As somebody who actually deals in the market and writes algos, I have to add you have no idea what you are talking about.
HFT by itself does not push the price around. What HFT does is be the catalyst to any slight news. Think of it as follows. Put a fire in a forest and it burns, but it burns with some control. Put a fire in a forest that 100% oxygen and you don't have a chance in hell. This is HFT in a nutshell.
What happens when there is any slight movement whatsoever the HFT will overdo the moves. This then leads to the problem of psychology where traders will ask, "maybe there is something wrong with this company and they begin to sell off even more." The 100% pure oxygen HFT will then begin wild fire that nobody can control.
HFT is a problem and it needs solving. Case in point, America uses much more HFT due to the lower market costs. Europe is not better, it is that in Europe costs of doing business are much higher hence not as attractive for HFT. Where have all of the screw ups been? Oh yeah America...
Transaction taxes are pointless. The financial industry is based on the notion of creating an artificial world. Stocks, money, etc are all artificial human constructs. Thus they can create a new construct, like CFD's, or move back to OTC, etc. These constructs will warp the market in the same way, but using indirect forces. The only real way to stop HFT's is to put in speed bumps like the 50ms holding rule I was commenting on.
No the problem is that it will not disappear because it will move to the side. Case in point UK. They have a stamp tax on stocks. What happened? The financial industry created CFD's Essentially these are leverage products that trade on top of the stocks (sorta like futures) are not subject to the stamp duty. Granted they don't get the stock benefits, but they still warp the market.
As somebody who works in the market, the solution is to introduce a 50 ms holding rule. It would work as follows. You put in a bid, or ask. The moment it goes onto the market you have a 50 ms waiting period before you can put in another bid or ask. You can cancel your original bid and ask within 1 ms, but you cannot put in another one until your 50 ms is up. This action will introduce a delay and slow the market down.
Oh I have an electric lawn mower as well and hate it. Why? very easy, I HATE DRAGGING THE DAMM CORD. Half of my lawn mowing time is wasted on shoving the cord from one corner of the lawn to the other corner.
The problem that we have with electrical is that it can not in the near future provide the energy density that fuel can:
Fuel has about 45, batteries 1.8. Assuming an efficiency in the gas motor of 30%, we have we have 13. Electrical cars have about 80%, which puts it at 1.44. This means a car has an advantage in pure energy of 9x. Electrical batteries are dicking around with maybe double better energy in the near future. In other words batteries in the next 20 years are not going to cut it.
I have written fast programs in both Java and C# that are maybe 10% slower than pedal to the metal C or C++. It really does depend on how you write the code. There are things that make Java and C# very slow. In fact I think one can argue that the current incarnation of C++ is a dog in terms of performance. With all of that template "goodness" you are just loping on stuff that Java and C# can do in an easier manner.
BTW for reference I write financial algorithms that include Monte Carlo simulations.
Microsoft did show some innovation. Namely Microsoft made it possible for generic applications to utilize specific hardware without having to know about the hardware details. This abstraction was attempted by others like Desqview, and OS/2, but it was Microsoft that made it work extremely well. Go back to the original Mac days. You had to buy Apple specific crap, and that was very easy to do. Sun did that approach, so did DEC. I personally feel that little piece of historical credit is underplayed. It is not sexy as a desktop, or as exciting, but it is damm near amazing as it facilitated the desktops we have today.
Office was very innovative as well. Back in the original days you had wordperfect, and you had lotus. Both of these apps could not share any data. Microsoft created a unified vision of desktop app integration. They used OLE, and the result were a bunch of competitors who tried to copy them. OLE while initially badly designed was actually quite amazing. You could embed documents within documents and create a work. What did OLE in was the fact that they tried it, and then tried to write it off. Though I would argue they actually mastered the idea of copy and paste. Yes yes others tried it, but Windows copy and paste did work across the board unlike the others. I remember trying to get copy and paste to work on Linux or a generic Unix, royal pain in the ass. Even to this day OSX copy and paste has little issues. For example when I copy from TextWrangler to WebStorm I will have moments where things just will not transfer.
Oh great a Microsoft Monkey Manager pointing out how many great papers are published! Come on anonymous are you from Microsoft? Just because you publish ten million papers does not mean you can actually make money from it. Take a look at your bottom line please. You spend more money than you generate. The purpose of R&D is not to pump out papers. The purpose of R&D is to improve the viability, revenues, and returns of your company. You are supposed to show progress. While you might argue, but wait some stuff is fundamentals that does not have an immediate payback, I will counter, agreed. HOWEVER, Microsoft R&D has been around for more than a decade and I am still waiting for that fabled amazing product done with fundamental research! Simply put Microsoft Research is a deadweight much like the rest of Microsoft...
