And by the year after that, they'll need 128-bit just for the firefox version number.

HFT arbitrage largely exists because of the ability to make bids/offers with no intention of completing the transaction. It's arbitrage -only- because they have the ability to act in bad faith in contracting for a sale. Cancelling bids/offers should be permitted only where there is a bona fide reason which would be valid in other contractual context - like typographical errors and honest mistake where enforcing would be manifestly unjust.

Minor correction. The decision on whether to count the ballot at the polling station lies exclusively with the deputy returning officer. Scrutineers are, however, permitted to object to any ballot being improperly counted, or spoiled. The impugned ballot is noted by the DRO, and subject to review if necessary.

But you're right, paper ballots work just fine. And counting by hand doesn't meaningfully slow down the process of results for polling stations from being made public.

Taxes on corporations are shared by the purchaser of its products, and by its equity holders. The equity holders are "the company". To say that it's only passed on to consumers is simplistic and misleading.

You lost a factor of 10 in there. 10% of 21,000 would be 2,100, donating an average of $23.80 each.

What kind of dumbfuck utility would agree to pay $0.30-0.80/KWh when their production cost is an order of magnitude lower? Massively subsidising "green" energy may be an "easy" answer, but it's not a reasonable one.

And RIM is suing nobody. Because they can't do that right either.

Fun fact, s.351(2) of the Criminal Code of Canada already makes it an offence to wear a mask while committing an indictable offense.

The government wants it to be an offence to wear a mask while disagreeing with those in power.

I was a scrutineer for one of the parties at one of the polls in the riding I lived in during the last federal election in Canada. There were two other parties at the poll who had scrutineers. Each of the three of us sat around a table while the deputy returning officer counted each ballot, showed it to the scrutineers, and waited for the scrutineers to not any exceptions. When he was done, the ballots were sealed in envelopes (which the scrutineers were permitted to initial on the seal), and placed in a box for delivery to Elections Canada.

At the end, each scrutineer checked their count against the official count by the deputy returning officer. The vote total was checked against the ballot booklets. All counts were consistent with each other, and the total consistent with the number of ballots cast.

In this polling station there were no irregular or spoiled ballots, and we had a count to report to our candidate HQ, and for the deputy returning officer to report to Elections Canada, in less than a half hour after the polls closed.

There's no need for machines to count votes. And the notion that people can't count votes quickly, and accurately is pure bullshit.

US currency is not backed by gold reserves, and hasn't been in any meaningful sense since the 70s. It's backed by a common belief that the currency in and of itself has value.

The same thing that prevents real competition in all high fixed-cost industries. "The market" produces oligopolies where there are very high fixed costs relative to the variable costs. The incumbent advantage is higher, at least for Bell and Rogers. Both can leverage their other product oligopolies in the ISP market. That is, they can offer price reductions, and multi-product discounts out of their existing monopoly rents. So a new entrant would have to enter all the markets (phone, wireless, tv, internet) to be able to compete. The other obstruction to new entrants is that the incumbents have "special deals" and perform upgrades in an area when an incumbent starts a new deployment (like ftth). They can afford to wait out the new provider, knowing that they can get back to their monopoly rents when the new company goes out of business.

and the execs would find it harder to justify their $100M year-end bonuses.

They can keep using the same line they always have: they need to pay out those salaries and bonuses to attract the most capable people for the positions. It doesn't matter how badly the company does.

Police and military are effort to no productive purpose, so no they do not create value. Imagine two scenarios. The first is reality, where some people insist on stealing from, and killing each other. In such a world, total surplus from productive effort is higher when a portion of total effort is expended on police and military services. The second is magicalfairyland, where people aren't douchey. That effort which was spent on police and military services in the first scenario can now be allocated to productive purpose. The total surplus in magicalfairyland is the surplus from the first scenario, plus the surplus created by the now productive non-military-and-police-services efforts. So as I said, once again douchebags ruin it for the rest of us.

This creates jobs for both sides

It may create jobs, but they do not create value. These jobs are an economic drain. As usual, people who act like douchebags ruin it for the rest of us.

The US exist strategy for Germany? Maintain status quo: US exists, Germany exists.