http://www.economist.com/debate/debates/overview/224 Look how HFT lobby scumbags have reversed the polling since they discovered it...
Traders who lose will always lose, it is not due to HFT. I personally know many successful manual traders who operate today.
HFT is quite easy. Route your feeds, algorithm, orders & fills through http://lxr.linux.no/linux-old+v2.4.31/net/khttpd/