Rather ironic given that Sony has been caught engaging in illegal activity of their own, including price fixing and hacking their customer's computers, not to mention just delivering poor quality products and coasting along on the strength of what used to be a good brand name. The fact is when you steal from your customers you should hardly be surprised when they react in kind. I don't condone people taking what they want rather than paying for it, personally, I just stopped buying their products altogether and don't download them either. If Sony wants to deliver their music and video products with a reasonable profit margin rather than price gouging and attempting to get laws passed which give them money from my pocket even if I don't want their products, then I may consider buying again.

Rubbish! The microprocessor was the new and revolutionary tool of the time, today there is the internet, biological sciences and a whole host of other areas. Individuals can (and have) taken a new idea, created something and brought it to market in a few short years, and in a few cases some very young people with particularly good insight or just a love of something that hadn't occurred to everyone else have turned it into 10's or 100's of millions of dollars. If you really love hardware, anyone can use open source tools and have a small prototype board made by a professional production shop overseas (including mounting of components) for the inflation adjusted equivalent of less money than I made in one month delivering newspapers in the 1970's. If you love other areas of science, just take a look at what teenagers have been doing in the major science fairs. It has never been easier or cheaper to gain access to technology.