Refund? Good luck with that--customer service at the store will immediately say, "we cannot prove that you did not buy this game just to copy and bring back, and it's been opened, so the most we can do is exchange with another copy of the same game."
Which smells badly designed service. It being running should be tied to any specific hardware/vm/os running.
As yes...the old all software ever written is just badly designed argument. We just need to fix all software ever written and then we won't need OS virtualization.
I (and possibly many others) interpret this as needing an internet connection to boot Windows, as in booting from their remote server.
This is why/. readers are often labelled slashtards.
The reference to a "remote server to push OS code to systems at boot time" refers to the fast net booting technology that microsoft patented... where instead of waiting for a complete system image before booting, the system can begin booting much earlier.
Its an enterprise targeted enhancement to net booting that makes net booting more usable.
Its wild speculation crossing the line to complete idiocy to speculate that this net booting capability would be required for all users.
Think about it for half a second. You wouldn't be able to turn your computer on: on a plane. Or a boat. Or in the mountains. Or when visiting a 3rd world country.
How many networks aren't attached to the internet or aren't attached reliably? Military, Medical, Testing, Remote research stations...
How do most hotspots and hotels etc work... you connect to an open network (wired or wireless) but all internet access is blocked and all http access is redirected to a web page to enter in your room number, guest password, whatever... so ALL that infrastructure breaks down too.
Virtualization is an ugly band-aid. But it's a band-aid for real shortcomings in current OSes.
And solving those shortcomings would lead you to separating the OS into 2 layers akin to a hyper visor and OS... and you'd be right back where you started.
And someone would still need to run a *nix server along side a Windows one, or find they need to run two different distros or two different kernel versions... and still need traditional virtualization to do it.
I don't use Windows much anyhow (other than games) so I guess I'll just be moving to consoles.
a) Right, because consoles haven't been moving towards being always online, or requiring mandatory firmware updates to use, and they certainly have never done anything draconian in terms of drm or copyright protection. They're way more hacker friendly and give you far more freedom than Microsoft Windows does. Are you entirely sure you've thought this move through?
b) I estimate that there is a zero chance that windows 8 will require an internet connection.
For one thing, a lot of the good stuff gets taken down by copyright owners.
Oh, now you want it it to be "good"... i thought it was just important that it be cheap. (more sarcasm:) )
For another, how much would 24x7 YouTube cut into your monthly data transfer cap?
I pay for decent access so as long as it wasn't primarily high def it'd fit under. (of course since im not awake 24x7 I can probably knock 1/3rd off right there...)
Let's see, in a paper voting system how many Slashdotters could have access to the counting process? Could you, personally, get the votes from each ballot in the country and verify that the count is correct? Or would you necessarily depend on other people, believing they are honest?
I've seen how the canadian voting system works. I've got family who worked in a couple now. (As in were part of the process.)
Its actually surprisingly secure, with decent checks and balances. The processes are largely out in the open, with lots of people watching. One notable item is that the candidates are allowed to have representatives oversee the process in each ballot station as well. Vote counts are tallied and audited against the voter registration lists with witnesses including candidates representatives.
1) Identifying a need 2) Answering that need with an invention.
A patent should be a non-trivial / non-obvious response for step TWO.
What I see is a lot of people conflating the difficulty answering the need vs having the spark of genius to identify it in the first place.
A lot of patents are really obvious answers to questions that no one had thought to ask yet.
The little tripod/table thing to keep cheese getting stuck to the lid of a pizza box is an obvious solution to the problem it solves.
Ask any qualified engineer to actually solve that problem, and sticking a little plastic "load bearing tripod or scaffold" on the center of the pizza is a no brainer.
So how did we go for decades without them?
Because it took a moment of "genius" to actually ask the question.
But the patent system isn't supposed to reward people for asking questions... its supposed to reward people for coming up with innovative answers.
As you said: "Most ideas are obvious is retrospect to people who are experts in a field, but its a fallacy to believe it was obvious to those same people BEFORE they saw it."
If the idea for a solution is obvious once the problem is posed its not supposed to be patentable.
That's the problem with patents. If I read an abstract for "a method to suggest movies based on viewing habits of customers on a computer"
Then I'm going to envision a database of movies, and who watched them, and some algorithm for correlating a given customers viewing habits with others similar, and then suggest movies that other people like him watched that he hasn't watched yet. Maybe i'll even take into account how they rated the movies. So there will be a feedback mechanism...
The exact algorithm used to suggest movies might be validly subject to a patent, but not its general structure.
