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This has been written in a very pro-selldata approach:

For example, if the proxy that’s providing a user’s address is located in a different city from that user, then location data that could aid in targeting ads would be unusable, he said.

So, should ipv6 be enabled because it kills privacy? This article is stupid shit. I really don't like if internet protocols are designed with "targeting ads" in mind. This is where the google involvement into internet standardisation has brought us to: an internet built to spy on us. Google is not very much more than that: a company getting billions from running the most profitable internet ad network in the world (visit this, and search for "Advertising revenues"), and running other services in order to show those ads on.

10 Major ones in Symantec/Norton, NOD32/ESET, ClamAV, Arcabit/Arcavir, Comodo, Qihoo360, EmsiSoft, HerdProtect, & McAfee.

So far?

---

1.) Arcabit/ArcaVir (retracted fully)

2.) Symantec/Norton (retracted fully)

3.) COMODO (retracted & offered "preferred/trusted vendor status")

4.) ClamAV (retracted fully)

5.) Qihoo360 (fully retracted)

6.) EmsiSoft (fully retracted)

7.) NOD32/ESET (fully retracted by DIRECT email correspondence w/ Mr. Aryeh Goretsky)

8.) McAfee (in process w/ handler J. Walter @ mcafee)

9.) HerdProtect (in process)

10.) DrWeb (only other 'false positive' albeit in the russias/ussr/soviet union & I have not contacted they yet)

---

* McAfee & HerdProtect are in process now afaik since I wrote them for this (it's std. process in these situations)...

So far/So good, in that my "naysayer experts" are falling like dominoes, 1-by-1, since they simply didn't understand the executable compression engine technique I use... & did a "falsie" on my program!

It happens!

I use exe packing/compressing, for several GOOD reasons:

---

1.) Compressed exe's load FASTER over a LAN/WAN by far, very noticeably so (& faster from local HDD's too, since the compression/decompression process is offset by the speed of today's CPU's, & since the file is SMALLER on disk & tinier files load up from disks, faster... & disks ARE the slowest part of the "performance equation" in computing (particularly mechanical HDD's, even fast as they are in 7,200/10,000/15,000 rpm varieties + PRT tech onboard etc./et al!))

2.) Compressed exe's are HARDER TO "resource hack" (by FAR in the file itself)

3.) Compressed exe's are HARDER to 'disassemble' (not in memory though - process explorer of Dr. Mark Russinovich illustrates this in a tool many 'techies' often utilize)

4.) Lastly, since I test my program @ startup for size in bytes? Well, IF IT IS NOT THE COMPRESSED SIZE?? It will "self-terminate" (assuming it is infested/infected OR being hacked into in some way (noted above))... This works, since std./classic viruses add size & alter jump tables + tack on code @ the tail of exe's typically? This method works as "built-in" virus protection!

(I am surprised EVERY coder's not using this technique in fact).

---

* Yes, I am now also CERTAIN that McAfee/HerdProtect) will have to retract it too & especially since 77 others did not find it a 'badware' (via VirusTotal &/or JOTTI online scanners) NOR flag it falsely as such... they understood my exe compression schema, the "falsie crew" didn't.

APK

P.S.=> So, what am I saying here? Well, ok - As good as the "experts" in security are? They screwup @ times!

This isn't a 1st for me "turning them over onto their heads" either, they make mistakes (I did the same to CA years ago also, passing ALL 21 of their review questions, and it was 'downrated' to ZERO threat level (should have been TOTALLY removed but they were stubborn - I called their head coder (Craig Jensen iirc) & he was SO easy to get the better of, he threatened if I called him again, he would call the police - I told him a lawyer would be involved for libeling me 1st: In the end? Computer Associates was BUSTED for ACCOUNTING FRAUD (big news -> http://www.sec.gov/news/press/...) & their "security suite"?? Sold off, lol - it was even put out of use by a former employer of mine, we sold it even (forced to in fact), but it "tore up" email left & right - had to go, it sucked, being trained/tuned or not))... apk

9 Major ones in Symantec/Norton, ClamAV, Arcabit/Arcavir, Comodo, Qihoo360, HerdProtect, & McAfee.

So far?

---

1.) Arcabit/ArcaVir (retracted fully)

2.) Symantec/Norton (retracted fully)

3.) COMODO (retracted & offered "preferred/trusted vendor status")

4.) ClamAV (retracted fully)

5.) Qihoo360 (fully retracted)

6.) EmsiSoft (fully retracted)

7.) McAfee (in process w/ handler J. Walter @ mcafee)

8.) HerdProtect (in process)

9.) DrWeb (only other 'false positive' albeit in the russias/ussr/soviet union & I have not contacted they yet)

---

* McAfee & HerdProtect are in process now afaik since I wrote them for this (it's std. process in these situations)...

So far/So good, in that my "naysayer experts" are falling like dominoes, 1-by-1, since they simply didn't understand the executable compression engine technique I use... & did a "falsie" on my program!

It happens!

I use exe packing/compressing, for several GOOD reasons:

---

1.) Compressed exe's load FASTER over a LAN/WAN by far, very noticeably so (& faster from local HDD's too, since the compression/decompression process is offset by the speed of today's CPU's, & since the file is SMALLER on disk & tinier files load up from disks, faster... & disks ARE the slowest part of the "performance equation" in computing (particularly mechanical HDD's, even fast as they are in 7,200/10,000/15,000 rpm varieties + PRT tech onboard etc./et al!))

