And how is this different from the threat of an idiot human fucking up? Hell, why isn;t it the fault of the human who chose to use a primitive AI to control security at a lab with the capacity to kill the entire human race?
Because you have to admit that we can do some remarkably stupid shit. Even very smart people. The Cabinets that decided to invade Vietnam and Iraq were, by most non-starting-land-wars-in-Aasia measures smarter then the average cabinet. But they still totally fucked up.
The problem with this argument is it assumes a single AI entity. That's not what's gonna happen.
It's actually gonna be a lot like the internet. Every company will have it's own AI. Every government will have multiple AIs. If the NSA's AI goes rogue and starts trying to destroy humanity then turning it off won't magically turn off the rest of the AIs.
As for the problems of AI killers, those aren't actually any different then the problems of human killers. Whether the evil nation trying to murder millions does so with 2.7 million troops under a Field Marshall von Killendeath, or 2.7 million semi-autonomous drones under DeathKill17 the response is pretty much the same: 3.0 million non-evil units.
The problem with that argument is that we don;t have to design an AI that is self aware by that specific definition. Moreover that definition means a lot of actual humans aren't "self-aware." Depressives, many people in dangerous professions that require a non-zero risk of death, etc.
Just program it to be a sad-sack, or so mission-focused it doesn't care whether it lives (as long as the job gets done), or even to be so human focused that it only cares that it's masters are happy, and you'd be fine.
I actually suspect that the default for AIs will be the latter case. If you include a bunch of code intended to make an AI do a very specific job well, and a bunch of code intended to make it responsive to the humans it's working for; but the self-preservation routine is limited to "you cost $3 Million, don't let yourself killed unless you calculate your death would save the company more then $3 million," then that AI's the third case.
AI designed to kill + self replicating virus \ worm \ malware \ botnet \ buzz-word-of-the-week + inferior or obsolete security \ encryption on similarly platformed machines.
Not to mention some of the swarm AIs that have been developed in the past couple of years..
its not really that great of a leap to consider.
Isn't there a kill switch engineered in at the hardware level?
Hell, why would you create a self-replicating autonomous swarm in the first place? Self-replication adds a whole lot of complexity to any piece of hardware (this is a major reason women have more health problems then men), so you've added an order of magnitude or so to the complexity of the design. You haven't really gained anything, because if you lose control of your factories you're already dead; and you've greatly increased your risks because one asshole going Venona Project on you can turn half your defense force into a permanent invasion army.
That's kinda the problem with most of the Sci-Fi works that prophecy Evil Robot Armies. They don't really posit a reason for creating a totally autonomous Evil Robot Army.
Here's your problem with that argument: As someone who has a physical job that involves very little direct interaction with the finance system I don't give a shit about measures such as "liquidity" and "volatility" unless they travel into other sectors of the economy. That hasn't happened in France. Companies have a little more trouble accessing capital, but it's not like Airbus is gonna go bust because they have to wait a day for something they used to be able to do in microseconds.
Moreover the government's gotten a new source of revenue, and the finance geeks have whined to high heaven. I really can't see a downside here.
If that was true, why aren't the banks pushing "best execution" now?
The left, including most young people, are convinced that the way to solve this problem is an HFT tax. This will hit the banks. As time goes on (read: old people who vote for conservative Republicans die), the transaction tax becomes more and more inevitable. Particularly since it has been tried in France, and while it severely annoyed finance geeks nobody else seems to have noticed.
There are basically two explanations for this behavior:
1) For complex technical reasons "Best Execution" won't actually work, which people will know if we implement it now, and it fails. Then the 2020 financial transactions tax becomes fucking inevitable. But if they don't push it now it won;t be proven a failure until 2025 or so.
Oh my God, as a middle-class American child in the early 90s every day my Dad would open the papers complaining about how the evil Bid/Ask spread was destroying his IRA. It was the most important issue of the day. Thank God and High Frequency Traders for fixing that evil Bid/Ask spread.
Finance guys are great at explanations. The problem is they're so out-of-touch with the real world that everyone else lives in that it's impossible for anyone who doesn't think a multi-million HFT house is a "small investor" to tell whether it's a BS rationalization or God's own truth.
It seems to me you're pretty clearly in the BS category, because the trading strategy I described doesn't care about the Bid/Ask spread. It is designed to figure out which side of the spread the UAW's pension fund is going to be using (ie: if they're selling stock they're accepting Bids, and thus will get the Bid price), and then move that to disadvantage the UAW pension fund.
Two points: HFT investors are only "small" by the ridiculous standards of Fortune 500 companies. Every HFT outfit has tens of thousands in computer equipment, leases on New York Real Estate, a six-figure geek budget to keep it all running, and $2-$3 million in their stock market accounts. And most of them probably got their seed money from one of the big banks, so they're only "small" in the sense that they are technically separate from
The people who don't have New York real estate, whose major IT expense is a $80 a month cell bill, and whose sole assets are a sub-$150k house and a sub-$100k IRA are the real little guys here. And screwing their IRAs is exactly how the HFT guys make money.
Pension funds, Mutual Funds, and other large investors.
The way it works is pretty simple: the stock market can blip upward or downward quite rapidly if somebody buys or sells a lot of shares extremely quickly. The market has to find outstanding shares of a company to sell (or buyers to sell them to if it's a sale), and if it can't find enough at the current price the price goes up (or down, during a sale).
