According to trade magazine Computer Sweden, RAÄ wanted to continue using an older Oracle Database 9.3 system for a limited time, before migrating to the PostgreSQL open source software.
RAÄ had a licence to allow it to run Oracle Database 9.3, but Oracle insisted that the agency also renew its support contract for the system. According to the supplier, a customer must have the same level of support for all copies of Oracle Database used in the organisation — and RAÄ had recently renewed a support contract for a more recent version of Oracle Database. So according to Oracle, the agency had two choices. It could have the existing licence — bought and paid for — nullified and stop using the database software now. Alternatively it could renew the support contract for a software version that soon would no longer be supported by Oracle anyway.
Bordering on a scamIn a follow-up comment, Lars Danielsson, a reporter at IDG Enterprise Sweden, called these practices “bordering on a scam”.
What Two Years of Negative Interest Rates in Europe Tell Us
It hasn’t worked very well. As many experts predicted at the time, the policy has had only a modest impact on growth. It is also increasingly clear that pushing rates down further wouldn’t help much and could, in fact, increase risks to the global financial system.
.. It would be far better if European governments used fiscal policy to increase demand by investing in roads, bridges, railroads, ports and other infrastructure... Bond investors are willing to lend money to the German government for 30 years at a rate of just 0.38 percent; in France, the rate is only 0.878 percent... The worry among many experts is that banks, institutional investors and even individuals desperate for higher returns might be seduced into taking foolish risks. They might also be tempted to make big investments overseas, driving up the price of stocks and bonds in the United States and Asia and creating bubbles.. In addition, persistently negative rates could well force European banks to raise fees on checking and savings accounts to recoup the rising cost of depositing reserves at the central bank. This, in turn, would encourage individuals and businesses to take some of their money out of banks and stash it in safes, or under mattresses.
Where Europe is most and least innovative, in 6 maps
DRESDEN, Germany — Europe has long secretly admired Silicon Valley. So when a local European politician wants to emphasize how innovative his region really is, it is common to somehow relate it to the Valley.
One example is “Silicon Saxony,” in eastern Germany, with the regional capital Dresden. It’s far from being the only European region dreaming of California, though. When a large German company opened its new headquarters in Munich earlier this year, many felt obliged to applaud the “Silicon Valley spirit” one could allegedly feel. What was so remarkable about it?
Although that comparison mostly emphasizes how much Europeans still feel they lag behind the United States in innovating, Munich may indeed come closer than most other cities on the continent,
.. The share of college graduates among the total workforce is only about half of the E.U. average in most German regions.
.. Germany has long prided itself for offering an alternative path for high school graduates besides university. Many companies offer apprenticeships, which are practical and are paid courses for a set amount of time.
The world’s losers are revolting, and Brexit is only the beginning
From Mexico to Argentina, Thailand to South Korea, Hong Kong to Indonesia, and, eventually, the United States to southern Europe, these capital flows magnified the economy’s boom-bust cycle, with an emphasis on the bust.
.. They warned that Turkey is about to join the E.U. — it’s not — and flood the country with immigrants. They said that Europe’s refugee crisis has pushed them to a “breaking point” in a poster reminiscent of Nazi propaganda. And they promised to earmark the funds now being sent to the E.U. for what they claim is the overburdened-by-immigrants National Health Services instead. Never mind that they overstated how much money that’d be by a factor of two. Their basic argument was that Britain could only stop this influx of immigrants if it ditched the E.U. and its rules mandating the free movement of people and that the elites had failed the people by forgetting there was a Britain outside of London.
.. First, they’d have to change all the money in their economy, and, second, every other euro country would worry that they’d be next. That, in turn, would set off a slow-motion bank run across Southern Europe as people tried to get ahold of their euros before they could be turned into, say, liras that wouldn’t be worth anywhere near as much. It’d be the mother-of-all financial crises. Which is why German, French, Spanish and Italian stock markets all fell much further than Britain’s did after it voted to leave. Indeed, those markets dropped 6.8, 8.0, 12.4 and 12.5 percent, respectively, on Friday, while Britain’s “only” declined 3.2 percent.
.. Brexit, it turns out, is more about Europe than it is about Britain.
.. Brexit really might be the end of the E.U. if France and Italy follow Britain out the door; it might also be the end of the U.K. if Scotland and Northern Ireland decide they’d rather be part of the E.U. (or what’s left of it); and it might even be the end of our era of economic integration if it helps propel populists to power across the continent who only care about putting their people “first.”
.. Its second one was ignoring the evidence that things were indeed going bad just as predicted, and blaming irresponsible governments instead. And its last one was all but blackmailing governments into slashing their budgets out of the misguided belief that this would get their sputtering economies growing again. It didn’t. It was the economic equivalent of tossing a drowning person an anchor instead of a lifeline, because you thought they needed to get stronger and not bailed out.
.. The liberal international order isn’t working for too many people, but, on balance, most economists would say it’s still worth fighting for. After all, there are much worse alternatives.