look at the bright side though, when people start ditching their smart tv's as their apps start getting older and buggier and buggier, there will be plenty of nice free hardware available on the curbside. Then some future open source project - ddwr-tv - will allow us to flash new firmwares to them!

Its amazing what some people throw away as "broken"

So the way I have heard HFT explained is:

Trader 1 asks to sell Xsomething at $1.
Trader 2 asks to buy Xsomething at $1

Before their trade can go through, the HFT system immediately buys trader 1's Xsomething for $1.01. It then immediately sells that stock to trader 2 for $1.02.

Thus the HFT system has increased costs for everyone, while increasing this "middlemans" worth because he is physically closer to the exchange and can intercept legitimate orders as fast as light. Should proximity to the exchange give you a license to rip people off?

So explain please if this is not how it actually works, or why this should not be illegal.

"They have to be very low-latency to make it profitable."

Con men and scammers always try and work as fast as possible on their mark, lest they be discovered. If its as above board as you say, they should have no problem waiting 5 seconds before doing their business. If they can't wait, its a scam.

Seems to block wifi from my tests around the office. New buildings and new windows are often low-e these days it seems. I haven't seen any articles about it, but as for anecdotal experience, I am 100% sure it does muffle wifi to varying degrees..

"cars are a hell of a lot better designed than they were 25 years ago. 25 years ago, a car typically lasted 100,000 miles and generally cost more to maintain that it cost to replace. Today, cars that go through basic maintenance can easily go 200,000 miles. Your 25 year old Toyota is an outlier."

(citation needed). Did they find away to prevent rust completely now? Any well maintained vehicle will last many years. I myself drive a 20+ year old car which runs like a champ. The only problems I really have with it are all rust related. Unless you mean that more cars are made out of more plastic now adays, but I question whether that will make them last longer or less than steel.

The problem I see with modern cars is that there is so much computer control. My car does have a computer in it (OBD1), however it does look like it was designed for a space probe.The entire thing is entombed in some kind of resin which is somewhat indestructible. I think the GP is questioning the standards of today and comparing them with 20 years ago. It does seem like all electronics now adays are designed to fail, running mostly at their spec, as opposed to being over engineered as they were back then. Of course as someone pointed out further above, you dont see the crappy stuff that failed right away and only see the long lasting durable machines and tools that were able to survive.

Still, the statement "Cars are better engineered today (in terms of pure durability)" is a questionable one. Sounds too much like someone trying to sell me a new car for me to just trust it on faith.

" The social BIOS cannot be flashed. It is the bootstrap for all social interactions."

Just apply the kernel patch: "alcohol_v01.gz" or the related update "a_few_drinks_v02.gz" and you will be fine. (disclaimer, most kernels need this sort of patch and there is nothing wrong with that. It is certainly not a "disease")

"That's only how straw man capitalism works, not real world capitalism"

and then

"Of course, in "capitalism" as practiced by the US right now the entrenched bread company would get the government to pass some regulation"

So if the US government practices an example of "straw man capitalism" in the real world, does that not make it "real world capitalism?".

The problem is that your academic version of capitalism has no baring on the real world. In the real world, the CEO would collude and conspire to increase profits at the expense of everything else, including and not limited to his shareholders and the future of the company. Because in capitalist america, short term profits drive YOU!

"Here's a tip: the fuse that needs to be pulled in order to do a hard reset of the system every month or so requires you to have about 7 joints in your hand to get to."

Well there's your problem! put down your 7 joints till your done with the maintenance.

"There are different motherboards?"

Spoken like a true non-enthusiast!

I will assume you are not just trolling.
- number and variety of ports
- number and variety of expansion slots
- number and variety of onboard options
- technologies used
- various manufacturer specific features
- overclocking/over voltaging abilities
- form factor
- board layout
- manufacturer
- price

Each one of those broad categories has lots of different options. The last time I went to purchase a motherboard for myself was 2010 and I spent a good few hours comparing models and looking for the exact features I wanted. For me, it was about board layout, lots of sata ports (8), ability to plug in multiple graphics cards, solid state caps, etc.

If I am going to spend 100-$200 dollars on something, then I damn well better do a few hours of research and not just slap in the first motherboard the salesmen offers me.

Its always cheaper to do the proper research before you buy something!

In 20+ years you never had a motherboard fail 1 or two years after your bought it? hell i had one fail at 5 or 6 months! so then I have to desolder the chip? uh no thanks..

Dont spread misinformation. I have been using duck duck go since mid summer and I find it just as reliable as google was back in the day, before they started adding all the useless crap. I had been looking for a google alternative for years, tried bing and all that, but they all sucked ass. Duck duck go is more like what google once was. Their mapquest integration might not be the best (or mapquest just sucks), so i still do use maps.google.com on occasion, but I was actually surprised how well DDG works.

