Jim is standing over there, and shouts out "50c to buy this apple". Flash the wonder asshole stands close to Jim, so he hears this first. He then runs to Jon at the speed of light (which is faster than sound) and asks Jon "Would you buy an apple for 51c?". Jon says "why yes, that sounds reasonable". Note, Jon would, by definition, also be happy to pay 50c for the apple. But Flash is a fast fucker, and the sound of Jim's call hasn't reached Jon yet, so Flash buys the apple and runs to Jon and sells it to Jon at the higher price.
In economic terms, Flash has pocketed the surplus 1c, which would otherwise would have accrued to Jon (as he would have paid 1c less than his maximum). Sounds great so far, Flash is benefiting from his l33t running skills, Jim got his price (50c) and Jon paid what he was prepared to pay (51c).
Except it's not that simple, or rosy....... First of all, Flash is running between willing participants in a market, adding no value to anyone but himself (arguably he is destroying value by forcing the exchanges to put in more and more expensive infrastructure, which everyone in the market is paying for). The fact that Jim sells his apple a microsecond faster is not relevant to a normal market participant.
Second, and much worse, Flash is not actually asking Jim "would you like to buy an apple for 51c". He's asking "would you like to buy for 51.05c", ah, no, "how about 51.049", no? how about "51.048" and so on (creating and cancelling orders all the time, massively loading up the system). Simultaneously there are two possible ways he's trying to figure out Jim's minimum price -- he's either asking Jim "sell for 49.99?", "49.991?", "49.992"....until Jim says "yes" or, if he's a real scumbat, saying "I'll give you 50.5" and when Jim says "OK", say "Hah, made you look, order is cancelled, how about 50.45" and because he is so quick, he can cancel before the order fills.
Oh yes, and if you screw up, you go plead to the market to get your positions reversed. And because you pay so much to the market in fees (stock exchanges are companies, which charge traders to participate in the market), the market turns a blind eye.
And that, kids, is why HFT is fucking antisocial scum -- they manipulate the markets for their own ends, squeezing out surplus for only their own benefit. They add no value to anyone but themselves (increased liquidity is a trope -- no normal investor needs microsecond delivery). They've corrupted their system of oversight (the exchanges) to be dependent on the fees they pay.
One solution: ticked trading, bids and offers get queued and matched at a fixed interval (say every 0.5s), this would kill HFTs immediately as you can no longer run between Jim and Jon faster they can communicate themselves.
Alternative solution involves tar, feathers, a rail and a town.
And don't forget the piece where Apple's share of US corporate income taxes collected in 2012 was 2.5% (6bn USD). Dear politicians, while you obviously want to shake down the big companies first ('cos that's where the money is), having a go at the biggest corporate taxpayer strikes me as being a bit silly. How about having a go at the companies overcharging the govt for defence contracts? Oh, because you hope to sit on their board when you retire. Ah.
And killing the used market overnight would be a bad thing for consumers and ultimately also for publishers/devs -- you are taking away a part of the value of the game (namely the resale value), without lowering the price of original purchase. Giving lower value at the same price should lead to lower sales, lower profits and (hopefully) a change in business model which involves the publishers getting their head out of their asses.
BTW, piracy has made large inroads into the music "industry", where the "industry" is the publishers/distributors who were extracting economic rents from the artists who actually produce the product. I personally have no problem with the "industry" going to the wall if it fails to adapt to changing circumstances (and in fact uses every means at its disposal, fair or foul, to maintain the status quo which suits it).
Usually in corporate-speak, "pursue other interests" == "spend more time with his family" == "fired". I've had companies I do business with where the CEO left explicitly call me up to explain that, in this case, "spending time with his family" was really "spending time with his family" as the CEO's wife was really quite ill, and the company didn't want us to wonder about their direction/strategy/management competence.
I suggest you look up what "write-only" means before you spout bullshit. Hint: it means "hard to read, and thus hard to maintain", with Perl often being given as an example.
Almost nothing else can read it except for other TeX variants.
So Spanish is a useless language too, as almost nobody can understand it but other Spanish-speakers.
