Hmm.. That is better. But I wonder what I would be paying per Oz. after the fees and shipping costs?

They may be legit, I don't know. But consider the concept. It is a copy of what is normally called "paper gold". When you buy the gold you do not get actual gold but a share of gold that is (supposedly) held by the issuer. IMO, that is a very distant second place to owning gold. Doesn't it make way more sense to buy gold? Real gold you can hold in your hand?

I second many of the suggestions above. Get a better wallet. If you are an android user I would recommend this one: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.schildbach.wallet
This one uses a system that keeps your private keys hidden from the wallet operator. And MAKE SURE YOU CREATE A BACKUP OF YOUR PRIVATE KEYS!!!!! If you lose your keys there is absolutely no way to recover your money. Keep that backup in an extremely safe place like a bank vault.

Do set up an account at a recognized exchange. You will need to fund it and give your identity in the process. In most countries you and the exchange are legally required to do this. If you find an exchange that requires no identity papers then all you can say for sure is that you are dealing with criminals. You can guess what is going to happen when you send them money.

It is a hassle to set up, but once it's all done it is easy to get bitcoins when you want them.

This last year I was required to replace my card after data breaches at Target stores, Home Depot, and I forget the third one. In any case when you buy something using a credit card you have to give over all the information that is needed to steal from you. It is insured so you wont pay directly, but of course ultimately the customer has to cover the entire cost of fraud.

With bitcoin there is no need to connect identity with money. It's like cash. When you pay with cash the vendor does not check your ID or care who you are. All that matters to them is that the bill is paid.

Because you are in the UK this may be less of an issue for you. In the U.S. we still use unencrypted magnetic stripe cards, much like the ones dinosaurs used millions of years ago.   

While there are no rules about identity within the bitcoin protocol, there are a lot of rules for using fiat currency that may apply. That is certainly true if you are using any kind of bank system, like a credit card. Once you have bitcoin then you can buy things online without handing over your identity / financial details to the vendor, card processor, NSA, and presumably the Chinese government.

After my third card replacement in a year from data breaches, I have cut the cord and ONLY use bitcoin online.

I do. So don't worry, I wont shut down your internets.

My guess would be that your theory is spot on. We talk about super high values for bitcoin, but banks and hedge funds are very rational actors and are far more interested in a sure fire 2% bond than an extremely risky unknown currency asset. As much as I believe in bitcoin I would not vote to include it in a managed portfolio if I were on the board. Perhaps I could be convinced to go 0.1%, but anything else could be argued to be a failure of fiduciary responsibility. If it tanks, the whole board could be sued for this.

Are any of you adopting a child? I thought not. Carry on Doc.

I heard he died. 
Of taxation.   

Maybe they would like to be called ISIS, but I'm not their friend so I use the term that everyone in the Arabic world uses. I have spent a lot of time there and everyone who opposes them uses this term. In reality they are the same. DAESH is the acronym in Arabic for ISIS. In the Islamic world they only use DAESH because it has a double meaning of sorts. When you pronounce it, it sounds like the word in Arabic meaning "to trample" or crush under foot.
This is offensive to DAESH and in fact using that word is illegal in the Islamic state. By proclamation anyone saying "DAESH" will have their tongue cut out. 

ISIS is mostly just an American thing. (and some in the UK). No one in the military or intel community uses it anymore either.

"Good and relatively safe dice strategy?"

Buy a casino. 

No free lunch. Few seem to want to listen to Gavin's warning about block size. So if blocks can only include some transactions then you are going to have to pay to be one of those included transactions.

I find Islam to be a kind and peaceful religion. I know that my Muslim friends pray that one day DAESH will convert to Islam and stop worshiping the devil. 

I did, and it was cool. I love thinking about aliens. It is one of those things in science that, although there is little evidence, a lot of circumstantial evidence points toward the likelihood of us not being alone. I have been looking at the new pictures of Pluto today and some part of me is looking for clues of life in the pictures. Could the dark areas be mats of bacteria like organisms? The mind boggles.

I put the link below. It's cool how any of us can be among the very first humans to ever see these pictures.

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/soc/Pluto-Encounter/index.php

For that amount I would recommend buying directly from a mine or OTC. You may be able to get a better price since you save the seller time and effort.
Since there is a danger of fraud if you are not sure what you are doing, I would want to meet face to face and sign a contract for the sale. Meet at a public restaurant for dinner. The seller can send the coins then you guys can eat dinner while waiting for 5-6 confirmations. In about an hour the Tx is safely encoded into the blockchain and each of you can be assured that the sale is legit.

You may also need an escrow. The hard part of this is the fiat, not the bitcoins. 500k is a lot to carry in a briefcase, but no one in their right mind is going to let you walk out after handing over a check. They will need some way of verifying that you have the money and that the dollars are real.

Also, as the block reward shrinks over time mining is predicted to become increasingly unprofitable. just like gold mining it will likely shut down when prices are low and start up again when prices rise. The very last bitcoin (or percent of 1 BTC) will never get mined and so we will have mined almost but not quite 21 million.   

An "exact" copy would be bitcoin. But ANY change in the code, even one letter of the code, would cause a fork because it would be rejected by the network.

Crop circles are an excelent case study in conspiracy theories. The people who started the whole craze were a group of pranksters who would use ropes and boards to flatten crops into a circle. They got the idea from an old tradition of ruining the crops of rivals or as a vendetta against local enemies. It was people then as well, but at the time it was thought that the devil did it.

The funny part comes when the pranksters came forward and confessed. By that time the whole idea had a life of it's own. Even though these guys had tons of proof including pictures of them doing it, their confession was rejected by people who had subsequently made a career of alien crop circles. The myth had grown to include thing like "crop circles are typically slightly radioactive" or that "no trails lead to the circles". Totally untrue and easily provably wrong. Yet once someone has decided they are alien, no amount of logic or prof can move them.
 

Remember that 21 million is a completely arbitrary number. Bitcoin would work as designed even if there were only 1 bitcoin. Right now we can divide BTC out to 8 decimal places. If we moved to 9 we move an order of magnitude. This is easy to do and solves any shortage of bitcoin supply.
As mentioned above by several posters, any attempt to "re-mine" those coins should be outright rejected. Who will determine what a "lost" coin is? How would you know if my coins are lost or in cold storage? After you re-mine coins then someone shows up and says "I found my coins!", who's coins are now the real coins? Are you going to replace the found coins, and with what coins are you replacing them? And under what authority can you render some coins unusable?
If the 21M cap is ever lifted I would divest at least 50% of my BTC and I would assume the project is now dead. A strict, unchangeable cap is one of the most powerful features of BTC. Without it you basically own benie babies or tulips.  

I'm fine with most people not getting it yet. It really is what current speculative profits are based on. Just as with the constant stream of criticisms of the early internet, by those who could not see that the internet would eventually dominate their lives, those who see bitcoin's potential stand to gain the most. 
One can invent all sorts of reasons why bitcoin might not do this or that, but as long as it is the fastest, safest, and cheapest way to move money it is worth trillions. That kind of money is never left on the table.