Thus other vendors should be free to implement their own "movie suggesting systems using databases and correlating viewing habits on a computer" without any fear of interference from this patent. Indeed the patent is too broad.
If it instead was a patent on a distance algorithm for relating viewers relative to movies viewed that was actually innovative such that an expert in the field wouldn't suggest its general form without even seeing the answer, that might be a valid patent.
My point is being the first person to think of doing X shouldn't be rewarded if the method of doing X is obvious to anyone now that you've thought to ask them too.
Again as a counterpoint, just look how much code written in.NET has to implement IDisposable which if not done means that programmers will leak all sorts of non-memory resources such as file handles, etc
Your counterpoint misses the point.
Pretending the problem doesn't exist doesn't make it go away.
Nobody is pretending the problem of resource management doesn't exist.
Car analogy:
Your argument comes across as saying drivers shouldn't use automatic transmissions to reduce the effort they need to spend to maintain proper control of a car because they still have to steer and work the gas.
Programmers still need to be focused on resource management, just as drivers still need to be focused on controlling the vehicle. Garbage collection, like automatic transmissions just reduces the effort required.
1 goes way way up, like 100x. 99 go very slightly down.
Hmm.. That's not the stock market i know. In the stock market i know...
In a given month, a stocks go up (some go up a lot, some barely at all), b stocks go down some go down a lot, and some barely at all), c stocks are delisted (removed entirely - lets just consider them bankrupt although there are other situations that can cause a symbol to stop trading that aren't so dire), and d stocks are newly listed.
A random selection of stocks is likely to do worse than the market because you have a chance of picking stocks that get delisted, (and of course no chance of picking stocks that were listed after your picks).
This skews random picks towards doing slightly worse than the market.
But over all, its still probably pretty close to a 50%/50% split.
You damn right they use it, because they are forced to participate in it they damn sure should use it.
Fair enough. But I think the more interesting part of my response was that the vast majority of Tea Party supporters - 70% according to polls, oppose cuts to Medicare and Medicaid.
This why they come off as raving nutters. They want to cut taxes, cut spending, and keep the entitlements right where they are.
Immediate family members... as in the ones that you typically take some personal responsiblity for. I wouldn't get excited over the "OR a family member" anyway: 32% of Tea Party supports respond affirmative for themselves personally, vs only 22% for all respondants.
Poll q106 Are you, or is any member of your immediate family, covered by Medicare?
Self Identified as Tea Party Supporter Yes, self - 16% Yes, other - 12% Yes, self and other - 16% No - 56%
All Respondants Yes, self - 13% Yes, other - 12% Yes, self and other - 9% No - 66%
Tea Partiers were also personally receiving Social Security benefits at a higher rate than the general respondents. 20% of respondents said yes, 35% of Tea Partiers said yes.
The vast majority also support eliminating waste and fraud in all gov't spending, including Medicare and Medicaid.
Seriously, that statement says nothing at all. Good luck finding anyone who doesn't support eliminating waste and fraud in all gov't spending, including Medicare and Medicaid.
Hell, I fully support national health care like what Canada, England, and France have, and guess what I also fully support eliminating waste and fraud.
I'd expect most Tea Partiers to have medical insurance, and so your objection is rather misguided.
44 percent of Tea Party supporters were polled as receiving Medicare or have a family member receiving it.
Their objection is to excessive federal spending (which is absolutely a valid argument, especially when it comes to public health care, which is almost designed to be tremendously wasteful)
The vast majority of Tea Party supporters - 70% according to polls, oppose cuts to Medicare and Medicaid.
The fact that someone was willing to arbitrage between them meant they could do that more quickly at a better price.
Of course they were willing it was a no risk transaction.
But there is no need for them to do it. No value added by them doing it. And they are leveraging things like "physical proximity to the exchange" to gain this access to zero-risk trades. Fuck them.
You're ignoring that the trades would happen at lower frequency and volume
HFT isn't real trades or volume. It just front runs existing trades and volume.
I go to sell 1000 shares for X, an HFT algorithm snatches it up, and then sells it for X+1, to an actual buyer. Yay...frequency and volume is 2 @ 2000 instead of 1 @ 1000. Worthless.
You also might be paying more rather than less due to a wider spread.
I pay more thanks to HFT as well. I pay their profit. So instead of the seller getting more the HFT guy gets it instead? Worthless.
