"Actually currency trading makes up a ton of the HFT. "
You completely missed my point. Read the final sentence again, please. What I stated was that getting a current exchange rate need not require HFT. And further, it is, plain and simple, not good for the system to work such that the exchange rate fluctuates that rapidly.
That is exactly the kind of recipe for disaster that we are referring to. If people in government and finance fail to realize that, then we should replace them ASAP.
Well, yes, and that fits well with the statement I made elsewhere, that Wall Street is not "capitalism", it's just a casino. And a particularly bad one, in which the high-rollers get to shove their losses onto the little guy.
"Firstly they've been workable for many many years, and secondly i was referring to the fact that you have had the choice of dual booting and not having to be constrained to either-or."
Dual-booting is not the same as running a different OS in a VM. But to be clear: I wasn't trying to say that the VMs themselves were necessarily crap, but a decade ago, they were so slow on most hardware as to be almost unusable.
And I agree that there was not enough customer demand in the long run for OEM Ubuntu... but things change. For one thing, it was not long after that time that Gnome and KDE both changed the user interfaces in ways that were almost universally despised.
So yes, I still assert that the OEMs supplied Ubuntu machines in response to customer demand. But I also agree that over time, there was not enough sustainable demand to keep it up. But I don't think the changing desktop environment of the time can be ignored as a factor.
The only way to improve it is to abolish it. And it should be abolished, before something very, very bad happens.
"If a bank needs to exchange dollars for Euros, what should they do? Call someone on the phone because they're afraid of competing in an electronic market?"
Getting a current exchange rate -- or making an exchange, for that matter -- are not the same things as HFT. Both are quite possible without any HFT at all.
I agree with msuave and OP both. High-frequency algorithmic trading is a recipe for disaster.
Look at what happened on Amazon, when two sellers used software to set their prices just barely higher than the other guy. They got into a loop and before you know it, the books they were selling were priced at more than $1,000,000!
Now imagine that kind of loop operating behind the scenes on Wall Street.
"There is no address bar in Finder, so I can't type where I want to go."
Yes, you can. Click on "Go" and then "Go To Folder" in the main menu. (Or press Shift-Apple-G.) Type in your destination.
"I heard that a long time ago some OS had a shelf where you could temporarily drag files to and from. That sounds like a good idea.)"
Actually this is a prime job for the old dual-pane file manager. There are at least several decent Finder-replacement programs out there that work in dual-window mode. Among the best of them is Forklift. But you might try muCommander. It's free.
My Adobe Suite has bruises all over it from my having touched it so often with 11-foot poles (seriously... Photoshop won't even save a.png right in 10.7!), and I outgrew Microsoft Office years ago. For almost all of my purposes, Libre Office works better, faster, and a hell of a lot cheaper.
Just as there are lots of alternative 3rd-party programs to do certain Windows things better than Windows, there are lots of 3rd-party apps to do OS X things better than OS X.
There is absolutely nothing stopping you from using a 3rd-party VNC on OS X. There are quite a few, and most of them are free.
I just don't see this as a valid objection. I mean really, it's hard to see any justification for bitching about that, when literally all you have to do is hold out your hand and somebody will drop a better one in it.
And by the way: I run lots of *nix software and X11 stuff on my Mac... but the only reason I still have Windows is for 2 specific programs... and one of those is a game.
"And even with that people didn't flock to free OSes, the lack of software freedom still isn't biting anyone."
Uh, yeah, they kinda did. That was when people started demanding alternate OSes on their commercial purchases.
One thing that's different today: I mainly run OS X (and use the *nix features A LOT), but I have Windows in a VM and several distros of Linux that I run from time to time, for specific purposes.
It isn't that one or another OS had taken over, it's that there are lots more choices, and today it's a multiple-choice question, it's no longer either-or.
That leaves 3 possibilities: your windows jump around when you change screens, or they get covered up at the top by the menu, or there is wasted screen space where the menu bar WOULD be.
In all seriousness, though, General Interface looks pretty impressive. I don't know if I'd recommend something like that for someone who is learning programming. But I am sure as heck tempted to go play with it now.
Haha. Some years ago, a senior "fireman" in our area was caught & convicted for setting fires so that he could "discover" them and be instrumental in putting them out.
If memory serves, he will be in prison for quite a while yet.
