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Bitcoin is nowhere near as secure as banks. First off, are they fDIC insured? They aren't? Damn.

FDIC is specifically from the US government and doesn't cover the world, so no not FDIC insured.
But far larger and global insurance companies most certainly offer the same insurance for bitcoin, and there are even insurance agencies that offer specific insurance policies to bitcoin exchanges.

Here is one such insurance company
http://innovationinsurancegroup.com/our-services/bitcoin-brokerage-agency/

Plenty of exchanges world wide use it too
https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/international/2018/02/01/479202.htm

If the bank loses my money are they liable for it? They are? Damn can't say the same about bitcoin. But keep talking about how itis just as secure as banks.

Insured exchanges are liable for it just as much as your bank. I won't be out a single penny if my exchange gets compromised.

If you are going to answer your own questions with false, and easily proven false, answers - why bother asking? I doubt you even care.

I remember a year ago when this happened:

https://www.insurancejournal.c...

"The train was traveling 78 miles (126 kilometers) an hour when it hit a curve near DuPont, Washington, where the speed limit was 30 miles an hour."

My first thought was "why in 2018 do engineers still drive trains?" Seriously. Why is there a human involved in constantly changing the speed of the train - which is literally a complete job description. Set the speed. That's it.

I'm not saying there shouldn't be a human, and I think it's silly to remove humans from the equation simply because they're such a tiny cost and worth it.

Airplane manufacturers figured this out decades ago with autopilot. You have a pilot who does the hard stuff like taking off and landing, but for normal flying around at cruising altitude the plane flies itself. If the plane hits a rough patch or whatever the pilot will take over.

Driving a train in one dimension is much, much, (imagine about a thousand more "much"s) easier than flying a plane in three dimensions. Especially with GPS. It should be the case that a human drives the train one time on the route, his speed adjustments are noted 10 times a second or whatever, and then the computer simply does the same thing every time, setting the instantaneous speed based on location. Then, the human sits there and takes over if there's a person on the tracks or whatever.

Here's what I'm getting to. I'm literally baffled that this isn't normal. Seriously. How can someone even hit a cure at two and a half times the safe speed? This problem can be solved with hundred year old technology.

"NTSB investigators have said that an automated braking system known as Positive Train Control, which is required on railroads by the end of this year but wasn’t yet working on that section of track, would have prevented the accident."

Wow, you guys got right on that.

So, yeah, sorry to say I'm not real impressed with whatever China's doing there with "driverless train".

On a possibly related note, Wells Fargo is selling about $2 billion in insurance business in 54 locations to USI Insurance. http://www.insurancejournal.co...

I do not respect the authority of no-lawsuit clauses for essential services.

Solved. This is a non-story

Please provide reference to a SCOTUS ruling which affirm arbitration agreements in this circumstance and I'll shut up. P.S. now SCOTUS is hearing whether employer-mandated non-class-action clauses are enforceable: http://www.insurancejournal.co...

I also believe BIA 10-2474 is the compound based on what I've been able to piece together via web searches.

Here are the sources I located:

http://www.biocentury.com/prod... http://www.insurancejournal.co...

This is truly tragic, God help the people affected.

You must not have heard the recent use, franchise employees and contractors are now considered "joint employees".
http://www.insurancejournal.co...

As long as the Federal Government is underwriting flood insurance while not collecting enough to cover the costs it is the government's business. Why should the rest of us pay for other peoples recklessness.

Get rid of the flood insurance. In fact, Congress already tried, but then caved in, as did Obama:

http://www.insurancejournal.co...

Probably the only real solution is to grandfather in existing owners but not provide insurance on sales and new construction.

You Englanders must be extra-special, because it takes most people several days to adjust and insurance research shows that accidents increase when you lose an hour of sleep.

Must be nice living in a country that's so out of touch with reality... or you're just being a jerk.

"U.S. Expected to Seek Limits on Car Touchscreens"
http://www.insurancejournal.co...

and about time, i dont want to be in the car that idiot drivers hit, especially when their insurance company drops the coverage and leaves it to the lawyers.