. Suppose wheat is selling for 24p in New York and 27p in Tokyo, and then a HFT guy comes along and offers to buy for 25p in New York and sell for 26p in Tokyo. Then the seller in NY gets a better price, the buyer in Tokyo gets a better price, and the HFT guy earns his profit. Sure he's taking profits away from the guys who would've bought in New York for less or sold in Tokyo for more, but he's done so by outcompeting them, which is in the public interest.
That is a fantasy. It doesn't happen.
If its selling for 24p in New York, then someone buys it for 24p in New York. Then it gets sold for 27p in Tokyo.
The buyer does not get a better price. The seller does not get a better price. The trader makes 3 cents a share.
That's how arbitrage works. And that's even OK when the seller in New York and the buyer in Tokyo aren't connected. For 3 cents the trader connects a buyer and seller who aren't connected. Good on them.
But what if they ARE connected? What if the bid/ask between the actual buyer and seller would have connected within 2 seconds, and the trade would have completed without the HFT guy leeching 3 cents of profit out of the exchange? Because that is what's happening with HFT. They are living in the sub-second space between orders matching naturally and are taking profits by inserting themselves between them.
That adds no value to the the system. There is no benefit to anyone in this.
Suppose wheat is selling for 24p in New York, and an order willing to pay up to 27p arrives in New York. It will naturally match up with 24p ask, and close.
HFT guys observe that it takes 2 seconds for that 27p bid to get matched with the 24p ask, so when they see that 27p bid come in and start... they race ahead with their faster internet connection to match a 24p bid with the 24p ask ahead of the 27p bid they ALREADY KNOW IS COMING, and then throw up a 27p ask just in time for the 27p bid to get there.
All HFT does is take advantage of arbitrage opportunities that a human is too slow for.
Exactly right but think about that for just half a second.
Who was benefitting from the fact that the arbitrage opportunity was not exploited? In each case it was the buyer or seller.
So the "profit" the HFT takes, is taken directly from the buyer or seller in each transaction.
Everytime I place a buy order, without HFT, i might have got the shares for a few cents less. Everytime I place a sell order, without HFT, I might have gotten a few cents more for the shares.
"HFT takes advantage of arbitrate opportunities that a human is too slow for"... meaning my transactions would have closed without the "liquidity" HFT provided within seconds.
So how do you reach any conclusion other than "HFT" is leeching profits from the actual buyer and seller, while providing nothing of value?
would you rather have volatile markets with wide spreads, or more stable prices, with a highly liquid, small bid-ask spread
The stock market wasn't more volatile 20 years ago. Liquidity wasn't a "problem" that needed to be solved either.
The markets of 75 years ago benefitted significantly with the march of technology, but HFT hasn't made a good thing better.
Arguing against new technology just because horse and buggy companies are going to go out of business is no sound argument at all.
And how is that relevant? Who are the metaphorical horse and buggy companies here? Computerized trading systems make perfects sense. Internet connecting the buyers and sellers the world over so they can instantly and effortlessly trade is what reduced the spread, and added a significant and APPROPRIATE level of liquidity.
Letting the HFT group leech MY profits to the tune of a factional cent so that trades could uccur at a fraction of a micro second faster with a fraction of cent less volatility is of no value whatsoever to the actual investors like me.
I can't tell if your being sarcastic. I hope so, because otherwise what you wrote was idiotic. Not only does it not make sense, but the argument itself isn't even logical.
Bottom line is that any profit extracted by HFT is at the expense of the real buyers and sellers of the underlying stocks.
Your somewhat vulnerable to theft anywhere. Whether going on vacation makes you more vulnerable depends where you are travelling FROM;) and how much brought with you to lose.
Slashdot Mirror
Refund? Good luck with that--customer service at the store will immediately say, "we cannot prove that you did not buy this game just to copy and bring back, and it's been opened, so the most we can do is exchange with another copy of the same game."
So return it unopened.
Which smells badly designed service. It being running should be tied to any specific hardware/vm/os running.
As yes...the old all software ever written is just badly designed argument. We just need to fix all software ever written and then we won't need OS virtualization.
Hell, it's even in the summary:
And you should know better than to rely on that.
I (and possibly many others) interpret this as needing an internet connection to boot Windows, as in booting from their remote server.
This is why /. readers are often labelled slashtards.
The reference to a "remote server to push OS code to systems at boot time" refers to the fast net booting technology that microsoft patented... where instead of waiting for a complete system image before booting, the system can begin booting much earlier.
Its an enterprise targeted enhancement to net booting that makes net booting more usable.
