I was anti-social before social was in.

Seems to me you "forfeit customer support" whenever you buy anything more complex than a carton of milk. Oh, there are exceptions but I think I could defend the general case.

What I can't figure out is how we are buying all these new scanner machines and patting down everyone that can't or won't go through them BUT we don't seem to have the technology or extra money to get a machine that will scan you with your belt and shoes on.
I think people would applaud spontaneously when told by TSA that they could leave their shoes on and, no, the belt can stay on the pants. But millions of dollars later, you can't leave your shoes on and you now have to remove your belt.
(Bulky jewelry and clothes with grommets could be left on your person for version 2.0 of the scanner machines for another few million.)

Rewrite in APL and its only 13 lines of code. (Showing my age, huh?)
Rewrite it in Lisp and its 120 Million parentheses.
And if you use the old cut-and-paste-code-reuse pattern it doesn't take as long to generate one line of code anyway.

I agree with the legislator. Let's remove all those unfair sales taxes the brick-and-morter companies have to collect from their customers. Let's do it right away.

And public school is so "functional" with such mature "socializing" going on?

For $300 dollars you could buy the same machine used OR you could buy a new battery. I haven't found buying new batteries for 2 year old (or more) laptops to be compelling over the last 10 years. (NOTE: Prices not exact and may not be quoted. For comparison purposes only.)

And what percentage of the car audio player market? And what percentage of the home stereo market? And what percentage of the DVD player market and ... There is more to audio than the portable player market.

Sounds like a car rental company's pricing. Run a big optimization program in the background. Add a little human intervention in case it makes stupid pricing choices now and then. Some cool code watches how things are selling and, eventually, the prices change based on your IP address, time of day, things you have bought recently and at what prices, gender and how fast you type or click or read. Sounds like an MBA's dream come true.

I think the change, in part, is due to the fact that with CD and advances in amplifier and speaker technology the default fidelity setting is "high enough" for most people. I still cringe when I actually listen to a set of Bose or B&W speakers in a quiet setting. So ... when you have all that road noise in your car AM radio is good enough if the station is close. When you want to walk around and listen to music AND don't have any cash, the ear buds are good enough. When your goal is to impress your peers, rumbling and shaking and blinking lights is good enough. And ... drum roll ... when you are at home the default CD player is good enough.