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No, yet another court order says that NSA has to retain the records for the purposes of a lawsuit. This one was filed by EFF, asking the court to stop the deletion of data as per the court order in this slashdot story. The EFF lawyer actually says that
The March 7 FISC ruling was “based on a mistaken belief that no preservation order existed for the material,” Cohn said.
This new order was in San Fransisco and not a FISC court.

Not just Obama, but the by anti-oil people.

Not just the anti-oil people, but the people who own those railroads you speak of... Oh, right, Warren Buffet...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

Characterizing an "investment" in bitcoins as a big risk is being very generous. Bitcoin was designed from the start to be a vehicle to steal from those gullible enough to convert real money into it.

You begin to sound like one of those Fragilistas. That might be why Mt.Gox was started; I don't know. But there are some significant advantages to antifragile systems such as the Bitcoin protocol.

Did you even READ Satoshi's paper?

What gives you the right to say 'Bitcoin was designed as a vehicle to steal' ?

How come you are able to be so certain based on so little evidence?

This is how it works: billionaires go to their bitches in Congress and tell them to change the law to help them.

Therefore, shit that would be completely illegal for us peons, is now legal for them.

QED.

It's only legitimate because they made it so.

We can't do that because we are not the 0.01%.

That's where a lot of the outrage over the rich come from: they rig the game to help themselves at the expense of the rest of us.

There is a reason why the middle class is disappearing the US.

Looking the home buying data yesterday, housing is being driven by cash buyers: hedge funds.

We are becoming a renter nation. And when a person with a solid job and decent middle class pay cannot afford a house, you just see that the American dream is dead.

GE is going to production with 3D printed fuel injectors and uses 3D printed turbine blades for testing right now.

I'm not a fan of oil tankers. They tend to spill and waste a lot of oil. Moving oil by rail is better, they don't spill as often or as much when they do. Pipelines are the best means we have to move oil. They spill much less often and are much easier to fix.

Really? Well, no and no.

One must be careful not to confuse the frequency of spills with the quantity spilled, or the size of a spill with how much press it gets.

You seem to have a strange divergence from reality.

The deal is four billion dollars cash, the rest in stock. Facebook's net income for 2013 was $1.5 billion. The deal ate up 35% of Facebook's cash on hand, so there's not necessarily any debt here to make up, and all things being held constant, my math would have them in the green again within three years.

I don't think that Facebook has any more chance of long-term success than those people silly enough to sell operating systems, but at the moment they're both pretty good rackets. This is a heavy investment for Facebook, but they're not an untalented bunch; they have by necessity made a very fast pig out of a PHP application, and they have (apparently) a lot of money to throw at a new market. Can anyone really say that this makes less sense than whatever chunk of Google's $6.8B R&D budget is going to autonomous vehicles and Glass?

Besides, you're giving Zuckerberg & co. far too much credit for long-term thinking.

The Consumer Reports article plus solid financial news and analyst forecasts for Tesla today and widely circulating speculation about their planned Gigafactory to be announced in a couple weeks with an aim of cutting battery costs by at least 50%, all lead to a surge in the stock today (2/25).

Even the confirmation that the Model X would indeed not surface until 2015 seemed to have no effect.

The stock was up as high as 17%, and closed up just under 14% (+$30 on the day to $248). With Morgan Stanley estimating a $320 price there is probably significant growth left, It seems they will have no problem funding that 5 to 7 Billion dollar battery plant. The "giga" refers to Tesla's need to build the equivalent of all of the world’s current production of lithium ion batteries under one factory roof. May be time to invest in on Lithium stocks as well.

Of course, the next drunk that crashes his car and lives to watch it burn will provide a stock dip, but that just sounds like importunity knocking.

Still, I predict Haters going to Hate. They should be arriving in about 3 seconds.....

Real banks, the ones with experience not losing all of your money or that are regulated and insured by the U.S. gov't, by comparison, are stable, secure, and at least reliable enough for an economy to run on.

And if by "stable, secure, and reliable" you mean de-facto bankrupt, system held together by sticking plaster, and saturated with the most duplicious and thieving employees in the known universe, then yes I suppose that statement would be correct.