"You don't think I don't know that link? Heh. That post is old and a fractal of bullshit mixed in with petty annoyances, and only a few solid criticisms."
At least get your story straight before you reply. That post is "old"? Yeah... 2 months old! And the criticisms are all valid, from my point of view. Certainly none of them are false, in my experience.
This isn't for educational purposes.
Um... maybe take a bit of your own advice, and stick to what OP wrote? "... just to tinker a bit due to curiosity. pretty much equals "educational purposes", at least where I come from.
"And you criticize PHP which isn't even eligible. Well, lol."
Quite the assumption there. It depends a hell of a lot on your native OS. PHP runs just fine on a Mac, right out of the box. (If you turn it on in your preferences.)
So does Ruby, so does Python, so does C, so does Java.
"So your company assumes that most of its creative employees are dishonest and that's OK with you?"
Even worse; it was handing out those "all your inventions are belong to us" forms to new employees, just like all those thousands of other, equally dishonest companies.
To everybody who has taken issue with my suggestion to avoid PHP, I offer you a quote excerpted from THIS more complete explanation. I am hardly alone in my opinion and I did not make this stuff up.
I can't even say what's wrong with PHP, because -- okay. Imagine you have uh, a toolbox. A set of tools. Looks okay, standard stuff in there.
You pull out a screwdriver, and you see it's one of those weird tri-headed things. Okay, well, that's not very useful to you, but you guess it comes in handy sometimes.
You pull out the hammer, but to your dismay, it has the claw part on both sides. Still serviceable though, I mean, you can hit nails with the middle of the head holding it sideways.
You pull out the pliers, but they don't have those serrated surfaces; it's flat and smooth. That's less useful, but it still turns bolts well enough, so whatever.
And on you go. Everything in the box is kind of weird and quirky, but maybe not enough to make it completely worthless. And there's no clear problem with the set as a whole; it still has all the tools.
Now imagine you meet millions of carpenters using this toolbox who tell you "well hey what's the problem with these tools? They're all I've ever used and they work fine!" And the carpenters show you the houses they've built, where every room is a pentagon and the roof is upside-down. And you knock on the front door and it just collapses inwards and they all yell at you for breaking their door.
"But come on: if you have never programmed, *any* language will teach you the same thing?"
Not with the same degree of ease or utility.
PHP has virtually no internal consistency. It is a hodgepodge of utility functions, many of which do almost the same things, but take different parameters, in different order even. It was (is) a project in which contributions were just taken willy-nilly, and incorporated into the product, seemingly without regard to any sort of organization.
And object-orientation? A weird kind of object-orientation was sort of tacked on, in... what was it... version 5? While other languages have had that as a fundamental infrastructure from the beginning. Ruby, for example (I'm not certain about Python) is object-oriented from the ground up. The language is mostly written in itself. (The standard library does contain some C for performance.)
While many languages are "Turing complete" -- that is to say, given enough diligence they can theoretically accomplish anything that any other language can -- that does not mean that they are "equal" when it comes to everyday power or ease of use. Some are vastly more consistent and intuitive.
Here is an excellent example of what many programmers think of PHP. I did not make this stuff up.
No, for educational purposes, PHP is about the worst thing I could think of. I would advise someone to start out on C itself -- horrors! You can see how much I feel this -- before I would suggest PHP.
It is actually fairly well-defined by the courts. While I do not pretend this is verbatim (I could look it up but I have other things to do), it is something like:
"Factual data" consists of facts that anyone could discover on their own given due diligence, with no judgment, interpretation, or other value added by the author. Typically this consists of physical data, or public information about individuals or things."
That is not exact, I promise. But they do have a pretty clear, and even reasonable, definition.
Slashdot Mirror
"Actually currency trading makes up a ton of the HFT. "
You completely missed my point. Read the final sentence again, please. What I stated was that getting a current exchange rate need not require HFT. And further, it is, plain and simple, not good for the system to work such that the exchange rate fluctuates that rapidly.
That is exactly the kind of recipe for disaster that we are referring to. If people in government and finance fail to realize that, then we should replace them ASAP.
It's stupid to allow this.
"THAT's the REAL problem with the markets."
