Should be modded troll, since Tivo service doesn't cost anywhere near that amount, even for standalones boxes.
Yes you could build your own PVR. You could build your own car. You could build your own refrigerator. Most people are not experts in building PVRs, cars, or refrigerators, so they choose a ready to go solution instead.
Re:Sheesh!
on
TiVo Will Die
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Ahh yes Comcast on Demand. "We'll give you a list of programs to choose from, if you favorite show isn't on the list too bad."
Tivo is easier to use than any other PVR I've ever used. Tivo lets you record 2 shows at once, and has season passes. Comcast doesn't. It is $4.99/month, only slighty more than the $3.50/month you say Comcast charges, and is free if you get DirecTV's full programming package.
Maybe Tivo will die, maybe it won't, I dunno. But Tivo's death has been predicted about as often as Usenet's.
Actually I remember one episode where one of the fraggles decided it was cruel to be eating the things the Doozers built, so he started a grassroots movement to convince all of the fraggles to stop eating doozer buildings. They did, and the doozers left because they had no space left to build. Once the fraggles started eating them again, the doozers came back.
I'm a little scared that I actually remember that...
You have that backwards, don't you? The *right* half of the CPU goes in the 2nd processor slot, not the left half. I made the same mistake the first time I tried this.
BTW, if you get a 2nd full size fan/heatsink instead of cutting the original one in half with the CPU, you can do some massive overclocking of your 'new' dual processors.
oh yeah... over the course of 3 or 4 years of running the site, I incurred significant bandwidth and server costs, as well as spending significant time maintaining and developing the site. But my total costs were nowhere near $300,000.
I used to run a Dave Matthews Band fan site. It was the #2 most popular DMB fan site. It had free (and legal) mp3 downloads of live concerts. It got about 2 million hits during its single most popular month.
I will suggest to you that there are significantly more than 788,149 fans of Dave Matthews Band around the world. In fact, there are probably more than 788,149 DMB fans that had visited my site at least once during the nearly 4 years that it existed. But I still did not come close to approaching 3.5 million hits per month.
Now, I suppose I could have reached 3.5 million hits in a month by adding lots of little images to the pages on the site. It would have increased the number of hits without really increasing the actual number of visitors....Which is the main reason "hits" is a meaningless statistic.
Overall it sounds like this whole thing was the result of two unreasonable people doing business with each other without a contract. That's always a recipe for disaster.
The news article states he "volunteered to run the site in exchange for publicity". That's not volunteering, that's a (probably verbal) contract with publicity as the consideration. A contract is binding regardless of whether or not it is a good deal.
The Justice4Pat site states he "agreed to discuss financing for maintaining and hosting of the site at a later date". Thats just poor business. He started providing a service for which he apparently expected to be paid, even though no agreement was in place. He should have never put the site up in the first place.
Think of it as a newspaper's instant editorial page or readers' letters page (how many people actually read those, BTW)?
I read them occasionally.
For all of the people who think Slashdot is full of whining idiots, try reading your local paper's letters to the editor sometime. They are much, much worse.
Well I suppose you are right, but that doesn't change my point. No cover letter, or a poorly written one, still reflects poorly on you. As least if you hire someone to write your cover letters for you, you are making an effort, rather than just not bothering with one at all. If you got someone else to write it because you don't have good communications skills yourself, that will probably become evident in the interview.
When a company gets over 100 applications for a single position, it seems very likely to me that a crumpled/photocopied/cheap paper resume would get tossed into the trash can without even being read.
The point is to make an effort. If you are not willing to make an effort to get a job, the employer will assume you are not willing to make an effort on the job. If your resume is wrinkled or photocopied or even on cheap paper, that sends a message that you aren't making much of an effort.
I'm in the process of looking for a job myself, and I've found a great book that gives some really good advice on responding to this question. It specifically recommends against the conventional wisdom of responding with a positive such as "I always work late" or some other faux weakness, but it gives good advice such as:
- choose a weakness that is not critical to the job you are interviewing for - discuss a weakness that related to content knowledge as opposed to an innate personal quality (i.e. one that can be easily overcome) - always talk about what you are doing to overcome the weakness
The book is very comprehensive (the tough questions section is only one part of the book), and although the book was published before the dot-com bust, the advice in it seems very appropriate for the employers job market we are currently in. Anyone seriously looking for a job should spend the $15 this book costs.