It does only one thing particularly well: produce fixed-layout PostScript/PDF pages.
"A boat does only one thing particularly well -- travelling on water". Producing fixed-layout.pdfs is pretty bloody useful for very, very many applications. And produces those so that they actually look good, and the author can focus on content and structure without having to worry (much) about layout.
(La)TeX has its strengths and weaknesses, and whether it works for you is a matter for you to decide, however please refrain from posting crap.
International distribution, download infrastructure, payment services, many millions of potential clients for the vendor + ease of installation and a (pretty much) secure environment for the users is not, to use your words, "nothing". You can argue that MS can feasibly provide the same on its own (lord knows, they have the download infrastructure -- they have to so that they can support all the security patches), but that would also cost them money.
For your info: I just lost 16-11 to my girlfriend in Tekken 6 on xbox369, but I blame it on the fact that she was sitting there topless the entire time. True story.
XBOX369 - at least that explains what you did afterwards:)
You're missing some points -- adding them strengthens your argument though.
Other scientists, who are usually not paid, review the work before publication.
They are paid, usually by the taxpayer (as they tend to work at public institutions).
The publisher uploads the pdf to a website and then charges universities thousands of dollars to have unlimited access to their pdfs.
Universities are again funded (to a greater or lesser extent) by taxpayers, so the taxpayers pay again. The system continues to exist because the publishers own the "big name" journals like Nature, and because the insiders (e.g. established peer-reviewers) get fast-tracked when they want to publish in these journals. It's a racket which siphons huge wealth from the taxpayers to the publishers for little effort. May it end quickly.
I really can't fault Carmen Ortiz and Stephen Heymann, their behavior is what the current system demands.
Yes, you can fault them. Abuse of power for personal (career) gain, as well as a lack of ethics and humanity. It is also a well-established doctrine that "I was just following orders" is not a suitable defence against wrongdoing (not in the military, not anywhere). The system is broken, no question, but it will never change unless there are personal consequences for those that exploit it.
Hotz was smart; he realized how futile it would be to ruin his life in a battle he could not win.
And the fact that the so-called justice system can threaten to ruin someone's life (and simultaneously advance the career of the person doing the threatening) is acceptable to you? If the crime was truly so bad, by all means, go ahead and throw the book at someone. The fact that a much lesser punishment is ultimately considered acceptable (ie the plea bargain) should tell you that the initial proposed punishment is nothing more than a "negotiation" tactic, with one party in the negotiation holding all the power, and with a perverse set of incentives to boot (the prosecution wants to win, but doesn't want a court case, as those take time which could be better spent racking up more wins through quick plea bargains).
This is not a direct proof of snooping, just that the German government has the ability to do so. That doesn't necessarily mean that it abuses that power in warrantless monitoring.
So, let's ask them for details on what they have been doing. Queue response: "National Security! We can't tell you!" sotto voce "Monitor him, he's asking questions".
Big words, little dog. It gives you a model of how the world works, it has hugely driven forward our understanding of the human mind (behavioural economics) and the connection between our physiology and our behaviour.
Genetics is not a hard science either - it's not based on strong causality either (else we would be saying "genetic makeup X causes Y", instead we are saying "genetic makeup X increases the likelihood of Y". If you're looking for real science, try physics, wander by the math department, and then stop -- you've found them.
That "ponzi scheme" whereby the pensions of today are paid by those paying into the pension plan is the only good, cheap, and stable way such a thing can be run.
Please explain how you manage to maintain adequate levels of pension when the ratio of workers (ie those paying) to pensioners (those receiving) has shifted from around 10:1 in the 1960s to around 4:1 now and heading towards 2:1? Pay-as-you-go pensions work when your population pyramid is a pyramid, just like a ponzi scheme apparently works when it is growing -- it's when the growth stops and more and more people want their money that the shit hits the fan.
Except that taxes are generally spent on the well-being of society (and yes, this is easily contested, but it is the idea), whereas income extracted by private companies is definitely not.
Despite what a lot of folks believe, the US is not going to be defaulting on their obligations any time soon.
