Specula-tacular

NEW VENDING MACHINES USE MICROCHIPS TO ADJUST PRICE (Rueters)

(Houston, Texas) Coca Cola introduced it's new line of "smart" vending machines in test markets in Houston, Atlanta, and Chicago today. The machines have sophisticated cameras and sensors that adjust the price of it's cold sugar-water beverages according to specific consumer desires.

It's the next generation of machines in the increasingly complex vending machine market. While consumers balked at first, over the last few years, they have grown used to machines that adjust the price on a digital readout according to outside temperature and time. But these new prototypes have sophisticated cameras and galvenometers that adjust price according to the particular desire of the consumer standing standing before it.

"I saw the Coke machine, it said 45 cents, and I was like, yeah, I want a Dew, and then while I was standing there, the price went up to a buck fifty. I thought I just had lousy timing. I bought it, but I was kind of pissed," said Clyde Snemborough, today outside an W-AOL-Mart in a Houston shopping complex.

The new machines measure pupil dialation, body language cues, and body surface temperature, as well as "considering" complex market data it processes through satellite linking technology, which combine in the vending machines processor to determine exactly the highest possible price that the consumer standing in front of it will be willing to pay.

Some savvy consumers in Atlanta tried to give their change to random people walking by to make the purchase for them, in order to get a lower cost, but engineers apparently foresaw this. A "null" desire for the beverage sets the price at it's highest setting.

There might be chinks in the armor of this new pricing scheme, however. One high-schooler in Chicago stood in front of the machine, and using what she called "deep breathing and relaxation techniques" willed the price on the machine in front of her down almost forty cents. She left without buying anything. However, just a few yards away, angry consumers attacked a similar machine with their fists, beating it until smoke began to rise from it, and security employees chased them away.