Its wild speculation crossing the line to complete idiocy to speculate that this net booting capability would be required for all users.
Think about it for half a second. You wouldn't be able to turn your computer on: on a plane. Or a boat. Or in the mountains. Or when visiting a 3rd world country.
How many networks aren't attached to the internet or aren't attached reliably? Military, Medical, Testing, Remote research stations...
How do most hotspots and hotels etc work... you connect to an open network (wired or wireless) but all internet access is blocked and all http access is redirected to a web page to enter in your room number, guest password, whatever... so ALL that infrastructure breaks down too.
Its simply not going to happen.
Virtualization is an ugly band-aid. But it's a band-aid for real shortcomings in current OSes.
And solving those shortcomings would lead you to separating the OS into 2 layers akin to a hyper visor and OS... and you'd be right back where you started.
And someone would still need to run a *nix server along side a Windows one, or find they need to run two different distros or two different kernel versions... and still need traditional virtualization to do it.
I think you missed the point.
You can migrate a server in virtualization to new host hardware without shutting it down.
This is not the same as "copy, shutdown the old, bring up the new". This is live migration without a shutdown.
I don't use Windows much anyhow (other than games) so I guess I'll just be moving to consoles.
a) Right, because consoles haven't been moving towards being always online, or requiring mandatory firmware updates to use, and they certainly have never done anything draconian in terms of drm or copyright protection. They're way more hacker friendly and give you far more freedom than Microsoft Windows does. Are you entirely sure you've thought this move through?
b) I estimate that there is a zero chance that windows 8 will require an internet connection.
"The ZBV produces electronically generated xrays that detect substances containing low atomic number elements such as carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen.
These elements are often present in explosives and other contraband..."
not to mention lumber, tofu, soil, cucumbers, coal, ice cream, books, mayonnaise, ham, and blankets...
Hell even the original white paper for Java was trying to claim this.
Nobody seriously thought resource management was going to go away. The idea is absurd on its face.
My argument is that if you are using C++ you should *gasp* use the built-in automatic memory management features
They aren't built in to C++
Smart pointers are a library not a language feature.
RAII is a best practice not a language feature.
Re:WHAT!?!?!?!
You do realize i was being sarcastic right?
For one thing, a lot of the good stuff gets taken down by copyright owners.
Oh, now you want it it to be "good" ... i thought it was just important that it be cheap. (more sarcasm :) )
For another, how much would 24x7 YouTube cut into your monthly data transfer cap?
I pay for decent access so as long as it wasn't primarily high def it'd fit under. (of course since im not awake 24x7 I can probably knock 1/3rd off right there...)
To put it another way - they've been paying into it their whole life, so why should they not take the benefits when they retire?
Well that they should. So why do they want it cut?
As it turns out they don't want it cut at all.
The vast majority are in favor of not cutting those programs.
So how exactly do they want to balance the budget? By not cutting and not raising taxes? This is why they get ridiculed.
By just eliminating "waste and fraud"?
That's not enough.
Let's see, in a paper voting system how many Slashdotters could have access to the counting process? Could you, personally, get the votes from each ballot in the country and verify that the count is correct? Or would you necessarily depend on other people, believing they are honest?
I've seen how the canadian voting system works. I've got family who worked in a couple now. (As in were part of the process.)
Its actually surprisingly secure, with decent checks and balances. The processes are largely out in the open, with lots of people watching. One notable item is that the candidates are allowed to have representatives oversee the process in each ballot station as well. Vote counts are tallied and audited against the voter registration lists with witnesses including candidates representatives.
Its extraordinarily transparent.
I see Invention is 2 separate steps:
1) Identifying a need
2) Answering that need with an invention.
A patent should be a non-trivial / non-obvious response for step TWO.
What I see is a lot of people conflating the difficulty answering the need vs having the spark of genius to identify it in the first place.
A lot of patents are really obvious answers to questions that no one had thought to ask yet.
The little tripod/table thing to keep cheese getting stuck to the lid of a pizza box is an obvious solution to the problem it solves.
Ask any qualified engineer to actually solve that problem, and sticking a little plastic "load bearing tripod or scaffold" on the center of the pizza is a no brainer.
So how did we go for decades without them?
Because it took a moment of "genius" to actually ask the question.
But the patent system isn't supposed to reward people for asking questions... its supposed to reward people for coming up with innovative answers.
As you said: "Most ideas are obvious is retrospect to people who are experts in a field, but its a fallacy to believe it was obvious to those same people BEFORE they saw it."