If you can figure out that some pension fund is about to buy $10 million in Ford stock (symbol: F), and you can get your trade to buy F to the exchange first, you buy pre-blip. Then you sell during the blip. The pension fund gets fewer shares then it expected because the price is higher then they expected. If it were to turn around and sell F you would sell shares (selling shares you don't own is called "short selling") before the pension fund's trade arrives, and then buy them right after the pension fund's trade. The pension fund gets less money then they expected because you sold early, driving their price down. Your profit margin is exactly proportional to the extra shares of F the pension fund didn't get with their retirees money, or the amount of cash they didn't earn from selling Ford.
Obviously, this requires truly delicate timing and there are geeks in Manhattan making millions a year because they can figure out which building you have to rent space in to send your trade to the NASDAQ 2 milliseconds before a) the other HFTC guys, and b) 4 milliseconds before the poor schmucks charged with ensuring that retirees still have a pension next year.
There was actually a 60 minutes piece on a guy who swears he's solved the problem. The solution involved a huge (as in several miles, IIRC) length of cable specifically intended to throw the HFTC routines timing off. If you arrive 10 milliseconds behind them because your network included more cable then they expected their shenanigans are over before your trade arrives. He used to work for the Royal Bank of Canada, which has an investment arm, and he was quite confused that all his stock orders bought less stock then he expected, and his sell orders resulted in less revenue.
Think like you're playing a computer game. How would you get around that rule?
Derivatives are one way. A call option is the right to force some poor schmuck to sell you the stock at a given price. if the stock is $38.50, and a large order comes in momentarily blipping the price up to $38.60, then your option to buy at $38.50 gives you a profit of roughly $0.10. Buy the put option right before the sale goes through, and then sell it mid-blip (we're talking milliseconds before and after), you could make money every day. You make even 0.1% a day, with a couple hundred trading days a year, compounded, and you're making 25-30% profit a year. High frequency trading survives.
The Financial Transactions tax is a lot better because it's much harder to game, and if doesn't work at least you've paid off part of the deficit.
The belief that you would exercise some reading comprehension ability is the most magical of all. Now go back and reread my comments in this thread until you understand that I suggested that the NSA is watching congresspeople (on average) more closely than they're watching media contacts (on average), or at least they were. There's the possible mechanism for his arrest due to communication with congress, which in the absence of strong protections for whistleblowers is a violation of federal law. Now address my comment, or admit that you're just blathering.
Still as trollish as the last time we tangled, I see, Mr. Poo.
That's a mechanism for the NSA to find out, and if you're naive enough to assume there are circumstances under which a WASPy white guy would be subject to extra-legal tactics in the US it could be a cause for concern.
But it is not a cause for arrest, because to be arrested in the US you have to violate a statute.
You do realize that there's no angels who come down to heaven and smite countries that let you fly without the proper paperwork? So if Putin just told his airline that they "accidentally forgot" to scan Snowden's passport Ed would be in Cuba today?
Nice squirrel, but that does.....what to prop back up the Big Lie that Snowden chose to end up in Russia?
Nothing.
This particular post isn't intended to prove anything about Snowden's choices.
It's intended to prove that Putin is as much to blame for Snowden being stuck in Russia as Clinton is.
In other words Clinton may have signed the paper Putin used to rationalize keeping Snowden as his pet, but Putin's the one who decided he wanted a Snowden pet.
Ah, "pet". You forgot to include "traitor" in the list of required junk authoritarian talking points. Short of Putin putting Snowden on a Russian navy fleet chartered for Havana, it's going to be somewhat difficult for him to get to South America when the U.S. has shown how far it's willing to go to get him. But I'm sure Puting declining to spend tens or hundreds of thousands to fly Snoden pro-bono is still Snowden's fault. Somehow.
So, have you always been a fan of corrupt hypocritical authoritarianism, or just since Obama was elected?
And now, since you have no idea how to respond to a post that indicates the United States is not the only evil country to ever exist, you insist I must be "authoritarian." As countries go we're far from perfect, but we're a lot better then most.
I haven't said anything about Snowden's choices in this post. A "pet" isn't necessarily happy about being held captive, that's why they escape. Whether he likes it or not that's what Ed Snowden is today. And it's what he'll remain for the foreseeable future, because Putin clearly wants to keep him.
As for Putin's choices, you do realize he has the second largest navy in the world Navy? Including carriers? And that it's very difficult to stop a commercial aircraft from flying through your airspace? Especially one that doesn't need to stop to re-fuel? What are you gonna do, kill 150 innocent passengers to skoosh Ed Snowden?
Snowden's problems with using Morales' plane were two-fold:
1) Bolivia is poor, so Morales plane did not have the range to go all the way in one go. He had to stop in Europe to refuel. Italy, Spain, and France all refused permission. If it had simply been a matter of airspace Spain would have been irrelevant, because you can't get to Spanish airspace from Moscow without going through Italy or France.
2) The French are (as pretty much always) playing a double-game. Publicly they'll condemn the hell out of the NSA. Privately their industrial policy is based partly on strategic industrial espionage, their foreign policy is based on having intricate (and intimate) relationships with a dozen or two former African colonies. This means they do a lot of fucking spying on fucking everyone. But they are also the designated America-skeptics, so last July they condemned PRISM. The day before Le Monde revealed that France had it's own PRISM program. This was all pretty embarrassing for the French, and it was July 4th or so. Morales plane had problems a few days before that. The French had to know Snowden's revelations would spread to their DGSE, so they had to be very unhappy with him.
