They used to say communism works in theory, but I don't think that old saying still applies. It really doesn't work, if you pick apart the details. I think libertarianism is the same thing: from the big picture perspective, it sounds great, but beyond that, it's logically flawed---it ignores the reality that human nature and human institutions are imperfect and corrupt. Or the idea that the "free market" is the solution to everything---my understanding is that a perfect market is one with a truly level playing field. A truly level playing field is one in which all participants have access to complete information at all times---how is that possible under any circumstances? A perfect market, with a truly level playing field is simply not possible, not even "in theory". So our current system is broken, but the libertarians want to replace it with something that is logically also not perfect.

While I feel that regulations are a double-edged sword, I do think they make my life better. And this goes back to the comment I quoted above: how can anyone think that their life would truly improve if all regulations were removed? Think about how hard your life would be: is the water you're drinking safe? Is your food tainted? Are the buildings in which you live and work structurally sound? Are they wired safely? Are the consumer electronics you're buying filled with mercury or other heavy metals? Are they going to electrocute you when you plug them in? I think the anti-regulation people (libertarians, right?) either don't recognize or at least take for granted how much "free" comfort they get due to regulations. And they always come back and say, but there would be independent businesses, bound by contract law, that would audit foods and structures and consumer products for safety (e.g. Underwriters' Laboratories). But how can anyone think that for profit "regulators" would really work in the interest of the public? They will be paid by the companies making products, and their first priority will always be profits. And how can we audit those private companies, to make sure they are actually honoring their contractual obligations? See my comment above about a level playing field. Furthermore, necessarily, products that are "regulated" by these for-profit companies will cost more. So poor people are further screwed, as they will be less likely to afford the "safe" stuff.

I have yet to have someone explain to me why libertarianism isn't another term for social Darwinism. The fundamental underpinnings of a market economy are supply and demand. What work an individual performs is a function of his personal "supply". That is, his talents, aptitudes, and/or interests. Not everyone can make the big bucks, for one reason or another. As the parent said, most jobs don't pay in proportion to their benefit to society. I just don't get it: how can a pure market economy and a society held together by contract law (isn't that libertarianism in a nutshell?) suddenly change human nature and values in such a way that the needs of the masses are balanced with the needs of the individual? Does anyone really believe that optimizing a society's structure around the needs of the individual will be good for everybody as a whole? Can some people not see (in less that two minutes) that there are plenty of examples where individual interests directly conflict with a group's interests?

At the end of the day, humans are imperfect and therefore human institutions are imperfect. I think the goal of any government is to recognize those flaws, and try to create a structure where the effects of those flaws are minimized. And I don't think there's a single silver bullet to fix it. Like anything we build, a government, a market structure, a society---they all require care and feeding, planning and monitoring, checks and balances. That is, it requires work. I think there's a middle ground where most people will be driven to do that work, for the greater good---that is, work for something that benefits themselves and at worst has a neutral impact on everyone else. And frankly (perhaps in contrast to everything I just wrote), that middle ground is a little less comfort than I think most middle class (and up) people in the USA have come to expect. Too much comfort, and we become shiftless and complacent; too little comfort and we might as well revert back to primitive times where daily life was a struggle to survive. Make life hard enough that I'm motivated to work hard and improve it; but also make life easy enough that I still have the time and energy to care about more than my immediate needs.

I see this mantra repeated often around here, but I'm not so sure it's entirely true. First, what is a "regular stock holder"? On one end, there are small-time, buy-and-hold investors such as myself; on the other end, there are big institutional investors who manage massive portfolios for pension funds, insurance companies, mutual funds, etc. And there's everything in between. From one end of the spectrum to the next, you have very different trading profiles, and thus are affected very differently by high-frequency trading.

For someone like myself, I make maybe a few dozen (relatively) small buys per year. These buys are usually in the neighborhood of 100 shares. If a high-frequency trading program jumps in and effectively front-runs me to to make a few pennies, I don't really care. Overpaying by a penny or two per share means nothing given my buy and hold (long term) strategy. I'm already out $9.99 per trade in commissions to my broker. I'm looking at a horizon of at least ten years, when these relatively small additional costs shouldn't matter.