For me the last straw with google was when they got rid of "cached" copies of webpages, or made it so you had to login to get them. I also see how much is tracked on my girlfriends google + account and how many searches are influenced by things in her gmail. And the last main reason, is that I talk alot of shit about google these days and using them as a search engine was being quite hypocritical. So suck it google/NSA/US govt! no soup for you!

" People need to move forward, otherwise keep using Windows 7."

Why?

Why do I need to move "forward"? Is this OS "forward" because its new? What if "new" is really several steps backward in usability, or compatibility? (for instance, advertising built in)

Basically, what makes newer = forward. Intrinsically, nothing. Yet people keep saying it. Forward in time, well then you are saying nothing. Yes, Windows 8 is newer than windows 7. Kind of a redundant statement to make.

"Reading fail. The (obvious) point the OP was making is that the vast majority of snailmail is catalogs and other junk mail,"

Thinking fail. You haven't ever received a mail in rebate, an ebay package, a small business online order, a care package from grandma, letters from the bank, local catalogues from small businesses, cheques from contract work, reminders about doctor visits, city forms, etc.. recently?

And besides all that, do you really think that the destruction of a carrier will stop or decrease the levels of spam? HA! all that money there, UPS and fedex would be more than happy to enter that market. I doubt you would see even a one day drop in spam volumes. Someone like UPS would buy up the usps business and then charge the average person $7 to send a letter. The volume discounts would likely not change and you would be at the same place you started, except on the rare occasion when you do need to use the service and then you would personally pay a lot more.

Its hard for me to believe that the federal government doesnt own the post office as a government service. Its one of those businesses that should not be run as "for profit". They are providing a service at a low cost to everyone in your country and should be protected.

" Hence your "old ..and poor people" are subsidizing the corporations."

Nice try there sparky, but here's a fun arithmetic fact. 10000 items at 5 cents per item is vastly MORE MONEY than 1 grandmas letter at 2 dollars or whatever. Obviously the advertising industry drives the post office's revenue. You can argue that this is wasteful, environmentally unfriendly and therefor the federal government should really probably pay for the post office to prevent these sorts of spamvalanches, but you are not doing that. You seem to be saying that snail mail is obsolete, which i think is demonstrably false. There is quite a high premium to send things by fedex or ups, thus creating a good niche for USPS, albiet evidently not a profitable one. Should near universal access to a communication tool be profitable? thats the question.

If you ever thought that advocating for or even casually mentioning the assassination of geroge w bush as a positive thing, you cannot really object to people doing the same thing with obama. Back in 2003, i certainly did want bush out by any means necessary. So it would be hypocritical of me to not side with free speech here.

Hate speech is another issue, but as i understand it, hate speech is not illegal in the USA, whereas assassination threats are taken more seriously because of the seriousness of the position. Probably because in the usa the position of president is sacrosanct, whereas hate speech, which often builds to hate crimes (and arguably is more likely to insight actual violence), affects only the ordinary citizen who is less protected then the president, obviously.

Advertising causes mental problems. Advertising is evil and must be stopped. Would you like it if while walking down the street, every 10 feet or so someone spit in your face?

I dont give a cows lick if people that rely on spitting in my face for their revenue have to find another business model. All free content will never dissapear. Perhaps you remember the mid 90s? I can assure you that the internet before advertising did exist.

Advertising causes need, therapy, therapy, advertising causes need. Every minute, every second, buy, buy, buy, buy, buy.

I have also noticed that you are paying a huge premium now for even a 3 year warranty. Most seagate drives now come with a ridiculous 1 year warranty on them, so I wont even look at them any more. WD is not much better, with their green drives being 1-2 years. If you want 3-5 year you are paying 50% more for the drive. For example a 2tb WD black (5 year warranty) has a non sale price of $199 ( http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=58376&vpn=WD2002FAEX&manufacture=Western%20Digital%20WD&promoid=1230 ) whereas the same drive albeit "green" with a 2 year warranty is $119 non sale price ( http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=62047&vpn=WD20EARX&manufacture=Western%20Digital%20WD&promoid=1230 ).

Its a shame because I was looking at old invoices and in 2010 I was buying 2tb drives with 3 year warranties standard for 80 bucks.

Sure they claim to have more "features" with their different colour codes, but it does seem like they just decided 3 years should no longer be industry standard for a warranty. Probably some sort of collusion as they all pretty much changed their warranties at the same time. With seagate, they used to pride themselves in having 5 year warranties. And having recently RMA'd a 1TB drive from 2008, I am glad for that.

Most HDD's die within 3-5 years. So a 1 year warranty is useless except for straight off the truck failures. Arguably, this is more sensible for the company, however it sucks ass for consumers who are used to having a standard 5 year warranty, an artifact of the storage wars of the mid aughts.

So I am not surprised, but not many people are talking about this, which is surprising. Glad to see a slashdot article about it!