We're missing the Big Question here...

Would thieves have been able to perform their task as efficiently if it had been Windows PCs they were stealing?

I think we all know the answer to that.

I'm not convinced it's wholly irrelevant.

The principle behind any (successful) technology is that its adoption will continue to increase, ergo more people ought to have HD TVs now than did when the first XBox 360 was launched.
It is not unreasonable, from a consumer perspective, to expect to receive in the box everything you require to get your new device working.
The question is, do the companies fail to include these cables because they do not believe a high enough percentage of the population has adopted HD yet, or because they think they can milk the peripheral sales for a while longer. It's a no brainer for me.

Further to this, in fact:

The HDMI cable costs around 30 Pounds in the UK (or did last time I looked). Compared to, say, SCART, which isn't going to cost more than 10 Pounds even to buy from a shop (so we can safely assume that wholesale Microsoft are paying a fraction of that), it hardly takes a genius to work out which cable is going to provide the biggest profits sold separately.

In fact, if memory serves, the default cable bundled with the console covered the HDMI slot so you had to purchase a second cable to gain access to it? Or maybe it was the Ethernet port it covered. I don't remember, suffice to say; money grubbing scum.

...then don't go crying to Google just because their van happened to drive past as you were doing it.

We all know who the real culprits are here.

I think it's the same company I work for who run the technical support for Blizzard in the EU.

It's almost like reading a report on the quality of service provided to people who phone through to my centre as well.

There's no excuse for poor service like that. Nobody should expect an issue to be fixed immediately, but they should expect to be speaking with someone who takes their issue seriously and has some idea of what has already occurred.

I could swear that ELF is (or used to be) some kinda oil company.

Now that would add a twist, wouldn't it? Oil located in the middle of a town, but there's a damnable radio mast right where the drill needs to be. "I know boss, why don't we destroy it, say that 'ELF' did it and let everyone assume it's those other chumps."

Alternatively, if could just be a very arrogant Elf, who always writes his name in full caps. I'd love to see an elf taking down a radio mast, that would be awesome. A christmas-style elf, rather than a Tolkien-style one, naturally. No-one wants to see Orlando Bloom firing arrows at things any more than we already have.

On a side note, since this seems to crop up quite regularly... Hamas are not terrorists. No more than the US, UK, Australian, Spanish, Chinese, Pakistani (etc') Governments are.
Simply being the elected officials in a Nation whose own legitimacy is dictated by another Nation doesn't automatically make them terrorists because they fight a war against said Nation.
Although, in an effort to be reasonable, I did a little digging and apparently the US Government disagrees with me and officially considers Hamas to, in fact, be terrorists. So I suppose it is reasonable for those of you who wish to believe so to follow your Government's policy on that.
But hey, I've apparently put the US Government on the same level as Hamas anyway, so frankly I don't really care what they consider Hamas to be; I know what I consider.

Hmm, by the way, before I get trolled, I should mention, I'm only comparing the two Governments in terms of the legitimacy of war declarations, it's a fair shout that the US Government does rather a lot more for its people domestically.