This is actually history being rewritten by companies. Kinect DID NOT come from Microsoft research. It came from an Israeli company that actually offered the technology first to Apple. It did not like the contract and hence did not even show it to Apple. They then went to Microsoft and the rest is history.
Microsoft research and its R&D department SUCKS wind. In stock investing terms R&D is supposed to increase your revenue and cash flow. Thus if I invest 10 USD in R&D I should get at least a return of 10 USD. Anything below that means that the company is throwing money out the window. Microsoft is such a company. It's R&D generates very little that adds to the bottom line of Microsoft. It does not mean that Microsoft Research is useless. It means that something in Microsoft is causing not to make more money from its research department.
1) Ok so who made MacBook Air competitors before Apple came out? Oh yeah ZERO!
2) So who made notebooks with great than 2K resolution on the screen before Apple came out? Oh yeah ZERO!
3) So who made SSD's popular before Apple came out? Oh yeah ZERO!
Do you see the pattern here you turd! Does Apple charge more? Heck yeah! But do they deliver on better quality and better hardware? YEAH! Did you notice in Tim Cook's keynote address where he slammed the competition on Ultrabooks saying, "its not so easy is it?" Essentially he was saying what Apple has been preaching. To make hardware as sexy as theirs is not cheap, nor easy as typified by the prices charged by the Windows people.
I completely agree here... When I moved back to Europe in 94 they were in full swing moving power cables from above ground to below ground. Now in 2012 it is rare to see an above ground house to house power cable... With most of them, outside of the big distributor cables, underground it is also nicer looking as there are no more power lines.
Mod up the parent... I completely concur. Yes I pinned as well, but I did use the start menu to navigate the positions. But hey why do I matter and care. I shifted all of my machines to OSX, and Linux Ubuntu...
I have made the jump to the financial world. The short of it, there are plenty of people of IT people in the business so it is hard to get in now. But if you have talent and have something you can probably make it. Though if you have zero business knowledge of the financial world that is not good. You do need business knowledge. Ask me anything in specific if you wish...
You sir are incredibly insightful. I researched this company and this topic. In the local paper they described how this company managed to build a 15 floor building in 15 days! Yes 15 days!
The reason why this company can do what it can is because it builds these buildings using a pre-fab approach. North American's, and Europeans partially are not yet used to prefab houses. In Europe it is slowly trickling in, but nobody wants them to be built because they seriously undercut the housing lobby. Take for Ikea homes. Yes Ikea sells homes, using this method. They are cheaper than any other home. Look at this Ikea home for 86 K, which includes everything in the inside as well.
It is hard to beat with all appliances and furniture of 86K. Now is it the final dream? No not really since Ikea is just partnering with a prefab company. BUT imagine if the Chinese managed to put it all together like this company. Then the west has serious issues!!!
1) Greece had slaves 2) Only men of certain classes were allowed to vote
Is that democracy? At least as we perceive it today? No, not at all... That system you are referring to reminds me more of a representational democracy as there is a class of people deciding what the other class of people will do.
I quote
"Estimates of the population of ancient Athens vary. During the 4th century BC, there may well have been some 250,000–300,000 people in Attica. Citizen families may have amounted to 100,000 people and out of these some 30,000 will have been the adult male citizens entitled to vote in the assembly. "
Bullshit! I live in Switzerland and I am whole hearted for direct democracy. I was not a Swiss by birth, but am Swiss through naturalization. I know what representational democracy is about and here is what is wrong with it
1) Votes are bought by lobbies!!! 2) Votes are bought by lobbies!!! 3) A minority determines what happens to the majority
In a direct democratic system like Switzerland
1) Votes cannot be bought by a lobby since they would have to pay off each and every citizen. 2) Does the mob rule? Yeah it does, but guess what most mobs don't actually behave like you say. Remember that the Nazi's, Communists and so on arose to power as a minority and then imposed violence to keep majority in its place. 3) People when presented in a rational discussion, which actually happens in a direct democracy system will actually for the most part vote logically. ESPECIALLY when it is their own pocket book. Representational democracies like to oh so easily spend other people's money. Whereas when you know it will come out of your pocket book you will ask, "am I better for it..."