Cover letters serve some very important purposes. I wouldn't recommend not using one.
- a cover letter gives you a chance to directly address the hiring manager. It is a form of personal communication, unlike a resume. "Good communications skills" are often a job requirement; a cover letter shows whether or not you possess those skills.
- a cover letter demonstrates that you have put some effort into applying for this position, which indicates you actually have some interest
Hiring managers and recruiters will decide within 15 seconds of seeing your resume whether to 'file' it or not. You don't want to be filed, you want to be hired. Don't give them an excuse to file you.
I don't know about Walmart's employees, but as an IT worker, I've had an RFID access badge for years. I don't see how that would reflect negatively on my employers.
Re:Ouch for card counters...
on
RFID Casino Chips
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I was at the Hard Rock Casino in Vegas two years ago (during Defcon), and the dealer there was showing us how to count cards while we played. This is the same Hard Rock that got taken for huge amounts of money by the MIT card counting crew. The dealer told us that they will usually let you count cards, even if they know you are doing it, unless you start winning a lot of money. The reason: Amateur card counters tend to make mistakes that benefit the house. Unless you are really good at card counting, you may be better off sticking with basic strategy.
He had a good point, but the next year I went back and they had installed continuous card shufflers at most of their tables. You can't count cards against these machines since there is no beginning or end to the shoe.
A more appropriate analogy would be if you bought a bicycle and put it in your garage, and that caused your car to no longer fit in your garage. The problem is the garage is too small. In this analogy, the garage is the OS. If installing one piece of software breaks another, the problem is not with either piece of software, it is with the OS.
How hard would it be for some company to open a fast-food restarant that has healthy food? It's not like it takes longer to fix healthy food than it takes to make a Big Mac. I don't mind paying more for better ingredients. Instead of trying to blame people who eat at McDonalds, why don't you blame the "healthy" restaurants who won't meet consumer demand for drive throughs and quick "to-go" meals?
Here's one. These guys aren't bad either (in fact, they were run by McDonald's, last time I checked).
I'm not sure what your hangup on drive-thrus is. Last time I used a drive through for lunch it took way longer than walking into the store and getting lunch to go.
Lunch is a social occasion and a chance to get away from the office. I go to lunch with coworkers and friends who come to the office to unwind. I can't show up at a restaurant with a bagged lunch in hand. Nor do I want to become one of those pathetic type-A people who eats lunch while working, responding to e-mails, and answering the phone.
Well, yes you can show up at a restaurant with a bagged lunch -- what's stopping you? The staff at McD's surely won't care.
It is your choice to go along with the rest of your coworkers and eat out all the time. I'll be honest -- I do it too (although not at McD's). You could choose to use a break room or bench somewhere away from your desk to enjoy a brought-from-home lunch. You could even encourage your coworkers to do the same so they could join you.
I assume penguin7of9 made a typo when he suggested people work 7 hour days. His point is still valid: many (he said most, but I will only say many) people have pretty standard work schedules. In any case, the job they have is a result of the choices they have made in their life. The fact that most people in the USA choose a busy, hectic lifestyle does not preclude others from choosing differently. If someone uses the excuse that they don't have time to eat healthy, then they need to realize that is only a result of the choices they have made.
If you had a salad at McD's then good on you.:) This whole thread branched from a post which read:
If you ate at McDonalds yesterday, their is a chance within 30 years you'll be acting like, yes-a mad cow.
This implies that "you" ate beef at McD's, since I don't think many people would seriously argue that eating a salad at McD's could give you mad cow disease.
There have been a lot of advances in other areas of aviation, such as safety, navigation, and understanding of weather. No, they're not as sexy as some of the physical airplane designs, but they are important. GPS has had a huge impact on flying, especially in general aviation (that is, non-commercial flight).