2.) Compressed exe's are HARDER TO "resource hack" (by FAR in the file itself)

3.) Compressed exe's are HARDER to 'disassemble' (not in memory though - process explorer of Dr. Mark Russinovich illustrates this in a tool many 'techies' often utilize)

4.) Lastly, since I test my program @ startup for size in bytes? Well, IF IT IS NOT THE COMPRESSED SIZE?? It will "self-terminate" (assuming it is infested/infected OR being hacked into in some way (noted above))... This works, since std./classic viruses add size & alter jump tables + tack on code @ the tail of exe's typically? This method works as "built-in" virus protection!

(I am surprised EVERY coder's not using this technique in fact).

---

* Yes, I am now also CERTAIN that McAfee/HerdProtect) will have to retract it too & especially since 77 others did not find it a 'badware' (via VirusTotal &/or JOTTI online scanners) NOR flag it falsely as such... they understood my exe compression schema, the "falsie crew" didn't.

APK

P.S.=> So, what am I saying here? Well, ok - As good as the "experts" in security are? They screwup @ times!

This isn't a 1st for me "turning them over onto their heads" either, they make mistakes (I did the same to CA years ago also, passing ALL 21 of their review questions, and it was 'downrated' to ZERO threat level (should have been TOTALLY removed but they were stubborn - I called their head coder (Craig Jensen iirc) & he was SO easy to get the better of, he threatened if I called him again, he would call the police - I told him a lawyer would be involved for libeling me 1st: In the end? Computer Associates was BUSTED for ACCOUNTING FRAUD (big news -> http://www.sec.gov/news/press/...) & their "security suite"?? Sold off, lol - it was even put out of use by a former employer of mine, we sold it even (forced to in fact), but it "tore up" email left & right - had to go, it sucked, being trained/tuned or not))... apk

Who would trust them?

First this: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/ed...
(bitcoin trust)

Then this: http://www.investopedia.com/ar...
(bitcoin payment system)

Now this thing... ("regulated" exchange that can't leave the US for an international virtual decentralized currency...)

Perhaps they just didn't get that memo about their relevance having tanked somewhere after they wanted to
renege on their FB settlement and go for a do-over uh-gain:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

Their fifteen minutes of fame is up. The harder they try and bring themselves
into relevance the funnier it gets. The bell has rung. Time to get off the stage little boys.

E

Not an arrest yet, but:

http://www.sec.gov/litigation/...

"The Court's judgment permanently enjoins Shavers and BTCST from future violations of Sections 5 and 17(a) of the Securities Act of 1933, and Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5 thereunder; orders them to disgorge, on a joint and several basis, $39,638,569, plus $1,766,098 prejudgment interest thereon, for a total of $40,404,667; and orders Shavers and BTCST each to pay a $150,000 penalty. "

That's gotta hurt.

SEC Files Securities Fraud Charges Against Computer Associates International http://www.sec.gov/news/press/... so see my subject line above. Your sources are not reputable by any means and birds of a feather flock together, Thor Schrock.

This is too. Look at Sean McKessy's smile. Creeeepy.

A lot of the labour cost of running an airline is pretty invisible (ground crew, engineering and so forth). I suspect that would be a large part of your answer. State ownership/subsidy, I suspect, also plays a part.

Most of the cost is FUEL. That's why it needs to fly full as often as it can to make money. Leasing/depreciation costs of an aircraft are also significant.

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/ed... , page #20

Fuel: $2.5b
Salaries: $2b

on revenue of $10b.

They made $1.3b before taxes.

But 10% more people on a plane, means probably 7-10% higher revenue without additional expenses.

Extra legroom scales out ALL costs, not just labour. It increases fuel costs too, per passenger. Different comforts on those flights are more indicative that the airlines compete differently than in the US. Maybe it's not only about the price of the ticket for them.

PS. Americans also have much higher "girth" than Asians. This causes all sorts of problems. Higher fuel costs and less space for the people in question. Airlines make money per kg shipped mostly, so 50% more mass and no revenue swells that fuel/kg costs.

The issue I think with crowdsourcing where the contributors were investors is that it complicates everything. It isn't easy to legally sell investments in privately held companies to those who aren't "accredited investors". http://www.sec.gov/answers/acc... I

Yes, this.

AMZN's game plan is to transform retail by exploiting network effects, economies of scale, lower cost structure, and the ability to shunt costs off to others. They're investing heavily to create a dominating position that will be unassailable by new etrants - see Warren Buffett's comments about economic moats.

They are deliberately running their operations close to break-even from an accrual accounting point of view... their $126M loss sounds large, but it's not very material given their $20B of revenue over the same period. These losses (from low prices) are a crucial part of killing competition and transforming the retail ecosystem permanently. Instead they're focused on keeping enough positive cash flow that they generate enough internal funding to fuel their strategy without continuing to raise significant funding from sales of equity or debt. You need to focus on AMZN's statements of cash flow

2014q2 operating cash flow was $862M - seven times the "swelling losses" making headlines. This didn't quite fund their purchases of property/plant/equipment which were $1,290M... but these kinds of cash sources & uses can be quite lumpy over the course of a single quarter; they maintain a very healthy warchest in corporate treasury as a shock absorber.

That's the game plan. Bezos is very good at it. The investors are on board... foregoing the bird in the hand to reap many more birds from the bush in the feature is what investing is all about.

I have no interest in owning the stock, but that's what those who do are looking at.

About half of Apple's employees are retail employees (working in Apple stores). Only about 40,000 work as developers, testers, etc.

Apple's 2013 10-K Annual Report states

"As of September 28, 2013, the Company had approximately 80,300 full-time equivalent employees and an additional 4,100 full-time equivalent temporary employees and contractors. Approximately 42,800 of the total full-time equivalent employees worked in the Company’s Retail segment."

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/ed...

A list of Google Inc's subsidiaries, in desperate hope of curing your ignorance.