So all this political posturing about not raising the debt ceiling (ie forcing a default) a couple of months back - that was just play-acting, right? Because politicians are all sensible and rational and all......
Nobody has made a compelling case that HFT has any real net impact on retail investors or anyone making an IPO or issuance. Look to my other post in this discussion but by and large HFT is just Wall Street Banks pirating from each other.
Bullshit. They skim the difference between what someone would be prepared to sell for and what someone is prepared to pay (ie an investor may be prepared to pay 1.25 for a share, but you are offering to sell for 1.20 -- instead of the investor paying only 1.20, the HFT jumps in, buys for 1.20 and sells for 1.25, pocketing the difference). This is not just HFTs screwing each other, it screws the normal investor (which includes, you know, funds investing your pension money).
The liquidity argument aside, the HFT guys are the ones who drove the technology that has enable you and I to trade online for low fixed prices, rather than the bad old days where you had to find a broker who would bother with you in the first place and then put up with his 3+% commission.
More bullshit (seriously, do you have a cattle farm?). You correctly describe the bad old days, but those ended in the 1990s, and are dealt with by having competition between brokers/online quote platforms. HFT sucks up the capacity of the trading systems to be able to deal with the frequency of trade, to absolutely no-one's benefit but their own (or do you really think a retail/corporate investor cares whether their trade executes a microsecond faster -- they care that they are not getting screwed by the marketplace).
And to answer the "why don't they put a stop to this" question -- the stock exchanges like having large number of quotes, as they charge for trades, so the more the better. They are acting in the interests of their own shareholders, to make money, and not in the interests of the participants of the market (who want a fair market).
Slashdot Mirror
Jim is standing over there, and shouts out "50c to buy this apple". Flash the wonder asshole stands close to Jim, so he hears this first. He then runs to Jon at the speed of light (which is faster than sound) and asks Jon "Would you buy an apple for 51c?". Jon says "why yes, that sounds reasonable". Note, Jon would, by definition, also be happy to pay 50c for the apple. But Flash is a fast fucker, and the sound of Jim's call hasn't reached Jon yet, so Flash buys the apple and runs to Jon and sells it to Jon at the higher price.
In economic terms, Flash has pocketed the surplus 1c, which would otherwise would have accrued to Jon (as he would have paid 1c less than his maximum). Sounds great so far, Flash is benefiting from his l33t running skills, Jim got his price (50c) and Jon paid what he was prepared to pay (51c).
Except it's not that simple, or rosy.......
First of all, Flash is running between willing participants in a market, adding no value to anyone but himself (arguably he is destroying value by forcing the exchanges to put in more and more expensive infrastructure, which everyone in the market is paying for). The fact that Jim sells his apple a microsecond faster is not relevant to a normal market participant.
Second, and much worse, Flash is not actually asking Jim "would you like to buy an apple for 51c". He's asking "would you like to buy for 51.05c", ah, no, "how about 51.049", no? how about "51.048" and so on (creating and cancelling orders all the time, massively loading up the system). Simultaneously there are two possible ways he's trying to figure out Jim's minimum price -- he's either asking Jim "sell for 49.99?", "49.991?", "49.992" ....until Jim says "yes" or, if he's a real scumbat, saying "I'll give you 50.5" and when Jim says "OK", say "Hah, made you look, order is cancelled, how about 50.45" and because he is so quick, he can cancel before the order fills.
Oh yes, and if you screw up, you go plead to the market to get your positions reversed. And because you pay so much to the market in fees (stock exchanges are companies, which charge traders to participate in the market), the market turns a blind eye.
And that, kids, is why HFT is fucking antisocial scum -- they manipulate the markets for their own ends, squeezing out surplus for only their own benefit. They add no value to anyone but themselves (increased liquidity is a trope -- no normal investor needs microsecond delivery). They've corrupted their system of oversight (the exchanges) to be dependent on the fees they pay.
One solution: ticked trading, bids and offers get queued and matched at a fixed interval (say every 0.5s), this would kill HFTs immediately as you can no longer run between Jim and Jon faster they can communicate themselves.
Alternative solution involves tar, feathers, a rail and a town.