Garmin is about to release the G1000, the first affordable glass cockpit for smaller airplanes. It includes GPS navigation but also replaces just about every other instrument typically found in a cockpit. It also adds features such as weather radar and terrain awareness that until now have been uncommon in smaller planes. The cool part is that it's about the same price as all of the equipment that it replaces, so it doesn't increase the cost of the airplane.
That's true. "Experimental" when it comes to aircraft is a lot more broad than it sounds. The first time I heard the term "experimental airplane" I had all kinds of crazy visions as to what that means. I guess it basically refers to any airplane which is not mass-produced, and kit airplanes are not as uncommon as an average person might think.
Well, I've never flown outside the US, so I would have to admit ignorance there. Within the US, I can check an airport directory to verify that the airport at least sells fuel. I don't have to actually call them -- the issue is not so much whether they have fuel available at the moment, but whether they sell fuel in general. I would guess that whatever landing strip existed at this Antartica base (if any at all -- it may have been nothing more than a flat section of ice) is not listed in any directory since it is not intended for general aviation. Therefore, for him to ass-u-me that he could land there and get fuel was irresponsible, and it is silly for him to get upset at the scientists there for his assumption being wrong.
If you are a pilot, then you know that flight planning is supposed to account for possible weather conditions, especially ones which you say are "not uncommon". When you plan your flight, you make note of possible alternate landing strips in case you can not reach your destination. Don't you think, as a pilot, that you should be sure that your proposed alternate landing strips will be able to sell you enough fuel to get back in the air?
As a pilot, you should know that the success or failure of your flight depends entirely on you. The pilot is responsible for making sure all appropriate planning is done. This guy made the right decision to make an emergency landing, but he is irresponsible as a pilot to expect to be able to buy fuel in a remote location like Antartica without checking ahead of time, and also for not taking into account "not uncommon" headwinds when planning his trip.
I'm sorry, but I fail to see how a couple of extra fuel tanks makes an off-the-shelf aircraft "experimental", as the original poster suggested. And, as I've said all along, I fail to see how this is even remotely science.
Fuel is heavy. Adding extra fuel tanks to an airplane changes every operational aspect of the plane: weight and balance, drag, power and speed required for takeoff, amount of runway required for takeoff and landing, best rate of climb, best glide speed, etc. I would say modding an aircraft by adding fuel tank absolutely makes it experimental.
If they diverted to a commercial or otherwise public airport, yes they would probably be sold fuel. That's because those airports have gas stations that are in the business of selling fuel. There is no such thing in Antartica.
Consider a private pilot making an emergency landing at a private airport, perhaps a military landing strip. They would not sell him fuel, because there are no businesses selling fuel at those airports.
The folks in Antartica have made sure the pilot is taken care of, providing food and shelter, and offering him a ride home. They have no obligation to help him out with his airplne, especially when giving him some of their fuel would likely be a great inconvenience to them. It's not easy to get fuel to Antartica, you know.
BTW, it's not likely that there is any sort of control tower in Antartica that could have refused him permission to land, even if they wanted to.
NASDAQ's own press release gives exact times for everything, except for what time they decided to cancel the erroneous trades. There are reports in the Yahoo message board for COCO of people who bought shares during the time period in question unable to get an answer from their brokers as to whether or not there buy was valid, even after trading resumed.
To me, Archipelago seems to be the big problem here. They willfully resumed trading of the security even while NASDAQ continued the halt, and complained that Nasdaq "used this authority to attempt to impose on its competitors a trading halt in a situation that was unique to it."
It would seem to me that if a stock is halted on one market, it should be halted on all markets, and I think it was irresponsible for Arch to resume trading. Clearly there was enormous confusion over this stock during the time frame in question, and the purpose of a halt, in my opinion at least, is to allow information to get out to eliminate the confusion in order to ensure a fair market. Arch's action of unilaterally resuming trading resulted in increased confusion and an unfair market situation.
It does not happen all the time. I believe this is the first time NASDAQ has ever cancelled trades *after* allowing a stock to resume trading. It is fundamentally unfair to allow a stock to be trading and then after the fact announce that some of those trades will be cancelled. That is why NASDAQ has the ability to halt a stock, and it should not have been resumed until after all decisions about cancelling trades were made and published.