The SEC started requring companies to file their earnings reports in the Extensible Business Reporting Language a few years ago. At first, it was only for big companies; now it's everybody. The SEC displays this info in a standard format on line. Here are the latest earnings for DICE Holdings, Slashdot's parent. Here's the raw XML behind that data. Turning that into verbiage isn't that hard.

I've been doing this for years at Downside.com, extracting the raw data from the human-readable text. This is now obsolete, but it's still running. Here's the same DICE financial statement as processed by Downside. That's Perl code that's been running for 15 years now. When it started, nobody was doing that. Now that everybody in finance has that data, it's probably time to retire Downside's old extraction engine.

The SEC started requring companies to file their earnings reports in the Extensible Business Reporting Language a few years ago. At first, it was only for big companies; now it's everybody. The SEC displays this info in a standard format on line. Here are the latest earnings for DICE Holdings, Slashdot's parent. Here's the raw XML behind that data. Turning that into verbiage isn't that hard.

I've been doing this for years at Downside.com, extracting the raw data from the human-readable text. This is now obsolete, but it's still running. Here's the same DICE financial statement as processed by Downside. That's Perl code that's been running for 15 years now. When it started, nobody was doing that. Now that everybody in finance has that data, it's probably time to retire Downside's old extraction engine.

When this Ponzi scheme collapses the SEC will have to investigate the United States Marshals Service.

Should make for interesting spectating.

Specific practices like driver using phone while driving, or curb parking time limits can certainly be regulated. But not the basic fact of people exchanging money for information. Dislike it all you want, but people have freedom to do as they want.

It is illegal to exchange money for all kinds of information. Credit card and Social Security numbers, for example. Insider trading, for another. It continually amazes me the degree to which crackpot libertarian ideology is so consistently blind to extremely common legal practice. Do you people spend all of your time in the basement?

Furthermore, a law banning the parking app would be trivial to enforce. Just have police answer the ads, find the douchebag who is blocking the spot in order to charge for it, tow their car, and give them a nice big ticket. Can't happen soon enough.

I once made the effort to read the document dump on the investigation of the SEC's failure to detect the Madoff ponzii scheme. It's sitcom material. The SEC staff is a clutch of lawyers livin' la vida loca while they hone their ability to avoid responsibility to a fine point. Madoff was the biggest fool in the whole thing; he lived in terror that these mopes might actually discover something and follow up on it. But for the credit bubble popping he would still be rolling and on his fifth or sixth SEC audit.

A few years later I read about the wide spread porn habits of SEC lawyers on their government computers and it makes perfect sense. Yet every time some new fraud surfaces the statists cry for more funding; "none of this would have happened if bush/reagan/nixon/whomever hadn't cut the budget!!1" Like paying for more of this pathetic nonsense is going to help.

Bailing out GM was at least as big a waste as our ongoing funding of the SEC.

This is the second sentence : So why should society infrastructure be modified to suit them (exclusive order types on exchanges regulated of necessity) ?

And it not only answers your question that you ask as a reply to it, but makes it unnecessary. I DO NOT think everything should benefit society, I never said so. But if society adapts for individuals, individuals better provide a much bigger benefit to society in return. I don't have patience for people who write more and read less, and I am not even sorry about it.

You don't even know how much they earned, so how can you really comment on it? Virtu Financial recently filed an S-1 to go public: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/e... Total revenue: $664 million. Net revenue: $182 million. Not bad, but not exactly killing it either.

I happen to know that zero multiplied with any possible profit is zero. Society benefits ZERO by people being just a bit faster than competition and cornering a market. Hence the remark of "proportion".

What are you talking about with "society infrastructure", and particularly "exchanges regulated of necessity?" What does that even mean? Did you know that NYSE, amongst many other liquidity venues, is now a publicly traded company? The exchanges have provided these order types of their own volition, this isn't an "HFT" problem, its an exchange problem if anything- they are trying to attract the HFT flow to their exchanges!

This is exactly part of what I am saying. The other part is - regulated of necessity. If NYSE in its own greed kills investor trust - NYSE also loses. Yes financial industry in the US has enough short term greed and there is not much competition from less greedy financial players currently. But it is for the good of stock exchanges themselves that there be a semblance of trustworthiness.

As for whether this new technology is benefitting anyone, I would argue this is just a luddite argument that has been made many times before whenever there has been a disruptive new technology

This is idiotic. I don't see any clarification or examples, and this is an enormous statement. Rest seems to be based on this idiotic assumption. By needing to ask "why should everything benefit society", when I didn't even say so, you have yourself admitted HFT doesn't benefit society. Disruptive new technology rarely ends up being so useless for society in general.

I am not spouting off anything- I spent the last ten years building this stuff on both the HFT and Agency side. You read a few articles, and maybe the entire Flash Boys book? Good for you. I am trying to give you the rest of the story.

And you haven't read my post so you didn't understand that I know what you are trying to tell; but you are wrong in some places which I corrected.

You seem to have a lot of animosity- did you post in this thread to just have a circlejerk about how obviously bad HFT is? Or have a reasoned and informed discussion?

Maybe my reading comprehension is off- here is your second sentence: And none of them benefited society in any respectable proportion to what they earned. So why should society infrastructure be modified to suit them (exclusive order types on exchanges regulated of necessity) ?

You don't even know how much they earned, so how can you really comment on it? Virtu Financial recently filed an S-1 to go public: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/e... Total revenue: $664 million. Net revenue: $182 million. Not bad, but not exactly killing it either.

What are you talking about with "society infrastructure", and particularly "exchanges regulated of necessity?" What does that even mean? Did you know that NYSE, amongst many other liquidity venues, is now a publicly traded company? The exchanges have provided these order types of their own volition, this isn't an "HFT" problem, its an exchange problem if anything- they are trying to attract the HFT flow to their exchanges!