Generally the way the US abuses it's relationships is not by forcing countries to do things. They generally simply say "fuck you US" on principle. The way the US abuses it's power is by doing things, and then daring anyone to call us on it. This pretty much our entire relationship to Pakistan. OTOH, the French generally work indirectly through their allies. This helps them sometimes (ie: just try getting a non-French oil company into a former French colo
You mean the actual US-Indonesia relationship, or the one in press releases? Because the actual reaction seems to be a lot like Germany's. They bitch to the cameras to assuage the public that they too oppose the US Security State's over-reach, and then as soon as the cameras turn off they call begging for the US Security State to target the Chinese over the nine-dash line.
If you don't want to talk about the political merits of climate change, and their relationship to spying, you probably shouldn't have brought it up. To quote you:
It tells me a lot about you that you appear to think it's justified because climate change is involved
All I did was mention the conference the relevant spying happened at. You're the one who decided that it was a good idea to turn that into a debating point. It's not my fault you apparently have no productive response to the point.
Why would you assume we were talking about a monopoly on physical books when the dispute is about eBook pricing?
If eBooks have infinite digital supply, why I can't buy as many of them on Amazon today as I could before they has a dispute with Hachette? There's a difference between physical supply, and digital supply.
Moreover the way Amazon's contracts are written they don't have infinite physical supply. They decide they'll sell 1,000 copies of a book, so they order 1,000 copies. they send Hachette 70% of list price for those 1,000 copies. The 1,001st guy has to wait until they strike another order with Hachette. This is actually the loop-hole that allows them to screw with Hachette's eBooks. The contract that would allow infinite supply is actually the one that Hachette just got court-ordered from implementing, the so-called "Agency Model."
As for barriers to entry, you're missing the big one: customers. In the late 90s the only barrier to entry in the OS Market was that customers were locked into the MS Ecosystem. The Courts ruled Microsoft's use of that ecosystem to extend it's control to the browser market (ie: by making it impossible to not use Internet Explorer with Windows) was illegal. The major problems for a new eBook seller are that a) everyone already has an Amazon account, and b) Amazon discounts it's prices so much that it breaks even. Kobo's staff have actually left the country because the Japanese eBook seller couldn't figure out how to make money in the market. You can still buy eBooks from them, but they aren't fighting Amazon for market-share anymore.
As for the legal definition of monopoly, as far as I know there isn't one. Monopolies aren't illegal. Thus it doesn't need a strict definition. Using your vast market-share to gain new markets, or expand your old ones, OTOH, is illegal. Your current market-share (and thus monopoly status) is irrelevant. That's why Apple lost even tho it had no market share of it's own.
Amazon's behavior is problematic because it's hard to see how Hachette can avoid caving in to that much market share, and when they do Amazon will be further entrenched in multiple markets. It will be a much bigger player in the publisher's market, because Hachette's royalties are a quarter of it's revenue from Amazon, which means that if that 70% goes to 60% author pay goes from 17.5% to 15%. Which means a smart author with large eBook sales will be much more likely to self-publish on Amazon.
Moreover, as I said, a major problem for entrants to the eBook market is Amazon pays 70% iof list price, and then only charges 80% of list price. If Amazon gets that 70% cost reduced to 60%, then they can discount 30% (aka: the price Kobo actually pays for eBooks) and still break even, or they can simply keep the profit to themselves. Either way it's really hard to see how BN.com or Kobo chips away at that 2/3 market-share if Amazon gains the ability to discount 20% and turn a decent profit.
I think you really just showed the reason why this whole campaign will fail. Snowden would prefer to live in a world where the NSA continues data collection, and he's not in US prison; to a world where he spends a few months awaiting trial.
That is a false dichotomy. In fact, the choice as far as his actions are concerned today is between a world where the NSA continues data collection, and he's not in US prison; and a world where the NSA continues data collection, and he is in US prison. Because there is nothing about a trial of Snowden that will be injurious to the US government. Evidence will be denied precisely as in the Ellsberg case (at least read the comments here on Slashdot if you cannot be bothered to familiarize yourself with the story otherwise) and even if he does manage to evade prison, no further revelations will be revealed due to the case.
*woosh*
I just proved he had better odds of success by going through Congress. There is a 0% chance of a trial because there's no law against telling Congress things. If the US Government actually tries to charge him then he's gonna beat them in Court, and they'll have a whole mess of trouble not admitting what they're doing in the public record of the trial proceedings.
Which means that the choice before him was superior odds, and going through Congress, or inferior odds and going through the media. He went through the media, largely because he did not understand that the Constitution precludes the trial he feared.
So he'll keep his freedom. If you can call it that.
It sounds to me like you're bitter that Snowden isn't a magician who can wave a wand and save us all from our inattention and apathy. That's not how it works. At your age, which is clearly more than five, I should not have to explain to you that if you want magic in the world, you make it yourself — and not by howling for a trial which can only ever be unfair.
What's more magical: The idea that if you tell Congress things, they may theoretically do the right thing; or the belief that if you tell the media things (and the media tells Congress), then Congress will do the right thing?
Hell what's more magical: The belief that Snowden would be arrested for talking to Congress, despite the fact there's no statute against talking to Congress; or the belief that Snowden would be arrested for talking to the media (and most law enforcement thinks there's statutes against that).