Nobody knew it was a bug at the time. They simply saw the price dropping dramatically and decided to take a risk and bet on a price rebound. It was only after the halt and after the resume and *after* these people sold what they though they had bought that NASDAQ decided to cancel the orders.
Daytraders often buy on dips, betting that the stock is being oversold. This is a decent strategy, since often the reaction to bad news is more extreme than the news warrants. So, the stock dips suddenly, then regains a lot of what it lost. This is risky, because sometimes it turns out that news was even worse than initially reported, and the stock goes down even more. Daytraders understand this risk and accept it.
However, NASDAQ has introduced an entirely unprecedented risk -- that your buy order may be cancelled with no notice after you have already sold it forcing you into a short position that you did not intend.
Take this scenario:
10:55 AM - Investor sees huge dip in stock, enters BUY order for 1000 shares
10:56 AM - Investor gets confirmation from broker that he bought 1000 shares at $40, total price $40,000 (plus fees)
10:58 AM - Stock is halted
11:19 AM - Stock resumes trading, price starts going back up
11:55 AM - Investor puts in SELL order for 1000 shares
11:56 AM - Investor gets confirmation from broker that he sold his 1000 shares at $50, paying $50,000 (minus fees). That's a profit of $10,000.
12:28 PM - NASDAQ announces cancellation of all trades between 10:46 and 10:58 AM.
12:30 PM - Broker adjusts Investor's account to remove cancelled BUY order from 10:55 AM. But the SELL order was not in the cancelled time frame. Investor now has -1000 shares of stock and must buy to cover the debt.
12:35 PM - Investor enters BUY order to cover the 11:30 SELL.
12:36 PM - Investor gets confirmation from broker of BUY at $55 per share, total cost $55,000. Since the shares were sold at $50/share, that's a loss of $5000, due to NASDAQ's cancelling after the fact.
If NASDAQ had announced it was cancelling transactions before resuming the stock, the investor would not have entered the SELL order in the first place, and the whole thing would have been a wash. That would be the fair way to handle it.
Slashdot Mirror
Charging 20 bucks for TV listings per month
Should be modded troll, since Tivo service doesn't cost anywhere near that amount, even for standalones boxes.
Yes you could build your own PVR. You could build your own car. You could build your own refrigerator. Most people are not experts in building PVRs, cars, or refrigerators, so they choose a ready to go solution instead.
Ahh yes Comcast on Demand. "We'll give you a list of programs to choose from, if you favorite show isn't on the list too bad."
Tivo is easier to use than any other PVR I've ever used. Tivo lets you record 2 shows at once, and has season passes. Comcast doesn't. It is $4.99/month, only slighty more than the $3.50/month you say Comcast charges, and is free if you get DirecTV's full programming package.
Maybe Tivo will die, maybe it won't, I dunno. But Tivo's death has been predicted about as often as Usenet's.
Actually I remember one episode where one of the fraggles decided it was cruel to be eating the things the Doozers built, so he started a grassroots movement to convince all of the fraggles to stop eating doozer buildings. They did, and the doozers left because they had no space left to build. Once the fraggles started eating them again, the doozers came back.
I'm a little scared that I actually remember that...
You have that backwards, don't you? The *right* half of the CPU goes in the 2nd processor slot, not the left half. I made the same mistake the first time I tried this.
BTW, if you get a 2nd full size fan/heatsink instead of cutting the original one in half with the CPU, you can do some massive overclocking of your 'new' dual processors.
oh yeah... over the course of 3 or 4 years of running the site, I incurred significant bandwidth and server costs, as well as spending significant time maintaining and developing the site. But my total costs were nowhere near $300,000.
I used to run a Dave Matthews Band fan site. It was the #2 most popular DMB fan site. It had free (and legal) mp3 downloads of live concerts. It got about 2 million hits during its single most popular month.
...Which is the main reason "hits" is a meaningless statistic.
I will suggest to you that there are significantly more than 788,149 fans of Dave Matthews Band around the world. In fact, there are probably more than 788,149 DMB fans that had visited my site at least once during the nearly 4 years that it existed. But I still did not come close to approaching 3.5 million hits per month.