Dreaming? A former NSA and CIA director, Michael Hayden, came as close to admitting it as one can, without becoming legally liable -- he said he would do it himself: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

What proof do you have that NSA etc. do not share important details with their corporate partners? Your belief that it is illegal and immoral?

Once you admit to yourself that these agencies first and foremost act for their own benefit and survival, for their highest officers' personal careers second, and only third for their stated purpose, you start to realize how the world turns. It's not evil, it's just how humans work.

Welcome to reality, friend.

Now we just need to convince the Arctic ice, Antarctic ice, and Greenland ice sheet to stop their damn melting. Please do tell them about the fraudulent data they're using.

The further north you go the more liberal you get, the US north is more liberal than the US south, Canada is far more liberal than the US north, and Northern Europe is notoriously liberal.

The Arctic ice and Greenland ice sheet are so liberal they're gay married and are probably melting just to collect welfare and refreeze later with the free health care. The damn commies are further left than Sean Penn's dry cleaned underwear.

My problem with these rankings is that they omit so much. The self-imposed censorship of stories that fail to flatter the liberal narrative is rampant and a big liability for the US. Last week we once again observe the blackout of reporting on ever growing mob violence in our cities. Tomorrow we'll watch as our MSM spins the popular backlash against socialist revolution in Venezuela.

Whinging about injustices on war-on-terror whistle blowers while ignoring these other, obvious problems with our media is selective hand-wringing and not credible.

Now we just need to convince the Arctic ice, Antarctic ice, and Greenland ice sheet to stop their damn melting. Please do tell them about the fraudulent data they're using.

In your rush to leap the defense of foreclosure, you missed the fact that none of what you're talking about has anything to do with what MickyTheIdiot was talking about, which is shit like being foreclosed on even if you've paid up or being foreclosed on, even though you don't have a mortgage.

Mod parent up.

I'm getting bored of articles about Venezuela's so-called dictatorship. Ask yourself:

1. Why is Venezuela's democracy questioned when former US President, Jimmy Carter, whose foundation monitors these things, says "of the 92 elections that we've monitored, I would say that the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world"?
2. Why does the media spend so much time vilifying Venezuela's democracy when our friends in Saudi Arabia chop off the head of a princess in a car park, ban women from driving and do not have elections but have a rather nasty dictator? "Ignore that man behind the curtain" - apparently it's hateful little Venezuela with their elections that keep voting in socialists that are the real problem not the Islamic dictatorships of the Middle East with whom we can more easily negotiate oil supplies.
3. Does it have anything to do with Venezuela having the world's largest proven reserves of oil? And that despite all the animosity between Venezuela and the United States, it still is the fourth largest exporter of oil to the US? Or could it be that it used to have a habit of threatening to stop selling oil to the United States? A self-destructive move but one which it had every right to do.

Venezuela is undeniably badly run. But in a democracy, a country has the right (within reason) to run their affairs as they see fit.

From 1978-2012, "12 fold" i.e. 1200%:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-15/cost-of-college-degree-in-u-s-soars-12-fold-chart-of-the-day.html

This one only goes back to 1985 and shows "only" a 485% increase to 2011:
http://inflationdata.com/inflation/inflation_articles/Education_Inflation.asp

Actually, linksys has been owned by Belkin for over a year:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

You know, "charitible" foundations that somehow make your company MORE money without being taxed. Need to deduct those from your total charitable tally for the rich.

This guy was on eof the more famous- but hardly an anomaly.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

You information is quite a bit out of date... During October they roughly doubled the tab "fixing" Healthcare.gov spending over $300m by the end of the October.

Where did you hear that?

'The health department has provided some information on spending. It paid $174 million on contracts tied to Healthcare.gov and supporting technology through August, a sum that jumped to $319 million by the end of October, according to Albright of the Medicare agency.

The figures suggest a late surge in spending before the website’s opening. Only $18 million was spent in October, Albright said in an e-mail.