If the idea for a solution is obvious once the problem is posed its not supposed to be patentable.
That's the problem with patents. If I read an abstract for "a method to suggest movies based on viewing habits of customers on a computer"
Then I'm going to envision a database of movies, and who watched them, and some algorithm for correlating a given customers viewing habits with others similar, and then suggest movies that other people like him watched that he hasn't watched yet. Maybe i'll even take into account how they rated the movies. So there will be a feedback mechanism...
The exact algorithm used to suggest movies might be validly subject to a patent, but not its general structure.
Thus other vendors should be free to implement their own "movie suggesting systems using databases and correlating viewing habits on a computer" without any fear of interference from this patent. Indeed the patent is too broad.
If it instead was a patent on a distance algorithm for relating viewers relative to movies viewed that was actually innovative such that an expert in the field wouldn't suggest its general form without even seeing the answer, that might be a valid patent.
My point is being the first person to think of doing
X shouldn't be rewarded if the method of doing X is obvious to anyone now that you've thought to ask them too.
Again as a counterpoint, just look how much code written in .NET has to implement IDisposable which if not done means that programmers will leak all sorts of non-memory resources such as file handles, etc
Your counterpoint misses the point.
Pretending the problem doesn't exist doesn't make it go away.
Nobody is pretending the problem of resource management doesn't exist.
Car analogy:
Your argument comes across as saying drivers shouldn't use automatic transmissions to reduce the effort they need to spend to maintain proper control of a car because they still have to steer and work the gas.
Programmers still need to be focused on resource management, just as drivers still need to be focused on controlling the vehicle. Garbage collection, like automatic transmissions just reduces the effort required.
What are you doing watching cable at 0.04 an hour?
I can watch youtube for free. 24x7
When I need a break I play free flash games.
Spending even 1 cent on entertainment is inefficient.
Hmm... or maybe looking at entertainment as a $ spent/hr user prospect is idiotic. Yeah... that might be it.
1 goes way way up, like 100x. 99 go very slightly down.
Hmm.. That's not the stock market i know. In the stock market i know...
In a given month, a stocks go up (some go up a lot, some barely at all), b stocks go down some go down a lot, and some barely at all), c stocks are delisted (removed entirely - lets just consider them bankrupt although there are other situations that can cause a symbol to stop trading that aren't so dire), and d stocks are newly listed.
A random selection of stocks is likely to do worse than the market because you have a chance of picking stocks that get delisted, (and of course no chance of picking stocks that were listed after your picks).
This skews random picks towards doing slightly worse than the market.
But over all, its still probably pretty close to a 50%/50% split.
You damn right they use it, because they are forced to participate in it they damn sure should use it.
Fair enough. But I think the more interesting part of my response was that the vast majority of Tea Party supporters - 70% according to polls, oppose cuts to Medicare and Medicaid.
This why they come off as raving nutters. They want to cut taxes, cut spending, and keep the entitlements right where they are.
Terrible poll (you OR a family member?)
Immediate family members... as in the ones that you typically take some personal responsiblity for.
I wouldn't get excited over the "OR a family member" anyway: 32% of Tea Party supports respond affirmative for themselves personally, vs only 22% for all respondants.
Poll q106 Are you, or is any member of your immediate family, covered by Medicare?
Self Identified as Tea Party Supporter
Yes, self - 16%
Yes, other - 12%
Yes, self and other - 16%
No - 56%
All Respondants
Yes, self - 13%
Yes, other - 12%
Yes, self and other - 9%
No - 66%
Tea Partiers were also personally receiving Social Security benefits at a higher rate than the general respondents. 20% of respondents said yes, 35% of Tea Partiers said yes.
The vast majority also support eliminating waste and fraud in all gov't spending, including Medicare and Medicaid.
Seriously, that statement says nothing at all. Good luck finding anyone who doesn't support eliminating waste and fraud in all gov't spending, including Medicare and Medicaid.
Hell, I fully support national health care like what Canada, England, and France have, and guess what I also fully support eliminating waste and fraud.
I'd expect most Tea Partiers to have medical insurance, and so your objection is rather misguided.
44 percent of Tea Party supporters were polled as receiving Medicare or have a family member receiving it.
Their objection is to excessive federal spending (which is absolutely a valid argument, especially when it comes to public health care, which is almost designed to be tremendously wasteful)
The vast majority of Tea Party supporters - 70% according to polls, oppose cuts to Medicare and Medicaid.
Hmmm.
