Over where I live (Czech Republic) I'm told it's been this way for several years now. Although even before that, the local Vodafone made a point of differentiating itself from competitors by selling only unlocked phones. Their position was always "our service is so much better that we don't need to lock you in".

I wouldn't be surprised if this was the case in a lot of the EU countries (or if it were an EU-wide directive shortly).

Yet most beliefs don't seem to attract the level of politically-correct-bullshit-hysteria-preventing-rational-discussion that environmentalism does. Which is what this article is about.

I agree. This story is such an excellent example of why environmentalism can be so dangerous and *must* be subjected to intense criticism, not adopted automatically "because that's what we should all do, right?".

It plays on people's fears, causes them to act irrationally and in the end can achieve environmentally negative results - as in the case of Germany introducing 20 new coal power-plants - the same that we've been so fighting so many years to get rid off, since they pollute the air and deplete non-renewable resources. (Yeah, my country neighbors with Germany, so I actually care about the resulting pollution.)

Yay! Progress... :(

Another way to look at it is that it helps find the price point by analyzing that crow-sourced human price-finding.

I suppose we should also outlaw exit poll election forecasting, since they help us analyze human behavior and thus somehow invalidate the process of voting for our elected officials.

Both this and the parent comment are FUD that is sad to see so highly promoted on Slashdot. It is fear-mongering over technology you don't understand, neo-ludism.

HFT does not replace long-term positions. It cannot. While HFT does make up a lot of VOLUME of sales, they are of absolutely negligible in terms of profits and don't end up having nowhere near the same proportion of profits as the long-term position traders.

- you believe that long-term trading is somehow obliterated by HFT - but the vast majority of PROFITS (not VOLUME) are still realized in long-term trading
- you compare HFT to a Wall Street broker (the whole point of HFT is that it's NOT a physical, slow broker)
- you believe HFT means "computers make investment decisions" (they don't, look it up, HFT company is defined by having virtually no positions at the end of the day)
- you believe this somehow undermines private ownership (see above)

Your hysteria around HFT can be compared to an ludite breaking an early telegraph machine just because he's scared it can read radio morse code signals faster then a human can - and believes that it means the end of people talking to each other, only machines will do the talking from now on. Somewhere along the way, he fails to realize it's still humans talking through the machines, which just amplify their abilities.

It is a sad day when I have to preach about this on Slashdot.

This comment is bullshit, because it demonstrates lack of understanding what HFT is. Let me explain, why HFT cannot be influenced by decisions that the company makes, regardless how long- or short-term those decisions turn out to be.

HFT is not based on strategic company behavior. HFT is purely based on market patterns, ie. patterns created by physical traders

Imagine that Apple introduces a revolutionary new phone. Investors get excited and start buying AAPL stock, thus starting to raise it's stock price. The HFT algorithms discover this sooner then most living investors and starts buying. It's also faster then physical investors to notice when the demand is tapering off, thus stops buying and starts selling.

This short example both illustrates how HFT improves liquidity for longer-term investors (people seeking to buy AAPL stock now have the ability to do so very quickly from the HFT trader) and how company behavior does not influence the HFT behavior (it is not the introduction of iPhone that triggers the HFT, but the reaction physical investors have to it) and the fact that long-term investment is still the most profitable and not hampered by HFT (if you invested into AAPL at the time iPhone was introduced, you're a happy man today).

Cut the fear-mongering and FUD about technology you don't understand. This is not Slashdot-worthy.

78% of which is spam. Remaining 22% is generated in large part from mailing lists. I'd hazard a guess that already today Tweets, Facebook messages and text messages combined easily trounce actual, real email activity. And the gap will be growing.