There are reasons to why Linux is safer, but they are mostly non-technical.

I think the most important reasons are that the user base is rather small, and the users are more likely to have a clue,
making it less interesting as a target for virus makers.

There is absolutely nothing "technical" that prevents a virus or a trojan wiping your files or steal your data. The users
are just slightly less prone to execute any file they find on the net, and most virus infected executables are not written for Linux..

And perhaps also that the OS does not ( or did not used to) autostart executables on removable media.

So, you could argue that the tools and servers are a little bit more bulletproof and perhaps thats true, but the sad truth is probably that a linux box would
be p0wned in no time at all, if it was used to control a uranium centrifuge...

You Sir, are absolutely correct.

Database changes are a tricky matter though. Despite testing our upgrades on a copy, we feel its safest to
one or two developers on site during software upgrades, in the event that something goes pear shaped.

I also think if developers can be involved in running and monitoring the actual system, you will get
better stability, better diagnostics and simpler handling.

(Banking systems, inhouse "enterprisey" applications on unix servers)

Indeed, anyone can become a mediocre programmer.

Unfortunately, or not, depending on how you see it, that's all it takes to grind code for a living.
(Perhaps because it's really hard to measure, and most people hiring can't actually code at all)

It's rather unusual to find someone with great analytical and social skills combined with just
the right amount of stubbornness yet responsiveness, curiosity and pragmatism - that makes a really great programmer.

I needed more control over the serial port than the available serial libraries could give, so I rolled my own.

It took me a couple of hours to implement a jna wrapper around linux terminal interface, without any suicidal tendencies, and I
ended up with 700 lines of code... It's yours if you wan't it....

JNA is quite nice, actually.

Wait, what?

Have you ever tried compiling a couple of years old C++ code? Or actually compiled any code at all?

Java's best strength is the platform - the well defined vm-spec and the rock-solid api that is almost totally backwards compatible.
The language itself is stringent, which is really nice except in those places that it's causes som verbosity.
The jvm:s are quite nice, fast and with good gc.

The biggest problems are the lack of anonymous methods, and it's large userbase that includes a lot of morons, beeing an enterprisy language...

The GUI integration on the client side, sucks though. Even a simple thing as naming runnable jars as jxe is not thought of...

I don't know if it's intelligence that's needed to code C++.

The required credentials rather seems to be a great patience.

It's seriously the best thing I ever bought.

A minor issue is that I had to fill the inside of the shell with asphalt sound dampener... :-) But the keys are just excellent.

OK.

Some statistics from the European Union, a union of 27 states with ~500,000,000 people.

Quoting from the European Central Bank's statistics from 2010.

"The total number of non-cash payments in the EU, using all types of instruments [1], increased by 4.4% to 86.4 billion in 2010 compared with the previous year. Card payments accounted for 39% of all transactions, while credit transfers accounted for 28% and direct debits for 25%."

Cheques are not mentioned specifically in the text, but according to the graph on the page, it seems to account to about 5 % of all transactions.

In the table for "Retail transactions" - which includes "bills", it can be found that cheques are mainly used in France. (As well as on Cyprus, and Malta, not exactly large countries.)

The EU is both much more politically complex and is having a much larger population.
The banking systems of the individual countries are much older. The 20 oldest banks still in operation is all European. (JP Morgan Chase, or rather the merged Bank of the Manhattan Company founded in 1799, is on place 23). The first central bank (ever) was founded in Sweden in 1668.

So I don't think that Your arguments are valid.

However, the EU bureaucrats and politicians have the benefit of a totally opaque political system which enables them to implement whatever they like, and they usually like to implement grand plans for integration and standardisation.

I'm not in a hurry, if the HFT guy didn't exist, the sell order is probably still around, and I will get my 6 cent... If not, I can wait.

So, The risk without the HFT guy is that my trades will take longer.

On the other hand, HFT -and- fast algo trading increases the risk for a market collapse, if not only for the increased number of trades (too quick for human analysis) and the emergent properties and complexity from the combined actions of the algorithms and people. No bugs are needed.

I think hidden orders, and matching once every 15 minutes is even better...

(where are my mod points when i need them)

I think the first faceplant was to totally misjudge Apples ability to turn the iPod into an iPhone.
Anyone with a clue could tell that it was going to happen, but that it was packaged so good was probably a surprise for all.

Steve Jobs had a passion for product design, and that passion included the software and UI.
Anyone that have uses an old Nokia or any other pre-apple "smart" phone would notice rather soon
that there is no passion involved at all. They were (and are) made by people writing "use-cases" and
gantt-charts, and the "design" was something that regarded the plastic shell.

There were probably hordes of proud and passionate software developers, but my guess is that there was
no creative process, no feedback and no iterations. Just project plans and use case documents.

I have no idea, but I have always figured that how things worked at Apple was that Steve said that he wanted something,
a team of developers and ui-designers made version 1, Steve basically said that they could do it better, and eventually at iteration n, Steve was happy.

The funny thing is that you probably don't need Steve; anyone with a mild disposition for design could say "no" a couple of times, and
let the developers make awsome stuff, while having fun.

Anyway, having lost their massive market share, Nokia hired the microsoft guy to fix things. And what else can really happen after that?

Unfortunately, Nokias engineers were probably more inclined to focus on Linux and Android phones, if not for nationalistic reasons, but
as long as the use-case guys rules, they will not be able to deliver something that does not suck. Letting microsoft piss away millions on
gui design for you, may not be a bad choice given their circumstances, but they could equally well have let google piss away the money...

From my perspective in the software industry I think this business as usual at SAP.

When they sell stuff, they put a sticker on with more features than they have, and bump up the price...
I figure that when they're buying, they think it's fine to do just the opposite...

I have both a Asus K53 and K73, and I am very satisfied. They sure match the build quality of any of the thinkpad's i've had, and are way much better than the HPs and Fujitsus.

Both K53 and K73sv have a keypad, and the K73sv have a nice brushed aluminum finish and is dead silent most of the time when using a SSD.

(The nvidia card is a hybrid card, but bumblebee works fine)

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Asus-K73SV-TY032V-Notebook.54381.0.html