The market cap of the company is $189B. That's the stock price times number of outstanding shares (not considering fully diluted share count). It is not related to income or cash+assets on hand. The stock price is a reflection of those items by the market, but is not directly related.

The $200B figure was treated on the balance sheet over time as income or some other accounting item which you'll need to analyze the 10-K to find out for each year. Those dollars were then saved or paid out as dividends to shareholders, corporate expenses, etc. Whatever was most advantageous taxwise and needed for capex, etc.

So the point is that the $200B figure is not directly related to the market cap as you proposed, although funds may have viewed that free money as a positive when analyzing whether to buy the stock.

Dice Dice Baby, Dice Dice Baby
All right stop, collaborate and listen
Dice is back with my brand new invention
Something grabs a hold of me tightly
Flow like a harpoon daily and nightly
Will it ever stop? Yo – I don't know...

Well, personally my first thought after reading the summary was "but how do you trust the BIOS?" A few years ago I'd have immediately said that's conspiracy theory and dismissed it (along with the other items you listed). But after a year of exposure to the Snowden and RSA revelations and everything else, it pains me to say these NSA questions aren't so far fetched any more.

Sure they may not be probable but they could be possible. No matter how rational you think you are, it really messes with one's mind. Subtle paranoia, if you will.

Great article. Including the openssl bug(s) he pointed out...was expecting something esoteric but turned out to be really straightforward i.e. the type of error you make at 2am, taking the size of the pointer instead of the actual size of the buffer.

Corporate profits and GDP growth have a pretty strong dependency on productivity numbers. Over the last 20 years a majority of the rise in productivity was due to the massive network buildout for telecom and internet.

So nowadays the internet is inextricably linked to the economy as a whole. Akin to other vital components such as electricity...things that qualify as "utilities" because of their economic importance to our society. Try removing the internet and see what the effect is on your 401-k.

The real question is whether that projected liability cost would offset the bad PR cost (intangible but notable).

Really surprised Costco let it get to this point and didn't find a middle ground to spin it. They had to know social media would be all over this in a really bad way (facts be damned as usual).

It is a little difficult to parse at first glance. He's saying that Costco is completely focused on the "jars they won't sell" aspect (first two sentences).

By concentrating on that, they're blinded to the issue that the homeless wouldn't be buying peanut butter at Costco anyway. So the third sentence is really the key point, that Costco should do a facepalm when they realize the problem with their logic.

Carry on.

Thanks for taking the time to answer. It's something I've wanted to do but my biggest concern was getting side-tracked by real world commitments and not finishing a course I started. If the estimates are in the ballpark then it's easier to plan ahead and make sure it gets done.

Interesting. From your experience, were the number of hours listed under "time advisory" pretty accurate?