I would argue that the stupid exist to be preyed upon, and there is nothing immoral in that; in fact it is just, in that their stupidity usually causes splash damage for which they should pay. Any time a stupid person gives his or her money to a self-centered charlatan who spends it on entertainment, there are less dollars that stupid person can spend buying theocratic laws, etc...

However, an immoral act occurs when stupid people are used as a resource to commit harm to the population at large, such is the case with the autism/vaccines scare, and most religious and political efforts... the Catholic Church's efforts against prophylactics, the selling of the Iraq war, the selling of the upcoming Iran war, etc...

I've heard a very well educated "anti-atheist-agenda" speaker talk about this. He was a brilliant speaker. We talked a little afterwards, because I found him interesting... he knew enough medical, biological science, and so did I, that he couldn't actually use bullshit reasoning denying how DNA works, etc... so he acknowledged that "microevolution" happens "of course." What these kind are actually denying is Geology, not Biology. Their premise is that, sure, DNA works, and there's a lot of useful science there, so they won't deny that with an audience who gets biology... they'll simply state that those mechanics can't apply to humans evolving from other creatures, because that just couldn't happen in 6000 years and they're correct! And since geologic science is not as hot of a topic right now, and generally drier than biology, they can fool more people... I'm guessing a lot fewer people can articulate why we know the earth has a lot more than 6000 years of history than there are people who get the concepts of DNA and inherited traits and natural selection.

Geology is the current target of denial by the crafty charlatans... Denying the mechanics of evolution is just the arena for complete morons and low-grade charlatans.

(g) The government will use this to perform extra-advanced interrogations on everyone who might know about terror, drug sales and distribution, and on women who report an ambiguous rape so that they can have an abortion in the few states that keep a rape exception in the next few years.

My thought on that aspect: they belatedly realized that they kinda already did "raise" her, by growing up with her as a best friend, and due to her influence on their lives, they couldn't go back and alter that. River's childhood already happened a certain way, and they even witnessed it already. It still doesn't account for ages zero through 8 or so, but causality and all that... *shrug*

Those are some lovely straw-man cases. A fan or other moving part is most failure prone in a fridge, and standard bolts allow access and cheap replacement. The digitizer screen and battery are the failure/damage prone parts of a phone, and it can be easy to access or hard to access to repair... if it's hard, is that design out of necessity, or is it on purpose, for nasty reasons? That's what this boils down to. I don't think people are complaining about surface mount electronics being involved in the phones or the dishwashers here, but cool story, bro. And as for locked up vs. open firmware, I'd pick open every time it's available, but that's still very rare.

Next time you clear compartments in your refrigerator, take a look around. Our 'fridge quit on us during the summer, and we were suddenly quite sad about the prospect of spending hundreds of dollars and dealing with shipping / moving a huge object. But there were proper, standard hex bolts in there. So I started disassembling. I found the fan had died. I ordered a replacement from amazon, re-installed, and it has worked great ever since.

Dishwasher manuals usually come with an exploded diagram of all their parts, so that a pump here or a valve there can be replaced, rather than the whole unit, even on the cheapest models.

The government actually got involved in regulating standards on cars to fight this trend. (i.e. standard OBDII tools can work on many vehicles and the cost has fallen under $20 for a very capable device)

Varying levels of difficulty do not a "walled garden" make. Manufacturers deliberately choose to construct the "walled garden" when they employ connectors that can't be disconnected without destruction, glues rather than screws, inventing new screw heads just to defeat those of us who already own a good variety of screwdriver bits...

Is repair / DIY for everyone? Hell no, but that's simply not the argument here. Anti-DIY and anti-repair choices (made for that purpose) on the part of manufacturers have some serious shadiness: They don't want the product to last, so customers are forced to buy more, sooner; they want to kill the used products market, less by innovation and more by quality degredation and irrepairability; they generate more waste, including rare and valuable materials; they drive people away from the joys and benefits of working for themselves and building / maintaining useful, money-saving skills.

Just like pepper spray and sonic weaponry and bean bag guns and rubber bullets and tazers and batons are only used so very properly, right? It's a nice thought you have, but any bit of reading on recent history of non-lethal weaponry used by police forces might make you rethink your assertion. Also google for some recent news articles about the random people at peaceful protests who start visibly and audibly inciting the crowd to start breaking things. The peaceful demonstrators usually complement the officer on his standard-issue shoes. Don't take my word for it or just reject it; go look it up.

And oddly enough, this isn't about disliking or liking cops. Cops are directed to do what they do. Their protocols and their attentions are directed by others. Bad cops are responsible for being bad cops, but bad systems are defined at another level. I'm not starting the "us vs them" mentality, and really, neither did the cops.

If you peaceably assemble for redress of grievances, you will face cruel and unusual punishment, sans any form of judicial action. Laaaaand of the Freeeeeee, and the Hoooome of the brrraaaave. Congratulations, USA.

Our school district doesn't allow most potato chips either. Sun Chips are okay, but Doritos or any type of potato chips you cannot have. They will take it away from your kids.

I attended elementary school in the '80s. Every time I see stuff like this, the school uniforms in public schools everywhere, the drug dogs and lockdowns, etc... it just makes me so sad. Also in the '80s, they were teaching us about the idealistic and practiced differences between our society and East Germany and the USSR, etc... US schools used to prepare children for factory jobs (schedule by bell ringing, etc...) Now US schools are preparing children for prison.

I am an Evangelical Christian and I think Santorum is a dangerous man whose basic ideology is antithetical to liberal democracy.

Out of curiosity, who do you feel does more damage to gaining / keeping adherents to Christianity: people like Santorum or vocal "against" parties like Penn Jillette? If the former, is there any brewing movement within Christian organizations to denounce approaches like that of Santorum?

they still don't want to be married to someone from the same sex

Actually, I think this is indeed the big, obvious reason. Theocrats constantly argue that they're "defending" marriage... that they need to protect their marriages from this "threat." So they do fear legalization of gay marriage, as they'd probably go get that gay marriage they secretly have always wanted and that would kinda ruin their current sham marriage. It's also very telling when they claim the irrelevant bit about "being gay is a choice!" Only the closeted or bisexual are making a choice, kids.

Until you can buy or print a tailored case made for this device, note that a Penguins or Altoids tin appears to be a perfect fit (after cutting holes for the ports that stick out).

Finally, a digital-world example of "stealing" data. The FBI in this case actually stole people's data... they took it and made it unavailable to the owners. Until now, every ass-hat who has talked about "stealing" in the contexts of "piracy" cases has been a completely inaccurate moron. Now they have their day and a legitimate example of how to steal data. Learn.