Nope. The exchange would match all orders until the 1.25 was filled, including your 1.20 offer _at_ 1.20 -- the investor would save 0.05 per share for the percentage that your offer covered. HFT, like the rest of the world, would only see the trade.

More quotes != more trades. I could flood the market with offers to buy AAPL for $1 and not a single one would ever get matched. There are markets that are considering a tax on trade-quote ratios that are too low. In the case above, I don't believe a single quote was ever hit so in a market with minimum trade-quote ratios, this behavior would be taxed out of existence.

The Ouya wasn't scheduled to ship until March 2013 so, assuming you didn't post this next year, there's still time for them to be late.

Or take it only a half step further, breed it, and see the finished product.

For the second case, that is not the definition of front-running. Front-running is when a broker executes trades for its own benefit based on knowing what its customer's plan to do and is illegal. What you've described is someone/something taking on risk and providing liquidity for a small fee. It's also not a backdoor fee. It costs money to trade on the exchange -- that's how they make money and cover their costs. I know I notice the $8.95 it costs me to make a trade (I would much rather pay fractions of a cent per share). You also solve no problems with a trading lag. If you have one, the race is still to see who can get first in line but you just force all the incoming traffic to be at "N time" intervals. Trading has always been about the race in some manner. It's like Christmas shopping in the US -- if you aren't first in line, don't expect the best deals.

No Futurama reference? Shame on you.

When can I co-lo at Blizzard?

... I yell "LeRoy Jenkins!" ??

In terms of productivity (especially w.r.t. the severe productivity declines incurred beyond 40 hrs mentioned earlier in the article), 4 people @ 50 hrs/wk is probably less than 5 people @ 40 hrs/wk. Beyond that, it's up to those in charge to decide if they want to take on the (costs of an) extra employee for more long-term productivity or continue with the short-term productivity they currently have. The primary focus of the article is more of a call to arms for the worker to keep a 40-hour work week for their own sanity (note the title: Why We Have to Go Back to a 40-Hour Work Week to Keep Our Sanity ). If businesses and workers want to do otherwise, it's on them. This article provides justification for the worker to push back (or to find a place with better conditions).

... or in base 4.

Interesting critique. I obviously missed the dimensions that were released in the two linked articles... Care to share them?

... the big box retailers selling Honeywell products made a statement and pulled Honeywell products from their shelves. It sends a nice message: "You don't like competition? Fine, don't compete."

Our enemies will create drones to enter the drones in our drones. It'll be a hit movie for our drone overlords.

Ironically there are two straw men here. Scott Adams is the straw man of engineers being libertarians and from TFA, the Dilbert comic strip is Adams' straw man.

It is an admission of guilt but the problem is you don't know what crime the contents of the drive showed he committed. He _could_ have had 10,000 illegally downloaded mp3s and didn't want to fork over billions to the RIAA.

That's manager-speak for "will you take a 36% pay decrease until we're profitable." Assuming the hourly rate *with overtime*, you're losing out on 22.5 hours of pay (15 hours @ time-and-a-half). Considering I value my 5-9 time more than my 9-5 time, it would be an even bigger pay cut in my opinion. If you believe the company will become profitable *and* compensate you accordingly, make the appropriate gamble.