Mutual insurance was introduced to the US by Benjamin Franklin.

But lately the execs at such companies have been unhappy that the mutual structure prevents them from showing high profits to justify pay raises and makes it hard for them to raise investment capital to buy out competitors to justify pay raises. So they've been demutualizing http://www.insure.com/articles/lifeinsurance/demutualization.html into traded stock companies ... but pretending that they didn't demutualize by creating a new "mutual holding company" and moving all the insurance business to separate non-mutual companies.

http://www.insurancejournal.com/magazines/southcentral/partingshots/2001/04/30/18694.htm has a little explanation of how the mutual company execs use this maneuver to siphon decades of value growth from the mutualized owners into the personal pockets of the execs.

No, people can't opt out of accidents and exposure to disease. But they should be able to make their own decision, right or wrong, to seek out health insurance or to handle their problems in their own way as they see fit. And this includes anything along the lines of religious and moral objections to current medical practices.

As for data? Gonna be hard to find now. For most people, the requirement is based on laws which are about 20 years old. (Meaning most people here don't have a full appreciation of the before-after effects of such law.) But as a person in his mid 40s, I can recall clearly how my rates changed after laws were passed and how much news there was discussing the problem in that day. I am unable to find news or other articles related to that. This is as close as I could find:

http://www.insurancejournal.com/magazines/partingshots/2000/06/26/22647.htm

The basic fact is that insurance companies have less incentive to lower rates once the requirement laws were put into place. It also shows their profitability went up following the passage of such law. Meanwhile, the amount of actual coverage went down for many people simply because they couldn't afford the newer, higher rates. And at the end of the day, it didn't curb the most frequent offenders of failure to be insured -- illegal immigrants.

Just as in the case of health insurance requirements, you only have to look at who benefits most and who is harmed the most to see what's wrong with such law and programs.

What does this Bush-bashing have to do with anything? I don't see what point you're trying to make. And just to bring balance: There's flooding in the Northern midwest states right now and Obama's FEMA still hasn't done squat. (In fact he denied the governors' requests for emergency aid.) GOP or DNC; they both suck.

According to this Aug. 6th article FEMA "declared a major disaster for three northwestern Wisconsin counties due to flood damage in June" and "The declaration allows local governments affected by the floods to apply for aid."

This lady opted out of a class action and took Honda to small claims court and won.
http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/west/2012/02/03/234115.htm

Rather, it's up to the insurance company; just like an auto-wreck, they're the ones who determine its ability to be salvaged.

http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/international/2012/01/19/231831.htm

Apparently there's worry that it will end up costing over US$1bn before everything is said and done.

You can do something about rollover, and we are but making anti-roll-over standards:
http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2006/09/15/72448.htm

Also, regular cars are susceptible to roof crush, like swept back windshields and convertibles. The current 1.5 ratio of weight to crush pressure is not SUV specific.

The frequency of rollover is only a fraction of other accidents: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_accident
The high fatality rate form rollover comes from ejection (not wearing seatbelt), not from roof crush. See same link.

Allies should not be crashing nuclear reactors into each other by accident.

Drivers should not be crashing containers of flammable liquids into each other by accident. Let's ban cars!

I realize the response was tongue-in-cheek, but automobiles account for some 41000 - 43000 deaths per year in the US. That's not counting any that were cripple, maimed, or otherwise injured for long or short term. Getting rid of the cars gets rid of that problem. We see the reduced traffic from the recession is reducing traffic deaths.

In some areas, cars are the leading cause of death for some age groups. It's rather embarassing that folks in the US can live 2km from the city center and still have, for all practical purposes, no public transportation even during business hours. It's the daily commute and the party traffic where public transport pays off for public health. The former because of the sheer number of km travelled, the latter because about 1/3 of accidents are alcohol-related.

Anyway, that's moot since most drivers don't go around with the windows boarded over, trying to sneak up on other cars, as would be the analogy for the subs.

Baby-boomers are not only the first generation to become dependent on cars for transportation at an early age, but also the first generation to have access to fast cars at an early age. WWII produced more than just the baby boom, it produced a generation with an unprecedented advancement in engineering capability as a result of training either from the military directly or from support efforts.

