It depends on how much you consider "knowledge". I can read pretty much any OO language well enough to understand any recent graduate's code for hiring purposes. I also understand enough to be dangerous in all of them; that is enough to open the IDE, change behavior to suit a requirement, and make sure it works. What I don't know in most of them is when I'm re-inventing the wheel, when I'm doing something a backwards-ass way, etc.

Mostly true. It does change the calculus some. The risk of future events like this/mitigating those risk increase the cost of issuing the cards. Therefore, they may be willing to increase prices (slightly) and issue fewer cards (slightly) to re-maximize profits.

But yeah, this particular event is a one-time cost, so not going to change their pricing structure/desire for profit.

Although there's 3 other veins where the effect may be felt.

1. An "anti-fraud" surcharge may be added to cards, because non-sticker costs have a different impact on consumer behaviors than an identical transparent charge.
2. There may be the ability to transfer liability to the consumer (increasing their total costs), with or without the option of purchasing insurance. Or even claim that they provide insurance for something the consumer is not liable for.
3. This may serve as a trigger that allows all banks to raise their rates at the same time without violating anti-collusion laws.

Fox News/Rush would pick it up in a second. Not that they like atheists by any means, but conservative radio/Fox News will pick up any example to hammer the USPS.

Since when is BC a religioius institution?

Since it's founding.

BU, the similarly named public univerisity is and always has been secular.

In a secular government: should taxpayers be forced to fund a religious institution?

That's kind of an open question, to the degree to which a religious institution does a secular function. I'm honestly not sure where I come down on that.

Unless you found a way to go around entropy, you can't claim that all or even most things are subsidised by government and it is somehow a sustainable model.

Economics isn't physics. It's well known that, in economics, concepts such as conservation of value don't exist. Hell, the entire field pretty much is devoted to that.

That's why we have trade. It's literally producing value from thin air.

Further, the value of a subsidy and the cost of a subsidy are not the same. Look at roads. The cost to the government is high, but they subsidize a huge number of businesses, and provide huge calue to them.

Heck, even accepting your implicit premise that subsidies are giveaways, the money goes somewhere: There's no reason that a country couldn't function if 1/3 of people worked in the private sector, and were taxed with no subsidies, 1/3 dug ditches for a government wage, and the last 1/3 filled in those same ditches for a government wage. Not my ideal society, but you've made a strong claim that is impossible. Defend that position

Can you name any major political change that happened through normal democratic methods without widespread protests ?

I would say the EPA and Clean Air/Clean Water acts were major changes. The WPA, Social Security, the TVA all were fundamental shifts. Hell, getting off the gold standard was huge.

Getting rid of the monarchy, getting rid of slavery, votes for women, civil rights, whatever. None of these happen through people simply going through the motions of voting.

I must point out that on the state level, all these happened without protest in the early-adoption states. Well, except getting rid of the monarchy. Hell, women had the right to vote in some states in the 1700's, long before slavery was abnolished in those states. Slavery was peacefully abolished in 1/2 the union without violence or protests. And civil rights came about in some areas (e.g. the military) quickly and painlessly.

Again, so what? And who decides what is "critical"? I don't think the power grid is critical because the folks who really need the power have backups. So, what business is it is of our spy agency if Walmart can keep their lights on? My local hospital has multiple backup generators and so does my local Air Force base/NAS.

And the really important places in the US have anti-aircraft weapons. But I'm still glad the Air Force has part of it's missions to keep [insert scariest foreign group] from dropping bombs on my house.

Critical does not necessarily mean it causes massive deaths immediately. It can be as simple as making sure that munitions plants can remain open, or food riots don't break out because there is suddenly no refrigeration.

You don't have to insist on 100% safety to object to unsafe things.

Unpatched Windows XP has more security holes than a patched Windows 7 machine. Yet you wouldn't suggest that because Windows 7 has security holes, you may as well be running unpatched XP.

