the new Childrens Storybook Fiction Writer overlords.

Some irony there somewhere.

Part of the revamped SAT involves establishing Khan Academy SAT Prep courses. https://www.khanacademy.org/te... The perception has been for years that test takers from wealthier families have key advantages, including taking the test multiple times and paying for special training. Gates has been a backer of Khan Academy already. I think it's a positive step if they do more to level the playing field.

From TFA "It seems obvious to say that happy developers will perform better than unhappy ones"

Then FTFA goes on and on explaining ... the obvious.

I read the article a few days ago, and thought lookout mama there's a white boat comin' up the river at Spotify. If Neil doesn't get in front and interfere, the bandwidth can support his increased quality, and the price point is cool.

Yes. You can. But most people buy stock, shares in BHP Billiton, Vale, Xstrata, Rio Tinto, Asarco.... buying rights to hundreds of thousands of acres at a time.

The source of the parent quote above is the Bureau of Land Management federal website. Perhaps whoever authored your wikipedia article is making a distinction about the "Mineral Leasing Act of 1920" which is derivative of the GMA. Or perhaps Jack Abramoff's mignons have been editing your wiki. But again, this is from BLM.gov

http://www.blm.gov/wo/st/en/prog/energy/coal_and_non-energy.html "BLM has responsibility for coal leasing on approximately 570 million acres where the coal mineral estate is owned by the Federal Government. The surface estate of these lands could be controlled by BLM, the United States Forest Service, private land owners, state land owners, or other Federal agencies. BLM receives revenues on coal leasing at three points: 1) a bonus paid at the time BLM issues the lease an annual rental payment of $3.00 per acre or fraction thereof, 2) royalties paid on the value of the coal after it has been mined. The Department of the Interior and the state where the coal was mined share the revenues."

Again, the total fees collected (GMA 1872 and MLA 1920 combined) do not even cover the costs of staff at the Interior Department or BLM!

The 1872 GMA law, signed by Ulysses S. Grant to hasten western development during the Apache Indian Wars, gives mining companies 1) right to lease rather than buy the land, at about $5 per acre, 2) no responsibility for remediation and pollution cost, and 3) no obligation to pay taxpayers any royalty on what's mined from the Federal Land. After 137 Years, it was nearly (finally!) updated in 2009, but candidate Barack Obama cut a deal with Nevada Senator (D) Harry Reid.

As for coal, according to Bureau of Land Management "BLM has responsibility for coal leasing on approximately 570 million acres where the coal mineral estate is owned by the Federal Government. The surface estate of these lands could be controlled by BLM, the United States Forest Service, private land owners, state land owners, or other Federal agencies. BLM receives revenues on coal leasing at three points: 1) a bonus paid at the time BLM issues the lease an annual rental payment of $3.00 per acre or fraction thereof, 2) royalties paid on the value of the coal after it has been mined. The Department of the Interior and the state where the coal was mined share the revenues." News Flash: The total fees collected do not even cover the costs of staff at the Interior Department or BLM!

Most of the mining done on the federal lands is hard rock mining (copper, gold, silver, etc.) but that is also the highest source or carbon and toxics (47% of all toxics released by all USA industry). It bankrupted Superfund (14 of the 15 largest sites are metal mining on federal land). The mere suggestion in 2009 that the GMA might be reformed caused stock in recycling companies to go up, and commodity hedge funds to go up.

That there is no "group" or "control". Once your agency has access, how do you know your 20-something employees aren't going to snoop? So many of the comments here seem to refer to monolithic, organized groups of "assholes", "scumbags" and "sphincters", like it's all planned out. The best case for privacy is chaos and inability of agencies to keep track of what "they" (their employees, contractors, executives, etc.) are accessing.

The rancorous debate over what to name celestial bodies strikes me of angelology. Who's going to know what they were named a thousand years from now, and how many times will those names be changed by people yet to be born? I mean, who cares? Let them each keep a different and divergent list of named craters, call them "List A" and "List B", and we'll revisit in 2,000 years and see which names stuck, and whom smelt of elderberries.

Obligatory RTFA, (the comic is at the top of the second link)

In my experience, being a doofus does not significantly decrease mens self confidence. Employers tend to hire confidence, women tend to marry confidence. Any measure of "perceived ability" is measuring confidence. Male birds tend to puff their feathers out, and also to self report their superiority to mates, and if we can translate bird, no doubt the male peacocks report they are better at math.

I remember the days getting started in our computer reuse / recycling business, that we had to boot PCs with "Caldera DOS" and I had to reprimand people for using MS-DOS (MS was threatening a lot of piracy enforcement vs. DOS, even in 2003). The staff looked looked at me like I was the silliest man in the world.

Particularly since the majority of cell phone owners worldwide earn about $3,000 per year. The article is about The Battle for the "Good Enough" Market. I would doubt either Firefox or Android has a stranglehold on Baidu. http://www.pewglobal.org/2014/...