You, like so many others seem to be under the impression that there was some 'golden age' of capitalism where stock market trading was a level playing field and anyone could waltz onto the NYSE floor and bid up some stocks. There have always been barriers to entry to directly trading on these markets, back then it was buying/renting a seat on the exchange. Now it's technology costs and fees to co-locate in the exchange's datacenter. And most exchanges these days will spool fiber within these datacenters so each entity has equal latency to the matching engines. Of course it's only the most serious players who can participate like this but then again, it was only the most serious players who bought seats on the trading floor in the good ol' days. The everyday Joe has always had to operate through a broker and it's no different today, except spreads are smaller and fees are cheaper.

That's not to say there aren't problems with the current paradigm of algorithmic high-speed trading. I think there's significant risk in turning over billions of dollars to algos that may interact with each other in unpredictable ways that distort valuation before humans can intervene. But I take issue with people pretending these markets were somehow more fair to everyday investors before they became electronic, because that simply wasn't the case.

Fortigategate or just plain Fortigate?

For a glimpse of where we're headed, I give you the Smart Pipe

I'm calling B.S. on these statistics until you can prove you didn't pull them out of your ass. It seems to me that independent taxi drivers would be a-ok with Uber, since they can voluntarily sign up to be an Uber driver and get referrals for business they wouldn't have had otherwise. Why are they protesting?

Huh, you don't say.

The reason for the limited preordering days and invite system is because of the small margins on each phone sold, reportedly in the single digits. The company is so small and the margins so tight that they can't afford to be sitting on any unsold stock.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ew...

Okay, so maybe it should be structured differently. Like a voucher system. Everyone gets, say 5 vouchers per election cycle they can donate to any candidate or party they would like. With those vouchers, candidates or parties can "buy" airtime/billboards/whatever. Let's not tie this to major parties only, please. I personally don't give a shit if the American Nazi Party gets airtime. We have to rely on people to filter out the bullshit on their own, otherwise we'll necessarily end up with censorship.

The main take-away is that money is not an equalizer and should not be relied upon for a functioning democracy.

So you think our current system is perfect; anyone with access to millions of dollars should be allowed to influence elections in any way they see fit. That must be why congress has the best approval ratings we've seen in years and politicians don't have to waste any time/resources campaigning when they could be, you know, doing their jobs.

Give me a break.

I agree that we should be careful with how we restructure elections. Rather than worry about how to restrict money flowing into elections (and dealing with "first amendment" issues) we should prohibit all political donations and give all candidates a set amount to work with to reach their constituents. I don't pretend to know the details of how a system like this should work, but it's certainly better than restricting political speech to individuals/groups with millions of $$$ to throw around.

Slashdot editor senteced to 35 years of grammar school.

In a similar vein, mine are DERPANET and HERPANET (for 2.4ghz and 5ghz).

It seems tragic that the only way to expose the overstepping of the government on human rights is to have lone leakers throw themselves under the bus and expose information, often haphazardly, to the world. There should be a system in place where government employees can appeal anything they consider unconstitutional to a special court for review. It is up to the judicial branch to uphold the constitution and seems utterly ridiculous that these secret overreaches by the executive branch are not eligible to the same checks and balances put in place for public laws.

I want to see publicly nominated and vetted judges sitting on a board to review classified procedures and actions for their constitutionality. The proceedings can be secret, but the number of cases overturned and left standing should be made public. It may be a pipe dream, but I think this would go a long way to restoring the people's trust in their government by restoring the accountability that was supposed to be there in the first place.

Wake me when there's a Vim equivalent.

Why? This has nothing to do with lower latency.