Now, I suppose I could have reached 3.5 million hits in a month by adding lots of little images to the pages on the site. It would have increased the number of hits without really increasing the actual number of visitors.
Overall it sounds like this whole thing was the result of two unreasonable people doing business with each other without a contract. That's always a recipe for disaster.
The news article states he "volunteered to run the site in exchange for publicity". That's not volunteering, that's a (probably verbal) contract with publicity as the consideration. A contract is binding regardless of whether or not it is a good deal.
The Justice4Pat site states he "agreed to discuss financing for maintaining and hosting of the site at a later date". Thats just poor business. He started providing a service for which he apparently expected to be paid, even though no agreement was in place. He should have never put the site up in the first place.
Think of it as a newspaper's instant editorial page or readers' letters page (how many people actually read those, BTW)?
I read them occasionally.
For all of the people who think Slashdot is full of whining idiots, try reading your local paper's letters to the editor sometime. They are much, much worse.
Well I suppose you are right, but that doesn't change my point. No cover letter, or a poorly written one, still reflects poorly on you. As least if you hire someone to write your cover letters for you, you are making an effort, rather than just not bothering with one at all. If you got someone else to write it because you don't have good communications skills yourself, that will probably become evident in the interview.
When a company gets over 100 applications for a single position, it seems very likely to me that a crumpled/photocopied/cheap paper resume would get tossed into the trash can without even being read.
The point is to make an effort. If you are not willing to make an effort to get a job, the employer will assume you are not willing to make an effort on the job. If your resume is wrinkled or photocopied or even on cheap paper, that sends a message that you aren't making much of an effort.
what's your greatest weakness
I'm in the process of looking for a job myself, and I've found a great book that gives some really good advice on responding to this question. It specifically recommends against the conventional wisdom of responding with a positive such as "I always work late" or some other faux weakness, but it gives good advice such as:
- choose a weakness that is not critical to the job you are interviewing for
- discuss a weakness that related to content knowledge as opposed to an innate personal quality (i.e. one that can be easily overcome)
- always talk about what you are doing to overcome the weakness
The book is very comprehensive (the tough questions section is only one part of the book), and although the book was published before the dot-com bust, the advice in it seems very appropriate for the employers job market we are currently in. Anyone seriously looking for a job should spend the $15 this book costs.
Cover letters serve some very important purposes. I wouldn't recommend not using one.
- a cover letter gives you a chance to directly address the hiring manager. It is a form of personal communication, unlike a resume. "Good communications skills" are often a job requirement; a cover letter shows whether or not you possess those skills.
- a cover letter demonstrates that you have put some effort into applying for this position, which indicates you actually have some interest
Hiring managers and recruiters will decide within 15 seconds of seeing your resume whether to 'file' it or not. You don't want to be filed, you want to be hired. Don't give them an excuse to file you.
I don't know about Walmart's employees, but as an IT worker, I've had an RFID access badge for years. I don't see how that would reflect negatively on my employers.
I was at the Hard Rock Casino in Vegas two years ago (during Defcon), and the dealer there was showing us how to count cards while we played. This is the same Hard Rock that got taken for huge amounts of money by the MIT card counting crew. The dealer told us that they will usually let you count cards, even if they know you are doing it, unless you start winning a lot of money. The reason: Amateur card counters tend to make mistakes that benefit the house. Unless you are really good at card counting, you may be better off sticking with basic strategy.
He had a good point, but the next year I went back and they had installed continuous card shufflers at most of their tables. You can't count cards against these machines since there is no beginning or end to the shoe.
A more appropriate analogy would be if you bought a bicycle and put it in your garage, and that caused your car to no longer fit in your garage. The problem is the garage is too small. In this analogy, the garage is the OS. If installing one piece of software breaks another, the problem is not with either piece of software, it is with the OS.
How hard would it be for some company to open a fast-food restarant that has healthy food? It's not like it takes longer to fix healthy food than it takes to make a Big Mac. I don't mind paying more for better ingredients. Instead of trying to blame people who eat at McDonalds, why don't you blame the "healthy" restaurants who won't meet consumer demand for drive throughs and quick "to-go" meals?
