I loved my meccano kit as a kid

That would be the point, no?

That many of the copies downloaded would be unrealised sales in any case

Yep, different use cases for different people!

It's so rare that I need to do full text search. I am usually looking for info on a promo from some company, or a specific message from the wife or something

Thunderbirds filter search is fantastic. Immediate response and filtering by subject or sender

really? I use thunderbird through an SSH proxy and that connection drops ALL THE TIME
Thunderbird has little problem reconnecting and resuming email functions

gmail is horrible for many functions that a native client offers. Much better multiple account support in Thunderbird, much easier to search by subject and see mail the way I want, not how google wants

There is no way to guarantee nobody but the FBI can access these "back doors", or to guarantee that the FBI will do the right thing.

The business model of the FBI needs to change.

The number of useful powerpoint presentations I have seen can be counted on one hand, but the number of presentations where all the presenter does is read, slowly, the slides to the room is uncountable...

2 year old VW Tiguan here, has a pretty crappy multimedia interface... support for Bluetooth on the phone side is decent, but zero controls on the media side. Treats steaming music like a plug in aux input.

Cars will still cost a fortune and need to be reliable enough to get around for years.
Just because it runs some fancy app interface that will be obsolete almost as soon as it's installed isn't really the reason to buy a specific brand or model of car.
Head units are replaceable, even if the manufacturers keep trying to make it harder to do.

The last time I went to a tax preparer that's basically what they did, they entered the numbers into their own system and charged me lotsa money

It's release day DLC that adds in features expected at the base price.

The zx1 seems better and a lot cheaper, and has been on the market how long?

What burden? The monetary and time cost of maintaining certificates for sites that just don't need them.

If you're worried about the government watching everything you do then get a VPN service that encrypts all traffic so they can't even see what servers you are connecting to.

Encrypting every single website is a huge burden on every single web operator.

The burden for this should be placed on each website operator, and not the end user who is browsing?