(You can replace Windows 7 with Linux or OS X if you prefer.)

You completly misunderstand.

What "perverse incentive"? .. Trading faster is just another advantage and it is logical to take that to the extreme, such as is done with HFT. Nothing perverse about it.

There is an incentive to trade faster. This incentive does not align with the stated goals of the marketplace (to discover the market value of something and trade goods at that value.) "Perverse incentive" is a technical term for when an organization or individual provides an incentive that does not incentivize what they think it does/what furthers their goals.

You also misunderstand the point I made, thinking it somehow relates to fraud. Theoretically, the market is set up (and the SEC ensures it does) so that using publicly available information in ways to predict the financial health of companies is rewarded. However, HFT introduces a deadweight loss on the system, reducing the incentives for the person/company to seek out opportunities in the stock market.

The total reward for shorting Enron remains the same- the HFTs made money- therefore it must have come at the expense of the other party to make money: the one who shorted Enron.

It's funny how Slashdot, which is so against computer-automated HFT, is equally in favor of the self-driving cars... Anything can be automated and scaled up, including disasters.

One, driving cars produces value. Self-driving cars therefore automate a socially beneficial activity. Arbitrage benefits society only when it helps builds markets, otherwise it only benefits the arbitragers. And HFT is arbitrage where a market already exists.

Or, to use a different analogy, it's why I can be in favor of automating tellers at a bank, but not automating the bank robbers.

Those low latency traders have to work hard to gain their modest market advantage. And that is as it should be.

Who cares if they worked hard? Life isn't first grade and you don't get an "A" for effort.

Perverse incentives are bad. HFT adds no value. Therefore things that incentivize removal of latency (short-term goals) at the expense of say, detecting and shorting the next Enron or pumping dollars into a promising startup or trading your less risk-loving dollars for a VC's so he can invest in the next startup actively hurt society.

The only problem is when the SEC gets involved and undoes transactions to protect the automated traders from the massive losses incurred by their incorrect valuation.

I daresay that the problem is that the SEC is not getting involved and undoing transactions, and thus protecting the automated traders's massive gains by dubious methods.

Yeah, the exact same trademark.

Ironically, a large publisher was behind the app. You'd think they, dealing with IP all day as a business, and choosing the name, they could have foreseen the problem.

First off: Apple is only having people remove the apps in countries where the copyright is valid.

As an affected developer (actually from 3 years ago), I can tell you that it is a worldwide removal.

Progress: we now execute people for consuming whiskey. This is better.

Stupid pedantic point, but it is better than the original state when people were killed just cause. But, in case you didn't notice, only one western country tried outlawing alcohol, and it lasted like 15 years. Then it was undone because it was a stupid idea.

And notice how stonings, etc. don't happen anymore in western countries. In fact, you brought that up just because it's shocking and we don't do it anymore.

It went: Stone Everyone->Stone people over little things->Stone people over alcohol->Stone no-one

False, we have a lot of cool lights.

Yeah, but Edison didn't. I'm not saying that people weren't wrong about fire, I'm saying Edison didn't prove them wrong.

But it still holds that people were saying "fire makes light", and later discovered "non-fire makes light". Totally different concept. Non-market forces work better. Everyone else noticed this. Maybe a revolutionary way of using market forces would work. So... what would that revolutionary way be?

And seriously, you just seem to move the goal-posts around like crazy. You say you need laboratories of democracy; fine. All you need to do is provide health care for all - poor and those with preexisting conditions. You can go single-payer. You can have private companies compete.

But there is no way you can have people with pre-existing conditions able to sign up if they can just sign up when they get sick without making insurance a meaningless concept. I mean, the market failure there is self-apparent... people with pre-existing conditions drive up the cost of insurance, which drives up the price, which drives out the people getting the least benefit- the healthiest, which drives up the per-person cost, which drives up the per-person price...

It's why buying insurance in bulk is such a good deal.