Rather than having shitty servers, i'm speculating that the lag on mtgox is intentional and artificially added to prevent panic selling.  The more orders that are placed, the slower the system becomes and everything get "dampened".

Prove me wrong.

The price on btc-e is very frequently a few dollars less than the other exchanges.  Even taking into account deposit and transaction fees, the price difference is often more than the charges.

Right now mtgox is $116 and btc-e is $109 = $7
Charges/transaction fees 3% of $109= $3.27
Profit $7 - $3.27 = $3.73 / unit

There are other factors to take into consideration, such as the risk that the market price might have changed while waiting for the transfer on the other exchange.  This particular risk could be mitigated if you could convince someone on the selling exchange to loan you the coins.  Also, you might have to wait 5 minutes to execute your order on mtgox, which is more risk...

Some cases it is clear that theft has taken place, and there have been many well documented "heists".
e.g. http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2013/3/4/events-of-friday-bitinstant-back-online.html

Not sure who would decide, but would you knowingly accept "stolen" coins?

When coins are stolen, is it not possible to track them through the network?  If so, is there a mechanism to create a blacklist?

Very nice 

Is fractional reserve banking (i.e. lending based on a fractional reserve) incompatible with BTC?

This is the new model:
http://bloom.bg/14v57MA

Why not just buy on one of the exchanges?

The madness of the crowds or the new gold, either way, the price is too volatile.

If I open at $100 and close at $105 I expect to gain +$5, but actually this is not the case with icbit.  This is because it quotes the price in USD per BTC but the settlement price is actually based on the inverse.
i.e. BTC per USD.

So you are gaining/losing fractions of BTC, which is no good for hedging.

Hello,

I'm a developer currently working on a project with the goal of implementing the definitive bitcoin futures and options exchange.  I'm going to need so beta testers over the next couple of months...