A lot of the Bush renditions seemed to be mostly for show. Some low-level CIA guy decides his career needs a tough-on-terrorism stamp, finds a handy Muslim, and his boss approves because his career could use a boost too. You do enough of those, you need some place to stash people, which means you need black sites. And somebody's gonna wonder what these fucking black sites are, somebody else needs to guard the poor saps who got picked up, the USAF crew flying the damn plane know something's up, etc.
Obama comes in, kills any rendition that isn't of somebody who is truly fucking scary, and now there simply aren't a lot of renditions for people to notice. Poland closes the black sites and nobody minds because we weren't using them anymore. the few that do happen are people whose relatives do not want to go on the BBC.
And then if he gets arrested, or fired, or any clue that the NSA is on to him the story is "NSA thwarts Congressman's investigation," which is a lot better then the current story ("Snowden performs tricks for master Vladimir").
It's better for your sensibilities, not for Snowden's freedom. I reject the notion that he should have given up his freedom to make you feel better.
I think you really just showed the reason why this whole campaign will fail. Snowden would prefer to live in a world where the NSA continues data collection, and he's not in US prison; to a world where he spends a few months awaiting trial.
I always love it when anti-American paranoids bring that up.
We have the biggest intelligence apparatus in the history of the human race. It leaks like a sieve (see: Snowden and Manning). It's broadly perceived by the entire world as being the kind of apparatus that would steal an actual trade secret (ie: the design of the new Playstation) to aid American companies (ie: Microsoft). Yet the only example any of you have of this actually happening is that one time they publicly exposed a bribe Airbus paid to a corrupt Saudi official. The rest is all ridiculous conjecture, generally based on the principle of "If they were really fucking evil, they could probably do this."
Don't you think that if this kind of shit actually happened you'd have a second example? Preferably one from outside the aircraft industry, because aircraft companies are so intertwined with their governments that there really isn't a whole lot of difference between them? And really ESPECIALLY not involving the French, whose economic policy has been based on defending "National Champions" (like Airbus) with state power (like spy data) for decades?
I'll simply note that a) North Korea went the other way, and it sucks even more then Suharto did, and b) this whole debate over shit agencies that are not the NSA did in an era before networked computers existed existed is irrelevant to a discussion of shit the NSA does with computer networks. And if you don't change your mind about the wisdom of trying to bring up shit like this, I'll prove that the general principle you espouse (ie: limits on Federal law Enforcement) would in fact be the major platform p[lank of any Fascist politician elected in the US. And I'll give historical examples. So far I've done this a half-dozen times on Slashdot, and I have yet to see somebody come up with a coherent response.
As for your reading comprehension skills, what in God's name are you talking about with the clove cigarettes? Seriously. I used google. i found plenty of things regarding the climate change conference. I found some allegations that the Aussies spied on a law firm. But you seem to be making the whole "stole trade secrets and gave them to a US company bit" up completely.
Even if you aren't, you haven't actually addressed my point. Even assuming you can get a non-crazy news source to say anything about "trade secrets" given to a US company, the Climate Change conference is a perfectly legitimate place to spy.
BTW, I say that as a supporter of fixing Climate Change. If you read actual political science, instead of the paranoid delusions of people who can't forgive the US for being only half as evil as the Soviets in the 70s, you'd know that the major reason Climate Change conferences fail is that nobody really knows whether to trust everyone else. If the Chinese/Indonesians/etc. are gonna sign up, and then lie to the monitors, their businesses will all get rich while we get screwed. That means that if the US can honestly tell our allies "Don't worry about these two countries. Our super-secret spy data indicates they're negotiating in good faith. Worry about this third palce, which plans to sabotage the agreement by creating this specific loophole in the law..." we're much more likely to get the thing signed.
Communicating with Wyden from a throw-away email address, using encryption, etc. would not actually have been harder then the shit he did to meet Greenwald.
And then if he gets arrested, or fired, or any clue that the NSA is on to him the story is "NSA thwarts Congressman's investigation," which is a lot better then the current story ("Snowden performs tricks for master Vladimir").
You think Indonesia's an ally? Google "Major-non-NATO Ally." Indonesia ain't on the list.
If you got that fact wrong it shouldn;t be surprising your other fact is wrong. The Indonesia operation was at an international conference. On climate change, IIRC. We got a bunch of their phone numbers for future use. We don't spy for trade secrets.
A white man? You're arguing the US Intelligence Establishment would kill a white man, with no trial? Has that ever happened before? I mean there are plenty of Native Americans, black guys, a bunch of Arabs recently, etc. But white men? Fuck no.
I can see arguing that he'd be fired and arrested for spying, but it's really easy to get publicity for a white man being oppressed by Obama, and it's really hard to convict somebody for telling a Congressman on the Intelligence Committee stuff about US Intelligence.
But it's not like we're gonna get a Congress with a Green/Libertarian coalition running things anytime soon, so if Congress can;t be relied upon to act then Snowden releasing the data himself is simply foolish.
Doing it himself really reduced the odds of success because it means he gets some of the credit for doing the job. Whether he deserves the credit is irrelevant, what's relevant is that the publicity whores we elect to run our governments are much less likely to support an idea if some other guy gets the credit.
More importantly if he'd tried to go through Congress he still would have had the option of doing it himself. If Wyden sits on the data then it's still a scoop for Greenwald to get the story.
He basically painted himself into a corner by fleeing to Hong Kong, which means he;'ll spend the rest of his life as the Czar's special toy and the NSA will continue more or less as-is,
Slashdot Mirror
And how is this different from the threat of an idiot human fucking up? Hell, why isn;t it the fault of the human who chose to use a primitive AI to control security at a lab with the capacity to kill the entire human race?