As for "off the shelf" and "more difficult", it is nuanced. There are many components that are required to build a trading engine, major pieces of them can now be bought- low latency market data (Exegy), low latency network cards (Mellanox/Solarflare), and exchange connectivity, for example. There is now a critical mass of developers who can build this stuff for you, as opposed to this being arcane research type stuff. However, its all rather expensive. Co-location itself will cost you $10k/month per rack last I looked into it. Hence the "high barrier to entry" and "off the shelf" go together. 15-20 years ago, a boiler-room type phones and brokers operation might only have startup overhead (outside of employees) in total of $10k per month. The costs of some of this stuff will come down as it becomes commoditized, but bandwidth and datacenter space are likely to remain a sparse resource and remain costly.

As for whether this new technology is benefitting anyone, I would argue this is just a luddite argument that has been made many times before whenever there has been a disruptive new technology. Do you think the guys on the floor of the NYSE used to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for their seat because they liked going to Champs Deli or because they could wear a funny colored blazer? They did it so they could trade on information first. Telephones disrupted the bucket shops, SOES bandits disrupted the floor traders, later electronic trading completely disrupted floor trading, and now we have a bunch of guys who realized that they could build much faster infra and make money off it, and they did, forcing others to beef up their systems to keep up. And most have.

I am not spouting off anything- I spent the last ten years building this stuff on both the HFT and Agency side. You read a few articles, and maybe the entire Flash Boys book? Good for you. I am trying to give you the rest of the story.

Such a thing exists, but under a different name: SEC Section 31 Assessments amount to a tax on sales to fund the SEC's activities. As market volume is constantly changing, the rate is periodically updated; the current rate is $17.40 per $1 million sold (notional value, so price × quantity). This assessment is applied to all sales, so it behaves as a tax on HFT (half of whose volume is sales on a given day, so they can go home without a position). Right now the rate is only adjusted for budgeting and volume predictions, but it could conceivably be used as a punative measure against excessive trading. If it was adjusted by a large amount, you can expect that market spreads would widen accordingly and total trading volume would drop. I think the rate could probably go higher than the current value without much impact, but there's definitely a tipping point where the "friction" from the assessments would cause major liquidity problems. For scale, consider that a 1% tax on the notional value of all trades would be one thousand times larger than the current Section 31 rate.

Such a thing exists, but under a different name: SEC Section 31 Assessments amount to a tax on sales to fund the SEC's activities. As market volume is constantly changing, the rate is periodically updated; the current rate is $17.40 per $1 million sold (notional value, so price × quantity). This assessment is applied to all sales, so it behaves as a tax on HFT (half of whose volume is sales on a given day, so they can go home without a position). Right now the rate is only adjusted for budgeting and volume predictions, but it could conceivably be used as a punative measure against excessive trading. If it was adjusted by a large amount, you can expect that market spreads would widen accordingly and total trading volume would drop. I think the rate could probably go higher than the current value without much impact, but there's definitely a tipping point where the "friction" from the assessments would cause major liquidity problems. For scale, consider that a 1% tax on the notional value of all trades would be one thousand times larger than the current Section 31 rate.

you're an idiot. the order didn't vanish... and OFFER was put up and sold before the order to execute the offer as a buy could be placed.

if someone put a Lamborghini on craigslist for $1, and someone else bought it before you, your order didn't vanish... it simply can't be placed. the offer is no longer valid.

if you want to know laws, how about YOU READ THEM

The article is lying out its ass, and the lie is incredibly transparent. To see that this is a lie, here is the actual SEC filing. It is gigantic, but the relevant bits are pages 358 and 359 of the PDF. There are three big things that become immediately obvious from a cursory analysis of the table and associated description:

1. The SEC is proposing a requirement that crowdfunders produce and submit a series of forms. They estimate the cost of producing these forms at $10,060, assuming use of a lawyer at $400/hour. There's also the cost of yearly audits for crowdfunding greater than $100,000.
2. The SEC is estimating that crowdfunding intermediaries will extract fees between 5% and 15%. This is obviously not a cost that the SEC is imposing, but is a fee imposed by intermediaries whose amount the SEC is not regulating.
3. The cost estimates used middle values for each bracket ($50,000, $300,000, and $750,000). This means that the claim that it might possibly cost $30,000 for somebody raising $100,000 in a crowdfunding project is pure, unadulterated fiction. The additional cost for that is around $10,000, plus the intermediary fee, at $400/hour for a lawyer. There's the additional cost of yearly audits for crowd funding of $100,001 or greater, which is unfortunate, but it puts lie to the ridiculous graphs put out by Sherwood Neiss.

As others have already mentioned, this is also only applicable to crowdfunding where securities are given to the funders. For that situation, the new regulations are actually a tremendous cost savings, as usually this would require an IPO, which typically cost millions of dollars. So somehow the moron that wrote this article changed a dramatic cost savings (from millions of dollars down to tens of thousands, possibly less for small amounts of funding with a cheap lawyer), and turned it into a story of "bureaucratic overreach". Come on. This article should be retracted for gross inaccuracy.

I'm assuming the answer is "oh, I misunderstood."

(c) Neither the summary nor the article were particularly clear on whether these new rules would apply to Kickstarter-style merchandise pre-order crowdfunding. Reading the proposal, it becomes clear that the new rules would apply to the sale of securities that provide the investor a possible return in the form of a share of future revenue or profits.

I have participated in 10 crowd funded development efforts so far at Kickstarter and 1 at Indigogo. I am completely comfortable with the risks involved and the rewards I have experienced so far. I want government to stay out of the crowd funding process to prevent the costs always associated with government involvement. If you want to make a difference make your opinion heard to the SEC and your government representatives.

