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Comment Re:Won't work (Score 1) 342

HFT, through the very nature of what it is and that there are dozens of competing HFT firms, has been driving buy/sell spreads down to micro percent spreads. You can execute a market order these days and actually get the price on the ticker. 10 years ago that wasn't the case and that is because of HFT. The firms buy and sell so rapidly that the spread has decreased from the 3-5% normal to fractional percents that often don't even add a penny to the price.

All the opposition to HFT I see is people who've never traded stocks in their life. How many trades do you make per year?

Comment Re:Freedom of Speech? (Score 2) 328

Revenge porn is 99% of the time pictures taken by a significant other during a relationship and then spread after the breakup or taken by the victim themselves and distributed to the significant other for their (ahem) personal use.

Voyeurism and hidden camera shots are illegal in almost every jurisdiction, in fact one of the few that wasn't just changed their law after a guy was acquitted. You are building a straw man talking about these already illegal actions. Much like all the other strawmen in this thread such as child porn and bestiality.

The fact is if the victim took the pictures themselves (or participated in taking them) they own the copyright and can DMCA the pictures and if they are not removed they can sue the pants off the website. If the victim's significant other took the images then they are frankly SOL and should be. They still have the right to sue the website for commercial use of their image and they can still go after the ex-significant other for the action. What they are proposing is using the power of the state and force of the truncheon to enforce what is a civil complaint brought on by their own actions.

The very idea that you could sue Google for someone linking to some website distributing images for which they have the legal right from the copyright holder is absurd on the face. Putting loopholes like this into the first amendment is going to lead to more loopholes like anti-bullying and hate speech exceptions and pretty soon you won't have free speech anymore. These revenge porn sites can already be prosecuted (in most cases) for blatant fraud and blackmail. In fact many of them already are.

The simple answer here is that if you don't want naked pictures of you on the internet don't take naked pictures.

Comment Re:I think this is bullshit (Score 1) 1746

People comparing this to McCarthy show more lack of understanding about the issue than the fools that are raking Eich over the coals.

McCarthy was government and he was using the direct threat of government power for oppression. There is no comparison here. Your free speech rights don't extend to me having to be tolerant of them, they prevent the use of government force, not social retribution. If you equate the two you are no different than the jackasses that want to put a hate speech exception into the 1st. It's lunacy of the highest order.

Comment Re:Wise criminals stay in the shadows... (Score 1) 120

They won't be the next Rockefeller, Kennedy or Bush. The multinationals will run them out of business overnight. As soon as pot is legal Philip Morris is going to start selling machine rolled joints in handy cellophane wrapped packs and cartons just like they do cigarettes and in the process nearly every boutique pot grower/seller will be out business overnight. The cartels don't have the expertise, nor will they wind their organizations down quickly enough that the existing profits won't be eaten alive.

Unlike alcohol prohibition I fully expect governments to keep going after their assets long after prohibition ends. In the end there will be a small trust fund, for future generations that will likely be mostly wiped out in one or two generations of their families. That is if interfamily war doesn't destroy the whole thing. These cartel families are nothing like the mob.

Comment Re:Wise criminals stay in the shadows... (Score 1) 120

The templars make more money selling Iron Ore to China than they do moving drugs. Problem is the drug side of the operation is what keeps things going, most cartel members use drugs heavily so it's questionable whether they would be able to control their muscle without the drug trade because that muscle is essential to running the Iron ore portion of the business.

Comment Re:Doesn't matter... (Score 2) 208

I feel bad, I should've sourced where I got the saying from. To quote wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiot_proof) which more eloquently describes the origin of the saying I used to post in my cubicle which is a quote of Douglas Adams from Mostly Harmless.

Along those lines, Douglas Adams wrote in Mostly Harmless, "a common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools."

Comment Re:Wise criminals stay in the shadows... (Score 1) 120

There is a very simple way out. It's called the end of prohibition.

In no time at all the cartels will be starved of the money they need to operate, without the millions in cash they can't pay the security and they cant bribe the government officials. The result will be a massive loss of the men that make up their force and a government suddenly willing to tackle taking down the key players.

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