Because you have to admit that we can do some remarkably stupid shit. Even very smart people. The Cabinets that decided to invade Vietnam and Iraq were, by most non-starting-land-wars-in-Aasia measures smarter then the average cabinet. But they still totally fucked up.
The problem with this argument is it assumes a single AI entity. That's not what's gonna happen.
It's actually gonna be a lot like the internet. Every company will have it's own AI. Every government will have multiple AIs. If the NSA's AI goes rogue and starts trying to destroy humanity then turning it off won't magically turn off the rest of the AIs.
As for the problems of AI killers, those aren't actually any different then the problems of human killers. Whether the evil nation trying to murder millions does so with 2.7 million troops under a Field Marshall von Killendeath, or 2.7 million semi-autonomous drones under DeathKill17 the response is pretty much the same: 3.0 million non-evil units.
The problem with that argument is that we don;t have to design an AI that is self aware by that specific definition. Moreover that definition means a lot of actual humans aren't "self-aware." Depressives, many people in dangerous professions that require a non-zero risk of death, etc.
Just program it to be a sad-sack, or so mission-focused it doesn't care whether it lives (as long as the job gets done), or even to be so human focused that it only cares that it's masters are happy, and you'd be fine.
I actually suspect that the default for AIs will be the latter case. If you include a bunch of code intended to make an AI do a very specific job well, and a bunch of code intended to make it responsive to the humans it's working for; but the self-preservation routine is limited to "you cost $3 Million, don't let yourself killed unless you calculate your death would save the company more then $3 million," then that AI's the third case.
So imagine:
AI designed to kill + self replicating virus \ worm \ malware \ botnet \ buzz-word-of-the-week + inferior or obsolete security \ encryption on similarly platformed machines.
Not to mention some of the swarm AIs that have been developed in the past couple of years..
its not really that great of a leap to consider.
Isn't there a kill switch engineered in at the hardware level?
Hell, why would you create a self-replicating autonomous swarm in the first place? Self-replication adds a whole lot of complexity to any piece of hardware (this is a major reason women have more health problems then men), so you've added an order of magnitude or so to the complexity of the design. You haven't really gained anything, because if you lose control of your factories you're already dead; and you've greatly increased your risks because one asshole going Venona Project on you can turn half your defense force into a permanent invasion army.
That's kinda the problem with most of the Sci-Fi works that prophecy Evil Robot Armies. They don't really posit a reason for creating a totally autonomous Evil Robot Army.
The RBC guy is actually setting up an entirely new Exchange:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...
Presumably for precisely this reason.
Here's your problem with that argument:
As someone who has a physical job that involves very little direct interaction with the finance system I don't give a shit about measures such as "liquidity" and "volatility" unless they travel into other sectors of the economy. That hasn't happened in France. Companies have a little more trouble accessing capital, but it's not like Airbus is gonna go bust because they have to wait a day for something they used to be able to do in microseconds.
Moreover the government's gotten a new source of revenue, and the finance geeks have whined to high heaven. I really can't see a downside here.
If that was true, why aren't the banks pushing "best execution" now?
The left, including most young people, are convinced that the way to solve this problem is an HFT tax. This will hit the banks. As time goes on (read: old people who vote for conservative Republicans die), the transaction tax becomes more and more inevitable. Particularly since it has been tried in France, and while it severely annoyed finance geeks nobody else seems to have noticed.
There are basically two explanations for this behavior:
1) For complex technical reasons "Best Execution" won't actually work, which people will know if we implement it now, and it fails. Then the 2020 financial transactions tax becomes fucking inevitable. But if they don't push it now it won;t be proven a failure until 2025 or so.
2) Banks are too dumb to understand politics.
So the bid/ask spread is down?
Oh my God, as a middle-class American child in the early 90s every day my Dad would open the papers complaining about how the evil Bid/Ask spread was destroying his IRA. It was the most important issue of the day. Thank God and High Frequency Traders for fixing that evil Bid/Ask spread.
Finance guys are great at explanations. The problem is they're so out-of-touch with the real world that everyone else lives in that it's impossible for anyone who doesn't think a multi-million HFT house is a "small investor" to tell whether it's a BS rationalization or God's own truth.
It seems to me you're pretty clearly in the BS category, because the trading strategy I described doesn't care about the Bid/Ask spread. It is designed to figure out which side of the spread the UAW's pension fund is going to be using (ie: if they're selling stock they're accepting Bids, and thus will get the Bid price), and then move that to disadvantage the UAW pension fund.
Two points:
HFT investors are only "small" by the ridiculous standards of Fortune 500 companies. Every HFT outfit has tens of thousands in computer equipment, leases on New York Real Estate, a six-figure geek budget to keep it all running, and $2-$3 million in their stock market accounts. And most of them probably got their seed money from one of the big banks, so they're only "small" in the sense that they are technically separate from
The people who don't have New York real estate, whose major IT expense is a $80 a month cell bill, and whose sole assets are a sub-$150k house and a sub-$100k IRA are the real little guys here. And screwing their IRAs is exactly how the HFT guys make money.
Pension funds, Mutual Funds, and other large investors.
The way it works is pretty simple: the stock market can blip upward or downward quite rapidly if somebody buys or sells a lot of shares extremely quickly. The market has to find outstanding shares of a company to sell (or buyers to sell them to if it's a sale), and if it can't find enough at the current price the price goes up (or down, during a sale).