The Medicare and Medicaid agency owes $630 million for the work through September, Julie Bataille, a spokeswoman for the health office, has said. The agency didn’t provide updated information on the amount owed, or obligated, for work since the October debut of healthcare.gov.'

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

Bill Gates. As in "Bill Gates, Warren Buffett's friend". As in "Warren Buffett, guy who owns the Burlington-Northern Railroad". Note this part:

"Energy companies are already moving the oil out of Canada by rail."

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

When the pipeline was initially turned down Buffett's net worth went up by over $100M in a day due to the railroad. Do the math.

The oil's coming out of Canada one way or another. If we don't buy it, China will. The idea that we can stop the pipeline and that'll make people figure out some other way to get cheap energy is simply naive. At best.

The system is set up that those with money get heard and those without do not.

This is an oft-repeated canard, but it is simply not true. Money helps — as does comely appearance, good education, etc. But it is not a guarantee. For example, last year people favoring gun control outspent their opponents in Colorado by staggering 11:1 — and lost anyway.

Modern politics is no longer about doing what's best for the country or even the constituent.

"Things aren't what they used to be — and they never were." I'm yet to see a reform proposal, that does not infringe on First Amendment rights — and, worse, all allow the incumbent to decide, whether the opposition is not getting "too much money". That's a straight road to Chavez's Venezuela (if not Castro's Cuba), and that's far worse than even "plutocracy".

Lastly, you focusing on the wrong target. The real danger are not the wealthy individuals outside of government — they've earned the monies they are spending doing something, that other people wanted to pay for. The real threat to our freedoms (and prosperity) is the ever-expanding federal government — presidents come and go, but the bureaucrats stay... The stuffed suits justifying their own existence by issuing regulations (that nobody wants) and justifying their greater and expenses. Real estate in Washington DC never seems to drop in price and the region hardly sustained any recession. And, wouldn't you know it, they just got another raise...

Over the years a succession of foolish Congresses has delegated Legislature's powers to the Executive branch — and its various agencies headed by unelected bureaucrats. That needs reforming, but you aren't going to achieve it by limiting the amounts of money people are allowed to spend on politics. People in government will find a way — people outside will be audited by the IRS.

Citation required.

Seriously? Googling for "HSBC laundering iran" turns up about a billion hits.

But yes, technically, the burden of proof rests on the one making the claim, so, here, try this one

Jewish people in the US have not received anything close to the oppression that black people have, and I say that as someone who's part Jewish.
Jewish Americans were not:
- effectively barred from living in most of the country.
- prevented from attending public schools and later institutions of higher learning, which allowed them to gain the skills they needed to succeed.
- paid less than their non-Jewish counterparts doing the same job.
- beaten or killed as a common recreational activity in large areas of the country, with police either ignoring it or actively supporting it.
- prevented from borrowing money from banks, which allowed them to buy homes and start businesses.
- targeted by America's current system of racial oppression called the "War on Drugs".

While that is perhaps true *in* the US (though not entirely), all of that -- EVERY SINGLE POINT -- was literally the law of the land where the bulk of Jewish immigrants to the US came from. Some of it until quite recently.

To wit: being (not "effectively" - literally) barred from living in most of the country, being excluded from academic institutions (official policy as recently as 15 years ago), being beaten and killed as a common recreational activity in large areas of the country, with police either ignoring it or actively supporting it, being targeted by a system of racial oppression in campaigns against crime, etc. Not to mention fully one third of their world population being wiped out less than a century ago, and still below pre-WWII levels.

No question that blacks have had a rough go of it in the US. But the claim that "Jewish people in the US have not received anything close to the oppression that black people have", while partially true on a technicality, is both misleading and laughably ignorant. If you gave the ancestors of today's black Americans -- as mistreated as they were -- a good look at the lives of the same generations of ancestors of today's American Jews and offered them to swap, most of them would keep what they had in a heartbeat.

They arrest this guy on money laundering, but let HSBC http://www.bloomberg.com/news/... off the hook.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

Plenty of others on google

Liar liar well on fire:

What are you, ten?

So sad you can't even do basic Google searches, all of your links have been
debunked.

