Doesn't just pertain to computers, either. I walked into a ghost town of an Office Depot (or was it an Office Max?) looking for a comfy swivel chair. I found one, but it only existed as a floor model. The sales guy demonstrated his skill at one-sided haggling: while I said nothing, he kept pushing the price down, each offer prefixed with 'I shouldn't be doing this, but'.

Then came his concluding offer, which I suspect was the actual price of the chair minus markup. Unlike the ones before it, this offer had strings attached: instead of the $120 on the tag, pay $80 plus $10 extended warranty, or no deal.

Whatever. It's a comfy chair.

As I said, it's not bulletproof. But simple letter replacement hacks are no match for regular expressions. Indeed, the hardest part of implementing my scheme would be reducing false positives. Otherwise it would really suck to be an Anne Sexton scholar.