I'm bad!

Indeed. Their forum helped me find a local mechanic I could trust. I didn't always catch their show, but I'll certainly miss them.

I'd side with the masses. It's not particularly important what the author intended. It only matters what people take away from it. However, a contradiction between those two parties doesn't mean an author sucks at getting his/her point across. It just means when the work was released and took on a life of its own, the takeaway was different than what the author originally envisioned. There's nothing wrong with that.

Wrong! Edison's greatest contribution was obviously the electric hammer.

These situations rarely work out well, but you're going to have to deal with it for now or find a new job. It sounds like you're going to have to think about how to organize your projects for outside development. I'll let you in on a little hint that will help you: Your software libraries aren't worth as much as you think they are. If you have specific pieces that are outright trade secrets, lock them down, but don't be overprotective of your product as a whole. That should be handled through contracts and litigation.

"Re:I agree that BitTorrent is a tool, but...."

so is Wil Wheaton.

There are far fewer people like Jeffery Dahmer out there than there are Steve Wozniak. Therefore, Dahmer > Woz.

ex-Star Trek script writer maybe. Nobody has actually written anything approaching a script for Star Trek since DS9 went off the air.

That's assuming the Linux shovelware is installed via package management. If Dell is not above shovelware, they may also not be above an install process that bypasses APT. That would make removing the software problematic unless you knew exactly what you're looking for.

15 - 20 years ago, asking for when the last time a radar gun was calibrated during discovery was practically a get-out-of-ticket-free card. (These days police forces are smart enough to calibrate and record that they did it.) Unless they're going to compel you to have your unit checked out regularly, it's going to be hard to use that information in a court of law.

Whether or not you were speeding does not always affect who is at fault. Furthermore, how do they know you were speeding? You black box gets that information from your speedometer which is not regularly calibrated and can be affected by something as simple as changing your tire size. No judge or jury is going to take that information as gospel.

Well, that depends on your definition of "scam." They do have to follow the law. As long as they wrote out the actual details of their scam and put it somewhere on display like in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard' then they're fine. If they don't do that legal legwork, they could get into trouble.

Bills are accounts receivable. If you're self-reporting, that's not a bill. If the question really means most recent tax bill in the literal sense, then most people have probably never received a tax bill. My last one was about 8 years ago for a 1099 I never received and forgot I received the money. (It was a stipend I received while on a trip in college.) That's the only time the IRS has ever sent me an actual bill.

Shouldn't option 1 read "I'm either dirt dirt poor or I'm a fucking idiot who has absolutely no idea how taxes work."?

To be fair, most Americans wouldn't accrue interest with that extra money. They'd blow it on cheap stupid shit. At least holding onto it for them and telling them they're "getting" money once per year gives those Americans the opportunity to blow their money on expensive stupid shit.