This thread and series of modded-up comments proves that the majority of Slashdot users have no idea how financial markets work, nor how they enable society to progress to the level it has achieved today. Go back to your little cubicle to write code, go home to your wives, 2.5 kids and white picket fences, and stop making a fools out of yourselves. You made the choice to work for steady, meager wages, so stop complaining about people who make real contributions to the world and sign your 150k/year paycheques.

That is exactly their aim — to make people "settle" for taxation. There should simply be no taxation of gambling!

I think there's already enough laws against robbery. Why would you feel you need more laws against robbery? "No man is an island" was a socialistic rant of a romantic poet who wasn't remember for anything in the world of law or political states.

Obviously, your problem is with welfare. So get to the point and end welfare. Stop beating around the bush.

I guess that's why movie tickets cost at least $9.50 in a medium-sized city in the USA. There's nothing like outsourcing the pain to the populace.

Profit is a sign that a market is inefficient. All free markets are continually moving to a point where there is no profit. I, for one, like the fact that i don't live in a "Soviet Russia" where there are shortages. In a nice country, there are no shortages, and i find it pleasant that i know that there is always a ticket i can buy. The marginal utility of said ticket is higher for me than the others who think it's stupid to buy the ticket for that price. What can i do? Nothing needs to be done.

Scalpers provide a very useful service because they prevent shortages. If i want a ticket, i can buy one without having to worry that they ran out of tickets.

We are here to live and use the earth. We are not here to preserve the earth.

Isn't the price of food in supermarkets already marked up to account for the cost of energy involved in bringing it from rural areas to distribution points, to warehouses, to supermarket shelves, to your pantry and then to your mouth?

If you know you have the best game out there, it's not unreasonable to have people pay before they can use it.

This has only been held back by government regulation. People will pay for something as much as it's worth to them. If it costs too much, then it won't be produced. It's stupid to assume that improvement and excellent service are worth the price for everyone.

What if the software used to test modern CPUs is better-configured to give meaningful differences between very fast modern CPUs. Perhaps the old software would have all modern processors off the charts and wouldn't give meaningful numbers for comparison.

What's interesting is that sea levels rose by 300 feet in the past 11,000 years. What makes people think they are the pinnacle of this trend and that it stops here? We have lived with rising sea levels and adapted. I look forward to global warming and believe it will be beneficial to humanity with greater crop yields, lower costs of heating, and greater areas of arable land.

If you think it's so simple and riskless to profit from bubbles, why don't you do it yourself. If you indeed believe it's going to be a bubble, why don't you short it and profit when it pops? Put the money where the mouth is and enjoy an inefficient market.

The aforementioned post cannot be lauded enough. Bravo.