You can buy shares in Amazon, Rackspace, etc. So if you want to profit based on value of cloud resources just buy or sell shares in the companies which provide the resource.

Um, although I actually agree that there needs to be more regulation of AirBNB practices in NYC, you don't need a permit to rent real estate. I don't know exactly what differentiates a hotel from an apartment in a multi familiy, but I know I don't need a permit to rent the top floor of my house which has a certificate of occupancy, unless you include that.

NYC should NOT be able to subpoena AirBNB, mostly because it's too big a net. Open that door and they can search every house in a neighborhood because one person was seen selling drugs.

Because when you live in the close quarters of a city everyone agrees to certain rules. Hotels are zoned and licensed so that you know that when you decide to rent an apartment from someone that all of a sudden you don't find yourself with neighbors who are not vested in the neighborhood. Then there are the issues of making sure that fire codes are being upheld, etc.

Just as I may not understand the logistics of living in suburbia or the rural US, I think many folks outside major cities don't understand that there are some rules you want in areas with high population densities. The rules are there because people wanted them, not because the government arbitrarily wanted to make them.

If I lived in a house next to you and started burning garbage in my backyard everyday I'm sure you would want some law that regulated how I did it even though it's on my own property.

Could you get a restraining order against someone who just followed you around? I'm not sure you could, unless there was some reason to think that they were also going to invade your privacy. Why wouldn't movie stars have restraining orders against all of the paparazzi if you were allowed to do this?

So very true. Wish I could mod this comment up.

Everyone whines about HFT, but don't realize that it actually does add liquidity. It also means that the people trading do take their risks, and have to pay for them. It's a fair trade. LFT (Low Frequency Trading), is not necessarily any better. The AMEX used to have "specialists" that were on the floor who were supposed to make sure that the trading happened smoothly, what actually happened was that the "specialists" were basically given the right to "skim" off the top, just like HFT traders do. Before everything was electronic, orders would hit the exchange and the specialists had a chunk of time to decide on what they wanted to do. In that time, they would see what was going on in the market, and make sure they could do both sides of the trade and make the bid ask spread. The difference between then and now is that then they had special privileges that no one else had.

Then there's the fact that the stock exchanges in the US almost stopped in the 70's because they were too slow. No one could keep up with the paperwork. That's when the DTC was created http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depository_Trust_%26_Clearing_Corporation. If you think trading was more scrupulous then than it is now, you are out of your mind.

Frankly, if you don't like the stock market, don't put money into it. I personally find it hard to put money into a company I really know nothing about. If you do enter the market, via a broker or your 401k, then you should be happy it's as efficient as it is. It costs fractions of a penny for each share as a transaction cost. Compare that to your house, which probably ran 3-6% for just the brokers fee, then lawyers, then all the other closing costs. You could do a similar transaction of hundreds of thousands of dollars of stock on the stock market for next to nothing and if you put in a limit order, you won't lose anything to the HFT traders.

Just because one set of GM crops is safe, does not mean all will be. The problem is that because food is not sourced locally that much anymore, you have no idea who produced it. Some simple solutions: 1) Label GM crops and products made with them, or at least allow people who use no GMOs label their food as such. 2) Require GM foods to go through the same process as drugs going through the FDA. People used to sell elixer's with opiates in them before there were controls. Who says that once GM is allowed that no one will make tomacco? (Simpson's reference) "Gee, I really want to eat a tomato, but I'm not hungry" 3) Do not allow GM seeds to be "copyrighted", i.e. you can't sue a farmer for selling food made from your GM seed unless they broke into your lab and stole it and you can prove it in a court of law. If companies who make seeds want to prevent people from growing their products then they need to GM the seeds so that they cannot reproduce. You can't throw me jail or sue me if you drop some money and then it sticks to the bottom of my shoe and I bring it home with me.

I would send them one more email explaining how to crack a user account. If they still don't believe you, then I would send a complaint to the FTC with all of the relevant information on how it is insecure. The investors in this company don't want to hear about it. If the name of the company gets out, they'll have issues. If you really believe that their systems are insecure, post the name of the company here. People post security flaws all of the time: http://mashable.com/2011/10/03/htc-security-flaw/ I think you actually have a responsibility to tell people about the issue after you have done what you can to help the company.

They should be dischargeable under bankruptcy like any other loan. While we're at it, how about making the university responsible for the 50% of the loan if it goes into default. If a university wants to get money through federal loans, then they should stand behind the education their giving. A mortgage is backed by the house you buy, an auto loan by the car. The current system just funnels federal dollars into the pockets of university administrators.

And what does this have to do with option pricing? It just proves that there is no closed form. From the quick little research I did on closed forms, all this means is that you can't use limits or integrals, which are used as solutions for a slew of real world problems.

Um, you're using currency produced by the government. If you want complete control, try carrying around gold ducats.

Make t-shirts.... now.

When I see that BSOD, I hand my head and cry....

Browsers should just drop support for that attribute. As a matter of fact, why have any attributes that rely on generic browsing info. If a website wants to track which links I've visited, then show them to me via redirect and keep a list of which redirect links show up. How important is having a browser visually indicate which links I've visited? visited is just about as important as supporting the blink tag....Wait, blink isn't supported anymore.