See the full text of the SEC's proposed rule making here:
http://www.sec.gov/rules/proposed/2013/33-9470.pdf

If you are opposed to this insane over-reach as I am make your opinion known to the SEC through the following methods:
DATES: Comments should be received on or before February 3, 2014.
ADDRESSES: Comments may be submitted by any of the following methods:
Electronic Comments:
  Use the Commission’s Internet comment form: http://www.sec.gov/rules/proposed.shtml;
  Send an e-mail to rule-comments@sec.gov. Please include File Number S7-09-13 on the
subject line; or
  Use the Federal eRulemaking Portal (http://www.regulations.gov). Follow the
instructions for submitting comments.

This information is also in the above document.

I have participated in 10 crowd funded development efforts so far at Kickstarter and 1 at Indigogo. I am completely comfortable with the risks involved and the rewards I have experienced so far. I want government to stay out of the crowd funding process to prevent the costs always associated with government involvement. If you want to make a difference make your opinion heard to the SEC and your government representatives.

See the full text of the SEC's proposed rule making here:
http://www.sec.gov/rules/proposed/2013/33-9470.pdf

If you are opposed to this insane over-reach as I am make your opinion known to the SEC through the following methods:
DATES: Comments should be received on or before February 3, 2014.
ADDRESSES: Comments may be submitted by any of the following methods:
Electronic Comments:
  Use the Commission’s Internet comment form: http://www.sec.gov/rules/proposed.shtml;
  Send an e-mail to rule-comments@sec.gov. Please include File Number S7-09-13 on the
subject line; or
  Use the Federal eRulemaking Portal (http://www.regulations.gov). Follow the
instructions for submitting comments.

This information is also in the above document.

Here's the proposal:

http://www.sec.gov/rules/proposed/2013/33-9470.pdf

Those with constructive comments should submit them to the SEC. Here:

http://www.sec.gov/rules/proposed.shtml

Here's the proposal:

http://www.sec.gov/rules/proposed/2013/33-9470.pdf

Those with constructive comments should submit them to the SEC. Here:

http://www.sec.gov/rules/proposed.shtml

A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to its investors from their own money or the money paid by subsequent investors, rather than from profit earned by the individual or organization running the operation.

That's the definition of a ponzi scheme and the current way cash equivalency for BTC is attained.

Tell me I'm wrong.

You're wrong. Bitcoin is not a Ponzi scheme.

1) Bitcoin is not an investment. You're not paying for a stake in an operation, you're buying a commodity.

2) Consistent with the first point, Bitcoin doesn't promise or pay returns. You don't get anything "from Bitcoin". You may be able to sell your bitcoins later for a higher (or lower) price than you paid, but there are no guarantees.

3) There is no individual or organization "running" Bitcoin. That's the whole point—it's decentralized, with no one in charge. There is no one to run your hypothetical Ponzi scheme.

The primary identifying factor of a Ponzi scheme is promises of high returns for little risk, with actual returns being paid out of investor's own funds. Bitcoin cannot qualify because no one qualified to speak for Bitcoin (and there really isn't anyone qualified to speak for Bitcoin) has made any such promises.

Don't take my word for it, however. The SEC has its own document describing Ponzi Schemes Using Virtual Currencies. Note carefully that while they discuss some Ponzi schemes that involved Bitcoin, they never try to claim that Bitcoin itself is a Ponzi scheme.

That obese dolt's incompetent! 5++ antivirus companies I snuffed last year know more but I beat them also on a FALSE POSITIVE when they called an app of mine a "malware"!

* Just as his fat ass did & guess what? I proved each of THEM wrong!

(Ask Steven Burn of malwarebytes' hpHosts site @ -> sburn@malwarebytes.org - OR - Henry H. Hobbit the same (securemecca) @ -> hhhobbit@securemecca.com - They WON'T tell you any differently!).

COMODO, ARCAVIR, SYMANTEC & CLAMAV

+ others on a "false positive" on of ALL things, this (deals in hosts files):

http://start64.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5851:apk-hosts-file-engine-64bit-version&catid=26:64bit-security-software&Itemid=74

They rescinded their false positive findings & HAD TO since they F'd up large!

And so did the CROOKS @ CA -> http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2004-134.htm HOWEVER - they ended up having to do a lowering of my app to "zero threat levels"!

(However: It should have been removed totally, since I passed ALL 21 of their removal questions - this is how DIRTY those fucks are - not even obeying their OWN rules no less!)

They, like Mr. THOR SCHMUCK who associates WITH THEM mind you, are scumbag crooks... nothing more/period. "Crooks of a feather, flock together..."

Nir Sofer of NIRSOFT's been thru the same (& the guy's a machine that produces TONS of good little utilities). Same's happened to a former "co-worker" of mine in Dr. Mark Russinovich of Microsoft: His wares either being used in malware scripts OR being falsely accused of BEING malware.

By way of comparison to THOSE companies & their staffs... WHO THE HELL IS THE UTTER DOLT THOR "SCHMUCK"/?

APK

P.S.=> I can literally PROVE I've 'shot down' OTHER more esteemed so-called 'experts' before - Ask Dr. Mark Russinovich how Exchange Servers get unhalted (memory optmization techniques), & WHO corrected his work, telling him how/what/when/where/why he NEEDED a fix to pagedefrag.exe... clue - I did!... apk

Nope, still illegal for corporate insiders. From your source: http://www.sec.gov/answers/insider.htm

Examples of insider trading cases that have been brought by the SEC are cases against: Corporate officers, directors, and employees who traded the corporation's securities after learning of significant, confidential corporate developments;

In most cases, corporate insiders can’t trade when they have material information, before major announcements, must publicly disclose their trading ahead of time, hire a outside 3rd party to determine the exact timing of the trades, etc.

