Your memory of IBM differs from my own.

I can't say I've had that much to do with them. HP, on the other hand, I could rant about for a while...

Why should I be for or against some product? Everybody should buy what they like and can afford. What do I care?

Three words Anti dumping laws, dumping products at artificially low prices into a market in order to seize dominant market share and force competitors out of the market before substantially raising prices. Seems the US in-justice system is asleep at the helm, to tired pursuing whistle blowers and doing the RIAA's bidding.

If they own the copyright, they are free to relicense a piece of data

Sorry to be pedantic, but replace "a piece of data" with "a work of authorship". If there isn't the creative work of a human being involved, it's not copyrightable. And then we get to this:

17 CFR 102(b) In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.

And that means that even when the hand of man is involved, a lot of things are still not copyrightable.

Let's look at what Oracle is doing. I'll start the list of moves that appear to be intended to alienate the community around the very software they're promoting and cause the Open Source community to create viable forks that end up absconding with the product and its market. You guys contribute additional examples...

• Oracle v. Google regarding Java and the premise that APIs are copyrightable.
• Apache OpenOffice v. LibreOffice (which has a full-time negative publicity generator in Rob Weir).
• MySQL v. MariaDB.

IBM isn't known for dumb moves, but partnering with Oracle on this sure is one.

Bruce

Cogent isn't the only ISP out there for Verizon to choose from. They deserve some of the blame. And if they are choosing to bandaid the solution by implimenting QoS on a service-preferential basis, they're attempting to cover up their poor decision here; "Hey, rather than ponying up the cash for a real internet link for our subscribers, let's just throttle the hell out of everything that isn't http traffic... it'll keep customer service calls down and our network will appear to still be just fine, while everything else goes to crap!" "Brilliant! Promote this man at once!" It doesn't help that, just like Obama and Bengazi, the appearance of impropriety by having a competing service while its competitors suffer on your own network looks exactly like what people are reporting it as: A dick move.

Better $199.00 from a school than $0.00 from the dumpster.

This can be said at any point since the invention of the cell phone. These are the facts as of today, and those are the ones that matter in a purchasing decision.

Yup. From the city that brought you a ban on large fountain sodas to combat obesity comes solar panels to combat storms. o_O

I play EVE. It's not a "very stable market". Goonsquad decided to attack miners in highsec. Mining is one of the main ways raw materials are generated for product generation, and when they did that, key resources to fuel starbases (oxygen isotopes, etc.) shot up massively in price. It would be the realworld equivalent of bombing oil pipelines and refineries.

As you get farther away from the main trade hubs and out into nullsec, prices can easily triple for commodities. And many alliances have policies to prevent anyone else from getting in on their lucrative cartels of freighter transports bringing needed supplies out.

Like hell they are. Most people avoid serious trading because of the lack of easy access to information on sales volumes, pricing, etc, market volatility, and (unlike the real world) getting your products to one of the main trade hubs is risky. If blowing your ship to hell is cheaper than the cost of losing their ships to the police (concord), they'll blow it up. There's no jail in Eve -- in 15 minutes you're just like every other pilot again... and they'll loot your wreck and be on their merry.

And I'd suggest they play it to understand why government regulation and military protection of traders and merchants leads to vastly lower costs to society, and to see first hand how far the effects of market manipulation can travel.

And you're leaving out another critical component of Eve that isn't at all like the realworld: You're never sure who you're trading with. Identities can be traded, and because of this, and the interface mechanics, you can be buying supplies from your enemies one day, and selling arms to them the next.

And all of this "free market" love makes people incredibly distrustful, very manipulative, and economic power equates directly with military power. And what's more interesting... the distribution of wealth looks pretty much like it does in the United States: 1% controls over half the total wealth in the game... and that 1% can be very petty, self-centered, and short-sighted. Kings and kingdoms alike are created and destroyed every day -- there is no stability. In nullsec, you always have an exit strategy... a way to burn your assets and get out quick, because if the enemy doesn't fuck you over, your would-be kings claiming to be on your side will.

Eve is the wild-wild west, seen through the lens of a hundred spreadsheets. When it's a game, this can be fun. When it's real life... do you really want to go to bed one night and wake up the next with your house on fire and your neighbors looting each other, you, and everything else as the next Great New Power rolls in? Because this is a frequent occurrance in the game.

Okay, not that I'm disagreeing with anything you have to say but... what does any of that have to do with HFT?

And compared to European vendors...
AT&T - Slow. Expensive. Unreliable.
Verizon - Slow. Expensive. Unreliable.
TMobile - Slow. Expensive. Unreliable.
Sprint - Slow. Expensive. Unreliable. :(