You really will believe anything your masters spoon-feed you, won't you? What a shame that critical thinking has been so totally disabled by the green movement, once you strong and useful, now just a tool to be used by Arab oil interests to stop franking from slowing down the money flow.

I guess you have no interests in stopping the flow of money from the west going to prop up cultures that horribly abuse women and homosexuals. You may as well be casting stones yourself.

Easy solution: These companies should open major offices in downtown San Francisco. Build a skyscraper (vertical campus!) that is walking distance from a BART subway stop. They already have one (very small) office in the downtown SF area (opened in 2007). Same with Yahoo (though they can't afford a skyscraper), who recently bought the old SF Chronicle building.

Build a skyscraper!? You really don't know anything about SF, do you?

Easy solution: These companies should open major offices in downtown San Francisco. Build a skyscraper (vertical campus!) that is walking distance from a BART subway stop. They already have one (very small) office in the downtown SF area (opened in 2007). Same with Yahoo (though they can't afford a skyscraper), who recently bought the old SF Chronicle building.

I posted about this on my G+ feed a while back; at some point, we went from being told about Global Warming to being warned about Climate Change.

The reason for that is that people equate "Global Warming" with "hot summers". That's bogus. The greenhouse effect isn't about direct sunlight; it prevents heat from escaping; therefore it affects low temperatures more than it affects high temperatures, and it affects winter more than it affects summer. The Arctic and Antarctic are the places that are changing the most drastically, and that's far removed from your average Joe's day to day "ermigahrd its sooo hot" experience.

But warming the poles more than the temperate latitudes evens out the temperature difference between them, and that has huge consequences from a weather standpoint. Temperature differences drive the jet streams; a polar jet stream is a 100mph~200mph river of air that circles the planet 5 miles up, and if you live in a temperate latitude (e.g. the US, Europe, China, south Australia) then a polar jet streams is responsible for everything nice about your weather. A polar jet stream blocks cold dry air from plunging equatorward (and warm moist air from surging poleward), and it also shepherds weather systems from west to east, forcing them to keep moving. Without a jet stream, weather would just sit in place for weeks or months at a time, causing droughts or flooding depending on whether a high pressure system or a low pressure system decided to set up shop over your head. (Either possibility is a disaster for agriculture and local ecology.) But thanks to CO2-induced polar warming, the jet streams have been creeping equatorward a little bit each year and they've been weakening. With weaker jet streams, we can expect things like polar vortex plunges and balmy temperatures in Alaska and 15%-of-normal-rainfall droughts in California and 115 F heat waves in Australia to become regular occurrences. (These things are all happening right now, if you haven't been paying attention, and they're all a consequence of polar jet stream shenanigans, which are getting more common and more extreme as of late.)

Like the jet streams, ocean currents are also driven by temperature differences, so ocean currents will eventually start to shift if polar warming continues. That will have far-reaching consequences, because ocean currents determine evaporation rates and thus where precipitation falls, but ocean current changes are very hard to predict because we have so little data to work from. This hasn't really affected us yet, but the El Niño vs La Niña dichotomy (drought vs flooding; where you live determines which one brings which) gives a small taste of how much power the ocean has over the weather (and how big the effect will be once we do get our first permanent ocean current shifts). That awful The Day After Tomorrow film was mostly made of bogus-science-from-hell, but it was very loosely based on a real-world hypothesis that freshwater glacial melt could disrupt the thermohaline circulation that powers the Gulf Stream, the ocean current that keeps the UK and northern Europe warm. (The UK is at the same latitude as the Gulf of Alaska, suggesting it would be as cold as Alaska if the Gulf Stream were disrupted. The Gulf Stream

Try reading and you'll see it says nothing of the kind.

The country is facing growing public pressure from citizens to reduce air pollution, due in large part to burning coal. Its efforts to promote energy efficiency and renewable power stem from the realization that doing so will pay off in the long term, Figueres said. “They actually want to breathe air that they don’t have to look at,” she said. “They’re not doing this because they want to save the planet. They’re doing it because it’s in their national interest.” China is also able to implement policies because its political system avoids some of the legislative hurdles seen in countries including the U.S., Figueres said.

