The macbook also has 2.5x the battery life. Sometimes its worth paying for a better engineered product.

Yep, that's a cow alright.

In terms of natural issues, it doesn't seem to me like it would be any more dangerous than many inhabited islands. In fact, I bet some smart planning could create barriers and drainage systems which give it better protection than what most islands have. The server is already Slashdotted so I can't see the details of their plan but outside of the hardships on initial construction I don't see why this wouldn't be feasible.

The list was phones, tablets, set top boxes and tvs. Apple makes products in 3 of the 4 of these, and rather dominates the market in two of them.

I think Apple might have a thing or two to say about that...

If you're more of a cat person, I recommend a serval. An experienced robber will be used to a dog barking, but when they break into your house and hear a roar they are going out a whole lot faster than they came in.

Sure, but these guys got a $500,000,000 contract from the US government to actually make some of these things.

Do they have trucks in that area? Wouldn't that pose a minor issue?

I haven't downloaded anything illegally in quite some time now. Its not that I choose to pay for my material now, I usually just get it from a friend directly instead.

I did however download quite a bit while I was at college and received a nice letter for downloading a copy of Gladiator once. The school wasn't too happy about that one. Oh well.

Hate to reply to myself but also about "hiding" limit orders: Orders can be places with hidden quantities behind them. I can send an order down to sell 100000000 shares but only display 1000 at a time. Whenever my 1000 gets taken out, of any quantity I specify of it, it refreshes back to 1000. Pretty much every exchange allows this. A downside to this is that for ISO orders other floors are only required to clear what you have displayed.

Maybe for a limit order sitting in the book, but the parent is talking about a marketable limit order. When entered the broker (or computer) needs to clear the book (and the books of the various other exchanges, unless an ISO order is used) up to the limit price and THEN post it as a limit order. What the HF machines are doing is essentially buying up the stock in front or along with the marketable limit order and then dumping it back onto that limit order at the tail end of it. This can cause a dramatically worse price to the customer. I see it happen all the time.

Honestly, if you are trading anything less than thousands of shares at a time, this most likely isn't going to effect you to the tune of more than a dollar or two tops per trade unless you are trading in some really thin issues. If you are trading with the kind of size to actually move a stock than:

A. piece apart the trade into smaller portions and direct them to the primary at a limit price only a penny or two higher than the current market (this may increase the commissions you pay, but an extra $100 should be worth it on a million dollar+ trade) Space out the timing on your trades to allow other market players to step back up on the opposite side (don't just slam 2000 share trades at a stock every 3 seconds)

  or

B. establish a good relationship with your brokerage firm. Play the big shot and make them want to keep you around. Make it known that you have more trades to do but that if you're not happy with your execution that you will go elsewhere (and you should.) You should be able to tell your broker that you want the order worked not held and for best price over speed of execution. If your firm doesn't honor such a request, take your business somewhere else. A not held order should ensure that your trade is manually handled, and by spreading the order out over time you are helping to ensure that large chunks aren't executed all at once. Keep an eye on the tape for whatever you are trading. If you see large prints going up that match up to the size of your order than you're getting fucked. Complain to your customer rep. They will want to keep you around and you can probably get an adjustment. The broker will hate you for this but hey, its your money.

WoW has gotten significantly greedier in this regard over the past few years. I remember when it first came out, my returns home I would be forced to play on a 900 mhz pentium 3 machine with onboard video. It wasn't pretty, Ironforge was a mess, but it ran. I would have thought an iPad would have a little more horsepower.

Generally, trade reports are generated from you know, trades. Typically, for the reason of the article, these systems don't allow the users to generate reports even for testing purposes. Rather, they would submit a trade in a test stock such as ZVZZT or ZXZZT. These would generate a trade, which would show on the reports, but not have any clearing associated with them. While it is possible to "dummy" in trade reports, even a rudimentary glance at the corresponding blotter would throw up red flags as there would be no clearing associated with the trades, and they would have no presence on the tape. I know the auditors were crooked, but this is an aspect of the scam that the SEC should have been all over. A system which would make it appear as if there was clearing (at least on the paper that Madoff was generating) without that clearing actually being there is something that should shout "FRAUD" to anyone involved in the project.