"though are getting better and better at faking it"
now you get to let everyone know the difference between faking it and not faking it is. Good luck with that. Oh, please acquire a PhD in one of the appropriate areas before responding with you half baked 'idea'.

Well done,. you just describe all of science fiction.
From Heinlein needing a magical.. ,I mean, AI dimensional travelling car, to the Monolith.

Do you know what the difference between science fiction and fantasy is? Nothing.

7/8/9 should be about freeing the droids.

But WHY do they care so much?

Give them name changes, passports, a ticket to wherever they want to go, and a payoff check in exchange for releasing the US government from liability for their treatment. Don't disclose their identities and release them quietly.

Problem solved. It isn't like people are going to recognize them on the street.

I doubt it's a money saving effort. They've already spent a ridiculous amount of time and money getting him extradited in the first place which is hardly typical.

More likely the issue is that if they charged him they would be obligated to make him answer for those Swedish charges before extradition to the US.

"You can face at least questions over "throw away" statements."

Sure but it is unusual in the extreme to face extradition to answer those questions or for a completely different nation to spend millions attempting to seize you for that extradition or to battle the embassy of another nation that is granting you asylum.

Even if he had been convicted of rape, in the UK, and escaped to seek asylum in the embassy it is highly unlikely the police would actively guard the place. Police only expend that kind of effort if there is political pressure. This isn't something that is likely to help or hurt an official in re-election so where do you think the pressure is coming from?

He has to be charged before he can be tried. Him being charged and tried aren't things Sweden needs to keep secret to stealth him in.

Do the same thing the police do for all other identified suspects with warrants. It isn't as if police normally actively pursue people with arrest warrants, they wait for the people in question to make a mistake and turn up the warrant when they run their information. If you are wanted by police the vast majority of the time they don't even check your home or work.

They wouldn't spend 6 million camping the embassy in hopes to enforce a warrant on a no name serial rapist who had allegedly done his deed IN LONDON. I've known people who "evaded" the police for years on felonies in the US by simply by not getting pulled over. Worked the same job, lived in the same residence, took no actions to hide whatsoever.

Police don't have the manpower for that sort of tv style active pursuit. The same is true of investigation. They typically interview whoever, gather evidence at the scene, run tests with a cost factor appropriate for the crime which generally means no real forensics or lab testing, sorry CSI, and wait for some kind of information to come to them. The vast vast majority of the time police only solve crimes when they either witnessed them happening, someone snitches, or someone confesses.

Why bother guarding the embassy?

Sorry, still not seeing what the contention is here.

Premise 1: Reckless pursuit of profit may not be in the interests of long-term stability and sustainability

Premise 2: HFT is a perfect example of reckless and harmful pursuit of profit

Conclusion: Given Premises 1 and 2, HFT is not in the interest of long-term stability and sustainability.

So yes, if you want to advocate an economy based on "long term stewardship," you need to include HFT as one of the problems that stand in the way.
=Smidge=

Still a bad idea.

Take them to a conference center, dump the jet fuel inside, then lock the door and light 'em up.

Mmh, the number of Diaspora users grew by almost 40% within the last 12 months, so it seems quite alive and well to me.

40% growth on zero is still zero...

So it's growing faster than G+, then?
/rimshot

I don't see anything erroneous with the link.

HFT is implemented by people. It is not autonomous and it didn't pop into existence by itself. It was created by humans with the short-sighted goal of maximizing profit with no consideration of the long-term stability of the system it's interfaced with.

You are right that humans can't make rational judgements in milliseconds - that's why humans create machines to do it for them. Although I'd argue that humans have great difficulty making rational judgements no matter how much time you give them; there's been quite a bit of study showing that people will make poor decisions especially when money is involved. Creating automated systems that operate faster than their caretakers can react, for example...
=Smidge=