If you can figure out that some pension fund is about to buy $10 million in Ford stock (symbol: F), and you can get your trade to buy F to the exchange first, you buy pre-blip. Then you sell during the blip. The pension fund gets fewer shares then it expected because the price is higher then they expected. If it were to turn around and sell F you would sell shares (selling shares you don't own is called "short selling") before the pension fund's trade arrives, and then buy them right after the pension fund's trade. The pension fund gets less money then they expected because you sold early, driving their price down. Your profit margin is exactly proportional to the extra shares of F the pension fund didn't get with their retirees money, or the amount of cash they didn't earn from selling Ford.
Obviously, this requires truly delicate timing and there are geeks in Manhattan making millions a year because they can figure out which building you have to rent space in to send your trade to the NASDAQ 2 milliseconds before a) the other HFTC guys, and b) 4 milliseconds before the poor schmucks charged with ensuring that retirees still have a pension next year.
There was actually a 60 minutes piece on a guy who swears he's solved the problem. The solution involved a huge (as in several miles, IIRC) length of cable specifically intended to throw the HFTC routines timing off. If you arrive 10 milliseconds behind them because your network included more cable then they expected their shenanigans are over before your trade arrives. He used to work for the Royal Bank of Canada, which has an investment arm, and he was quite confused that all his stock orders bought less stock then he expected, and his sell orders resulted in less revenue.
Think like you're playing a computer game. How would you get around that rule?
Derivatives are one way. A call option is the right to force some poor schmuck to sell you the stock at a given price. if the stock is $38.50, and a large order comes in momentarily blipping the price up to $38.60, then your option to buy at $38.50 gives you a profit of roughly $0.10. Buy the put option right before the sale goes through, and then sell it mid-blip (we're talking milliseconds before and after), you could make money every day. You make even 0.1% a day, with a couple hundred trading days a year, compounded, and you're making 25-30% profit a year. High frequency trading survives.
The Financial Transactions tax is a lot better because it's much harder to game, and if doesn't work at least you've paid off part of the deficit.
The belief that you would exercise some reading comprehension ability is the most magical of all. Now go back and reread my comments in this thread until you understand that I suggested that the NSA is watching congresspeople (on average) more closely than they're watching media contacts (on average), or at least they were. There's the possible mechanism for his arrest due to communication with congress, which in the absence of strong protections for whistleblowers is a violation of federal law. Now address my comment, or admit that you're just blathering.
Still as trollish as the last time we tangled, I see, Mr. Poo.
That's a mechanism for the NSA to find out, and if you're naive enough to assume there are circumstances under which a WASPy white guy would be subject to extra-legal tactics in the US it could be a cause for concern.
But it is not a cause for arrest, because to be arrested in the US you have to violate a statute.
Nice squirrel, but that does.....what to prop back up the Big Lie that Snowden chose to end up in Russia?
Nothing.
This particular post isn't intended to prove anything about Snowden's choices.
It's intended to prove that Putin is as much to blame for Snowden being stuck in Russia as Clinton is.
Ah, "pet". You forgot to include "traitor" in the list of required junk authoritarian talking points. Short of Putin putting Snowden on a Russian navy fleet chartered for Havana, it's going to be somewhat difficult for him to get to South America when the U.S. has shown how far it's willing to go to get him. But I'm sure Puting declining to spend tens or hundreds of thousands to fly Snoden pro-bono is still Snowden's fault. Somehow.
So, have you always been a fan of corrupt hypocritical authoritarianism, or just since Obama was elected?
And now, since you have no idea how to respond to a post that indicates the United States is not the only evil country to ever exist, you insist I must be "authoritarian." As countries go we're far from perfect, but we're a lot better then most.
I haven't said anything about Snowden's choices in this post. A "pet" isn't necessarily happy about being held captive, that's why they escape. Whether he likes it or not that's what Ed Snowden is today. And it's what he'll remain for the foreseeable future, because Putin clearly wants to keep him.
As for Putin's choices, you do realize he has the second largest navy in the world Navy? Including carriers? And that it's very difficult to stop a commercial aircraft from flying through your airspace? Especially one that doesn't need to stop to re-fuel? What are you gonna do, kill 150 innocent passengers to skoosh Ed Snowden?
Snowden's problems with using Morales' plane were two-fold:
1) Bolivia is poor, so Morales plane did not have the range to go all the way in one go. He had to stop in Europe to refuel. Italy, Spain, and France all refused permission. If it had simply been a matter of airspace Spain would have been irrelevant, because you can't get to Spanish airspace from Moscow without going through Italy or France.
2) The French are (as pretty much always) playing a double-game. Publicly they'll condemn the hell out of the NSA. Privately their industrial policy is based partly on strategic industrial espionage, their foreign policy is based on having intricate (and intimate) relationships with a dozen or two former African colonies. This means they do a lot of fucking spying on fucking everyone. But they are also the designated America-skeptics, so last July they condemned PRISM. The day before Le Monde revealed that France had it's own PRISM program. This was all pretty embarrassing for the French, and it was July 4th or so. Morales plane had problems a few days before that. The French had to know Snowden's revelations would spread to their DGSE, so they had to be very unhappy with him.
Generally the way the US abuses it's relationships is not by forcing countries to do things. They generally simply say "fuck you US" on principle. The way the US abuses it's power is by doing things, and then daring anyone to call us on it. This pretty much our entire relationship to Pakistan. OTOH, the French generally work indirectly through their allies. This helps them sometimes (ie: just try getting a non-French oil company into a former French colo
Nope.
