licenses. XMLSpy did a similar thing and now we do without. I suppose it's like crack, give you a few cheap hits, get addicted and jack up the price.

It's hard to work without a tool to write queries and sqlplus (Oracle's command line tool) just doesn't cut it. There's a product called SQL Developer from Oracle that is free and supposed appeared to do some of what TOAD was doing and many of us moved to it. After using it for a while, I can honestly say that it's a pig. It uses 250 meg to load up. If you leave your machine on for a while, you'll find it using a half gig of memory. 500,000,000 bytes to run sql commands. I only have 2 gigs on my work box, so after the operating system, Outlook, bug tracking, virus scanning, web browser, and other assorted tools, I don't exactly have half a gig to query a database.

This appears to be a consistent pattern with Java applications. Use up all the available memory and make them buy more. I thought .NET apps were piggish when a simple service required 20 megabytes, but when you're using more memory that a piggish operating system, it's time to rethink how you're writing your application.

I long for the days when you could code and get the whole application under 100k. I think I'm going back to write some C code just to watch the binaries go under 100k.

TaxCut software sucks

The software doesn't suck, but when you buy the software in the store, you get a box. Inside the box is a CD. That's it. So I installed the software last month and tossed the box. I collected all the paperwork and filled it out. I got the state tax form and filled it out. I go to e-file...

I needed the box. There's some key code on the inside flap that is required to e-file.

Bastards. Why not have me type it in when I installed it? I don't keep the boxes around.

How to improve liquidity.

I don't know why the government wants to throw good money after bad to the banks. It seems that it eliminates risk and doesn't punish the idiots who ran the banks into the ground. I think a better solution is to give the money to healthy banks and let the bad banks fail.

The good banks could take the money and lend it.

The bad banks would fail. The FDIC would come in and clean up the mess.

Why does the government want to take bad assets off the bank's balance sheets? Seems like a bad investment for the government.

Privatize rewards, socialize risk? If risk is going to be socialized, so should rewards. Bank taxes should be pretty darn high. Bonuses? Tax those puppies. CEO's? Oh yeah - bring some of that money back into the coffers. Last I checked, a company's CEO is not worth a thousand times of another employee. If so, he could run his own business at home and make lots of money. The CEO's money is made off the backs of the employees.

Random thoughts on the economy

The economy sucks. Housing prices are going down, stocks are going down, people are being laid off, and companies are going out of business. Unfortunately, some of this is necessary.

However...

Why do we prop up AIG? Companies made "bets" against financial instruments that they sometimes didn't even have. Why does the government pay off those bets? The government didn't insure or regulate those bets in the first place. Considering that many of these bets are to foreign banks, shouldn't those governments step in? If it was the London branch of AIG causing the problem, should the British government step in? And what's with these bonuses? Perhaps a better solution is to have the government go in and take over the company. Figure out what is going on, sell of the valuable assets, and figure out what to do with the rest. The government shouldn't be handing out 100% payouts on unregulated insurance obligations. If the companies wanted insurance, they should have bought it. It was all a house of cards. Perhaps paying 20% or so as if it was a bankruptcy would be better. The companies who were placing bets get to feel some pain. Why should they not suffer through some of the pain?

Taxpayers are covering a lot of losses. We'll all be paying for this in the future. The government is printing huge sums of money to keep the system liquid. Isn't that what got us into this mess?

If a company is too big to fail, it is too big period. Some of these companies should be split up like AT&T was when it was a monopoly. This way the failure of one company doesn't risk causing total collapse.

Who is supposed to be protecting people from ponzi schemes?

The government ought to be reorganized. Who is responsible for food safety? FDA? Dept of agriculture? Someone should take a look and reorganize the government into more logical functional groups.

Why do we allow companies to sidestep regulation by narrowly defining what is being regulated? If we regulate AIG's insurance business, and AIG sells insurance but calls it something else, shouldn't the government still regulate it?

Why doesn't the government just take over some of the shaky banks instead of giving them cash? It seems that these companies that are on the verge of failing should just be taken over and cleaned up. It's obvious that their management did not do their job running the company and the stockholders did not seem to care. Both should lose.

There seems to be a lull in the bad news. Perhaps we're now at the bottom of this mess.