Let's look at some of the influences on baby boomers as they grew up:
- NASCAR was founded in 1947, right on the heels of WWII
- car design and marketing focused on performance during the 1950's moreso than ever before
- this leads to unprecedented technical advancements in cars, i.e. fuel injection, turbo-charging, supercharging, hemispherical combustion chambers, all of which were developed for military applications, and the market understood and demanded the benefits of advanced technology more than ever before
- the US became the world leader in gross national product during the 1950's, which led to unprecedented car production and sales, which led to unprecedented access to cars by younger drivers

There are 75 million baby boomers on US roads today, all of whom turned 16 shortly after muscle cars became the primary focus of the production and marketing of cars. You cannot apply today's elderly driver model to the elderly drivers of the next decade. Today's drivers over 65 did not drag race as kids or idolize James Dean. Tomorrow's did.

The only corporations that would possibly be taking this into consideration are insurance companies, who are responsible for billions in liability and survive by predicting driver behavior. Are any car manufacturers consulting them on the matter?

And let's not ignore the notion of turning an elderly person's car windshield into what must seem like a Star Trek helm console to them. I'm immediately reminded of an age-old proverb about teaching old dogs new tricks.

It might be a fitting omen that James Dean died in a car accident.

People don't go after Linux desktops because they are much harder to break into. What about all those nix servers out there. Linux isn't 'immune' but when properly configured you don't get infected by 'malware' merely by clicking on an URL or opening an email attachment.

Bank: N.H. Hannaford Customers' Cards Compromised

International Hackers Indicted for Sniffing Credit Cards from Dave & Buster's"

Windows sure has the most market share in getting your CreditCard stolen .. :)

Colorado's largest malpractice insurer, COPIC, for example, has enrolled 1,800 physicians in a disclosure program under which they immediately express remorse to patients when medical care goes wrong and describe in detail what happened.

Malpractice claims against these 1,800 doctors have dropped 50 percent since 2000, while the cost of settling these doctors'claims has fallen 23 percent.

So we're up to "hundreds of billions"? Considering the GDP of the US was about 13 trillion last year I guess that not only means a large part of everything the US does these days is make music and movies but we are bleeding _another_ several percent of potential US GDP in "lost income" from that economic engine. So we should envision the RIAA getting battered by Katrina several times per year and barely able to say afloat in the torrent of downloads.

[My Intro to Soc prof wrote Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics. Actually, intelligent people have sincerely claimed even stupider things with even less self interest so I guess I'm not surprised we're up the "hundreds of billions".]

Hundreds of billions of dollars is the GDP of a good-sized US state. It is also roughly the size of the loss due to hurricane Katrina ( http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2005 /09/04/59145.htm ). Cotton seems to be suggesting that domestic piracy has the equivalent effect on the US economy as losing an entire state, or having to rebuild a major city.

This was the second of four reports. They are:
Working Group I "The Physical Science Basis" (Released 2 February)
Working Group II "Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability" (The one just out -- 4 April)
Working Group III "Mitigation of Climate Change" (Due 3 May)
The Synthesis Report (SYR) (Due 16 November)

See http://www.ipcc.ch/

The economics of making as early a start as possible are looked at quite closely at:
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/Independent_Reviews/ stern_review_economics_climate_change/sternreview_ index.cfm

Industry will certain play some role in getting things moving. A good example would be "CEOs Ask Bush for Mandatory Emissions Caps" at:
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/55321.html.

The insurance companies are certainly seeing this as important:
http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/international /2007/04/06/78536.htm
There's a link from the above to a PDF hosted at Lloyds:
http://www.lloyds.com/NR/rdonlyres/FCA144E6-24D5-4 25E-B058-3A64E020E18F/0/360_RapidClimateChangeRepo rt.pdf

That's a 31 page PDF titled _Rapid Climate Change_. Major topic coverage:
    Rapid sea level rise
    By Professor David Smith

    Destabilisation of parts of the Greenland and West Antarctic Ice Sheet
    By Dr Stephan Harrison

    Increased frequency and intensity of floods
    By Dr Matt Wilson

    Climate variability and changes in global drought intensity and frequency
    By Dr Richard Washington

What's the "fair market value" of a unique species? What's the replacement cost?