I think Dell had to rely on illegal payments from Intel to meet the mentioned EPS expectations of Wall Street:
http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2010/2010-131.htm

Please realize that the SEC levies a tax on every transaction (buy and sell) http://www.sec.gov/News/PressRelease/Detail/PressRelease/1365171514024#.UjHRW6BTO5M

Also the market has a fee structure that charges if one take liquidity (order execute immediately and takes an order off the book) and gives a rebate on orders that provide liquidity (order remains on book for some period of time). http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/trader.aspx?id=pricelisttrading2

In my opinion a better solution is for the market to increase the minimum latency for a transaction. For example, every second all the orders sent to the exchange are reconciled and the results sent to the originators of the orders, as well as the updating all public data like national best bid, best ask prices. This would almost completely neuter very high speed trading engines, as their data and updates on filled orders would be the same as everyone else, viz. 1 second. Note, the 1 second is an arbitrary amount of time, but I would fix it to be several times a minute, but no faster than 500 ms.

Do you know the definition of Ponzi scheme? Because I don't think that term means what you think it means.
 
Bitcoin is many things, but it is as much of a Ponzi scheme as gold, real estate, or stock speculations. ie. not a Ponzi scheme at all.

While one can argue that Bitcoin is a scam (and most definitely a bubble), it does not fit the formal definition of a ponzi scheme.

http://www.sec.gov/answers/ponzi.htm

>>A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud that involves the payment of purported returns to existing investors from funds contributed by new investors. Ponzi scheme organizers often solicit new investors by promising to invest funds in opportunities claimed to generate high returns with little or no risk. In many Ponzi schemes, the fraudsters focus on attracting new money to make promised payments to earlier-stage investors and to use for personal expenses, instead of engaging in any legitimate investment activity.

The key point here is the "solicit new investors by promising to invest funds in opportunities claimed to generate high returns" section. In a normal Ponzi Scheme, the previous investors would attempt to guarantee newcomers that profit is certain.

In comparison, Bitcoin promises no such thing. While it is true that the profit of previous investors (or speculators) do indeed come from newcomers, the newcomers are not promised anything beyond their belief that the price will continue to rise.

This key difference makes the Bitcoin phenomenal a 'Bubble', not a 'Ponzi Scheme'.

I see no mention of Gilbert Fiorentino in all this. I wonder what all this means for him - as he was probably around during all of this.

Here is a September 12, 2012 press release posted on the US Securities & Exchange Commission's website: http://www.sec.gov/litigation/litreleases/2012/lr22481.htm

U. S. SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION Litigation Release No. 22481 / September 17, 2012 Auditing and Accounting Enforcement Release No. 3416 / September 17, 2012 SEC v. Gilbert Fiorentino, Civil Case No. 12-cv-23388, (S.D. FL.) (September 17, 2012) SEC CHARGES FORMER SYSTEMAX DIRECTOR IN COMPENSATION SCHEME On September 17, 2012, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“Commission”) filed a civil action for fraud and other violations against, and proposed settlement with, Gilbert Fiorentino, a former director of Systemax Inc. (“Systemax”), a Port Washington, N.Y.-based consumer electronics retailer. The Commission’s Complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, alleges that Gilbert Fiorentino, who in addition to serving on the board was the former chief executive of Systemax’s Technology Products Group in Miami, obtained over $400,000 in extra compensation directly from firms that conducted business with Systemax. Fiorentino also stole several hundred thousand dollars worth of company merchandise that was used to market Systemax’s products online and in mail order catalogs. Because Fiorentino was one of Systemax’s highest-paid executives, the federal securities laws required the company to disclose all compensation he received each fiscal year as well as his perks and other personal benefits. Since Fiorentino failed to disclose his extra compensation and perks to Systemax or its auditors, the amounts were not reported to shareholders correctly. Systemax placed Fiorentino on administrative leave in April 2011. After the SEC began investigating the conduct, Fiorentino agreed to resign from all of his positions with Systemax, surrender stock and stock options valued at approximately $9.1 million, and repay his 2010 annual bonus of $480,000. According to the SEC’s complaint, the misconduct occurred from January 2006 to December 2010. Systemax sells personal computers and other consumer electronics through its websites, retail stores, and direct mail catalogs. Fiorentino arranged the extra compensation as he dealt directly with external service providers, manufacturer representatives, and other entities that conducted business with Systemax. For example, he demanded and received $5,000 to $10,000 monthly from an entity that supplied materials to Systemax’s subsidiaries for use in retail and mail order operations. The SEC further alleges that through his executive position at Systemax, Fiorentino had access to company merchandise used to market Systemax products in mail order catalogs and online. Fiorentino routinely misappropriated some of this merchandise and failed to disclose it to Systemax and its auditors. According to the SEC’s complaint, as a result of Fiorentino’s actions, the information that Systemax filed with the SEC and provided to investors materially understated his compensation and omitted his personal financial interest in certain related-party transactions. Fiorentino reviewed and signed each Systemax Form 10-K from fiscal year 2006 to 2010 while knowing that it failed to make the required disclosures. Fiorentino also routinely signed management representation letters to Systemax’s independent auditors stating that he did not know of any fraud or suspected fraud involving Systemax’s management. The SEC’s complaint alleges that Fiorentino violated Sections 10(b), 13(b)(5), and 14(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (“Exchange Act”) and Exchange Act Rules 10b-5, 13b2-1, 13b2-2, 14a-3, and 14a-9. In addition, the SEC

Non-GAAP disclosure fall under Regulation G: http://www.sec.gov/rules/final/33-8176.htm

There are no hard and fast rules about consistency for Non-GAAP presentation. However, a company cannot play games claiming that a loss they're backing out is non-recurring, when in fact, it is recurring. In such a case, that Non-GAAP presentation is not clarifying results for the investor, but is actively misleading the investor, and the SEC will nail that company to the wall for it when they see the same "non-recurring" items getting backed out repeatedly.

