#1 aggravation is not even in the article - usage of checkpoints or limited save capability. I have limited time and patience for a game, and the last thing I want to do is die and go back 10 minutes to the last checkpoint. I guess this makes sense in old school consoles with limited storage capability, but a PC game should be able to save its complete game state anywhere. Even if you have to make a complete dump of the game's image in memory, that is preferable to forced replaying. If I kill Foozle, he has to stay dead.

I've been laid off twice in a 20+ year (so far) coding career. It sucks, but it's usually nothing personal. Some angel investor money didn't come through, some sales contract didn't get signed, and now they have to cut staff. It happens. I've never been out of work more than a month.

Look at it from the company's side. They probably paid you a lot of money to build software for them. They may not have given you permission to GPL your code, or more likely they didn't understand or didn't care about the legal aspects of open source development. It may be hard to distinguish between the code your wrote on your own and the code you wrote for them, especially if you were a contractor working at home.

Emotionally, you should separate the circumstances of your leaving the company from the behavior of the company with respect to your GPL code. Suppose you had gotten a better job and left voluntarily. Would you feel the same way about your former employer using your open source code?

Consider approaching the company and say that you'd like to continue development on your toolkit as an open source toolkit. They'll probably agree. I live in a 4M pop metro area, and I am always running into people I worked with before. If you get a reputation for burning employers, it will come back to you eventually.

Most modern piracy happens in the waters off Somalia as ships exit or enter the route through Suez. Ships could sail around Africa instead of going through the canal, as was done for a number of centuries before Suez. No idea if that is even cost efficient vs. paying the ransom.

And while no nation is required to allow armed vessels to dock in its ports, martime law does indeed allow armed vessels within a nation's territorial waters. Warships travel through the Panama canal all the time, and in fact such ships are designed so that they can fit through the canal. This classification is called "Panamax". Same goes for Bosphorus and the Dardanelles.

That's fine, as long as you understand that this self-edification comes with a price. You can also go to the library for free, Good Will Hunting style. But far be it from me to discourage a glorious voyage of self-discovery. I'd just appreciate it if folks wouldn't sing the blues when the bills come and they aren't able to pay.

The reason student debt does not get wiped in a bankruptcy is that no bank would loan money otherwise. On graduation day students typically have no assets or income. There is really no downside to immediately filing for bankruptcy and waiting out the 7 years of credit purgatory.

If students want the government to continue to guarantee the loans, they will have to live with the fact that debt must be repaid.