I read the article... it cites a single example of how someone *COULD* modify the ECU and make the car no longer legally compliant, but again... that's already against the law. The first part of the article itself talkes about using the DMCA to stop people from doing such things, but as I said... there's already a law against making your car unsafe anyways, so if people aren't going to pay attention to that law, why would they pay attention to the DMCA? Particularly when they are just as liable to be caught doing either?

Does tinkering with anything in the car always affect the ECU? And even then, does absolutely any possible change to the ECU always cause the vehicle to violate safety or environmental regulations?

One can drink alcohol while holding a driver's license and still not drive

And in general, one can also tinker with their own car without making the vehicle noncompliant to required safety standards.

Sure... but my point is that at least that's actually possible. I used to know a guy who built his own car... I'm not in contact with him any more so I can't go and ask him how much he paid for certification, but as far as I know the car was entirely road-legal.

And if such changes would cause the vehicle to no longer comply with regional safety standards for vehicles, then the person would be held responsible if or when that modification was discovered. While that may be too late to actually prevent an accident, making it illegal to modify your car under the allegation that you may make it unsafe to drive is like making it illegal for you to drink alcohol if you happen to have a driver's license (ignoring the fact that a driver's license is often used for verifying that one is of legal drinking age in the first place) because you might try drive while drunk. Most of the people who are suspected of drunk driving are unfortunately only found so after they have already caused an accident as well.

My point is that like drunk driving, and laws that prohibit that activity, there are already laws that prohibit making any unsafe modifications to your vehicle... and not realizing that a change would cause a vehicle to not meet the necessary safety requirements is no more of a justification than not realizing that one was over the legal limit for blood alcohol content when getting behind the wheel of a car.

... that prohibit enthusiasts from making modifications to any vehicle that is to be driven on public roads which make it no longer comply with regional safety regulations.

If manufacturers don't want people tinkering with their systems because they are genuinely concerned about public safety, then it seems to me like they are already covered... there's no need to bring the DMCA into it at all.

What if *YOU* build it?

Because MOST white people don't want to live around non-whites

Citation. I'm betting you can't come up with one that's authoritative.

Oh... and while its almost certainly possible to suggest something even more racist than what you've said here, I expect most educated people would probably have to make a conscious effort to do so.

Of course it's not free, that's why Lucas is *paying* for it... again, if he's footing the bill for this, why should the district object?

I expect a sizeable portion of that bill probably includes building all of the infrastructure to support that kind of multiple family residential complex in the first place... in urban environments, this infrastructure is usually paid for and developed by the city, but the article highlights that he's footing the entire bill himself rather than being funded even partially by the government, which suggests to me that's what most of the money that's going into this is going to get used for.

If he's going to foot the bill to get enough electricity and clean water to provide for over 200 families into the area, why should California's 6th district object?

In other words, the important stuff isn't worth thinking about, since we might come to a conclusion different from what God wanted, and then we would (for unknown but perfectly logical and loving reasons) we'd suffer horribly for eternity

God is right... if our reasoning finds that God is wrong, then it is our reasoning that is flawed, even if we do not necessarily understand how. As for the suffering for all eternity, this is only because we were created to *BE* eternal in the first place... and even I would have to to agree with the reasoning that it may not have been particularly fair to give finite beings such as ourselves the responsibility of making decisions whose impact goes far beyond anything in human experience... certainly if human beings were designing artificial creatures for some particular grander purpose than they could understand, it doesn't seem to make any sense... at least to myself, and probably to almost anyone else, to make them last forever if there is any possibility that they will fail to fulfill that purpose.

But i'm not God, and I certainly won't claim to speak for him... I can only say what my experiences have compelled me to believe. And while I am intellectually obligated to acknowledge what seems to me like the remote possibility that I could be mistaken in these views, I find that almost the same argument which could reasonably cause me to doubt them could equally be made for being unsure that anyone else other than oneself even exists. In the end, I think that one's sensibilities and perceptions of reality will eventually draw them inexorably towards a conclusion about it... and one can ultimately only hope that it is the right one.

People are imperfect... and I don't deny that certainly some heinous atrocities have been committed, and some still are being committed, in the name of religion. Everyone will still ultimately be held accountable, however... and it is certainly more than enough to worry about living one's own life to the best of their ability rather than pointing out how other people might behave.

I cannot help but notice that you have some errors in your understanding of what the biblical account of the fall of mankind actually was, such as suggesting that man was cursed by god when man was not... only the serpent and the earth were cursed... man was simply punished, and even through this punishment, there was an act of mercy, in allowing man to continue to exist rather than simply striking them down immediately, and a promise that would one day be fulfilled by Jesus, whose death would be sufficient atonement for all transgressions by man, for all time both in the past and the future to come (but although this was sufficient atonement for all sin, and such forgiveness is offered to all of mankind, it cannot remove the consequences of it for those who remain unrepentant because to do so would be to invalidate the point of giving man a free will).

However, the phrasing of your question really only highlights the incomplete understanding that people have of the bigger picture that is God's plan. I can't claim to have all of the answers, but it's certainly not my fault if you are going to endlessly pursue the deluded notion that you think you know more than any God possibly could, so don't try to imply that my inability to address your questions suggests that would make your views necessarily right and mine wrong.

Of course that seems unfair to us, because we don't know what the future holds.... God does. Freeing all of those in the interim from the consequences of evil would be equivalent to God revoking personal responsibility that humans should take for having free will in the first place. It may seem, from a human perspective that perhaps mankind, particularly given their position and ranking in creation, was simply too naive or even simply stupid to deserve to ever have free, given the pain and suffering that it would ultimately cause.... but again, we are not God... God's plan, whether or not we will ever understand it before finally meeting him in person, is righteous, loving, and perfect, and creation in completion will ultimately attest to all of that in a more complete way than anyone can imagine.

If you want no part of that on the allegation that God is somehow immoral, well.... that's your free willed choice, and God isn't going to take that from you.... God still made you eternal, however. and you will still bear the consequences for that choice for all eternity... consequences that God does not impose on anyone artificially, but actually only arise out of being separate from God in the first place. If this seems unfair to you, again, see the point I made above about how in a human perspective, it might seem that man was perhaps too ignorant to deserve this magnitude of responsibility in the first place. God doesn't make mistakes, however... and had a reason for doing this that we simply don't yet have the ability to comprehend.

The notion that we might consider it completely unimaginable to envision how all of the evil in the world that has existed will have ever been somehow worth it all, or that what is apparently unfair to people who must endure a world with evil in it suggests that God is somehow actually malevolent is in truth more of a testament to our own finiteness, not God's.

... free will without any downsides

If you seriously think about that for even a moment you should realize how inherently self-contradictory that notion is. If there are no down-sides, then in reality, you aren't really free to do anything that is bad for you in the first place, so you don't actually have the capacity to actually act on your so-called free will, defeating the entire point of having any alleged free-will in the first place.