It's not always just to save pennies; a through-hole connector has to go through all of the layers of the board. By using a surface-mount connector you only lose the space on the top layer and can route things in the layers beneath (modulo signal-crosstalk issues).

Think about it from Sony's perspective. Think about the costs they laid out to bring the entire Playstation to market. Don't they have a right to try and control what happens to their product

Sony's perspective on whether they do or do not have a right to control their product post-sale is irrelevant -- they can believe that they have that right all they want, but it doesn't make it so. What they do have a right to control is the service they provide; banning devices and/or users from PSN and the like is entirely legit. Who would possibly expect them to do otherwise?

People can argue that once a system is bought, it no longer belongs to Sony, but they do have controlling right to the technology that continues to exist in the system.

Indeed, people do make that argument. Some of them even sit on the U.S. Supreme Court.

The entire idea that Sony is out to get it's customers strikes me a spurious and unsupported argument. If a retailer of any product was "out to get their customer," what would it do to their business in the long run?

Definitely -- no legitimate business can hassle its customers and get away with it. On an unrelated note, bought any good CDs lately?

I'm sorry, but just under the battery cover (as on the Samsung Focus) isn't really tearing open the phone, especially when other phones (except those from Apple) have had user-replaceable microSD cards in the same location for years. Samsung made a very poor design decision in this regard, especially if it was aware of this particular Windows 7 'feature'.

But for phones like the HTC 7 Mozart where you have to unscrew and disassemble the whole phone to replace the card, then, yes, I agree; it's 'user-serviceable' only for a very determined class of user who is knowingly violating the warranty and should know what they're in for.

Technically speaking, the president doesn't have the authority to declare war -- only congress has that power. Consequently the US hasn't been at war since February 10, 1947. Peace is nice, ain't it?

A bunch of students at VA Tech's Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory have been working on that, actually: Blind Driver Challenge.