In other words, your answer was probably not added to the statistics as it didn't seem in line with the result they were looking for.
Economy is science -- it's a social science.
Read this, then come back: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
And don't forget the piece where Apple's share of US corporate income taxes collected in 2012 was 2.5% (6bn USD). Dear politicians, while you obviously want to shake down the big companies first ('cos that's where the money is), having a go at the biggest corporate taxpayer strikes me as being a bit silly. How about having a go at the companies overcharging the govt for defence contracts? Oh, because you hope to sit on their board when you retire. Ah.
And killing the used market overnight would be a bad thing for consumers and ultimately also for publishers/devs -- you are taking away a part of the value of the game (namely the resale value), without lowering the price of original purchase. Giving lower value at the same price should lead to lower sales, lower profits and (hopefully) a change in business model which involves the publishers getting their head out of their asses.
BTW, piracy has made large inroads into the music "industry", where the "industry" is the publishers/distributors who were extracting economic rents from the artists who actually produce the product. I personally have no problem with the "industry" going to the wall if it fails to adapt to changing circumstances (and in fact uses every means at its disposal, fair or foul, to maintain the status quo which suits it).
Usually in corporate-speak, "pursue other interests" == "spend more time with his family" == "fired". I've had companies I do business with where the CEO left explicitly call me up to explain that, in this case, "spending time with his family" was really "spending time with his family" as the CEO's wife was really quite ill, and the company didn't want us to wonder about their direction/strategy/management competence.
No. Sit further away, you'll be fine :)
Your post is ridiculous.
LaTeX is basically a write-only language.
I suggest you look up what "write-only" means before you spout bullshit. Hint: it means "hard to read, and thus hard to maintain", with Perl often being given as an example .
Almost nothing else can read it except for other TeX variants.
So Spanish is a useless language too, as almost nobody can understand it but other Spanish-speakers.
It does only one thing particularly well: produce fixed-layout PostScript/PDF pages.
"A boat does only one thing particularly well -- travelling on water". Producing fixed-layout .pdfs is pretty bloody useful for very, very many applications. And produces those so that they actually look good, and the author can focus on content and structure without having to worry (much) about layout.
(La)TeX has its strengths and weaknesses, and whether it works for you is a matter for you to decide, however please refrain from posting crap.
Evernote. It comes close, whether it's close enough is up to you to decide.....
Apple's providing nothing.
International distribution, download infrastructure, payment services, many millions of potential clients for the vendor + ease of installation and a (pretty much) secure environment for the users is not, to use your words, "nothing". You can argue that MS can feasibly provide the same on its own (lord knows, they have the download infrastructure -- they have to so that they can support all the security patches), but that would also cost them money.
For your info: I just lost 16-11 to my girlfriend in Tekken 6 on xbox369, but I blame it on the fact that she was sitting there topless the entire time. True story.
XBOX369 - at least that explains what you did afterwards :)
You're missing some points -- adding them strengthens your argument though.
Other scientists, who are usually not paid, review the work before publication.
They are paid, usually by the taxpayer (as they tend to work at public institutions).
The publisher uploads the pdf to a website and then charges universities thousands of dollars to have unlimited access to their pdfs.
Universities are again funded (to a greater or lesser extent) by taxpayers, so the taxpayers pay again. The system continues to exist because the publishers own the "big name" journals like Nature, and because the insiders (e.g. established peer-reviewers) get fast-tracked when they want to publish in these journals. It's a racket which siphons huge wealth from the taxpayers to the publishers for little effort. May it end quickly.
I really can't fault Carmen Ortiz and Stephen Heymann, their behavior is what the current system demands.
Yes, you can fault them. Abuse of power for personal (career) gain, as well as a lack of ethics and humanity. It is also a well-established doctrine that "I was just following orders" is not a suitable defence against wrongdoing (not in the military, not anywhere). The system is broken, no question, but it will never change unless there are personal consequences for those that exploit it.
Hotz was smart; he realized how futile it would be to ruin his life in a battle he could not win.