On the other end of the spectrum is the big institutional investor, like the pension- or mutual-fund manager. This person's job is to constantly rebalance the portfolio to meet some pre-defined metrics; he's generally actively trading huge amounts on a daily basis. While he certainly wants to get the best price possible when he trades, it's practically impossible for him to do that given the volumes in which he deals. Unless he has a highly specialized trading algorithm---that is, something just as sophisticated as the high-frequency traders---he can't help but signal his intentions to the market. Telegraphing his intentions is what makes him a "victim" of the high-frequency traders.

I'm not a fund manager, but my assumption is that, like me and my small buy-and-hold strategy, he also doesn't care about having a small percentage skimmed off of each transaction. To me, it's like buying a big-ticket item, such as a car. Say you budget $27k to buy yourself a new car. Now, some enterprising company goes out and manages a massive, real-time database of every car available for sale in the country. This company can use this database to find you the exact car you want, right now for $27,250. If you're willing to spend $27k, do you really care if you pay an extra $250? And for that $250, you get precisely what you want, and don't have to wait. Compared to going to a dealer, who, if you're lucky, might have what you want at your price... but chances are, the dealer will have something close to what you want, and you'll have to negotiate the price. Or maybe the dealer can get you exactly what you want, but you'll have to wait while he works the intra-dealer process to provision the car. Or maybe he can get you exactly what you want, for even less than $27k, but you'll have to wait for the car to be manufactured. A car buyer can face all these scenarios, but I believe the fund manager most closely mimics the first: that is, he knows exactly what he wants, and he wants it right now.

My prediction is that we'll see the high-frequency trading landscape continue to evolve. Like anything, there will come a day when that kind of business and the skills required to do it are commoditized. And when it reaches that point, it will be much less lucrative. I think we'll see traders of all profiles using ideas and techniques from the high-frequency world in their own trading, meaning that the very people high-frequency traders take from will become direct competitors. The small-time trader like me will implicitly use such techniques, though they will be invisible, as it will actually be implemented by my discount broker (perhaps they'll offer me the BestPrice(tm) service, which just uses high-frequency methods to get me a better price). The big institutional investor will build out his own algorithmic trading system with better "stealth" tactics, and also competes directly with the high-frequency types. I think we are heading towards a truly automated financial landscape. The "market" will consist of a bunch of little competing programs, and we'll see near-100% of all trades being not just electronic, but initiated by an algorithm rather than a human.

The ethics of all this I think is the same as with all technology. In the USA, doctors usually have high salaries. Even mediocre doctors probably fall into the "upper middle class" category, and some exceptional and specialist docs trickle into the "wealthy" category. And I think most folks would agree that an honest doctor's benefit to society is fairly tangible---they're helping you and your loved ones stay healthy. So perhaps they deserve their big paychecks. I also think conventional wisdom holds that jobs like nurse and teacher have tangible benefits to our society, though these are typically "middle class" or even "living wage" positions. But if you can consistently detect a mis-priced asset, or a major market move, and express this as a computer program, you'll find yourself securely grounded in the "very wealthy" class. But where's the tangible benefit to society?

Sometimes I take the socialist viewpoint that this is a major failing of capitalism: wealth isn't distributed according to benefit to society. Of course "benefit to society" is subjective, but our current system says detecting mis-priced asset is more valuable than saving a human life. On the other hand, perhaps that asset mis-price detection is truly more valuable than saving a life, we just don't yet have the ability to demonstrate it.

But ultimately, I think it's just human nature. Whenever there's a technology revolution in any industry, we always see questions of "is it too soon to use this?" For example, vaccines in medicine. As someone expecting his first child any day now, I found that there's a huge body of conflicting information (some of it downright scary) regarding infant vaccination. Just like with high-frequency trading, it seems to be a very polarizing topic, with staunch opinions on either side. I find that in situations like this, the truth is usually somewhere in the middle. And I like to think that my take on high-frequency trading is the middle ground---that it's ultimately neither good nor bad for markets, or even the economy as a whole. There's a lot of money to be made in it while it remains a fad. But as the techniques mature and become commoditized, it will be less glamorous and likewise less controversial. Human history is filled with stories of people making fortunes by being early adopters and implementers of technology. I'm not sure mankind has ever seen a new technology that didn't have a silver lining. Algorithmic finance falls into the same category---great for some, but others see the warts. When high-frequency trading as an industry matures---when finance is overwhelmingly algorithmically driven---it will be the "norm" and the warts will have smoothed over someone or at least accepted.

Who says the infrastructure needs be used efficiently?

