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Comment Re:Uh oh! (Score 4, Interesting) 380

I know you're being sarcastic, but it's not just nuclear power plants that generate revenues. Where I live, there's a large wind farm that pays millions a year through council and business taxes: they make my small sleepy town mega-rich and pose zero threat to the environment, save for a few birds that think they can fly through the spinning blades now and then.

Comment Re:Would probably be found (Score 4, Insightful) 576

Yes, that's the conventional wisdom with open-source. But tell me: when was the last time you went inspect the code deep in the kernel? How many open-source code users do you think have the time, desire and ability - and probably paranoia - to go and inspect the code in *any* open-source project of reasonable size, let alone something as complex as the kernel?

I don't think someone could slip funny code in the main kernel tree - too many specialists reviewing the patches - but I'm convinced that if Canonical, SuSE or RH wanted to distribute a tainted kernel, they could do it undetected for a very long time, if not indefinitely.

Comment Not gonna happen (Score -1) 185

Pharma companies make boatloads of money selling lifelong drugs to HIV sufferers. The last thing they want is a cure that'd kill the cash cow. Same reason why people with total kidney failure still can't benefit from artificial kidneys (too much money in dialysis machines, ambulance trips, special vacation packages... And no, kidney transplants don't kill the cash cow - patients are still on drugs for the rest of their lives) and why people diabetes still can't get artificial pancreata (too much money in insulin, needles...)

Comment Re:So far removed from anything useful for society (Score 2) 251

Yes, but allowing it and taxing the hell out of it would bring some of that money back into the government's pocket - or see it another way, the financial sumbitches that are bleeding most countries' economies white without any remorse today would have to start paying back some.

If a tax is levied on the speed of trading, at some point an equilibrium would be reached at which traders would consider the level of taxation acceptable: they wouldn't stop speed-trading, just doing it at a speed/cost that they're willing to bear. Better to collect money that way than to ban the activity altogether and collect no money at all.

Comment So far removed from anything useful for society! (Score 5, Interesting) 251

This sort of financial activities is complete economic nonsense, as it brings nothing of value to people, companies or other concerns that actually produce something useful to society as a whole. Just reading the /. blurb should be enough to convince anyone that "robot trading" is a parasitic activity that should be taxed to oblivion - by ways of a tax based on the speed of trading for instance - and financial markets forced to become what they're supposed to be: places for investors to invest in real economic activities for the long haul.

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