There are two mutually exclusive sets of frequencies, "can hear" and "can't hear".
Max(can hear) = 20k.
Therefore 320k and uncompressed (above 20k) are both in the "can't hear" set

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04...

this article explains in depth what the problem is. the SEC has now been alerted to the problem, and is investigating. the people who found the issue believed originally that this was deliberate, but it actually just turned out to be a systemic problem of the speed differentials between different routes that high-frequency trades come in at.

what they originally discovered was that they could see a price on a screen, but the moment that they put in the bid to a number of brokers, the price would DISAPPEAR. they thought that this was deliberate, that someone was scamming them: it turned out that this wasn't true, but it took a couple of years of investigation to find out. what they did was they put in *individual* bids *directly*, and found that they were accepted. they then investigated various combinations, introducing delays into the bids, and found, amazingly, that it was down to the *time of arrival at the exchange* of their bids as they were sent via numerous brokers.

so it was only when they invented a tool (which they called "Troy") that *deliberately* introduced networking delays, such that the bids would (as best they could manage) arrive within milliseconds of each other at the exchange, that they managed to trade successfully.

if however any one of those bids happened to go via a different ISP, or a different router, or any other random combination, then the bids would *FAIL*.

the problem it turns out is that these delay effects are well-known. most of the money in high-frequency trading is therefore made by seeing a slightly slower broker's prices, then putting in an undercutting bid *knowing full well* that the other broker has a slower network. and this aspect of high-frequency trading is what is currently under investigation by the SEC.

*this is why the introduction of networking delays is so absolutely important*.

the people who discovered this phenomenon basically had to set up their own independent exchange in order to solve the problem. they needed to introduce a delay of 350ms as a way to make things fair for everyone. they did this by basically putting in 38 miles of fibre-optic cable in a shoe-box in the basement of the server farm that they leased.

it turns out that once investors discovered this, they began *specifically demanding* that their trades *exclusively* be brokered through this new exchange that had this 350ms shoe-box delay. it actually caused a lot of embarrassment for a number of brokers and trading houses because the brokers were explicitly disobeying their client's instructions, because the brokers didn't understand how important this really is.

anyway: you really have to read that article (or the book) fully because it's quite complex, and it's basically an inherent flaw down to the fact that the internet (TCP/IP) is routed randomly, thus introducing gross unfairness that has become the subject of intense investigation, very recently.

so yes, *all* trading should be done with at least a 350ms delay.

IMO the "right" thing to do is either release the source or provide full API and file format specs. Also, if we are going to grant software patents as well as copyright, an "implementation" requirement should be added to the patent - (electronically) attach the source/specs to the patent. I don't thing corporate bean counters will like any of those options, but as someone who has spent 20+yrs developing commercial software I think they are "cutting their nose off to spite their face". Anyone who has ever pinpointed an unknown bug in someone else's proprietary O/S or application will know just how much time and effort goes into just finding the "other geek" in the different department/company who can understand what the hell you are talking about, let alone convince them it's a bug that needs fixing in their code. Fortunately we developers don't see much of that activity, just the delays, missed deadlines, and contradictory requirements that flow from it.

However it must be said that in cases where public safety is an issue suppliers board members, managers and "principle engineers" are often in the legal crosshairs if it can be shown they were "negligent" (eg:Y2K issues). The gaping hole in this approach is an ISO (or similar) audit once every few years is generally enough to get you off the hook. In my experience such an audit can be anything from a full day inquisition with detailed and relevant questions to "I was audited? When?"

OT: Truth be known most IT corporates would love to have a "developer pool" just like the old "typing pool", ie: cheap, replaceable cogs. I'm only 10yrs from retirement, so I doubt it will affect me personally, however IBM's "Watson" is starting to look like a viable way to send many relatively expensive "IT knowledge workers" to the unemployment scrap heap along side the secretaries, typists, telegraph operators, tea ladies, bank tellers, etc. Now may be a good time in history for ambitious young developers to become an expert in the "art" of developing/training expert systems such as Watson. .

The invisible hand has America by the balls. It feels good, for a while...