Here's one. These guys aren't bad either (in fact, they were run by McDonald's, last time I checked).
I'm not sure what your hangup on drive-thrus is. Last time I used a drive through for lunch it took way longer than walking into the store and getting lunch to go.
Lunch is a social occasion and a chance to get away from the office. I go to lunch with coworkers and friends who come to the office to unwind. I can't show up at a restaurant with a bagged lunch in hand. Nor do I want to become one of those pathetic type-A people who eats lunch while working, responding to e-mails, and answering the phone.
Well, yes you can show up at a restaurant with a bagged lunch -- what's stopping you? The staff at McD's surely won't care.
It is your choice to go along with the rest of your coworkers and eat out all the time. I'll be honest -- I do it too (although not at McD's). You could choose to use a break room or bench somewhere away from your desk to enjoy a brought-from-home lunch. You could even encourage your coworkers to do the same so they could join you.
I assume penguin7of9 made a typo when he suggested people work 7 hour days. His point is still valid: many (he said most, but I will only say many) people have pretty standard work schedules. In any case, the job they have is a result of the choices they have made in their life. The fact that most people in the USA choose a busy, hectic lifestyle does not preclude others from choosing differently. If someone uses the excuse that they don't have time to eat healthy, then they need to realize that is only a result of the choices they have made.
:) This whole thread branched from a post which read:
If you had a salad at McD's then good on you.
If you ate at McDonalds yesterday, their is a chance within 30 years you'll be acting like, yes-a mad cow.
This implies that "you" ate beef at McD's, since I don't think many people would seriously argue that eating a salad at McD's could give you mad cow disease.
There have been a lot of advances in other areas of aviation, such as safety, navigation, and understanding of weather. No, they're not as sexy as some of the physical airplane designs, but they are important. GPS has had a huge impact on flying, especially in general aviation (that is, non-commercial flight).
Garmin is about to release the G1000, the first affordable glass cockpit for smaller airplanes. It includes GPS navigation but also replaces just about every other instrument typically found in a cockpit. It also adds features such as weather radar and terrain awareness that until now have been uncommon in smaller planes. The cool part is that it's about the same price as all of the equipment that it replaces, so it doesn't increase the cost of the airplane.
That's true. "Experimental" when it comes to aircraft is a lot more broad than it sounds. The first time I heard the term "experimental airplane" I had all kinds of crazy visions as to what that means. I guess it basically refers to any airplane which is not mass-produced, and kit airplanes are not as uncommon as an average person might think.
Well, I've never flown outside the US, so I would have to admit ignorance there. Within the US, I can check an airport directory to verify that the airport at least sells fuel. I don't have to actually call them -- the issue is not so much whether they have fuel available at the moment, but whether they sell fuel in general. I would guess that whatever landing strip existed at this Antartica base (if any at all -- it may have been nothing more than a flat section of ice) is not listed in any directory since it is not intended for general aviation. Therefore, for him to ass-u-me that he could land there and get fuel was irresponsible, and it is silly for him to get upset at the scientists there for his assumption being wrong.
If you are a pilot, then you know that flight planning is supposed to account for possible weather conditions, especially ones which you say are "not uncommon". When you plan your flight, you make note of possible alternate landing strips in case you can not reach your destination. Don't you think, as a pilot, that you should be sure that your proposed alternate landing strips will be able to sell you enough fuel to get back in the air?
As a pilot, you should know that the success or failure of your flight depends entirely on you. The pilot is responsible for making sure all appropriate planning is done. This guy made the right decision to make an emergency landing, but he is irresponsible as a pilot to expect to be able to buy fuel in a remote location like Antartica without checking ahead of time, and also for not taking into account "not uncommon" headwinds when planning his trip.
I'm sorry, but I fail to see how a couple of extra fuel tanks makes an off-the-shelf aircraft "experimental", as the original poster suggested. And, as I've said all along, I fail to see how this is even remotely science.