Besides, if there was more competition for last-mile connectivity, we'd have 10x the number of providers, meaning, 10x the infrastructure. Sure, the usage of all that combined infrastructure would be "inefficient", but it wouldn't have to be so oversold, because there's the same number of customers spread out over more lines.

As someone else mentioned, fiber, aka "the infrastructure", is cheap. It's getting the rights to bury the fiber that's expensive. And I wonder if that's because so many communities have granted monopoly status to last-mile providers like Comcast?

Another "me too" post: I live in the city of Chicago, and I have exactly two options for consumer-grade wired Internet access: AT&T DSL, and Comcast.

Some parts of the city have more options (e.g., WOW and RCN), but not me.

Why not military boarding schools?

Here's my plan:

1. Install cameras in all classrooms
2. Have monthly "reminder" sessions where the kids learn that they can be moved to a military boarding school for bad behavior
3. After a certain number of reported behavior incidents, the taped footage is sent to some neutral 3rd party (like a jury) to review
4. If the 3rd party decides the reports are valid and the student is disruptive, they are put under military control in a boarding school

So we take out the ones that don't want to be there.

The camera and reporting system could also cut both ways: the teachers should also be held to some standards, and the video can be evidence of under-performing teachers as well. Teachers unions would probably keep this from happening though.

I have family and friends who teach in the public school system, and there are far too many classes where the teacher is nothing more than a baby sitter. Concerned teachers who investigate into the lives of their worst students (either in terms of behavior or academic performance) are usually shocked and appalled at the kids' home lives (or lack there of). My aunt has seen kids whose "bedroom" is like the old school interrogation room: peeling paint on the walls and maybe one light bulb hanging from a cord. Some kids don't even have proper beds. And this isn't the urban ghetto---this is smaller town middle America. How can you expect kids to care about school when their home lives are in such shambles? It sounds like a punishment, but a boarding school would introduce structure and routine into such a child's life.

My mother-in-law has a radical, non-politically correct idea for solving the "lousy parent" problem in public schools: if a child or child's parent is the recipient of any form of public aid, that aid can be withheld for at-school behavioral problems. The more I think about it, the more I like the idea.

Oh, you mean I have to work at it?! Well, then, I'm not interested!

Just joking, I think that makes a lot of sense. I believe I actually witnessed this once: years ago, I went out to lunch with two co-workers. One, call him Fundie, was a fundamentalist Missouri Senate Lutheran; the other, call him Thinky, was a non-denominational Christian. Many of the comments I made in my original post apply to Fundie. Whereas, Thinky is someone I really respect: his faith is very important to him and his family, but he was extremely open-minded, and more than accepting of other viewpoints. To him, church was for being part of a community and providing some structure for his children.

Anyway, Fundie and Thinky started discussing their respective churches. Fundy asked Thinky, "Do you allow gays in your church?" Thinky said that they do allow gays, to which Fundie immediately replied, "But the Bible says it's wrong."

Thinky came back with, "Do you allow divorced people in your church?" Fundie replied that they do allow divorced people, to which Thinky replied, "The Bible also says that's wrong."

Fundie had no response, just sat in awkward silence. I had the tact to restrain myself, but in my mind, I wanted to jump up and hi-five Thinky.

My knee-jerk reaction says you're wrong, wrong! :)

But upon further reflection, though I'm a bit ashamed to admit it, you're right. Though perhaps a bit paradoxical, I suppose it's just as easy to be "blinded by rationality" as it is to be blinded by faith. That is, if you're usually in a rational mindset, you might tend to assume you're always rational. And I think it's inhuman to truly be in a perpetually rational state of mind.

So how do you approach it?

I think you are (at least indirectly) speaking to something that scares the crap out of me: the growing influence of Christian Fundamentalists in the USA. In other words, the people who refuse to believe anything that is incompatible with their faith. By definition, these people are incapable of rational discussion. And when you try to point out their logical errors, they basically say, "that can't be, because the Bible says so," or, as you say, write you off as a fancy pants intellectual. Either way, you are left in a situation where you might as well be speaking two different languages. Actually, if one person refuses to deal in facts and reason, you might as well be speaking to a crazy person, or a dog, or a tree, because the conversation will go nowhere.

I spent the first 27 years of my life in small-town, midwestern USA. I hate to be cliche, but "blinded by faith" quite literally describes a significant number of people I've encountered---within my family, at school, at work, and in the community.