Well, yes, and that fits well with the statement I made elsewhere, that Wall Street is not "capitalism", it's just a casino. And a particularly bad one, in which the high-rollers get to shove their losses onto the little guy.
"Firstly they've been workable for many many years, and secondly i was referring to the fact that you have had the choice of dual booting and not having to be constrained to either-or."
Dual-booting is not the same as running a different OS in a VM. But to be clear: I wasn't trying to say that the VMs themselves were necessarily crap, but a decade ago, they were so slow on most hardware as to be almost unusable.
And I agree that there was not enough customer demand in the long run for OEM Ubuntu... but things change. For one thing, it was not long after that time that Gnome and KDE both changed the user interfaces in ways that were almost universally despised.
So yes, I still assert that the OEMs supplied Ubuntu machines in response to customer demand. But I also agree that over time, there was not enough sustainable demand to keep it up. But I don't think the changing desktop environment of the time can be ignored as a factor.
"it is pure, unrestrained capitalism. What could possibly go wrong?"
It is nothing of the sort. Capitalism is a means of producing things. Wall Street produces nothing.
Wall Street isn't "capitalism". It's a government-endorsed casino. There's a pretty big difference.
"If a bank needs to exchange dollars for Euros, what should they do? Call someone on the phone because they're afraid of competing in an electronic market?"
Getting a current exchange rate -- or making an exchange, for that matter -- are not the same things as HFT. Both are quite possible without any HFT at all.
"HFT happens in nanoseconds. "
That was his whole point.
I agree with msuave and OP both. High-frequency algorithmic trading is a recipe for disaster.
Look at what happened on Amazon, when two sellers used software to set their prices just barely higher than the other guy. They got into a loop and before you know it, the books they were selling were priced at more than $1,000,000!
Now imagine that kind of loop operating behind the scenes on Wall Street.
Disaster. I tell you.
"The only thing people were demanding was XP instead of Vista, not free OSes."
Balls. Several of the vendors started offering Ubuntu because of customer demand. They didn't do it just because they felt like it.
"It's been like that for well over a decade."
Again, balls. VMs were around a decade ago, but they didn't work worth a shit.
"There is no address bar in Finder, so I can't type where I want to go."
Yes, you can. Click on "Go" and then "Go To Folder" in the main menu. (Or press Shift-Apple-G.) Type in your destination.
"I heard that a long time ago some OS had a shelf where you could temporarily drag files to and from. That sounds like a good idea.)"
Actually this is a prime job for the old dual-pane file manager. There are at least several decent Finder-replacement programs out there that work in dual-window mode. Among the best of them is Forklift. But you might try muCommander. It's free.
My Adobe Suite has bruises all over it from my having touched it so often with 11-foot poles (seriously... Photoshop won't even save a .png right in 10.7!), and I outgrew Microsoft Office years ago. For almost all of my purposes, Libre Office works better, faster, and a hell of a lot cheaper.
Just as there are lots of alternative 3rd-party programs to do certain Windows things better than Windows, there are lots of 3rd-party apps to do OS X things better than OS X.
There is absolutely nothing stopping you from using a 3rd-party VNC on OS X. There are quite a few, and most of them are free.
I just don't see this as a valid objection. I mean really, it's hard to see any justification for bitching about that, when literally all you have to do is hold out your hand and somebody will drop a better one in it.
And by the way: I run lots of *nix software and X11 stuff on my Mac... but the only reason I still have Windows is for 2 specific programs... and one of those is a game.
"And even with that people didn't flock to free OSes, the lack of software freedom still isn't biting anyone."
Uh, yeah, they kinda did. That was when people started demanding alternate OSes on their commercial purchases.
One thing that's different today: I mainly run OS X (and use the *nix features A LOT), but I have Windows in a VM and several distros of Linux that I run from time to time, for specific purposes.
It isn't that one or another OS had taken over, it's that there are lots more choices, and today it's a multiple-choice question, it's no longer either-or.
That leaves 3 possibilities: your windows jump around when you change screens, or they get covered up at the top by the menu, or there is wasted screen space where the menu bar WOULD be.
None of those options seems quite ideal to me.
In all seriousness, though, General Interface looks pretty impressive. I don't know if I'd recommend something like that for someone who is learning programming. But I am sure as heck tempted to go play with it now.
Thanks for the tip.