They made 500 million over the course of 4 years, whereas Google earning 38 billion last year from computers. Even if they were sandbagging it for the court case it is small change...
"Android generated less than $550m in revenues for Google between 2008 and the end of 2011"
"That compares to Google's $38bn total revenues in 2011, almost entirely derived from advertising on PCs, of which there are 1.25bn installed worldwide, according to Microsoft. That suggests an average revenue for Google of about $30 per PC per year, though not all will be capable of accessing the internet or will use Google, so the actual figure will be higher."
I am sure Google was sandbagging the Android numbers so that the Oracle case would go in their favor. BUT say for the moment they earned 5 billion over the entire time, which is a fact of 10, it is still a pittance to what they earn on the desktop.
I completely agree. When people settled North America, Africa, or South America did they say, "oh you know what those are scared lands we will not disturb them." I say tough titty! If you want them, go get them yourselves, otherwise its fair game!
“The purpose of the [gathering] is for people to realize how terrible the Internet is and, of course, the best thing for every [good Jew] is not to allow it in his home at all,”
The main problem with Android is not that the network carriers are the problem. Sure there are issues with it. BUT please tell me how my Acer Iconia tablet and its lack of updates is somehow a problem of the network carrier?
The problem with Android is that it is becoming a clustereff! I have an Android phone and Android tablet. I also have an iPhone, and iPad. I prefer the iPhone and iPad.
Here are some issues:
1) lack of updates! We have two android tablets and one android phone and the updates just SUCK! 2) apps will not work across devices. I can understand that tablet apps will not work on a phone. But I have phone games where if they run on the tablet the graphics do really funky things and are completely unusable. 3) Why on earth is the chrome browser only on ICS, and not honey comb? There is no excuse. 4) Battery life truly does suck in comparison to my iOS devices. 5) Performance and usability is lackluster. Windows Phone, and iOS devices have superior UI response. This goes back to the architectural design of Android vs iOS/Windows Phone.
I gave Android a chance, truly tried to like it, but I wish Google would focus on the Android operating system and cleaning that up instead of trying to push the blame to the others. Instead Google thinks the best use of its money is to develop augmented reality glasses...
BTW just for kicks, nowhere in any of the Star Trek series have there been augmented reality glasses! It is a dumb idea! Oh wait there was this one episode... BAD GOOGLE, BAD!;)
Absolutely abolish copyright law!!! I don't want it, it is goofy and hurts us people!
Oh wait that means that the GPL becomes null and void? So that means I can now copy, and black box my device all that I want? Cool let me on that train...
Copyright law is a only a means to an ends. It is up to the copyright holder to determine how the law is used. Studios use it to restrict freedom, whereas GPL uses it to give freedom. But it is the same underlying law that governs both...
I know the feeling... I was reading the title and wondered, huh? Richard Stallman falls the third at conference. I thought, third what.. I seriously did not see ill. Wow I hate this font (Ill)
I call BS, BS, BS... As I commented in a previous post about direct democracy...
You say representative democracy is better because the average voter does not have the time. Oh really? You mean the country they live in does not deserve a few moments of their day? After all it is not that important right? This is the attitude that I DETEST! Your country is your country because you can vote and live in it, and like a garden it requires care. Sure you can hire a gardener, but unless you are willing to look at the work done by the gardener your garden will look like crap!
This is what has gone wrong. Citizens in a representative democracy have hired gardeners, pay them, but complain if a bleeding branch is in front of their window. The garden can go to heck in a hand basket, but heaven forbid a branch clutters their window. The only way to fix government is to have people vote on the issue when necessary...
THis is an open source forum, and last I heard open source is good because there are more eyeballs looking at the issue and hence less bugs. Can this not be said about direct democracy as well? Sure not everybody votes on all issues, but you will have enough people looking and asking questions that if anything were bad it would be raised very quickly.
Slashdot Mirror
As somebody who actually deals in the market and writes algos, I have to add you have no idea what you are talking about.
HFT by itself does not push the price around. What HFT does is be the catalyst to any slight news. Think of it as follows. Put a fire in a forest and it burns, but it burns with some control. Put a fire in a forest that 100% oxygen and you don't have a chance in hell. This is HFT in a nutshell.