There's no "only", there's no "this is the right way to do it", there's nothing like that. There's just "China is doing these things, this is why China is able to do these things".

All the powerful countries played this game. Students from around the world found their way to the US, Soviet Union/Russia, France, UK for total access to top quality education.
They where to return home with expert skills (linked to the host nations brands), a glowing personal account of their academic and new lifelong friendships.
Over time it was hoped the once young students would move up in their nations public or private power structures reflecting fondly recalling their education and years abroad.
This would give exports from US, Soviet Union, France, UK an edge or direct contact via friends, academics during trade negations, loans, weapons sales, imports, shaping the left or right wing of an emerging country.
The real issue is the total leaking of expensive emerging science and engineering technology over time for 'free' to emerging countries.
"Bob" or "Sally" return home with much more than a degree - long term contacts and sensitive technology finds its way out of top US, Soviet Union/Russia, France, UK institutions over time due to 'funding' pressure.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-08/american-universities-infected-by-foreign-spies-detected-by-fbi.html
Peter the Great is the warning from history - don't let your trade become a flood of raw materials out and have overpriced fashionable trinkets as imports. http://russiapedia.rt.com/prominent-russians/the-romanov-dynasty/peter-i/
The Cold War was is littered with efforts like/under, funding
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Committee_on_United_Europe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Policy_Coordination
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Student_Association
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peoples'_Friendship_University_of_Russia
Modern art was CIA 'weapon'
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-weapon-1578808.html via International Organisations Division (IOD)

That being said, can you provide links for your version of this information?

Here.

...and here.

...and here.

Then you'll be happy with the SCt. here. In this instance, they stated that you can't patent something so basic and obvious.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-13/internet-patent-owner-loses-high-court-bid-to-revive-suit.html

"The U.S. Supreme Court rebuffed an electronic-commerce patent owner’s effort to revive a $2.5 million verdict against Internet retailer Newegg Inc., in a case with implications for dozens of other companies.
The justices refused to hear closely held Soverain Software LLC’s appeal of a lower court ruling that its technology was too obvious to qualify for patent protection."

The lawyers affecting real law. Sensible outcome. Yeah, America!

> a bigbox store like walmart wants to open up and provide jobs that pay a wage

I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-13/how-mcdonald-s-and-wal-mart-became-welfare-queens.html

Android

Where would this leave local affiliates? (last sentence in quote) "Broadcasters say a federal appeals court ruling favoring Aereo created a blueprint that might let cable and satellite providers avoid paying “retransmission” fees to carry programming. With those fees estimated to exceed $4 billion this year, some broadcast companies say they may convert to cable channels if Aereo isn’t shut down. " http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-10/broadcasters-get-u-s-supreme-court-review-in-bid-to-stop.html

Not everyone agrees:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-08/yelp-reaches-record-as-jpmorgan-says-ad-growth-will-lift-shares.html

My last few Apple orders suggest otherwise. The tracking shows on a plane in Shenzhen China, a stop in Alaska to refuel and clear customs, a stop in Memphis to sort, and then on to my door. About 36 hours from when it left China it is in my hand.

There are also articles from credible sources that suggest Apple keeps 5.3 days of inventory on-hand, almost all in its retail stores, and that online orders ship directly from China in most cases. Other sources have documented a similar process, and suggested a Boeing 777 can carry 450,000 iPhones at a cost of $242,000 to charter, a whopping $0.56 per phone.

I'm going to bet most of your iPhones are destined for Best Buy, Wal Mart, AT&T, Radio Shack, or similar. Those vendors probably want Apple to bulk-ship into their normal supply chain where they can be sorted and intermixed with other goods going to those stores.

Not only that, it says "can be compiled for Linux, Mac, and Android". What about Windows?

Perhaps, since Microsoft sends security bugs to the NSA before fixing them, this guy just figures it is frivolous to pretend you can have secure messaging on that platform.

