Easy! There are 3 major groups of investors in the Facebook IPO fiasco.

You missed a group:

4) The institutional investors that are cozy with with investment bankers and get to buy-in at the IPO price. They are the ones that really want the first-day "pop", because it means they can off-load (some) at an easy 10-20% profit. Both of those groups like this racket, because for the next IPO, the institutional investors will come back, and the investment bankers will get more IPO fees because they can ensure a sold-out IPO to the next victim/company.

The SCOTUS labeled it a tax after the fact. Obama did not lie. It was reclassified by others.

We call them the government's lawyers:

"THE MINIMUM COVERAGE PROVISION IS INDEPENDENTLY AUTHORIZED BY CONGRESS’S TAXING POWER.”
-- Caption to Part II of the Government brief

By far the best simulator (with details) local to your own timezone, is the one by SunAeon.

Learn about Tax Nexus and you'll have your answer.

And here I was thinking it was because he was some kind of Borg creature. My mistake.

Certainly not predestined, but economic forces at some point would have demanded interoperability. Whether that meant a true "network of networks" (as you say, and as the internet was defined as), at some point a common-denominator protocol,service,etc would be required. The rise of cheaper and faster electronics (and therefore communications) would make any other scenario unlikely (barring dumb government regulation or something).
It may not have looked been TCP/IP, but it would be an Internet Protocol nonetheless.

Why not just make all spectrum public?

How do you propose to regulate it then so that everyone's phone works whenever they're in range of a cell tower? Otherwise, you haven't offered anything better than what we have now.

Indeed, Eye of the Tiger is available for public performance with ASCAP.

As far as I can tell, their system tracks using radio signals, and intercepting radio signals is specifically excluded from this provision

Your quote may be right, but your interpretation is incorrect.
"intercepting radio signals is specifically excluded" only applies to "a system, or series of systems, for carrying communications solely by means of radiocommunication".

A cell phone uses a "telecommunications network" that does not consist of "communications solely by means of radiocommunication", since a cell phone network includes the regular phone system, including exchanges, etc.

The exclusion given above would apply to things like ham radios, walkie-talkies, etc.

If you remember Breakout ... then you might not feel nostalgic about it

Spot on. I DO remember Breakout, and I absolutely feel NO nostalgia for it.

Since when is the Federal Reserve an agency of the United States government?

Since December 23, 1913:

The Federal Reserve, like many other central banks, is an independent government agency

I was under the impression that since Microsoft only announced Windows Phone 7 in February 2010, that a shipping product would be at least another 18 months away.

I'm speechless!

Difficult Parallel Makes Programming What?

(Prior message was optimized for concurrent throughput).

There appear to be a TON of clues in this document to help break it:

1. Repetition: "5E" or "SE". Plenty of times.
2. Numbers appear to be plain text. Three consecutive lines have 71, 74, 75 followed by the same four characters.
3. Apostrophes and hyphens. Not all of these would be literal, but they are major clues.

Plus, he has been using this "encryption" for years. The code is certainly something he could do in his head as he writes.