The fact that someone was willing to arbitrage between them meant they could do that more quickly at a better price.
Of course they were willing it was a no risk transaction.
But there is no need for them to do it. No value added by them doing it. And they are leveraging things like "physical proximity to the exchange" to gain this access to zero-risk trades. Fuck them.
You're ignoring that the trades would happen at lower frequency and volume
HFT isn't real trades or volume. It just front runs existing trades and volume.
I go to sell 1000 shares for X, an HFT algorithm snatches it up, and then sells it for X+1, to an actual buyer. Yay...frequency and volume is 2 @ 2000 instead of 1 @ 1000. Worthless.
You also might be paying more rather than less due to a wider spread.
I pay more thanks to HFT as well. I pay their profit. So instead of the seller getting more the HFT guy gets it instead? Worthless.
. Suppose wheat is selling for 24p in New York and 27p in Tokyo, and then a HFT guy comes along and offers to buy for 25p in New York and sell for 26p in Tokyo. Then the seller in NY gets a better price, the buyer in Tokyo gets a better price, and the HFT guy earns his profit. Sure he's taking profits away from the guys who would've bought in New York for less or sold in Tokyo for more, but he's done so by outcompeting them, which is in the public interest.
That is a fantasy. It doesn't happen.
If its selling for 24p in New York, then someone buys it for 24p in New York. Then it gets sold for 27p in Tokyo.
The buyer does not get a better price.
The seller does not get a better price.
The trader makes 3 cents a share.
That's how arbitrage works. And that's even OK when the seller in New York and the buyer in Tokyo aren't connected. For 3 cents the trader connects a buyer and seller who aren't connected. Good on them.
But what if they ARE connected? What if the bid/ask between the actual buyer and seller would have connected within 2 seconds, and the trade would have completed without the HFT guy leeching 3 cents of profit out of the exchange? Because that is what's happening with HFT. They are living in the sub-second space between orders matching naturally and are taking profits by inserting themselves between them.
That adds no value to the the system. There is no benefit to anyone in this.
Suppose wheat is selling for 24p in New York, and an order willing to pay up to 27p arrives in New York. It will naturally match up with 24p ask, and close.
HFT guys observe that it takes 2 seconds for that 27p bid to get matched with the 24p ask, so when they see that 27p bid come in and start... they race ahead with their faster internet connection to match a 24p bid with the 24p ask ahead of the 27p bid they ALREADY KNOW IS COMING, and then throw up a 27p ask just in time for the 27p bid to get there.
That is not the slightest bit useful.
All HFT does is take advantage of arbitrage opportunities that a human is too slow for.
Exactly right but think about that for just half a second.
Who was benefitting from the fact that the arbitrage opportunity was not exploited? In each case it was the buyer or seller.
So the "profit" the HFT takes, is taken directly from the buyer or seller in each transaction.
Everytime I place a buy order, without HFT, i might have got the shares for a few cents less. Everytime I place a sell order, without HFT, I might have gotten a few cents more for the shares.
"HFT takes advantage of arbitrate opportunities that a human is too slow for" ... meaning my transactions would have closed without the "liquidity" HFT provided within seconds.
So how do you reach any conclusion other than "HFT" is leeching profits from the actual buyer and seller, while providing nothing of value?
would you rather have volatile markets with wide spreads, or more stable prices, with a highly liquid, small bid-ask spread
The stock market wasn't more volatile 20 years ago.
Liquidity wasn't a "problem" that needed to be solved either.
The markets of 75 years ago benefitted significantly with the march of technology, but HFT hasn't made a good thing better.
Arguing against new technology just because horse and buggy companies are going to go out of business is no sound argument at all.
And how is that relevant? Who are the metaphorical horse and buggy companies here? Computerized trading systems make perfects sense. Internet connecting the buyers and sellers the world over so they can instantly and effortlessly trade is what reduced the spread, and added a significant and APPROPRIATE level of liquidity.
Letting the HFT group leech MY profits to the tune of a factional cent so that trades could uccur at a fraction of a micro second faster with a fraction of cent less volatility is of no value whatsoever to the actual investors like me.
I can't tell if your being sarcastic. I hope so, because otherwise what you wrote was idiotic. Not only does it not make sense, but the argument itself isn't even logical.
Bottom line is that any profit extracted by HFT is at the expense of the real buyers and sellers of the underlying stocks.
Your somewhat vulnerable to theft anywhere. Whether going on vacation makes you more vulnerable depends where you are travelling FROM ;) and how much brought with you to lose.