More importantly, why is a member of Congress more important that I am? So it is bad to spy on me but REALLY BAD to spy on someone just because they are elected? Fucking elitism at its finest.

This isn't elitism - that's stuff like free primo parking spaces at the DC airport. This is about compromising their job. They are our representatives. When the NSA spies on one of them, they are spying on all of their constituents and undermining the most fundamental American value - democracy.

How big do you have to be before you get to have shills?

I mean Whole Foods profit rose 20% in Q2 of 2013, and Hain Celestial, the owner of Earth's Best Organic, boasted a 21% increase in net sales in Q1 of 2013. I have no idea what Michael Pollan made in 2013, but I doubt it would be a tenth as much if he wasn't a big name in the (insert preferred adjective)-foods circle, selling books to concerned eaters, and getting appearance fees from talking on shows and at events.

Does Monsanto have some patent on having shills, or are we willfully overlooking the fact that there's plenty of people who would rake in the cash by overblowing concern with respect to "natural" and "organic" foods?

The political consequences will last for years. Coming soon: the doctor shortages.

Spoken like a true TeaParty ideologue. While the initial rollout of healthcare.gov was an unmitigated mess, the recovery will in time be recognized as one of the greatest tech successes. The initial design goal was for the website to be able to accommodate 50,000 simultaneous visitors. On Monday December 23rd the website was supporting 83,000 concurrent users. About 2 million people have enrolled into healthcare plans, 1.1 million through healthcare.gov. Quite a substantial number from those six people that enrolled the first day!

Regardless of what you think of the individual mandate or health care reform, that is a remarkable tech turn around - taking millions of lines of pre-alpha code in October to production status by the end of the year. Here is a short video interview with New Relic, one of the companies behind the turnaround.

For all the bad politics our government might have, do not underestimate its propensity to solve a technical problem.

A series of servers produced by Dell, air-gapped Windows XP PCs and switches and routers produced by Cisco, Huawei and Juniper count among the huge list of computing devices compromised by the NSA

Somebody please help me here !

I can't believe that now Huawei works for the NSA.

I just can't fucking believe it !!

http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1286054/it-goes-without-saying-huawei-spies-china-says-ex-cia-chief?page=all

On the above link, ex CIA chief Michael Hayden claimed that Huawei spies for China !

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-08/huawei-labeled-cyberspying-threat-faces-u-s-phone-gear-lockout.html

On this link Huawei was lockout from the US market because, "ahem !", Huawei is a SPY DEVICE of the People Liberation Army of China !!

I am totally confused now !

Who the fuck Huawei is working for ?

The Chinese PLA or the American NSA ??

The percentage depletion allowance: This lets oil companies deduct about 15% of the money generated from a well from its taxes. Eliminating it would save about $1 billion a year.

The deduction essentially lets oil companies treat oil in the ground as capital equipment. For any industry, the value of that equipment can be written down each year.

But critics say oil in the ground is not capital equipment, but a national resource that the oil companies are simply using for their own profit.

The foreign tax credit: This provision gives companies a credit for any taxes they pay to other countries. Altering this tax credit would save about $850 million a year.

Foreign governments can collect money from oil companies through royalties -- fees for depleting their national resources -- and income taxes.

A royalty would be deducted as a cost of doing business, and would likely shave about 30% off a company's tax bill. Categorized as income tax, it is 100% deductible.

Foreign governments long ago grew wise to the U.S. tax code. To reduce costs for everyone involved and attract business, they agreed to call some royalties income taxes, allowing oil companies to take the 100% deduction on a bigger slice of their bill.

Intangible drilling costs: This lets the industry write off about $780 million a year for things like wages, fuel, repairs and hauling costs.

All industries get to write off the costs of doing business, but they must take it over the life of an investment. The oil industry gets to take the drilling credit in the first year.

Here's the practical outcome of these policies: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/news/2013/12/20/81497/baucus-tax-reform-cuts-46-billion-in-oil-breaks/

The oil industry has prospered over the past decade, thanks to high oil and gasoline prices. The five largest companies—BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Shell—earned more than $1 trillion. In the first nine months of 2013, these five companies earned a combined $71 billion in profits. Certainly, these companies and other large oil companies will prosper without $40 billion in special tax breaks over the next decade.

