I agree, 2000 to 2008 definitely seemed a dark age where less smart masses overrode many intelligent ideas and thoughts.

Which if you were firing that gun from say, 100 miles away, might be pretty good!

First, this was one incident. Columbine and Virginia Tech had multiple incidents of expression.
Also, there are more choices then 'blow it off' and 'frisk and ban student'.
There's a whole bunch from sending a counselor to asking friends to cheer her up. If anyone had expressed any genuine concern to the students in the cases you mentioned, they might have found a method to vent with a smaller body count.

But it would be OK if a football student said they were looking forward to cracking heads in Monday's practice.

Your expression of delightful and joyful items is making those in the Northwest, British Isles, and recently kitten-less population unhappy. Please refrain from any further emotions or we will be forced to take action against you.

From the perspective a 60-80 year old probably finds 29 'almost' teenage. Just the way a 29 year probably considers 50 old like 60 even though there's a decade of difference.

I was thinking along the same lines.
What if she was venting to a friend at lunch and someone overheard her. Would they still have banned her?
I see the reason for someone to investigate it, but people need to express their feelings and frustrations in some way. Maybe a public place wasn't the best choice of forum, but I doubt her bottling it up until she really snapped would be a good idea either.
Also, I'm guessing the 'certain someone' would be her boyfriend so why would the professors be 'threatened'...
unless each one thought they had been her boyfriend...?

But this is exactly what happens. someone out there claims to be you and applies for credit in your name. That person may or may not continue to pose as you in getting more credit or when showing ID for the credit he has in your name. Even if the person stops claiming to be you, the damage is done to your name.

Just because the person isn't actively 'being you' every day doesn't negate the fact that for a brief moment they did act like you.
That's like saying if I stole a car, drove far away, and then ditched the car that I didn't really steal the car because I didn't keep it.

I do agree with everything you said about the banks and shop keepers.

I agree there is plenty of blame to go around
However, you seem to think that all people fit into one of those categories.

What you've missed is that there are 'little guys' who didn't take out a loan they couldn't afford, and didn't make a loan to some high risk person.
But these 'little guys' are getting screwed because of each of the parties you mentioned. Some of them have been laid off, some have seen their investments brutalized, some are now stuck in their house because their once 80 LTV is now 105 LTV.
These are a larger percentage of those complaining
Not to mention the same 'evil bankers' that made the loans also pushed to get regulations relaxed, which makes them somewhat more responsible as without their reckless behavior this mess

Now these 'little guys' find out their tax dollars are going to the same companies that got us into the mess while these companies also are basically getting free money to make new loans and start back with business as usual.

At least that's what I complain about and I'm one of those 'little guys'

Regarding 1:
who gets sued when a design flaw is found, or a component referenced in the design doesn't hold up over the lifetime and a person dies. I don't have a feeling for how much OSS software is currently in that situation, but both would fall under this same issue, but it is something that hasn't really been explored. Is the project creator, the manufacturer, the guy who made a tweak that was accepted to the project the one at fault?

Regarding 2:
Cost - the issue is in production (not development). In the software world distribution is relatively cheap, especially at low volumes of sale. For hardware it is quite the opposite. A company with more money can support a large quantity order, driving down the suppliers price for everything from components to final assembly. A small team or individual is then going to be at a disadvantage because they will generally not have the resources (or connections) to make that happen.

Interesting. My experience trying to sell anything over $20 has had just about the same problem ("I'll pay you 20% extra, oh and I need you to send it to me in another country).

I really think creating an API for viewing posts in different ways would really help Craigslist. They could keep the posting method the same which both protects their market (you still have to go to Craigslist to post) but allows someone else to do the work on trying new search features, data organization, etc.If they are concerned at preserving small communities, they leave contacting the poster out of the API or require a redirection to the actual post.

Since Craigslist doesn't make any money on completed transactions, their business model should be totally preserved.

You do know that you can download your Google doc in a variety of formats, right?
You can also upload them again if something should happen to your online doc.
Also, anyone who think they can rely on data saved to the hard drive, flash disk, floppy, or CD with no other backup is living in a much more delusional place then Cloud 9.

I agree that the length should also be reduced, but you did seem to overlook one piece.
The patent are not meant to just recover investment for an invention, but to do that so that the entire workings of the patented item be released to the public so that other inventors can improve upon it to make a new invention.
Now days it seems that if anyone improves upon a software patent, then they get sued for patent infringement because it is using the patent (an not an improvement).

Except, under your logic, if someone comes up with their own algorithm that generates the same results (or a high enough percentage is the same) as the patented algorithm, they are now able to be sued because it performs the same purpose.
Mathematics was explicitly excluded from patents.
For example
your algorithm is 2+2=4, you get a patent on it today.
Tomorrow, I come up with 1+3=4 and you get to sue me.

Now if you are saying that it is the code, and that the steps must be exactly the same then all someone has to do is go in and change a couple of lines of code which makes it different code. That would result in no protection.

Not to mention, but I have yet to see a patent contain any code (possibly some pseudo code, but even that wasn't complete).

There has to be enough protection for the inventor that they have incentive to share 'how it works' so society can improve upon it. However the current system just seems to cause stifling of the ideas.

I think one of the problems is timeline
For drugs and physically built inventions in the past, 20 years was needed to ensure that costs were recouped and some profit was made.
Now physically built electronic items are likely obsolete technologically in Software is even more so. Look back at software 5 or 10 years ago. Are the algorithms used that innovative that you would use them in anything today? The answer may be yes for a very select few, but most of it is so outdated that it isn't even useful to society anymore.

If it tasted the same (or could be made to), would it matter?
What would be way more important is to determine if differences in the way that this new meat grew, or changed would be detrimental to the person eating it.