What happens when there is any slight movement whatsoever the HFT will overdo the moves. This then leads to the problem of psychology where traders will ask, "maybe there is something wrong with this company and they begin to sell off even more." The 100% pure oxygen HFT will then begin wild fire that nobody can control.
HFT is a problem and it needs solving. Case in point, America uses much more HFT due to the lower market costs. Europe is not better, it is that in Europe costs of doing business are much higher hence not as attractive for HFT. Where have all of the screw ups been? Oh yeah America...
Transaction taxes are pointless. The financial industry is based on the notion of creating an artificial world. Stocks, money, etc are all artificial human constructs. Thus they can create a new construct, like CFD's, or move back to OTC, etc. These constructs will warp the market in the same way, but using indirect forces. The only real way to stop HFT's is to put in speed bumps like the 50ms holding rule I was commenting on.
No the problem is that it will not disappear because it will move to the side. Case in point UK. They have a stamp tax on stocks. What happened? The financial industry created CFD's Essentially these are leverage products that trade on top of the stocks (sorta like futures) are not subject to the stamp duty. Granted they don't get the stock benefits, but they still warp the market.
As somebody who works in the market, the solution is to introduce a 50 ms holding rule. It would work as follows. You put in a bid, or ask. The moment it goes onto the market you have a 50 ms waiting period before you can put in another bid or ask. You can cancel your original bid and ask within 1 ms, but you cannot put in another one until your 50 ms is up. This action will introduce a delay and slow the market down.
Oh I have an electric lawn mower as well and hate it. Why? very easy, I HATE DRAGGING THE DAMM CORD. Half of my lawn mowing time is wasted on shoving the cord from one corner of the lawn to the other corner.
The problem that we have with electrical is that it can not in the near future provide the energy density that fuel can:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density
Fuel has about 45, batteries 1.8. Assuming an efficiency in the gas motor of 30%, we have we have 13. Electrical cars have about 80%, which puts it at 1.44. This means a car has an advantage in pure energy of 9x. Electrical batteries are dicking around with maybe double better energy in the near future. In other words batteries in the next 20 years are not going to cut it.
BS!
I have written fast programs in both Java and C# that are maybe 10% slower than pedal to the metal C or C++. It really does depend on how you write the code. There are things that make Java and C# very slow. In fact I think one can argue that the current incarnation of C++ is a dog in terms of performance. With all of that template "goodness" you are just loping on stuff that Java and C# can do in an easier manner.
BTW for reference I write financial algorithms that include Monte Carlo simulations.
Microsoft did show some innovation. Namely Microsoft made it possible for generic applications to utilize specific hardware without having to know about the hardware details. This abstraction was attempted by others like Desqview, and OS/2, but it was Microsoft that made it work extremely well. Go back to the original Mac days. You had to buy Apple specific crap, and that was very easy to do. Sun did that approach, so did DEC. I personally feel that little piece of historical credit is underplayed. It is not sexy as a desktop, or as exciting, but it is damm near amazing as it facilitated the desktops we have today.
Office was very innovative as well. Back in the original days you had wordperfect, and you had lotus. Both of these apps could not share any data. Microsoft created a unified vision of desktop app integration. They used OLE, and the result were a bunch of competitors who tried to copy them. OLE while initially badly designed was actually quite amazing. You could embed documents within documents and create a work. What did OLE in was the fact that they tried it, and then tried to write it off. Though I would argue they actually mastered the idea of copy and paste. Yes yes others tried it, but Windows copy and paste did work across the board unlike the others. I remember trying to get copy and paste to work on Linux or a generic Unix, royal pain in the ass. Even to this day OSX copy and paste has little issues. For example when I copy from TextWrangler to WebStorm I will have moments where things just will not transfer.
After that yeah I agree not so much innovation...
Oh great a Microsoft Monkey Manager pointing out how many great papers are published! Come on anonymous are you from Microsoft? Just because you publish ten million papers does not mean you can actually make money from it. Take a look at your bottom line please. You spend more money than you generate. The purpose of R&D is not to pump out papers. The purpose of R&D is to improve the viability, revenues, and returns of your company. You are supposed to show progress. While you might argue, but wait some stuff is fundamentals that does not have an immediate payback, I will counter, agreed. HOWEVER, Microsoft R&D has been around for more than a decade and I am still waiting for that fabled amazing product done with fundamental research! Simply put Microsoft Research is a deadweight much like the rest of Microsoft...
