"Lenders are offered returns based on a rolling six-month average so dud projects will be offset by sales of profitable ones. It takes just a few deals to strike it big, Huynh and Stack say, and because it is a community that is not just passionate but also knowledgeable, better projects are likely to get funded.

The promise of returns is enough to get former investment banker Andrew de Montille excited.

"I put money in the bank not because I consider it as a charitable investment," says de Montille. "Rather, I am very confident that some of the projects will do well enough to be profitable to the investors.""

"Analysts, regulators, and politicians are beginning to recognize that most if not all of the widely touted benefits of modern finance redounded only to its purveyors. The decidedly retro Canadian banking system, with simple products, high equity requirements, and relatively modest securities operations that focus on domestic customers, is the soundest in the world."

"Welcome to HackingCongress! This site is just starting up as of March 14, 2009 — the goal is to be a hub, or at least a links page, for the developer community surrounding the intersection of civics and technology especially (but not exclusively) as it relates to the U.S. Congress."

"The thing that finally condemns the entire "baseball" idea, however is this: even with all these improvements, the game is no fun at all.

We tried baseball, and it didn't work."

"… Yet, it seems like other parts of the movie industry are having a lot of trouble understanding this, as recent efforts around the globe have forced the closure of a number of fansub sites — even ones that don't provide the actual movies to download at all, just the subtitles. Yet movie studios an the courts are ruling that just creating translated subtitles is infringing. In one case, it appears that a site was shut down just for linking to such an "unauthorized subtitles.""