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 The answer may be yes for a very select few, but most of it is so outdated that it isn't even useful to society anymore.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.

Had a sudden thought when you mentioned 'augmented reality'
Maybe it would bring awareness if someone created an 'app' that showed the following:
A person is standing on a street with their iPhone (or gPhone).
Looking through the iPhone you see a duplication of the houses you see through the person's eyes.
Zoom in to the iPhone and see 2 things on each house:
1) A number with a dollar sign and the word 'goods' after it.
2) A line of text like 'vacation', 'at work', 'at home', or 'nosy neighbor'

Right, because it couldn't have anything to do with the fact that maybe there is a cultural connection, and they felt he would represent them more.
If what you say is true, then no African-American candidate anywhere would lose where the majority of the voting population was African-American, and I don't see any evidence to back that up.

Only if MySQL was the only other DB left. Its not even the only large DB left.
There's still Microsoft SQL, and I don't think Oracle will kill that beast that quickly.
There are also plenty of other DB's available.
MySQL can already fork its current state, so I would ask, why does the EU need the trademark of MySQL to remain outside the influence of Oracle?

I think the reverse also holds as I've had to correct a number of European friends about various items over the years. One was even afraid to come over here because she thought she'd get sued as soon as she stepped off the plane.

Don't forget to add in the total lifetime of netbooks.
For most new types of products it takes a while to determine exactly how they are used and what needs to be done to improve reliability.
Laptops now have some features in them to help reliability that weren't there in the earlier years.

Heck their are whole new products built to be 'tough' to handle rougher treatment.
same thing for cellphones

Wrong: http://www.smithbrothersfarms.com/faq.php

No, you don't. You can do development in any text editor and compile with mono.
also, there are free (as in beer) licences of VS express.

Think teacher's are so bad? Try doing it yourself, and then come back here and tell us how easy it is that you shouldn't get paid that much for it?
Put up or shut-up.

1) You are assuming someone could get a comparable job for just 3 months (more likely, they'd be lucky to even get a minimum wage job for that length).
2) You assume that during those 3 months, teachers are on vacation just like the kids, and not doing any training, lesson plan improvements, etc.
3) You miss the GP's point that you are only taking days into account, if you count the hours teachers work, their hourly rate would be much lower as plenty of teachers (my wife is one) work 10+ hours each day, and exceed that numerous times throughout the year (extra grading to do, parent teacher conferences, etc...)

I do agree to some extent with you that there are many problems with the education system that are not salary related, but they do contribute to the problem.

I know one other person who's hours, and stress level are the same as my wife's, and he makes quite a lot more then her.

Actually it does seem silly that cordless phones couldn't be 'synced' with a local computer.
My Logitech remote can do it, and has cool features, why couldn't the cordless phone.
it wouldn't even have to be all that complicated (I've seen some people mentioning asterisk).

Meaning if there is demand for a service with higher caps that people are willing to pay extra for, there will likely be a supplier. If Comcast doesn't provide it, they'll lose customers to those that do.