The tax subsidies for renewable energy are dwarfed by the tax subsidies for oil and gas. The oil and gas production industry is hugely profitable. When an industry has the top five companies making a trillion dollars profit over ten years why do they need any tax breaks that other businesses don't get?

The real rich bastards are the oil company executives. You know how they spend that vast profit? Stock buybacks. About 25% of big oil company profit is going into stock buy back programs, which is more then they spend on exploration and acquisitions. Because of way that executive compensation is structured with stock options and deferred payouts, this ends up being a huge multiplier payout multiplier for the executives. They get their stock at a ridiculous discount, pump up the value and realize vast personal wealth.

All the investors are happy because they see their valuation go up as well so they don't complain. It's short term gain over long term profit. According to this 2007 Bloomberg article, the big oil companies are effectively liquidating themselves over the longer term.

If Chevron Corp. keeps buying back its stock at the current rate, the com

Google doesn't pay tax on billions in profits, yet uses taxpayer funded roads and bus stops. Sounds like a damn fine reason to protest.

If you are in the US, you can sign up with https://coinbase.com/ They just got $25 million of venture funding: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-12/bitcoin-startup-gets-25-million-in-andreessen-led-funding-round.html so they are not a fly by night outfit.

You have a choice to keep your bitcoins on their system, which is OK for small amounts, or transfer it to a personal "wallet" on your own computer. All bitcoin balances actually live on a distributed database called the "block chain", which every full copy of the client software audits independently. A wallet contains the private cryptographic keys that allow you to *move* a balance from your address to another one in the database. Thus wallet files are pretty lightweight, and can be backed up onto pretty much anything, including paper. Bitcoin wallets should be treated like house keys - have backup copies, but don't lose them, because then someone else can steal your stuff/bitcoins.

The distributed database is why bitcoin transactions are so cheap. A transaction is basically a message that says "Move X bitcoins from address A to address B", which is signed by your private key. The block chain database includes every past transaction, so everyone can audit your current balance simply by adding up all the past transactions for that address. If your balance is too low to cover the new transaction, it gets rejected. If it meets all the audit tests, it gets passed along to everyone else on the network. Since everyone now knows you spent your balance, you can't spend it again.

Bitcoin balances are tracked to 8 decimal places, so you don't have to deal in whole bitcoins. These days people are transitioning to reporting in millibitcoins (mBTC) since those are closer to dollars and other fiat currencies than a full bitcoin is these days.

Does your statement make sense to yourself?

The only way the probability of an event can not have a statistic is if it is not measured.
And if fraudulent behaviour by banks isn't measured then the US really is stuffed.

Yep, pretty sure it's most recent measure was $100B (in penalties/settlements) and a lot more than $100B in actual fraud (depending on how you mark the value of a subprime mortgage backed security and the loan itself): http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-28/u-s-bank-legal-bills-exceed-100-billion.html

California Median home value

I am not from California, but it is trivial to find out the median home value there. It is very uncommon for the average Californian to have $400,000+ to buy a home in full. They take out a mortgage to be able to buy the home initially..

I have no idea what the stats in Canada are to compare, but it appears that 1/3 of American homeowners have no mortgage.

A homeowner with a mortgage does indeed own their home. They can do with it as they wish. The mortgage holder can initiate foreclosure on the homeowner for breaking the terms of the mortgage, but the person that signs the mortgage is the owner of the home.

Jay Carney, is that you?

Nice idea in theory... the practice thus far doesn't fall in life.

Aside from the fact that the enrollment #'s (at both the state & federal exchange levels) are well behind schedule, good sized portions of the website still do not exist, like the payment system: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-29/obamacare-payment-system-to-insurers-delayed-by-months.html

No... the website was only the second blow from this horrible law... the first being the massive wave of insurance cancelations & price increases we've also seen over the last few months, mostly in the individual market.

Just wait until the other shoe drops next year and the unlawful postponement of the employer mandate runs out.