A lot of people think the the election was rigged. So I'm not so sure about this "right of self determination"

Huh? The user was driving the car forward, then he accidentally hit the gas, it kept going forward. So I'm not sure what your point is

He is correct, there is no free lunch. But I pay a LOT of money to download a bunch of stuff. I should get to choose where I download it from. If I want to use it all on netflix I should be able to, if I want to spread it around some for google, some for wiki, some for slashdot, I should be able to... But it sure ain't free.

Recruiters from other tech companies, or recruiters from headhunting agencies?

Not exactly. Either the company will pay the taxes, or they pay the employee more, claim that as a deduction, and the employee pays the taxes.
Yes the tax rate for the employee and the company will be different (which is why I said not exactly) and the company might find other loopholes to hide the money. But that is a separate issue.

So what you are saying is there isn't actually a missing plane, they just made it up?

Why not? Just because he licenses the things he invents? Or do you believe an inventor should also be the producer?

How were you originally sorting? Were you partitioning the receipts into separate piles, based on some date? And then taking each pile and sorting them? How is this NOT one of those fancy sorting algorithms you learned in comp sci? And how was a radix search faster?

And that is a good reason not to have millions of people driving cars. It will be easier and faster to work out most of the bugs in a computer driven car, than to get everyone to drive error free.

proving theories is left as an exercise for the reader

At the time of the closing, the value of the tape couldn't have been more than a few dollars.

So... the worst of both worlds then?

I've always though open office discourage collaboration... It is hard to have a chat in an open office. You either have to find a conference room, or you keep your voice down... or you disrupt others.

So what you are saying is... screw the little guy, hurray for the big companies with money?

The whole point of a patent is to promote science. One awesome way to encourage small inventors to invent, is to allow them to license their invention to someone with the means to produce it. By making it so only active users can hold a patent, you've made it very difficult for the little guy to hold on to patents. And thus you discourage them from inventing.