What's going on at the largest American oil reserve, which holds the crude sold on the New York Mercantile Exchange? Bloomberg commissions a satellite to fly over the site in Cushing, Oklahoma, twice a week and take a picture. The promise of the terminal, which it more-or-less fulfills, is quick and unlimited access to any information that might possibly make you money, from credit default swap spreads to sports betting odds. Up-to-date sales figures and other data about the terminals are displayed on screens throughout Bloomberg's offices. A terminal costs about $20,000 a year and, with 315,000 subscriptions around the world, accounted for the bulk of the company's $7.9 billion in revenue last year. Nothing captures Bloomberg better than these machines, though these days, it's usually more accurate to call them pieces of software. The other-which some Bloomberg customers use, as well-is called a B-Unit, for biometric: It reads their fingerprints to permit home access to their terminals. The first gets them into the building, logging their locations for anyone on staff to look up. Visit any of Bloomberg's 192 offices, and you are forever stored in the system come back years later, on the other side of the world, and the same photograph will grace your name tag. $1 Billion in Gold Shipped From New York to South Africa This Year.