There's one. Boeing and Airbus. The "second" is something you apparently made up about clove cigarettes.
You mean the actual US-Indonesia relationship, or the one in press releases? Because the actual reaction seems to be a lot like Germany's. They bitch to the cameras to assuage the public that they too oppose the US Security State's over-reach, and then as soon as the cameras turn off they call begging for the US Security State to target the Chinese over the nine-dash line.
If you don't want to talk about the political merits of climate change, and their relationship to spying, you probably shouldn't have brought it up. To quote you:
It tells me a lot about you that you appear to think it's justified because climate change is involved
All I did was mention the conference the relevant spying happened at. You're the one who decided that it was a good idea to turn that into a debating point. It's not my fault you apparently have no productive response to the point.
Why would you assume we were talking about a monopoly on physical books when the dispute is about eBook pricing?
If eBooks have infinite digital supply, why I can't buy as many of them on Amazon today as I could before they has a dispute with Hachette? There's a difference between physical supply, and digital supply.
Moreover the way Amazon's contracts are written they don't have infinite physical supply. They decide they'll sell 1,000 copies of a book, so they order 1,000 copies. they send Hachette 70% of list price for those 1,000 copies. The 1,001st guy has to wait until they strike another order with Hachette. This is actually the loop-hole that allows them to screw with Hachette's eBooks. The contract that would allow infinite supply is actually the one that Hachette just got court-ordered from implementing, the so-called "Agency Model."
As for barriers to entry, you're missing the big one: customers. In the late 90s the only barrier to entry in the OS Market was that customers were locked into the MS Ecosystem. The Courts ruled Microsoft's use of that ecosystem to extend it's control to the browser market (ie: by making it impossible to not use Internet Explorer with Windows) was illegal. The major problems for a new eBook seller are that a) everyone already has an Amazon account, and b) Amazon discounts it's prices so much that it breaks even. Kobo's staff have actually left the country because the Japanese eBook seller couldn't figure out how to make money in the market. You can still buy eBooks from them, but they aren't fighting Amazon for market-share anymore.
As for the legal definition of monopoly, as far as I know there isn't one. Monopolies aren't illegal. Thus it doesn't need a strict definition. Using your vast market-share to gain new markets, or expand your old ones, OTOH, is illegal. Your current market-share (and thus monopoly status) is irrelevant. That's why Apple lost even tho it had no market share of it's own.
Amazon's behavior is problematic because it's hard to see how Hachette can avoid caving in to that much market share, and when they do Amazon will be further entrenched in multiple markets. It will be a much bigger player in the publisher's market, because Hachette's royalties are a quarter of it's revenue from Amazon, which means that if that 70% goes to 60% author pay goes from 17.5% to 15%. Which means a smart author with large eBook sales will be much more likely to self-publish on Amazon.
Moreover, as I said, a major problem for entrants to the eBook market is Amazon pays 70% iof list price, and then only charges 80% of list price. If Amazon gets that 70% cost reduced to 60%, then they can discount 30% (aka: the price Kobo actually pays for eBooks) and still break even, or they can simply keep the profit to themselves. Either way it's really hard to see how BN.com or Kobo chips away at that 2/3 market-share if Amazon gains the ability to discount 20% and turn a decent profit.
I think you really just showed the reason why this whole campaign will fail. Snowden would prefer to live in a world where the NSA continues data collection, and he's not in US prison; to a world where he spends a few months awaiting trial.
That is a false dichotomy. In fact, the choice as far as his actions are concerned today is between a world where the NSA continues data collection, and he's not in US prison; and a world where the NSA continues data collection, and he is in US prison. Because there is nothing about a trial of Snowden that will be injurious to the US government. Evidence will be denied precisely as in the Ellsberg case (at least read the comments here on Slashdot if you cannot be bothered to familiarize yourself with the story otherwise) and even if he does manage to evade prison, no further revelations will be revealed due to the case.
*woosh*
I just proved he had better odds of success by going through Congress. There is a 0% chance of a trial because there's no law against telling Congress things. If the US Government actually tries to charge him then he's gonna beat them in Court, and they'll have a whole mess of trouble not admitting what they're doing in the public record of the trial proceedings.
Which means that the choice before him was superior odds, and going through Congress, or inferior odds and going through the media. He went through the media, largely because he did not understand that the Constitution precludes the trial he feared.
So he'll keep his freedom. If you can call it that.
It sounds to me like you're bitter that Snowden isn't a magician who can wave a wand and save us all from our inattention and apathy. That's not how it works. At your age, which is clearly more than five, I should not have to explain to you that if you want magic in the world, you make it yourself — and not by howling for a trial which can only ever be unfair.
What's more magical:
The idea that if you tell Congress things, they may theoretically do the right thing; or the belief that if you tell the media things (and the media tells Congress), then Congress will do the right thing?
Hell what's more magical:
The belief that Snowden would be arrested for talking to Congress, despite the fact there's no statute against talking to Congress; or the belief that Snowden would be arrested for talking to the media (and most law enforcement thinks there's statutes against that).
My money is on a combination of the two.
A lot of the Bush renditions seemed to be mostly for show. Some low-level CIA guy decides his career needs a tough-on-terrorism stamp, finds a handy Muslim, and his boss approves because his career could use a boost too. You do enough of those, you need some place to stash people, which means you need black sites. And somebody's gonna wonder what these fucking black sites are, somebody else needs to guard the poor saps who got picked up, the USAF crew flying the damn plane know something's up, etc.