So how do you approach these people, who are either unable or unwilling to communicate rationally? I've thought about this long and hard, but I can't come up with any solution. And I keep seeing suggestions that their numbers, power, and influence are growing. It's conceivable that they will eventually wield some real power (or you could argue they do already). And just as soon as they can, I guarantee you they will try as hard as possible to eradicate all the "fancy pants intellectuals".

I have a friend who teaches 7th grade math at a public school in a small town in central Illinois. She teaches there because, from a student quality and compensation point of view, it's one of the better schools. But the community is small enough that the overwhelming majority of the residents are fundamentalist Christians. Evolution is not taught at this school; school billboards have Christian propaganda all over them; Wednesday is "giving alms" day, and as such, there are no scheduled activities outside of normal classes. On the surface, it looks like a normal public school, but when you get in, you realize it might as well be a private Christian school. And that goes for the community as a whole---on the surface, it is a nice town, mostly upper-middle class residents, low crime, close to a bigger town with all the bigger-town attractions, etc. I always thought it would be a nice place to live until my friend told me about her school. I wonder how many unsuspecting non-Christians end up there, and are quickly run out because of their differences?

In my experience, I've found that what's available varies greatly, even within the same metro area or even city. I used to live in a Northwest Chicago suburb: there were several cable (tv/net) providers, but I lived in a multi-unit building, and Comcast actually owned the building's infrastructure, so they were literally the only option.

I now live in a house in a sparsely-populated part of the City of Chicago, and AT&T and Comcast are the only two options, even though other areas of the city have more options.

I had Comcast cable-based high-speed internet (HSI). I started in on a promo rate that was about $50/month (IIRC) for HSI and basic cable (very basic, effectively local broadcast plus religious, public access and shopping channels). I didn't want the cable, but the promo HSI rate only applied if I got some TV service, so it was actually cheaper to get HSI plus TV rather than HSI alone.

Eventually the promo ran out, and Comcast wouldn't negotiate. I tried calling several times, going straight to the "Cancellations Department", etc etc, and couldn't get them to extend the promo rate. The HSI+TV cost went up to $75/month, and HSI alone was $60/month. To Comcast's credit, the HSI service was generally fast and reliable. But I thought it was too much.

At the same time, AT&T happened to be offering their DSL service for $20/month for the fastest "Elite" tier (6 MB/s). Prices go down from there. I already have a land-line due to having a security system, but I read the promotional material very closely, at it sounded like you could get the same DSL deal without an actual phone line. I was hesitant, but found the DSLReports Forums to be very helpful. One, I was able to ping other forum users to see if there was anyone in my neighborhood with the service (an informal survey of sorts). Two, they have dedicated, private tech support forums where you can actually talk directly to a tech person about the service. In other words, at the cost of waiting a day or two for a response, you actually get a useful answer from someone who knows something, rather than taking your chances with the yahoos at the 1-800 number.

That $20/month is guaranteed for a year, but without any contract (cancel any time), and no setup or equipment fees. I was quite skeptical, but we've had the service for over two months now, and I haven't had any problems. It is slower than Comcast's HSI, but fast enough for streaming HD Netflix, which is our highest requirement.

By the way, my landline is about $16/month, bringing my total monthly outlay to AT&T to $36/month, still cheaper than Comcast. We use cellphones for everything, but need a landline for the security system. If you live in Illinois and have a similar requirement (basic land line service), check out the Citizen's Utility Board. They have negotiated an AT&T plan called "Consumer's Choice Basic", which is as cheap as possible for AT&T. When I signed up for this, it wasn't available online, and I had to call their 1-800 number to get it... and even then, they are shady and try to add services if you don't pay close attention to your order.

As another poster mentioned, there are now really only two chipset vendors for AMD CPUs, nVidia and AMD itself (at least in the desktop space, there may be others in the server space). I haven't done a detailed study recently, but last I checked, both were still sub-par compared to Intel's chipset offerings. nVidia had fairly widespread problems with the actual manufacturing of their chips; it tended to affect laptops more than desktops, but both were at risk. In general, the nVidia chipsets at least used to be quite power hungry.

The AMD chipsets just don't compete with the Intel equivalent. There was a website that benchmarked AMD's SATA 3 against Intel's SATA 2; the Intel won! Also, I don't know if they still exist, but AMD's SATA performance used to change depending on whether you used the native AMD interface or switched to AHCI mode. I forget the details, but you can google for it. AMD also doesn't produce their own ethernet chips. That's not a problem, but it means that AMD boards usually come equipped with an el-cheapo Atheros or Realtek ethernet implementation. I think that Intel makes the best ethernet hardware, hands-down. Yet, outside of the server space, it's impossible to find an AMD board with an Intel NIC on it.