This is actually history being rewritten by companies. Kinect DID NOT come from Microsoft research. It came from an Israeli company that actually offered the technology first to Apple. It did not like the contract and hence did not even show it to Apple. They then went to Microsoft and the rest is history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PrimeSense
Microsoft research and its R&D department SUCKS wind. In stock investing terms R&D is supposed to increase your revenue and cash flow. Thus if I invest 10 USD in R&D I should get at least a return of 10 USD. Anything below that means that the company is throwing money out the window. Microsoft is such a company. It's R&D generates very little that adds to the bottom line of Microsoft. It does not mean that Microsoft Research is useless. It means that something in Microsoft is causing not to make more money from its research department.
You are an idiot!
1) Ok so who made MacBook Air competitors before Apple came out? Oh yeah ZERO!
2) So who made notebooks with great than 2K resolution on the screen before Apple came out? Oh yeah ZERO!
3) So who made SSD's popular before Apple came out? Oh yeah ZERO!
Do you see the pattern here you turd! Does Apple charge more? Heck yeah! But do they deliver on better quality and better hardware? YEAH! Did you notice in Tim Cook's keynote address where he slammed the competition on Ultrabooks saying, "its not so easy is it?" Essentially he was saying what Apple has been preaching. To make hardware as sexy as theirs is not cheap, nor easy as typified by the prices charged by the Windows people.
I completely agree here... When I moved back to Europe in 94 they were in full swing moving power cables from above ground to below ground. Now in 2012 it is rare to see an above ground house to house power cable... With most of them, outside of the big distributor cables, underground it is also nicer looking as there are no more power lines.
Mod up the parent... I completely concur. Yes I pinned as well, but I did use the start menu to navigate the positions. But hey why do I matter and care. I shifted all of my machines to OSX, and Linux Ubuntu...
Hi
I have made the jump to the financial world. The short of it, there are plenty of people of IT people in the business so it is hard to get in now. But if you have talent and have something you can probably make it. Though if you have zero business knowledge of the financial world that is not good. You do need business knowledge. Ask me anything in specific if you wish...
You sir are incredibly insightful. I researched this company and this topic. In the local paper they described how this company managed to build a 15 floor building in 15 days! Yes 15 days!
The reason why this company can do what it can is because it builds these buildings using a pre-fab approach. North American's, and Europeans partially are not yet used to prefab houses. In Europe it is slowly trickling in, but nobody wants them to be built because they seriously undercut the housing lobby. Take for Ikea homes. Yes Ikea sells homes, using this method. They are cheaper than any other home. Look at this Ikea home for 86 K, which includes everything in the inside as well.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2108775/Ikea-launches-80-000-flat-pack-DIY-house.html
It is hard to beat with all appliances and furniture of 86K. Now is it the final dream? No not really since Ikea is just partnering with a prefab company. BUT imagine if the Chinese managed to put it all together like this company. Then the west has serious issues!!!
Did you forget the following...
1) Greece had slaves
2) Only men of certain classes were allowed to vote
Is that democracy? At least as we perceive it today? No, not at all... That system you are referring to reminds me more of a representational democracy as there is a class of people deciding what the other class of people will do.
I quote
"Estimates of the population of ancient Athens vary. During the 4th century BC, there may well have been some 250,000–300,000 people in Attica. Citizen families may have amounted to 100,000 people and out of these some 30,000 will have been the adult male citizens entitled to vote in the assembly. "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy
So next time when you quote history please at least make an attempt to read about it first...
Bullshit! I live in Switzerland and I am whole hearted for direct democracy. I was not a Swiss by birth, but am Swiss through naturalization. I know what representational democracy is about and here is what is wrong with it
1) Votes are bought by lobbies!!!
2) Votes are bought by lobbies!!!
3) A minority determines what happens to the majority
In a direct democratic system like Switzerland
1) Votes cannot be bought by a lobby since they would have to pay off each and every citizen.
2) Does the mob rule? Yeah it does, but guess what most mobs don't actually behave like you say. Remember that the Nazi's, Communists and so on arose to power as a minority and then imposed violence to keep majority in its place.
3) People when presented in a rational discussion, which actually happens in a direct democracy system will actually for the most part vote logically. ESPECIALLY when it is their own pocket book. Representational democracies like to oh so easily spend other people's money. Whereas when you know it will come out of your pocket book you will ask, "am I better for it..."