And it sounds like you're mostly afraid of getting financially burned by the "unknown", which is a reasonable concern. So, do the obvious fix: do an environmental impact study, including a field study of the flora and fauna, *BEFORE* you put up your money to buy the land, so that you *know* it isn't an issue. Think of it as insurance. You probably wouldn't think twice about a home inspection before buying it. Why not a "land inspection"? Especially in California, such an inspection can cover multiple risks and protect you from being hung out to dry because you bought a piece of land with a geological hazard on it that wasn't obvious either -- landslides are *really* common in California, for example, and have ruined alot of poorly-planned developments and killed unsuspecting residents, EVEN when there were warning signs preceding the deadly events.

Basically, don't get financially ruined (or worse) by the unknown. This is not rocket science. Some risks can be mitigated by a bit of study, and if that takes a bit of money and time, it is worth it if you are spending hundreds or thousands of times more on the land itself, and your financial neck is on the line. Make the risks known.

Offshore accounts are too risky these days. There's plenty of ways to hide money in plain sight: personal PACs, sham non-profit foundations, etc. California's former Insurance Commissioner set up a sham charity (California Research and Assistance Fund) that received millions from insurance companies in exchange for him waiving billions in claims and penalties related to the 1994 Northridge quake. That's what I call a return on investment.

Wikipedia entry for Chuck Quackenbush
Timeline of scandal

Something tells me that this summer isn't quite the time to be visiting Maryland.

Basically, yes.

What's next, a lawyer for your hair?

Well, if you can get your hair insured (a little more about it here) then there's a lawyer involved somewhere in the process... and don't forget to make deposits at the hair bank.

If you are using a straight rectangular keyboard that isn't at the proper height, pounding on it with your fingers and strained wrists, and feel you need to type 100 wpm in order to be productive, then its your own damn fault!

Sorry, but no. Even that doesn't cause CTS. (summary if you don't want to pay) Occurances, by percentage, of CTS in computer users is not elevated. Most computer users who have signifigant pain which they call CTS is really either something else, or caused by some other activity. Repetitive strain injuries are not Carpal Tunnel Syndrome! Surgery won't fix them. You have to fix your bad habits.

You can give yourself some nasty RSIs if you have poor posture and habits, but typing fast or using a regular keyboard don't imply that you are doing either of those things. Fancy ergonomic devices are just aids, not solutions. Think of them like the little rubber thing your elementrary school teacher used to use to get you to hold your pencil properly.

NO employer should refuse to let you bring in your own keyboard, mouse, even chair, if they do, find other employment.

That I'm in total agreement with.

Did some Googling and found one company and one organsization offering "copyright infringment insurance". Also found two interesting articles about this type of insurance.

TrustyFiles "The music subscription service includes copyright infringement insurance. The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) may continue to target non-subscribing P2P users with lawsuits, and inadvertently sue RazorPop's paying customers. The insurance will be capped at $5,000 per subscriber, which is above typical RIAA settlement amounts to date."

P2Pfund

Individual Copyright Infringement Insurance Prompts a Lawyerly Debate

RIAA Litigation Insurance: A (Very) Speculative Solution

No... This one is not one of the CSI studies. At least, the FBI press release makes it look that way.

From the release:
"Bruce Verduyn--a special agent in Houston's Cyber Squad, which administered the survey-said that this new survey differs from the annual CSI/FBI Computer Crime and Security Survey conducted by the Computer Security Institute and the FBI. "We surveyed about three times as many organizations and focused more on new technologies, where attacks originated, and how organizations responded," he said."

Irritatingly, it appears the FBI has removed the actual survey results from their page. Another story references the results directly at http://www.fbi.gov/publications/ccs2005.pdf but the link is dead. I'd much rather see the results straight from the FBI.

The test mice were all sound asleep when they met their ends, unlike this mouse , who went out a la Peter Jackson's Denethor.