Changing the presentation or formula isn't forbidden, but the whole purpose of Regulation G was to allow companies to publish Non-GAAP figures in a way that gives the investor more insight, more useful information from the perspective of management. For Non-GAAP figures, the company is required to show a comparison to the closest available GAAP figure, and show a reconciliation between them to highlight the differences. It's up to the investor to decide if that Non-GAAP presentation is what they want to use to make their buy/sell decisions.

Tell that to all the people getting rung up for illegal trades recently.

http://www.sec.gov/spotlight/insidertrading/cases.shtml

http://www.sec.gov/litigation/admin/34-43270.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_UBS_rogue_trader_scandal

Tell that to all the people getting rung up for illegal trades recently.

http://www.sec.gov/spotlight/insidertrading/cases.shtml

http://www.sec.gov/litigation/admin/34-43270.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_UBS_rogue_trader_scandal

More importantly BoA has been branded "too big to fail" and owns so many subsidiaries by now that they don't need to worry themselves with what ordinary consumers think of the Bank of America brand.

EA, on the other hand, was bothered enough to dish out pre-emptive damage control, so maybe some good will come of this.

Well, probably not.

Except there's not enough circumstantial evidence to really come to any conclusions here in that regard.

Where enough is arbitrarily defined so that what exists is inadequate, even if nothing else is more adequate.

Perhaps this is enough.

Query: What projection-altering event has happened within the past two months to tank the financial guidance issued in January?

I am not exactly sure what insider trading is, but since he not only knows the inner workings of Google but controls them, how is this not insider trading?

It *IS* insider trading. Any CEO selling their own stock is insider trading. That is why the SEC requires documentation and a public disclosure of any potential transaction before the sale happens, which is what the linked document is. The SEC cannot prohibit such sales, but they do put them under extremely tight restrictions - such as preventing such sales near the end of a quarter, when financial results are known internally but not yet released.

It is important to note that this does not mean that Eric *is* going to sell 42% of his stake, it means that he is now *allowed* to sell *up to* 42% of the stock. Many such filings end up with a smaller amount sold.

Someone who sells ratings should not also be buying and selling these products. Of course there is a huge perverse incentive here.

Here is a list of all the ratings agencies. You'll notice that no investment banks are on the list.

They've forgotten to add "... nor in the United States."

Reality check, according to the SEC filings Googles tax rate in the USA was 22%

The stories you read about Google "dodging tax" or paying only a few percent are looking at worldwide revenues. It's due to Americans going French all of a sudden and thinking that any money earned by any Google subsidiary anywhere in the world should be taxed by the IRS - even if that money was a Swiss Franc earned in Switzerland and then spent on Swiss salaries. Well the Swiss government gets to tax that, but the money never went anywhere near the USA, so the US doesn't get any. If you count all that money you can arrive at very low apparent tax rates, but it's just a fantasy.

ObDisclaimer: I work for Google and don't think there are any issues with the way the company pays tax.

Go to SEC and read the latest 10Q/10K for your company. ( URL: http://www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml ) My ISP (Cablevision) has $10 B in debt, negative equity and last year made about 3% on the total assets after covering operations, depreciation and interest due. They reduced their debt and pay an 'ok' dividend which is why they are attractive to investors. So I feel pretty good about paying $70 @ month for a cable/internet connection with basic 'TV' and about 20Mbps download / 2Mbps up. I guess the government could have done it and just paid for it with taxes, but it would have probably been for 128Kbps ('who needs more?'), have cost 3-5x as much and taken 7 years longer. As to FCC, maybe they should look at the electric bill... my bill breaks delivery away from supply...and I can get 'supply' competitively. That leaves the 'delivery' (infrastructure) to be assessed separately by folks who (hopefully) understand capitalization, recapture rates, sinking funds, etc. Maybe the real question we should be asking is: Why should cable industry keep the 'utility' part combined with the 'content' part?

Costco? They have, according to their 10-K for the fiscal year ending August, 2011, 92000 full-time and 72000 part-time employees. Target employs about 400k people during the Christmas rush, about 355k all year. Wal-Mart has 1.4 million employees in the US alone. (You can look up the 10-K's yourself for the other two.) Not only does it operate in a different market segment, with very different demographics, its workforce is over thrice that of Target and about ten times that of Costco. My home - a mid-sized city in the heartland, metro population about 400k, has two Targets - but seven Wal-Marts. The nearest Costco is about a three-hour drive away. Wal-Mart operates in poor, rural areas because they have figured out how to make money while serving those populations, and it's a good thing. If you ever shopped in the South before Wal-Mart, you know what I mean. I was headed out on a trip a few years back when the adapter I was using to play the iPod through my car stereo broke. It was 8 AM on a Sunday. Guess who was open, had several to choose from, and was literally right on my travel route? It wasn't Target.

People who are on welfare in the US are supposed to work. The EITC is one of those rare government programs that is actually very, very close to what economists would suggest in an ideal situation - instead of paying people to sit at home and do nothing, you supplement the meager income they are actually capable of earning but only if they actually go out and earn something. Now you're upset that someone is willing to take a chance on them? Let's be honest - if they had better opportunities, they would take them. But they don't, so they don't. Sorry, I just can't get upset that Wal-Mart is going out and giving them jobs. Does it make lots of money? Of course it does. So what? Have you ever sat and talked with someone who shopped at Wal-Mart because everywhere else was too expensive? It's the best part of a lot of people's lives. Where else are you going to get a bottle of Sriracha in Baxley, GA (picked at random, but it's in stock there as well as every other nearby store)? Take a look at the appliances and furniture they sell - yes, it's mostly cheap particle-board stuff, but it's remarkably better-made and better-looking than you would expect for the price. Target has talked about bringing design to the masses, but Wal-Mart does it too, and well.

