I wish I had mod points for this poster. HFT is just a catch-all term used in the media for lots of different things. It's clear that a lot of people here on Slashdot (which is normally fairly insightful) have no idea what they are talking about in regards to this type of trading, and are just blaming 'HFT traders' for their economic woes. Firstly don't confuse algo and HFT trading. HFT is a type of algorithmic trading, but there are lots of others. There are also lots of algo systems that are not prop systems (trading on the brokers own account), but agency algo systems where they trade for a client instead (like trading VWAP over the day). Secondly, HFT is actually a mis-leading term. What most people mean when they talk about HFT is an algo that recognises and responds to market events in a very quick fashion. This may include executing trades or revising limit orders. Actual HFT (where trades occur multiple times per second) is a small subset again of this. Academic are leaning towards thinking that algo trading increases liquidity (as monitoring costs are decreased) which in turn decreases spreads (as discussed above) which makes trading for everyone cheaper. So basically they think its overall impact is beneficial to the markets. They have found that liqiudity does withdraw in times of market tumoil, but then again who wouldn't (machine or otherwise). But don't let actual research get in way of a good bashing. HFT is bad.....hmmmmmm....okay. However, I do have strong opinions on the risk-reward payoff for traders themselves. There is little downside personally if they lose a lot of money (they lose their job and move to another firm), but there is a lot of upside personally if they make a lot of money. So they take a lot of risk unless monitored correctly. Because they potential rewards outweigh the potential risk. Basically buying a call option. And evaluating these risks is what these guys do every day. No wonder it happens. We need strong monitoring and greater downside risk to offset this. Not going to happen though.

Loved that game! All the Martians disguised themselves using Groucho Marx glasses and a cowboy hat. You eventually infiltrate their spaceship using the same disguise. And remember jamming up the toilet on the aeroplane with paper to distract the hostess while you grab the parachute. Good times.

My daughter is four and a half and I have an old work laptop built up for her. She's got some good mousing skills and scored an OCD ranking in one World of Goo level while I was doing the washing up.

Anyway....I've scoured around trying to find good content and have a good list. Steer clear of all the Disney and other commerical stuff, that stuff will rot their brains. It's also badly coded and mainly a vehicle to advertise to the kids.

This is what I have installed on her laptop. They are all links to flash sites as almost all good kids stuff is on-line now. Anything that you have to install probably lists Windows ME as the system requirement on the box:

1) Poisson Rouge (http://www.poissonrouge.com/) - This is a French/English flash site with has no instructions and just encourages the child to explore the pages and work out what to do. It's probably the best site on-line for the 3-5 age group.

2) Boowah & Kwala (http://boowakwala.uptoten.com/) - This is another French/English site originally made by a husband and wife for their daughter and has grown from there. It's more instructional in its activities, but has an enormous amount of content delivered in a great way. The two main characters (see the names) are voiced by the parents and are very funny.

3) Sesame Street (http://www.sesamestreet.org/) - This one is a no-brainer...they have a great variety of games for different ages.

4) StarFall (http://www.starfall.com/) – A reading site that runs from letter recognition all the way to full reading. It’s got some very fun stuff in it.

5) WordWorld (http://pbskids.org/wordworld/index_flash.html) – A very rich and interactive reading site with lots of fun characters made out of letters.

Enjoy!