On the mac platform lots of programs are available in the "app store." If we're counting those then a single game / program might be considered an "app" >$50

Two people hitting an offer at exactly the same trade is an EXTREMLY rare event because literally these guys are polling based on a difference of micro, nano, or picoseconds.

Citation please?

While you are correct that trades are typically allocated on a first come first served basis (creating an incentive to those who are speedy) most of what you wrote is bollucks

For $200 / hour a proper commercial flight will be much less expensive.

Utter rubbish.

I used to work for a high frequency firm, and I can tell you the downwards strategy is as important as the upward strategy. While in theory it is true that potential gains on the upside are unlimited and potential gains on the downside are limited to the share price this presupposes that a stock price can go to infinity. Realistically, this is not true, and realistically barring a catastrophe a stock does not go to zero. Even then a stock does not go to zero immediately when becoming worthless (see Dead Cat Bounce)

HFT is focused in on short term moves. On a short period of time, say the order of seconds, it will dominate. On a longer period of time, say hours, days, or weeks, investor sentiment will dominate. Even when HFT goes completely wonky and accidentally manipulates the market, over a period of days investor sentiment will still dominate.

Additionally, stock ownership represents ownership in an underlying company, that on average will experience growth. As profits grow, the value of the shares grow. Therefore growth in the present value of stocks is the natural state. Additionally, while you might take the counter argument that not all stocks should grow, most indices will cut out underperforming stocks. Therefore, an index is a bad indicator for the stock market at large because you are artificially selecting for winners and losers.

Sort of like an auction but not like an auction. There is no centralized keeper of bids, people make offers, and people take offers. HFT relies on speed because if I am faster than you I will take all the good offers and leave none of the bad offers.

A randomization of the bidding process would require change in the underlying mechanism as well

Slashdot editors should assume all readers have ADD, and make sure in 5 seconds I can tell what the hell it's about.

Won't work. How do you suppose trades actually go through and prices get discovered? Trading and price discovery sort of works like an auction. An auction is not effective if you randomly scramble the order the bids come in.

I say like an auction because there's not actually an auctioneer, it's more complicated than that. Some people do what's called passive execution. They put a quote out there that says "I'll buy XYZ at $x and sell at $y." Other people do what's called aggressive execution. They see your order to buy for $x and they "hit" it, and take the other side of the order.

Algorithms ultimately move the price they're willing to buy or sell at up or down, which is what creates price discovery. So if I'm willing to buy at a higher price than you, my quotes will get "hit" and you'll either need to match my offer price, or stay out.

That's where the speed advantage comes in. If I publish a quote to say I'll buy at $x + $0.05, and it takes my competitors 500 ms to react, and you can react in 100ms, you can buy shares from my competitors and sell to me before the market stabilizes.

That's the point of the delay. Right now there's a speed arms race where the fastest trader basically takes all the chips. If you can react to price discovery in 100ms, and it takes me 500ms, I effectively can't trade anymore.

Well let's say you want to buy a share, who do you buy it from? Or let's say you want to sell a share, who do you sell it to?

It used to be you'd actually have to find someone to step in and take the contra side of your transaction. That's a pain in the ass, will cost you time and money, and in the event you need to sell and everyone else wants to sell you're screwed. All of this would mean that unless you had lots of money to invest, the stock market was not for you.

Fast forward to today. We have people willing to take a position, any position. They provide "liquidity" for the market by buying the share you wanted to sell, in the hopes that they can turn around and sell it for a fraction of a cent more when someone comes along with a buy order. They actively manage their inventory of shares (yes that's a thing), and adjust prices in the event information comes out causing a large price change in the shares.

This is a service that needs to continue if you want modern markets to maintain their efficiency.

Now here's the problem. Back when the "marketmakers" were actual human beings buying and yelling at each other in trading pits one would not be substantially faster than another. But, using computers, there's an arms race for speed. If you can get a few miliseconds (or even nanoseconds) faster than your competition, you can take all of the profitable orders. This means if you plough enough money into speed, you can just own the market. In addition, because computers are so fast, your computer can make many millions of silly trades before a human trader can push the big red stop button.

Now a solution needs to come about. But, because of the need for market makers speed can't really be limited to holding onto shares for months. (Sorry). 500 ms basically breaks the arms race since it's a very easy speed to obtain. So, you can't just plough money into being the fastest kid on the block.

Man keep up with the conspiracy theories! The intelligentsia illuminati KNOW global warming is real, but it will helpfully kill off most of the imbeciles with famine, drought, and pestilence on a biblical scale right about the time that automation put them out of work anyways. This prevent revolution, and allows the technocracy to implement "changes" that may deprive liberties but will allow the remaining knuckleheads to survive, which will encourage them to accept that privacy is dead, and that Zombie Lincoln is their new overlord.

</Tongue In Cheek>

Oh I'm sorry, did you want a serious answer? ;)

While it may be true there are less known exploits for oddball platforms, an oddball platform is not inherently more secure, and certainly not 100% virus / trojan proof. All you do is add a level of difficulty, which may stop script kiddies, but a determined attacker (or sophisticated attacker who might see more oddball equipment then you think (read NSA)) will still get through.

Yeah but how much is your life worth?

I value my life infinitely, no matter how much cash you offer me, I will not put a bullet in my head in exchange for the currency. Everyone else does as well because generally no one who gets arrested and gets the death penalty says "let's do this, it was a fair trade"

If I HAD to do something illegal, I sure as hell would avoid the death penalty.

But people don't think rationally. They think short term. It's the same reason why normal people have so much problem investing.

What you're really pointing to is the fact that there are MULTIPLE problems with the prison system.

The fact that you solve one problem and others exist doesn't mean all the problems shouldn't be addressed.

Currently I'm traveling around SE Asia. Just about every country you go to has capital punishment for anyone trafficking in drugs. Yup, bring anything into singapore and they'll hang you by the neck until dead. Of course waiting would be cruel, they'll do it quite promptly the following friday.

(Citation? Of course: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...)

The funny thing is, even though you would think most people would want to avoid the long drop I am quite often asked if I want to buy drugs.

This to me really shows that people just are not rational enough to avoid crime no matter how harsh the punishment we mete out. Because of this, really I think the best option is to focus in on rehabilitation, and in extreme cases locking people away to protect society, because the fact of the matter is that punishment as a deterrent does not work.

Learning is just about putting in the work. If you decide that you want to learn emacs LISP, and want to implement a project in it, it's possible if you're willing to put in the work.

As others have pointed out, the more salient question is, why? If you really have progressed up the ladder, then presumably your focus is no longer about daily programming, but more about project management and general management. At that level, it becomes less important to be able to implement a widget in the newest shiny language, but to be able to bring the project (successfully) to completion.