Finally, while AMD's on-board graphics are some of the best you can get (definitely better than anything Intel currently makes), they don't support dual digital output. I have two monitors, and prefer to run them both digitally (i.e. HDMI or DVI). All of AMD's on-board GPUs allow only one digital device to be connected at a time. You can do two monitors with one digital and one analog, but I can see a quality difference; analog sucks.

Overall, though, I think AMD still offers a lot of value. The issues I pointed out will go unnoticed by the casual user. And the power user should understand his needs well enough to know if they make a difference. E.g., I know the Realtek NIC is inferior to the Intel, but is it going to make a difference in day-to-day usage? For the average desktop? Probably not. Another nice feature AMD provides is ECC memory support for all non-Sempron CPUs. With Intel, you have to shell out the big bugs for a Xeon-branded CPU to get ECC support. The unfortunate thing, though, is that most consumer motherboards don't actually provide the traces that allow you to actually use the ECC support! The Biostar A760-G M2+ is a noteable example that actually does let you use the ECC features of the CPU (though it's unofficially supported).

I don't disagree with the overall theme of your post, but just a bit of a nit: I often see people saying I run all these things on my computer, so I need as many cores as possible. The number of processes (or threads) really doesn't mean anything; it's how much work each of those processes are doing. My firewall/router computer is an OpenBSD system running on an AMD Geode processor (500 MHz I think). This is a single core CPU that's slower than even an Atom (I've seen people compare it to a 486!). On this machine, I run a name server, ssh server, time server, DHCP server, and a firewall. The Geode is plenty powerful for all these things for a small home network. Of course, if I was, say an ISP with 100s of customers, the Geode wouldn't be sufficient.

So, in general, any one of the processes you listed can be virtually no CPU load, or require a whole cluster by itself. Consider a mail server. If you're not doing virus scanning, I would guess that you can support 100s of typical users on a pretty wimpy computer, as it's really mostly I/O load. But to run, e.g. gmail.com, that requires a bit more power. The same goes for a web server: if you're serving mostly static pages or relatively simple dynamic pages with a limited number of users (for example, a hobby web development server), it's mostly I/O load, and doesn't take a powerful CPU at all. But, on the other hand, pick any high-profile site, and it's obvious you need a lot more horsepower. The point is, simply saying "I run a webserver" doesn't really actually say anything about the load you're putting on your system.

HTPC = every piece of media you have can be played from a single device.

And DVR capabilities as well, with something like MythTV.

...well, almost. I have the following requirements: streaming Netflix, DVR capabilities, and playback of large-ish DVD rip collection (x264 encoded, stored in MKV container).

A Linux-based HTPC (i.e. MythTV system) can do all of these, except Netflix. I have a PS3, which works for Netflix, but isn't as convenient (have to get up and put the Netflix disc in the PS3). Yeah, that's not a big deal, but the "HT" in HTPC is for "home theater", and to me, having everything accessible from one remote is part of the true HT experience.

I considered running Windows under a virtual machine on my Linux HTPC. While in theory that ought to work OK, it seemed like a "fragile" solution, as the remote control programming would have to be semi-complex to allow seamless switching between MythTV and the Windows virtual machine.

Given the cost (comparable to a Windows license) and ease-of-use of the Roku player, I opted for that.

On the other hand, perhaps a Windows-based HTPC is the real solution? Is there a MythTV equivalent for Windows? That is, a free and reliable DVR with a strong community behind it? Complete with commercial skipping/flagging?!

If I'm not mistaken, XBMC can be used as a MythTV frontend, and is available for Windows.

Now I'm starting to wonder if I was too quick to click "Submit" on the Roku purchase: existing Linux-based HTPC could be moved to the basement, and become a pure mythbackend. Instead of the Roku, I could buy a tiny, ION system for the front room. Install Windows, XBMC, and have the same functionality, but all in one box?

Has anyone else gone this route?

In some respects, I think that's what Gentoo is.

Massively off-topic now, but... does anyone know why there are city workers in downtown Chicago directing traffic when the automated signal lights are working just fine?. Every evening I walk through the intersection of Madison and Canal there is at least one person directing traffic. But their direction is exactly the same as the signal lights'.

So, how is this efficient? Maybe it's worse in other cities?