Obama comes in, kills any rendition that isn't of somebody who is truly fucking scary, and now there simply aren't a lot of renditions for people to notice. Poland closes the black sites and nobody minds because we weren't using them anymore. the few that do happen are people whose relatives do not want to go on the BBC.
And then if he gets arrested, or fired, or any clue that the NSA is on to him the story is "NSA thwarts Congressman's investigation," which is a lot better then the current story ("Snowden performs tricks for master Vladimir").
It's better for your sensibilities, not for Snowden's freedom. I reject the notion that he should have given up his freedom to make you feel better.
I think you really just showed the reason why this whole campaign will fail. Snowden would prefer to live in a world where the NSA continues data collection, and he's not in US prison; to a world where he spends a few months awaiting trial.
So he'll keep his freedom.
If you can call it that.
I always love it when anti-American paranoids bring that up.
We have the biggest intelligence apparatus in the history of the human race. It leaks like a sieve (see: Snowden and Manning). It's broadly perceived by the entire world as being the kind of apparatus that would steal an actual trade secret (ie: the design of the new Playstation) to aid American companies (ie: Microsoft). Yet the only example any of you have of this actually happening is that one time they publicly exposed a bribe Airbus paid to a corrupt Saudi official. The rest is all ridiculous conjecture, generally based on the principle of "If they were really fucking evil, they could probably do this."
Don't you think that if this kind of shit actually happened you'd have a second example? Preferably one from outside the aircraft industry, because aircraft companies are so intertwined with their governments that there really isn't a whole lot of difference between them? And really ESPECIALLY not involving the French, whose economic policy has been based on defending "National Champions" (like Airbus) with state power (like spy data) for decades?
And now you try to get in a history fight. Cute.
I'll simply note that a) North Korea went the other way, and it sucks even more then Suharto did, and b) this whole debate over shit agencies that are not the NSA did in an era before networked computers existed existed is irrelevant to a discussion of shit the NSA does with computer networks. And if you don't change your mind about the wisdom of trying to bring up shit like this, I'll prove that the general principle you espouse (ie: limits on Federal law Enforcement) would in fact be the major platform p[lank of any Fascist politician elected in the US. And I'll give historical examples. So far I've done this a half-dozen times on Slashdot, and I have yet to see somebody come up with a coherent response.
As for your reading comprehension skills, what in God's name are you talking about with the clove cigarettes? Seriously. I used google. i found plenty of things regarding the climate change conference. I found some allegations that the Aussies spied on a law firm. But you seem to be making the whole "stole trade secrets and gave them to a US company bit" up completely.
Even if you aren't, you haven't actually addressed my point. Even assuming you can get a non-crazy news source to say anything about "trade secrets" given to a US company, the Climate Change conference is a perfectly legitimate place to spy.
BTW, I say that as a supporter of fixing Climate Change. If you read actual political science, instead of the paranoid delusions of people who can't forgive the US for being only half as evil as the Soviets in the 70s, you'd know that the major reason Climate Change conferences fail is that nobody really knows whether to trust everyone else. If the Chinese/Indonesians/etc. are gonna sign up, and then lie to the monitors, their businesses will all get rich while we get screwed. That means that if the US can honestly tell our allies "Don't worry about these two countries. Our super-secret spy data indicates they're negotiating in good faith. Worry about this third palce, which plans to sabotage the agreement by creating this specific loophole in the law..." we're much more likely to get the thing signed.
Here's the thing:
Communicating with Wyden from a throw-away email address, using encryption, etc. would not actually have been harder then the shit he did to meet Greenwald.
And then if he gets arrested, or fired, or any clue that the NSA is on to him the story is "NSA thwarts Congressman's investigation," which is a lot better then the current story ("Snowden performs tricks for master Vladimir").
You think Indonesia's an ally? Google "Major-non-NATO Ally." Indonesia ain't on the list.
If you got that fact wrong it shouldn;t be surprising your other fact is wrong. The Indonesia operation was at an international conference. On climate change, IIRC. We got a bunch of their phone numbers for future use. We don't spy for trade secrets.
A white man? You're arguing the US Intelligence Establishment would kill a white man, with no trial? Has that ever happened before? I mean there are plenty of Native Americans, black guys, a bunch of Arabs recently, etc. But white men? Fuck no.
I can see arguing that he'd be fired and arrested for spying, but it's really easy to get publicity for a white man being oppressed by Obama, and it's really hard to convict somebody for telling a Congressman on the Intelligence Committee stuff about US Intelligence.
I fully agree Congress sucks.
But it's not like we're gonna get a Congress with a Green/Libertarian coalition running things anytime soon, so if Congress can;t be relied upon to act then Snowden releasing the data himself is simply foolish.
Doing it himself really reduced the odds of success because it means he gets some of the credit for doing the job. Whether he deserves the credit is irrelevant, what's relevant is that the publicity whores we elect to run our governments are much less likely to support an idea if some other guy gets the credit.
More importantly if he'd tried to go through Congress he still would have had the option of doing it himself. If Wyden sits on the data then it's still a scoop for Greenwald to get the story.
He basically painted himself into a corner by fleeing to Hong Kong, which means he;'ll spend the rest of his life as the Czar's special toy and the NSA will continue more or less as-is,