"Isn't the McKinnon case more like charging him to buy the lock that had been missing when he walked in?"

No, it's more like making him pay for new locks because he wrote a lockpicking book. The flaws existed, and he exposed them, but it's not his fault that people might use them to perpetrate crimes. If someone tells me how to crack a safe, I'd generally blame the safe's maker for designing that fault... not the person who realized the problem. Eh?

What? I don't know if you've ever USED a computer before, but for many people, they are integral tools for communicating and learning in LIFE -- screw school! Even if something's not required for a curriculum, I'd rather have all the materials at hand to be excellent in all of my endeavors, required or not! There's no vanity involved. Jeesh.

That has less to do with the application and more to do with connection methods. For the period in question, leaving IRC on would tie up your phone line. Now, most people have always-on connections, so leaving something running in the background isn't a problem at all. In fact, I've run IRC 24/7 for years, and most IRCers I know of do the same. It even has a term: "idling" a chan.

"To go with a nice car analogy. If a mechanic is working on a PoS[. . .]"

Wow. That's not a sentence, bucko! You're the CHAIR of a language arts department? Even if that PERIOD were a comma, it would still be improper grammar. This sort of thing hurts my soul.