For the record, I'm an Australian who lives in NYC. I'm very familiar with the policies of both countries.

Australia has some backwards format-shifting laws, prohibiting ripping DVDs under all circumstances for example, so it's inaccurate to pain Australia as better than the US in that regard. We can rip VHS though.

Basically, it's illegal to upload and distribute stuff, or to be making money off ripped items. If you just have stuff ripped for yourself, they are not going to care. If you're really concerned, put it all on a harddrive. If you're really, really concerned, encrypt that harddrive. If you're really, really, really, really concerned upload it and download it later. Internet speed is pretty fucking fast here.

Of course, having gone through customs numerous times with hundreds of burned DVDs, I don't think there is much cause for concern. I'd be much more worried about the UK.

Snowden is a no body. Thats why he's getting out of Russia. If he had anything that mattered, he would have 'never landed in Russia' and disappeared.

What he has 'leaked', the rest of the world sat back and said 'uhm, yea? You didn't figure that out 30 years ago?'

Snowden's leaks just show he's a traitor, they bring no actual value to the table, no new information, just a basic confirmation of what we already knew.

Are 6 years old, or did you just skip all your history classes? Europe is full of countries who have done EXACTLY that, until their empires fell and the next guy took over.

Does your city not have fires?

Does your city magically self sustain itself and produce all of its own food and energy within its own borders so that no one EVER has to leave it to do anything in the real world ... you know, where food and resources you consume actually come from?

Fact: Cities are consumers, not producers. You can not get much worse for the environment than an over crowded, pollution producing city that consumes millions of times more than is capable of supporting.

You want to use non-lethal shot on a bear ... but kill the human? Please stay in whatever shit hole city you live in. We country bumpkins will do well without you.

Actually, I'd say you have no clue, or at least, don't know much about history.

Just because it hasn't happened yet, doesn't mean it won't. You can't find a historical example of such laws that were not eventually perverted into a problem, which is why people get so uppity about them in the first place.

Those are still black crows, they just have pigmentation defects.

An albino black man ... is still a black man.

Your attempt to skew the meaning of the proverb has failed. If you only look skin deep, you're part of the problem.

Lets be clear, there is an EXTREMELY small minority of idiots with very large mouths, and a media who wants to sensationalize EVERYTHING that makes it look like there was some sort of actual issue with Obama being Muslim.

If the media didn't prop them up, no one would be heard making retarded statements about Osama/Obama or his religious preferences.

We are, in general, a little on edge with Muslims at the moment, but thats because there is a very small, but extremely troublesome group of people who spread hate under the flag of Islam. There are very few among us who are stupid enough to equate that with all Muslims, but the news media seeks them out.

Sadly, I have one of these ignorant people in my family. I do apologize for our morons, but they really are a tiny part of our population.

Please, please try not to let what you see on the in the media be how you view our country. Most of us are not like that.

The US has anti-discrimination laws as well. Whats your point? Having a law against something doesn't mean it magically goes away.

So ... less free than the US...

In the US (unfortunately) it is completely (legally) acceptable to harass people at a funeral for soldiers killed in action ... with a rally cry of something like 'god hates fags' or some other stupid bullshit. Or to burn the flag. Or to join a hate group.

Then why is Assange afraid of Sweden?

You do realize that the second half of the post contradicts the first half, and that because you have been doing it as a side business, you've illustrated that its not really considered disposable, right?

Hell, even Apple repairs them for fucks sake. You pay a flat fee, give them your old device, they give you a refurbished device. They don't repair yours right away, they send it off to have it done in bulk, but it gets repaired none the less.

As for not looking inside ... seriously? Because Apple still hasn't figured out that iFixit is and that they'll have a tear down of it on the web, showing everyone whats in it within 10 minutes of it going on sale, usually BEFORE it goes on sale?

Do you really think the company with so much cash in its bank accounts it could buy about half of the European countries and not sweat it has no clue what goes on the Interwebz? You really think no one at Apple knows that its trivial to find a pentalobe driver if you actually look?

Since you pretty much always have to go with the crowd in order to survive in the modern world, by your retarded definition, everyone is a servant for everyone else.

1) How often are you opening your phone? WHY are you opening your phone so often that you need to have a screwdriver handy?

2) I've never, in my life, seen anyone who has given a fuck about the screws when buying a used device. None of the reselling sites care, no one cares out side of the tiny group of slashdotters who aren't going to buy one anyway. No one pays extra for phillips screws versus pentalobe because .... ALL THE REPAIR SITES ALREADY HAVE PENTALOBE DRIVERS to deal with all the phones they get that are normal.

You don't have any good reasons and you're struggling to make them up.

WHAT principal? Just because you have a conspiracy theory about Apple being evil and shutting people out of opening their phones doesn't make it true.

You're principal is non-existent since anyone who ACTUALLY wants to open their phone, can, easily.

You want Apple to produce an inferior product, so that if you want to, you can open the case ... but you don't actually have a reason to open it ... and even if you did (such as water damage), you are a 0.00001% of the population who does. And ... the tools are readily available if it actually bothered you enough to do more than whine about it.

You're principals are fucking retarded, but I'm sure they go with your OMFGAPPLEEVIL juice pretty well.

As an Apple convert, I suggest you just accept their 'way of doing things' for 2 weeks. Embrace it completely and accept it. Then decide if you hate it so much.

If you try to customize the shit out of everything, stick to Linux and Android.

What I found, and perhaps its because I got older and had more important things to do, is that Apple's devices, while not PERFECT, require far far less tweaking to use, once I accepted their way of doing things and 'go with the flow' it turned out that I actually LIKE the Apple way a lot.

Once you stop fighting it and accept for a few moments that they have put more effort into usability than you have, then it works out better. It won't fit into your 'work flow' until you adjust your workflow to work with it rather than trying to change it to fit into your work flow as it has been.

With that sad, do you realize how silly your attacks on them actually look? Have you actually compared those statements to other companies? Do you not realize they all do the same thing? Do you think that Google/Android are some how not EXACTLY the same as you stated above for iOS?

Do you really expect a device to let you do ANYTHING you want? So your phone can make you fly around magically? Do you want your phone to be like a Linux desktop where you constantly spend time maintaining it rather than just using it?

Oh, so you're just being a disagreeable pain in the ass for no reason other than to have a reason to not like 'the man'? Well great, slashdot will cheer for you. No one else in the rest of the world will give a shit.

If you are so clumsy/accident prone that when you buy a phone, you're worried about being able to open it quickly to remove the battery because it got wet ...

Then you probably shouldn't be so stupid as to buy an iPhone in the first place, don't you think?

I can say this safely because there is no fucking way you're going to open the case faster than the water causes damage, no matter how quick or what screws you have. Even if you have the screw driver in your hand, with whatever head you want, and I drop your phone in glass of water in front of you, you will not get it open before the damage is done.