And the fact that the so-called justice system can threaten to ruin someone's life (and simultaneously advance the career of the person doing the threatening) is acceptable to you? If the crime was truly so bad, by all means, go ahead and throw the book at someone. The fact that a much lesser punishment is ultimately considered acceptable (ie the plea bargain) should tell you that the initial proposed punishment is nothing more than a "negotiation" tactic, with one party in the negotiation holding all the power, and with a perverse set of incentives to boot (the prosecution wants to win, but doesn't want a court case, as those take time which could be better spent racking up more wins through quick plea bargains).
Due to a rather strange side-effect -- the low-frequency rumbling from the powerball made my gf feel ill when she heard it......
You can keep your jokes and snarky comments to yourself, thank you.
The fact that Germany actually openly admits it is a feather in their cap. Everyone does it, Germany just has the decency to be forthright about it.
I don't think Germany openly admitted it -- more likely they forgot to suppress it.
And so a pedantic twit get's to put another notch on his belt...
Try being pedantic yourself -- it's "gets". Apostrophes aren't just random little pre-s symbols you know.
This is not a direct proof of snooping, just that the German government has the ability to do so. That doesn't necessarily mean that it abuses that power in warrantless monitoring.
So, let's ask them for details on what they have been doing. Queue response: "National Security! We can't tell you!" sotto voce "Monitor him, he's asking questions".
You will never get anything useful out of it.
Big words, little dog. It gives you a model of how the world works, it has hugely driven forward our understanding of the human mind (behavioural economics) and the connection between our physiology and our behaviour.
Genetics is not a hard science either - it's not based on strong causality either (else we would be saying "genetic makeup X causes Y", instead we are saying "genetic makeup X increases the likelihood of Y". If you're looking for real science, try physics, wander by the math department, and then stop -- you've found them.
That "ponzi scheme" whereby the pensions of today are paid by those paying into the pension plan is the only good, cheap, and stable way such a thing can be run.
Please explain how you manage to maintain adequate levels of pension when the ratio of workers (ie those paying) to pensioners (those receiving) has shifted from around 10:1 in the 1960s to around 4:1 now and heading towards 2:1? Pay-as-you-go pensions work when your population pyramid is a pyramid, just like a ponzi scheme apparently works when it is growing -- it's when the growth stops and more and more people want their money that the shit hits the fan.
Except that taxes are generally spent on the well-being of society (and yes, this is easily contested, but it is the idea), whereas income extracted by private companies is definitely not.
Despite what a lot of folks believe, the US is not going to be defaulting on their obligations any time soon.
So all this political posturing about not raising the debt ceiling (ie forcing a default) a couple of months back - that was just play-acting, right? Because politicians are all sensible and rational and all......
Thank you - great explanation.
Nobody has made a compelling case that HFT has any real net impact on retail investors or anyone making an IPO or issuance. Look to my other post in this discussion but by and large HFT is just Wall Street Banks pirating from each other.
Bullshit. They skim the difference between what someone would be prepared to sell for and what someone is prepared to pay (ie an investor may be prepared to pay 1.25 for a share, but you are offering to sell for 1.20 -- instead of the investor paying only 1.20, the HFT jumps in, buys for 1.20 and sells for 1.25, pocketing the difference). This is not just HFTs screwing each other, it screws the normal investor (which includes, you know, funds investing your pension money).
The liquidity argument aside, the HFT guys are the ones who drove the technology that has enable you and I to trade online for low fixed prices, rather than the bad old days where you had to find a broker who would bother with you in the first place and then put up with his 3+% commission.
More bullshit (seriously, do you have a cattle farm?). You correctly describe the bad old days, but those ended in the 1990s, and are dealt with by having competition between brokers/online quote platforms. HFT sucks up the capacity of the trading systems to be able to deal with the frequency of trade, to absolutely no-one's benefit but their own (or do you really think a retail/corporate investor cares whether their trade executes a microsecond faster -- they care that they are not getting screwed by the marketplace).
And to answer the "why don't they put a stop to this" question -- the stock exchanges like having large number of quotes, as they charge for trades, so the more the better. They are acting in the interests of their own shareholders, to make money, and not in the interests of the participants of the market (who want a fair market).