Wal-Mart isn't generally despised by its workers. It has a long tradition of hiring from within. My wife has some cousins in rural Iowa - solid salt-of-the-earth types, farmers and ranchers and blue-collar families who in times past would have been building washing machines and bulldozers. One is the manager of his town's Wal-Mart; he started as a stock boy in high school and worked his way up the ranks. It's a solid middle-class job.

I lived one year in a ghetto apartment complex in a small cow-college town. (Why I did so is a long and boring story. Post-baccalaureate studies. I had a good reason.) Everyone else in my building of eight apartments was a college student except for the one working-class couple with a teenage son that lived next door to us. To them, shopping at Wal-Mart meant that their dollar went a lot further than otherwise. It was cheaper than any other grocery store or general goods provider. It offered a remarkably good selection. IOW: actual poor people like shopping at Wal-Mart (as People of Wal-Mart proves over and over again). They generally seem to like working there. You can't compare them to Target, because Target is an upscale Wal-Mart with correspondingly smaller market presence. You really can't compare them to Costco, because actual poor people don't buy $90 memberships to clubs that offer a small but rotating variety of stock purchased based on what's cheap at the moment and pushed out in warehouse style to people who are willing and able to buy a lot of it at once. Hell, Costco's net profits are less than their me

> Would you spend two point five BILLION pounds
> (so ~FIVE BILLION dollars) in taxes that you
> don't have to?
> Yes or no.
> If you answer yes, you're an idiot and will probably be
> replaced by your board of directors within an hour.

Not if you put "We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served--as shareholders and in all other ways--by a company that does good things for the world [emphasis added] even if we forgo some short term gains. This is an important aspect of our culture and is broadly shared within the company." in your S-1 SEC filing, as Google famously did in 2004.

• Before June 3 (sorry, cannot find any links): BATS,NASDAQ propose "flash orders" to SEC, (weakly) justifying compliance with existing regulations
• June 3: DirectEdge announces support for flash orders
• June 5: NASDAQ offers FLASH orders
• June 5: BATS offers BOLT orders
• June 7: BATS CEO newsletter discusses hazards of flash orders, two days after the initial release
• June 30: BATS CEO newsletter defends fairness of specific BOLT implementation, reiterates hazards of flash orders in general
• September 1: BATS ceases BOLT orders
• September 1: NASDAQ ceases FLASH orders
• September 18: SEC rule proposal to ban flash orders
• November 20: BATS supports the SEC's proposed ban on flash orders
• November 20: DirectEdge opposes the SEC's proposed ban on flash orders

So yeah, the particular article you linked is abso-darned-lutely correct about flash orders. But it's wayyy out of date. If you read through the various exchanges' discussions and comments, there's some very interesting back-and-forth going on:

• DirectEdge accuses NYSE of being anti-competitive: NYSE did not implement flash order types, and it was expected that these orders would shift liquidity to NASDAQ/BATS/DirectEdge. All exchanges acted in their own self-interest here, because NYSE is the figurative gorilla in the room.
• BATS implements "me too" functionality to keep in competition with NASDAQ, but is very quick to distance itself from the controversy.
• Several exchanges highlight the (historically) new trend of liquidity moving into dark pools, and the risk which that poses to price formation in the normal exchanges. Hey, looks like they were right!
• Everyone releases news in lock-step. It's like a big game of chicken, nobody wants to publish early because it just gives "ammo" to the others.

Because the biggest return you can get is a refund on your ticket purchase, it's not an "investment". If you could get back more if the event was a big success, it would be a public offering of a security. There are some short form public offering arrangements available under SEC rules, but you still have to file a basic offering statement and financial statements.

"Crowdfunding" schemes have to be careful of this. If the pitch is that you can make money, it's a securities offering. If the pitch is that you get a product if some funding threshold is reached, the Mail Order Rule applies and there has to be a refund, without your asking for it, if the product isn't delivered by the stated date, or 30 days if not stated. If the pitch is that you're donating as a charity, the laws about charity frauds apply.

In the early days of the Internet, many small companies were fined under the Mail Order Rule because they had online ordering that didn't stop taking orders even though the manufacturing and delivery end of the business couldn't keep up. (Now, everybody with a clue has the shopping cart system hooked to inventory control, so the order isn't accepted unless it can be filled.) Companies don't get to hold onto the money until they get around to filling the order. They can beg the customer for more time, but must, by default, refund if they don't hear from the customer.

So now they get no Google maps renewal guaranteed, no screens from Samsung for any products, no licensing for anything Samsung owns, serious 4G LTE patent problems, everyone else in the entire industry hates them and it actively trying to destroy them, and they don't even get their 1 billion in all likelihood. Wow, great business strategy there, Apple.

Apple is doing just great financially, so yes it is a good business strategy.
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/320193/000119312511282113/d220209d10k.htm

Yes, the SEC limits your ability to raise funds in exchange for equity. The rules are (surprise, surprise) complex, but if you're asking people to invest who aren't principals of the company, they need to be "accredited investors":

http://www.sec.gov/answers/accred.htm

The idea had been to prevent people from being bamboozled into making bad investments. With Kickstarter, right now, you're being told explicitly: this is not an investment. It's a gift, with token prizes, not a piece of the action. "Accredited investors" are rich enough that they can afford to absorb losses. That changes next year with the JOBS act:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumpstart_Our_Business_Startups_Act

There is some concern that it will be used for fraud, as people give a lot of money for impossible returns. I think those concerns are well-founded, but we'll have to see. It might just be our next bubble.