Because
[ul][li]Cell phones and Monster cables have a high profit margin. Resistors and switches, not so much.[/li][li]It’s expensive to have electronics-knowledgable staff on hand.[/li][li]Way fewer people are electronics hobbyists anymore. Lots of people that would have done that 20 years ago make Youtube videos or write flash games or something.[/li][li]The kind of people who do still mess with small electronics projects have long been on the internet and order their parts online, for less money.[/ul][/li]
What you all need for your parents with trouble on computers is to look into a good Assisted Computing Facility.
Once, there was a line in the Astrology section to the effect, “Everyone tells you that your grandmother is now in heaven, but really she’s in a coffin desperately clawing at the stitches holding her eyelids shut.” I read this a few days after carrying my grandmothers coffin to the grave.
Ouch.
I can’t find it for some reason, but there’s one called something like “Plan to Organize Life in One Week Yields Mixed Results.”
It describes the guy taking a week off from work to get his shit together, but he gets drunk Sunday night and so sleeps all of Monday, then re-reads “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” all of Tuesday and…well, let’s just say I think they’ve been spying on me.
They predicted trouble with the Olsen twins back when they were young, and they even got the twin with weight issues right .
You know the site that most avidly ridicules borderline-Aspergers overweight geek losers? Slashdot, which is pretty much exclusively populated by same. Some people have a really odd sense of humor.
Although I’ve never edited a Wikipedia article, I do participate in the Celebrity Death Pool threads on the SDMB, and often click on the current year’s incarnation to see if a celebrity demise I’ve just learned about has already been noted. Thus, I can relate to this story.
Oh, how could I forget? This actually happened to me/my friends in college: Weed Delivery Guy Saves Christmas. Be sure to enlarge the pic; it’s priceless.
God bless you, Weed Delivery Guy! ::sniff::
After reading the article Video-Game Character Wonders Why Heartless God Always Chooses ‘Continue’, drowning my Sims didn’t seem so fun anymore.
Bingo! We have a winner, folks.
Also, switches and resistors are fiddly. They’re a pain in the ass to keep track of, and the people who want switches and resistors are the sort of people who expect underpaid 17 year old staff to know- off the top of their heads- how to build a shortwave radio using parts salvaged from a sewing machine, a desk lamp, and a deck of playing cards. They’re just not worth the hassle anymore, and as iamthewalrus says, the sort of people who do still build HAM radios and projectors and so on as a hobby get their stuff off the Internet for less money and with instant connectively to the other electronics geeks out there.
Having had a look in places like The Sharper Image and even Wal-Mart while I was in the US, I have to say we are miles behind here in Australia and it shows. Electronics here are expensive (comparatively) and not all that interesting- we just don’t have all the incredible gadgetry available as it is in the US. Sure, you can get them here, but you can’t walk into Myer or Target for it. And it’s bloody expensive…
We didn’t make it for you. 
Email from Aunt Accidentally Opened
Kitchen-Floor Conflict Intensifies As Rival House Cats Claim Same Empty Bag
FEMA Calls Rebuilding Complete As New Orleans Restored To Former Squalor
Uh oh. A few weeks ago I went to Radio Shack to pick up a replacement capacitor to fix my DVD player. Now what am I going to do?
I don’t know it. That’s kind of weird.
Well…everybody gets a free pass to make fun their own, don’t they?
I’ve also seen this to be the case.
Not making fun of people who are disabled, btw.
“Cookie” comes from the computing term “magic cookie”, which has been around for ages. Http is a stateless protocol, so using a magic cookie was effective for retaining a session state between server requests, and naming the packet a “cookie” was not an unreasonable thing for a programmer to do.
You notice how The Onion generally doesn’t make fun of upper-middle-class yuppie-type people? Their targets are typically either the lumpen-middle class mall-goer, arrested-development Gen-Y-ers, psychos, or Big Government. Big Business, less frequently.
Anybody think there’s something going on here?
Cite:
Searching the archive for SUV returns 30 results.
Searching the archive for parents basement returns 569 results.
I think what jjimm meant by being wooshed is that 100% of the articles are satire. That is to say, they’re all made up. The ‘kid’ The Onion was picking on isn’t real, rather a fictitious stereotype.
Or am I being wooshed?