Haha. Some years ago, a senior "fireman" in our area was caught & convicted for setting fires so that he could "discover" them and be instrumental in putting them out.
If memory serves, he will be in prison for quite a while yet.
"You wanted to know why you got modded down..."
Not even close. I know very well WHY it was modded down. But I do not agree that the reason was valid.
"You don't think I don't know that link? Heh. That post is old and a fractal of bullshit mixed in with petty annoyances, and only a few solid criticisms."
At least get your story straight before you reply. That post is "old"? Yeah... 2 months old! And the criticisms are all valid, from my point of view. Certainly none of them are false, in my experience.
This isn't for educational purposes.
Um... maybe take a bit of your own advice, and stick to what OP wrote? "... just to tinker a bit due to curiosity. pretty much equals "educational purposes", at least where I come from.
"And you criticize PHP which isn't even eligible. Well, lol."
Quite the assumption there. It depends a hell of a lot on your native OS. PHP runs just fine on a Mac, right out of the box. (If you turn it on in your preferences.)
So does Ruby, so does Python, so does C, so does Java.
"So your company assumes that most of its creative employees are dishonest and that's OK with you?"
Even worse; it was handing out those "all your inventions are belong to us" forms to new employees, just like all those thousands of other, equally dishonest companies.
I haven't worked there in years.
I can't even say what's wrong with PHP, because -- okay. Imagine you have uh, a toolbox. A set of tools. Looks okay, standard stuff in there.
You pull out a screwdriver, and you see it's one of those weird tri-headed things. Okay, well, that's not very useful to you, but you guess it comes in handy sometimes.
You pull out the hammer, but to your dismay, it has the claw part on both sides. Still serviceable though, I mean, you can hit nails with the middle of the head holding it sideways.
You pull out the pliers, but they don't have those serrated surfaces; it's flat and smooth. That's less useful, but it still turns bolts well enough, so whatever.
And on you go. Everything in the box is kind of weird and quirky, but maybe not enough to make it completely worthless. And there's no clear problem with the set as a whole; it still has all the tools.
Now imagine you meet millions of carpenters using this toolbox who tell you "well hey what's the problem with these tools? They're all I've ever used and they work fine!" And the carpenters show you the houses they've built, where every room is a pentagon and the roof is upside-down. And you knock on the front door and it just collapses inwards and they all yell at you for breaking their door.
That's what's wrong with PHP.
"But come on: if you have never programmed, *any* language will teach you the same thing?"
Not with the same degree of ease or utility.
PHP has virtually no internal consistency. It is a hodgepodge of utility functions, many of which do almost the same things, but take different parameters, in different order even. It was (is) a project in which contributions were just taken willy-nilly, and incorporated into the product, seemingly without regard to any sort of organization.
And object-orientation? A weird kind of object-orientation was sort of tacked on, in... what was it... version 5? While other languages have had that as a fundamental infrastructure from the beginning. Ruby, for example (I'm not certain about Python) is object-oriented from the ground up. The language is mostly written in itself. (The standard library does contain some C for performance.)
While many languages are "Turing complete" -- that is to say, given enough diligence they can theoretically accomplish anything that any other language can -- that does not mean that they are "equal" when it comes to everyday power or ease of use. Some are vastly more consistent and intuitive.
Here is an excellent example of what many programmers think of PHP. I did not make this stuff up.
No, for educational purposes, PHP is about the worst thing I could think of. I would advise someone to start out on C itself -- horrors! You can see how much I feel this -- before I would suggest PHP.
"So you complain about PHP when nobody even mentioned it (much)?"
I was not criticizing, I was telling the best and honest truth, as best I know it. And I have been there, so I do know something about it.
Don't like my advice? Fine. You are entitled to your own opinion. But just remember that I am, too.
"if going down the Ruby route, then the online runner may be of help: http://tryruby.org/levels/1/challenges/0"
Why in the world was this modded down?
What is "factual data"?
It is actually fairly well-defined by the courts. While I do not pretend this is verbatim (I could look it up but I have other things to do), it is something like:
"Factual data" consists of facts that anyone could discover on their own given due diligence, with no judgment, interpretation, or other value added by the author. Typically this consists of physical data, or public information about individuals or things."
That is not exact, I promise. But they do have a pretty clear, and even reasonable, definition.