Agreed. There is probably plenty of prior art, but one would be crazy to challenge the patent because:

1. That would give away a trade secret
2. Facebook could crush most competitors in patent suits

Congratulations, Facebook, you are a patent troll

Scrape them yourself in a semi-automated way, host them somewhere and provide a way to submit a DMCA take-down notice.

Done and done.

I have been pulled aside by a very high level manager, told to put all of my development on hold and implement entirely new functionality for a large enterprise product

This functionality required three months of team effort to develop properly + another two weeks of due diligence, pre-release testing, and deployment. And then he told me to get it deployed in three weeks.

That's how this can happen.

On the goal and nature of the redesign.

If the goal is to improve usability, then the customers should. Of course their input should be focused through the UI/UX guys.

If the goal is to increase profitability, then for B2C software, marketers and for B2B sales.

If the goal is to improve the maintainability and stability, then software engineers.

If the goal is to improve operability, then the operators.

If the goal is to improve scalability, then capacity planners and enterprise architects through the lens of software engineers.

And job candidates who customize their user agents are smart asses who will probably hack all of your systems.

Apps may or may not stick around, but one trend will continue: the increase in service oriented computing.

I.e. computing functionality is being broken down into modular services (usually web services) that are simple enough and independent enough to be easily scaled horizontally but that can be composed in order to provide richer more complex functionality.

If you understand this architecture, it will help your marketability immensely whether you are writing end user interfaces (such as apps) or building the aforementioned services.

Although putting periods inside quotation marks is recommended by various manuals of style and others recommend putting them outside, I believe that both approaches are misguided

Clarity should be the primary concern in language. Quotation marks are used to indicate that the current passage is repeating something verbatim from another source. It is most accurate to include punctuation inside quotation marks if that punctuation is repeated verbatim. In that case, they are punctuating the original. If they are not from the original source, they should be used outside.

Give that he spent decades of his life slaving away over complex mathematical proofs, he really ought use his well deserved prize money to buy

Hookers

Or if you use BitTorrent for completely lawful purposes.

I find it really ironic that it is a "Free Trade Agreement" that is preventing an activity that fundamentally is "Free Trade" (you can sell an unlocked phone to someone on another network).

I believe it comes down to the fact that governments support business at the expense of small business and DIYers. Probably because small business can't aford lobbyists.

Your comment is unfair to the U.S. government.

In one breath, you criticize the U.S. for supporting friendly dictatorial regimes. In another, you criticize it for supporting popular rebellions. What is the U.S. supposed to do? You accuse the U.S. of committing atrocities in Libya, but it neither sent ground troops nor war-planes beyond those providing logistical support to allies.

As you mention, the outcomes in those countries that have cast off dictators have not been good, but that can't be blamed on foreign powers–they stayed out of the nation building process. If you are going to blame them for not attempting nation building, I point you at the cautionary tales of Afghanistan and Iraq.

If you believe that there were atrocities committed by the U.S. in Libya, please be more specific. Preferably cite reliable sources (there are other sources than corporate ones). If there were atrocities, they certainly weren't large-scale. The U.S. military doesn't have sufficient information security to keep large scale atrocities from becoming public. Certainly not the murder of 1500K Libyans are you are implying. If you can't be more specific, STFU.

The lack of success in achieving stable democracies in the middle east and central asia obviously has far greater factors than foreign involvement. The lingering effects of colonialism obviously play a role, but other parts of the world have been able to bounce back from colonialism (East Asia and South America are examples). The inequality bred by a large economic dependence on extractive industries (mining in particular) is a better candidate. The failure of West and Southern Africa to achieve stable, equitable societies supports this factor as explaining middle eastern stability. Of course, there are likely cultural issues involved as well, the extremism of Salafist Islam and the general misogyny do not support peaceful, democratic social ends.

Of course, the motives nor methods of the U.S. nor its allies are beyond reproach. There certainly have been many atrocities committed by U.S. forces. There have also been many interventions undertaken for nefarious purposes. However, there have been several undertaken for reasonable humanitarian purposes. Furthermore, if any nations that does not want the U.S., U.N., or other stable Western democracies to intervene militarily can simply adopt a stable, peaceful democracy.

I don't care which books are being read by the most people. I want to read books that are well-written, fun, and/or informative. What the herd reads doesn't matter to me.

Unless you are a book critic, I would suggest that you ignore what the herd reads as well.