Fuel is heavy. Adding extra fuel tanks to an airplane changes every operational aspect of the plane: weight and balance, drag, power and speed required for takeoff, amount of runway required for takeoff and landing, best rate of climb, best glide speed, etc. I would say modding an aircraft by adding fuel tank absolutely makes it experimental.
If they diverted to a commercial or otherwise public airport, yes they would probably be sold fuel. That's because those airports have gas stations that are in the business of selling fuel. There is no such thing in Antartica.
Consider a private pilot making an emergency landing at a private airport, perhaps a military landing strip. They would not sell him fuel, because there are no businesses selling fuel at those airports.
The folks in Antartica have made sure the pilot is taken care of, providing food and shelter, and offering him a ride home. They have no obligation to help him out with his airplne, especially when giving him some of their fuel would likely be a great inconvenience to them. It's not easy to get fuel to Antartica, you know.
BTW, it's not likely that there is any sort of control tower in Antartica that could have refused him permission to land, even if they wanted to.
NASDAQ's own press release gives exact times for everything, except for what time they decided to cancel the erroneous trades. There are reports in the Yahoo message board for COCO of people who bought shares during the time period in question unable to get an answer from their brokers as to whether or not there buy was valid, even after trading resumed.
To me, Archipelago seems to be the big problem here. They willfully resumed trading of the security even while NASDAQ continued the halt, and complained that Nasdaq "used this authority to attempt to impose on its competitors a trading halt in a situation that was unique to it."
It would seem to me that if a stock is halted on one market, it should be halted on all markets, and I think it was irresponsible for Arch to resume trading. Clearly there was enormous confusion over this stock during the time frame in question, and the purpose of a halt, in my opinion at least, is to allow information to get out to eliminate the confusion in order to ensure a fair market. Arch's action of unilaterally resuming trading resulted in increased confusion and an unfair market situation.
It does not happen all the time. I believe this is the first time NASDAQ has ever cancelled trades *after* allowing a stock to resume trading. It is fundamentally unfair to allow a stock to be trading and then after the fact announce that some of those trades will be cancelled. That is why NASDAQ has the ability to halt a stock, and it should not have been resumed until after all decisions about cancelling trades were made and published.
Nobody knew it was a bug at the time. They simply saw the price dropping dramatically and decided to take a risk and bet on a price rebound. It was only after the halt and after the resume and *after* these people sold what they though they had bought that NASDAQ decided to cancel the orders.
Daytraders often buy on dips, betting that the stock is being oversold. This is a decent strategy, since often the reaction to bad news is more extreme than the news warrants. So, the stock dips suddenly, then regains a lot of what it lost. This is risky, because sometimes it turns out that news was even worse than initially reported, and the stock goes down even more. Daytraders understand this risk and accept it.
However, NASDAQ has introduced an entirely unprecedented risk -- that your buy order may be cancelled with no notice after you have already sold it forcing you into a short position that you did not intend.
Take this scenario:
10:55 AM - Investor sees huge dip in stock, enters BUY order for 1000 shares
10:56 AM - Investor gets confirmation from broker that he bought 1000 shares at $40, total price $40,000 (plus fees)
10:58 AM - Stock is halted
11:19 AM - Stock resumes trading, price starts going back up
11:55 AM - Investor puts in SELL order for 1000 shares
11:56 AM - Investor gets confirmation from broker that he sold his 1000 shares at $50, paying $50,000 (minus fees). That's a profit of $10,000.
12:28 PM - NASDAQ announces cancellation of all trades between 10:46 and 10:58 AM.
12:30 PM - Broker adjusts Investor's account to remove cancelled BUY order from 10:55 AM. But the SELL order was not in the cancelled time frame. Investor now has -1000 shares of stock and must buy to cover the debt.
12:35 PM - Investor enters BUY order to cover the 11:30 SELL.
12:36 PM - Investor gets confirmation from broker of BUY at $55 per share, total cost $55,000. Since the shares were sold at $50/share, that's a loss of $5000, due to NASDAQ's cancelling after the fact.
If NASDAQ had announced it was cancelling transactions before resuming the stock, the investor would not have entered the SELL order in the first place, and the whole thing would have been a wash. That would be the fair way to handle it.