Ever heard of software "clean rooms"? - If a thousand monkeys did actually manage to recreate the windows source code they would not be infringing copyright, monkeys can't read so obviously they cannot be guilty of copying anything belonging to MS.

in the studies that i've been doing for the past four months the best explanation i've encountered is one where particles are actually photons obeying maxwell's equations *to the absolute* letter, on some form of circular (or knotted, or hubius helical) path, where the epicentre creates a synchtronic electro-magnetic field that it in symbiotic support of the epicentre. there is actually a lot of research recently into optics which shows that it *is* actually possible to create phased laser beams that will literally bend in a semi-circle.

with that description in mind, the definition of a "particle" is therefore that the phase of the photon at the centre rotates in one direction.... and that for an anti-particle it rotates in the opposite direction. the string theorists / knot physics people have this down as "the knot being tied left-handed or right-handed".

it's really that simple... but it requires a bit of explanation otherwise it makes no sense. why did the universe choose one in priority over the other? who knows: who cares. the choice has been made.

que?? since when did married people have sex??

ok. i understand. there are personal views and there is a naive belief that his personal views will somehow interfere with his legal obligation to enact the articles of incorporation as a Director of a Corporation. to imply that someone is unfit to distinguish between personal and professional (legal obligations) is actually a very very serious accusation to level at someone, for which he could probably demand significant compensation, as well as initiate libel lawsuits against those people making such defamatory remarks. as he has faithfully been the CTO as well as a loyal person within the Mozilla organisation for such a long time i think he would stand an extremely good chance of winning.

i have a bit of a problem comprehending firewall rules (and deploying them). i asked around (just as you did) and got the advice "use fwbuilder". i liked it so much that i ended up writing a python script that parsed its xml files and generated HTML output so that i could clearly see what it was doing.

but, despite admitting that i am not a firewall rules expert, i do have to say that nothing substitutes for actually studying what firewall rules are and understanding them properly. i say that from the position of being a person who, whenever they need firewall rules, does an internet search and cuts/pastes the results successfully into an amalgam that "does the job", but it "does the job" with the concern always being in the back of my mind that i probably completely messed it up...

i'm sorry but i genuinely fail to see the importance of any of this "personal view" stuff. a technically-competent person who has been with it almost since the beginning: they were the CEO of Mozilla for about a week. someone as technically competent as brendan should have absolutely no difficulty firewalling personal from professional: why do we have to have idiots believe otherwise? could someone therefore please explain to me in simple language what's really going on?

You might think they are making decisions like stupid morons, but very likely it is a calculated response Indeed, my point was that their calculations are based on a different worldview, one that equates informed and uninformed opinion. One of the key words in Sagan's quote is "knowledgeably".

Send a sperm bank and a handful of (very dedicated) women, deter first cousins or closer from breeding, population remains low it doesn't expand until the ship nears it's destination, it then expands at a predetermined rate to provide the workforce needed to construct the colony upon arrival.

Pro tip: Not that it applies here but I always taught my CS students to code "defensively" by making it a habit to put constants on the LHS of a comparison, because...
if ( constant=variable) - Throws a compiler error, cannot become an application bug.
if (variable=constant) - At best a compiler warning, at worst an application bug.

That was back in the early 90's, many compilers back then did not issue a warning for the second case because it's valid syntax. Nowadays most compilers will issue an explicit warning for assignment in a conditional expression. Still, it's a good habit to cultivate since compiler warnings can be ignored/missed by others but compiler errors can't.

As someone else suggested it's probably debug code that found its way into production. It's not a lack of skill problem it's a process problem, code reviews should have picked it up but obviously didn't, how it got as far as customers is the question MS should be asking.

More depressing clips: A guy called ClimateBrad has a large collection of clips from US politicians doing their very best to make up their own facts and rules of logic.

Up until I reached my 40's I thought people like Senator Inhofe in the US and Tony Abbot here in Oz were uneducated, stupid, or more likely both. They are none of those things, they're just plain immoral by normal western standards when it comes to honesty (even the good ones). To paraphrase Shaun Micallef - "The media is called the fourth estate but behaves like a fifth wheel", like the political system it revels in conflict and is trained in the (in)humanities. If it can't find controversy in a story then it invents some (say) by equating a "one jump away" lobbyist's press release from one of their major sponsors to a meticulous scientific report. The Iraq war and "Climategate" are both prime examples of commercial media being worse than useless in clarifying a complex issue, particularly in the US.

The honest self-skepticisim required to be successful in the scientific and engineering world is a career killer in the political world. They have a different worldview that says everything boils down to an opinion, and all opinions are equal. Therefore social skills are more important than evidence and manipulation is more useful than reason. OTOH we have way too many Phd's in the hard sciences who have never stepped foot in a "Ph" class in their life and would not know Popper from Popoff.

Thing is, the political worldview is our natural behaviour, it's instinctual and we all do it to some degree because...well..it almost works. Critical thinking is a learned behaviour that basically refines "common-sense" using agreed rules of evidence and logic, it is the foundation of The Enlightenment, a radical shift in human behaviour barely 500yrs old. It's unsurprising that it hasn't permeated to everyone in the modern world that the "age of reason" created with extraordinary speed over the last 50-100yrs.

"I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness..." - Sagan, Demon Haunted World (Science as a candle in the dark)