Texas passed significant medical malpractice reform recently, and malpractice insurance rates are falling significantly.

-ccm

I used to work for a company that did some engine controls for the military, navy ships mostly. Their specs and test procedures were incredible. The equipment wasn't the most current technology, but they wanted to make SURE the control we built for their ships worked, no matter the cost.

Of course. You don't want your latest & greatest warship steaming out of port on its maiden voyage going *putt* *putt* *putt* [or even worse, not steaming out of port on its maiden voyage at all.]

Actually, it seems like more often than not governments are willing to spend lots of money, especially on things like technology. Now, if it's a new road or school building they are going to be as cheap as possible.

You've got that right.

The true numbers, as I understand them, is that the average claim for asbestos is maybe $10k-$20k, which is not high at all for someone who was given lung cancer. The commissions on filing claims are low, too, because it is very mechanical, but they're not zero because the law firm fronts all the costs (even for would-be plaintiffs who turn out not to have a viable claim) and the lawyers, secretaries, and paralegals need to make a modest living too.

Your numbers of $1m and 40% are from when asbestos litigation would go to trial and it wasn't a simple matter of filing a claim with the trust fund, and yet even then those figures are maximums, not averages. Many got smaller verdicts or nothing. The settlements of early litigants who didn't go all the way to verdict was often below what mesothelioma patients would get today from the trust fund, maybe $5k. Showing that a disease was caused by exposure to hazardous chemicals is extremely difficult. (Look at the recent, failed, litigation against IBM for workplace chemical exposure for another example of this.) There were some very few firms that got rich from the economies of scale of asbestos suits in the 1970s and 1980s, but another way to look at it is that they provided a way to help the cancer patients at a time when there was no other option.

Putting aside the general issue of "ambulance chasers," most of whom are by no means wealthy (although every now and then some like John Edwards strike it rich), I have trouble understanding the objection to filing asbestos claims. Having mesothelioma virtually guarantees that the person got lung cancer from asbestos, end of story, with a level of proof beyond that of almost any other kind of civil litigation. (Although a few decades ago it was very hard to win the suits.)

My understanding, though, is that the trust funds have been depleted by the filing of less important claims, where the patient shows scarring of the lungs but did not develop cancer. There's been some controversy in Britain recently over whether "pleural plaques" claims should be allowed. My own view is that they should not.

The terms sold were "AXA" and "Direct Assurance". ... it appears to be the assertion of AXA (the company) that their trademarks were sold to AXA's direct competitors.

The company claims that the use of their words infringes on its trademarks, patents and copyrights, and wants to stop Google from selling them.

[Begin rant]

Google is not selling people's trademarks. The company still owns them.

Google is not selling people's copyrights. They are making fair use of published material, as an indexing service.

Google is not infringing on people's patents by linking to their pages, unless that patant was on linking to someone's pages through a search engine.

Google is not supporting the competitors, other than through paid advertizing.

Google is not making any statements about which product to use.

Google is not making any statements about which company to support.

Google is not transferring any legal rights or ownership of the rights.

Google is not stating that you have a criminal record, or that you are doing something illegal, not making libel claims about you, and not violating your privacy, even though they might offer that information if it is searched for.

What ARE they doing?

Google is saying "You just asked us about one or more word. We have been paid to show you these ads when you typed that word, and these web sites use that word or have a high correlation to that word."

I'm sick of lawsuits against them for indexing public sites.

There are billions of web sites. These sites are publically available. Since Google is doing nothing more than indexing publically available content using fair-use excerpts, THESE LAWSUITS SHOULD ALL BE THROWN OUT.

If somebody is to be sued, it is the company paying for the ads, and the people publishing the source sites, making the information available to the public. Not Google.

[End Rant]

One wonders how the US government would react if a foreign nation tried a similar approach.
Try doing some minor research the US and other countries do it all the time, but I guess it more fun to be anti-american without the knowledge.
Try looking at some like this. Or this or this
The fact is the US extridites people to other countries all the times, denies extradition attempts and the same happens to it.

Toulouse Explosion Losses May Total $840 Million