Presumably the latter -- they paid $200M for it in 2009. (Ouch.)

... are too specific. The concept of an Atomic Operation is important; database transactions are just a domain-specific example.

In the list of concepts, along with OO, closures & functions, recursion is essential knowledge. If in doubt, see this post.

Popular Mechanics have a transcript and analysis of the final 10 minutes.

If the returns are really as great as they want you to believe (*), then private industry will be rushing in. The federal seed money has done its job and no more is needed. Voila!

(*) Except that the numbers they've published are gross, and it's the net that counts.

Share buyback here.
Results here.

CEOs and VCs are not necessarily the people who have ideas, and if they do, they *already* have the means to express them. I'd rather see 100 respected, talented, peer-voted if necessary, folks on the panel: *true* technocrats, true innovators, not financial folks; people with ideas, sometimes wacky ideas, rather than folks money; the people who turn down a promotion to management because it would take them away from the detailed problem-solving.

So, you only receive a brief flash from the laser, and only have a few rods and cones ablated by the coherent pulse from the laser. That one-second blast has only damaged 0.01% of your vision. Ten years down the line, when half your vision is gone, why would you associate the loss with a laser?

That'll be why there's a $1M reward -- cheaper to pay that than pay damages for all the innocent people they shoot by mistake...

Instead of re-inventing the wheel, use the same mechanism that stock markets use: if the price moves too much in a short period of time, a circuit breaker cuts in and suspends trading. It both stops the market getting skewed and signals that there's a problem.

Was this the clip you were thinking of? http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/ravens/video-raven-intelligence/1549/

Some Thinkpads have the QWERTY section full-sized (e.g. my T420). Arrow keys are below right shift, and Home, End, etc., are above Backspace, so it's not perfect, but it's better than most...

Looks to me as though the security guards have committed assault: http://yourlaws.ca/criminal-code-canada/265-assault

As a few others have commented, the biggest "bang for your buck" is probably to support outfits who help people in the developing world. Bootstrapping poverty-stricken but eager folk into the productive economy enables them to send their children to school. See Seeds for Development as an example of this type of organisation.

Disclaimer: I've met some of the founders of SFD.

Cook was an enlightened captain, *generally* treating both is crew and the natives extremely well by the standards of the day. He extended our knowledge of several Pacific islands, especially New Zealand, charting them in great detail. However, their existence was generally already known about from the voyages of Ferdinand Magellan & Abel Tasman, so it's grossly unfair to blame Cook for any subsequent poor outcomes for natives in Australia & the Pacific.