BEEEP wrong answer try again...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/mar/29/google-earns-more-iphone-android
They made 500 million over the course of 4 years, whereas Google earning 38 billion last year from computers. Even if they were sandbagging it for the court case it is small change...
Sorry dude, but you are the moron... BTW don't let facts stand in your way, ok?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/mar/29/google-earns-more-iphone-android
"Android generated less than $550m in revenues for Google between 2008 and the end of 2011"
"That compares to Google's $38bn total revenues in 2011, almost entirely derived from advertising on PCs, of which there are 1.25bn installed worldwide, according to Microsoft. That suggests an average revenue for Google of about $30 per PC per year, though not all will be capable of accessing the internet or will use Google, so the actual figure will be higher."
I am sure Google was sandbagging the Android numbers so that the Oracle case would go in their favor. BUT say for the moment they earned 5 billion over the entire time, which is a fact of 10, it is still a pittance to what they earn on the desktop.
I completely agree. When people settled North America, Africa, or South America did they say, "oh you know what those are scared lands we will not disturb them." I say tough titty! If you want them, go get them yourselves, otherwise its fair game!
Did you read a different article?
Here is what it says in the article.
“The purpose of the [gathering] is for people to realize how terrible the Internet is and, of course, the best thing for every [good Jew] is not to allow it in his home at all,”
Read more: http://forward.com/articles/156102/orthodox-rally-for-a-more-kosher-internet/?p=all#ixzz1vWYuGChY
Yeah thanks I was wondering about this... I was actually surprised that I was modded as a troll... Na ja there goes Slashdot...
I am sorry, but this is crap... I have an Acer Iconia in SWITZERLAND... We get updates whenever...
The main problem with Android is not that the network carriers are the problem. Sure there are issues with it. BUT please tell me how my Acer Iconia tablet and its lack of updates is somehow a problem of the network carrier?
The problem with Android is that it is becoming a clustereff! I have an Android phone and Android tablet. I also have an iPhone, and iPad. I prefer the iPhone and iPad.
Here are some issues:
1) lack of updates! We have two android tablets and one android phone and the updates just SUCK!
2) apps will not work across devices. I can understand that tablet apps will not work on a phone. But I have phone games where if they run on the tablet the graphics do really funky things and are completely unusable.
3) Why on earth is the chrome browser only on ICS, and not honey comb? There is no excuse.
4) Battery life truly does suck in comparison to my iOS devices.
5) Performance and usability is lackluster. Windows Phone, and iOS devices have superior UI response. This goes back to the architectural design of Android vs iOS/Windows Phone.
I gave Android a chance, truly tried to like it, but I wish Google would focus on the Android operating system and cleaning that up instead of trying to push the blame to the others. Instead Google thinks the best use of its money is to develop augmented reality glasses...
BTW just for kicks, nowhere in any of the Star Trek series have there been augmented reality glasses! It is a dumb idea! Oh wait there was this one episode... BAD GOOGLE, BAD! ;)
Absolutely abolish copyright law!!! I don't want it, it is goofy and hurts us people!
Oh wait that means that the GPL becomes null and void? So that means I can now copy, and black box my device all that I want? Cool let me on that train...
Copyright law is a only a means to an ends. It is up to the copyright holder to determine how the law is used. Studios use it to restrict freedom, whereas GPL uses it to give freedom. But it is the same underlying law that governs both...
I know the feeling... I was reading the title and wondered, huh? Richard Stallman falls the third at conference. I thought, third what.. I seriously did not see ill. Wow I hate this font (Ill)
I call BS, BS, BS... As I commented in a previous post about direct democracy...
You say representative democracy is better because the average voter does not have the time. Oh really? You mean the country they live in does not deserve a few moments of their day? After all it is not that important right? This is the attitude that I DETEST! Your country is your country because you can vote and live in it, and like a garden it requires care. Sure you can hire a gardener, but unless you are willing to look at the work done by the gardener your garden will look like crap!
This is what has gone wrong. Citizens in a representative democracy have hired gardeners, pay them, but complain if a bleeding branch is in front of their window. The garden can go to heck in a hand basket, but heaven forbid a branch clutters their window. The only way to fix government is to have people vote on the issue when necessary...
THis is an open source forum, and last I heard open source is good because there are more eyeballs looking at the issue and hence less bugs. Can this not be said about direct democracy as well? Sure not everybody votes on all issues, but you will have enough people looking and asking questions that if anything were bad it would be raised very quickly.