Wow. Most assholes post AC; mad props to you for just putting yourself right out there. You could have stopped at the third sentence.

Amen brother / sister.

If I want $200+ earphones, I'll buy them. But if I want/need $7 cheapies that I can risk losing or destroying without worry, I have that option today - WITHOUT the need for some stupid add-on adapter to use them.

The wheel a very old invention. It seems to still be pretty useful, if simple. Old age doesn't imply end of life.

Perhaps for your interests it is good enough. Mine aren't superior to yours, but they must be different, because I search for a lot of things (many highly critically regarded films that I haven't seen) and find that they aren't on Netflix, so yep, I pirate them.

Maybe history, codebreaking, and the passing of a generation of people who did amazing things seems neither interesting nor worthy to you, but trust me, your needless bitching is much less so.

I had a Nokia 920, then a 1520, both running Win Phone 8. For the state of things at the time, they were promising and, honestly, great. More stable than Android at the time (that's anecdotal, but my wife had an Android phone and it seemed to have more issues than my phone did), and was far more customizable than an unrooted iPhone (LiveTiles really is a great idea, IMO). Sadly, the combined hardware-software improvement that came in the move from Phone 7 to Phone 8 was a one-time event, apparently.

As I waited in anticipation for what I hoped would be some ground-breaking software innovations in 10 and fun/useful hardware features to give them life, I was at first in denial, then dismayed, next angry, and finally in acceptance (the ecosystem is diseased, after all) that MS entirely dropped the ball and screwed it all up. I'm no fanboy, but I really did hope for a strong third alternative. Once it was clear that my 1520 wasn't going to physically survive the last time I dropped it, I moved to a Nexus 6P, and I've been very pleased with the experience six months in.

So long, MS - it's your fault that you lost someone who was willing to be a loyal customer if you had shown some competence in the mobile area. I work in IT for a hospital, and can report there were four other people in the department who owned one a year ago, and don't today, so I'm willing to lay odds that you've lost not one, but five. I suspect that 2 million and change will continue to slip downward.

Well, thieves get what other people pay for.

For goodness' sake. Not taking inflation (even modest 1.5-2% matters) and / or higher ticket prices into account makes - as all higher-functioning life forms know (which apparently includes very few people who work in the higher levels of the Hollywood) - any claims of "ALL TIME HIGHEST" just a meaningless bunch of pablum, like many of the industry's products themselves.

Well, I'll put your sarcasm and AC status aside (you probably won't read this) - while a physical media purchase does in theory confer life-long use, parent was pointing out the fact that in order to obtain, for example, the roughly 20 million tracks on Spotify, you'd spend more money than most of us have. Even if you want a small fraction of those tunes, the total expense is still VERY high; factor in the "discoverability" angle and I would say that you really DO get a good deal from most streaming services.

I'm not sure if you've realized this, but it's possible to both subscribe to a streaming service AND buy the music you truly love. Yes, amazing concept, I know. If I buy new discs without knowing what's good, as you pointed out, I could be wasting a lot of money. Now, if I have test-driven the albums/tracks, and KNOW I will want to keep certain said items forever, I am now informed and can spend money wisely. That $120 a year on streaming might save me a few hundred on discs I would have bought & not liked, while still having the benefit of listening to things I haven't purchased outright yet.

Edit, sorry - $3,000 to $4,000, of course.... :(

Precisely this. Used to be, if you had a sizable record collection (vinyl, CD, what have you), that was a big deal and people would want to look over your stuff; your investment was around ~300 ~400 dollars US for 200 discs, and that might take a few years to build up. Now, everyone with internet access has close to, if not over, millions of choices for almost nothing. If you use ad blockers and get your music from YouTube, you don't even have to deal with a sales pitch in return for free-as-in-beer tunes.

Interesting thing though, one article points out that vinyl has outsold streaming. My 13-year-old is part of this movement back to the old-is-new.

Thank you! As the grandson, son, nephew, and cousin of many military members, past and present, officers and enlisted, it's nice to read comments like yours and know that not everyone's opinions are formed by movies.

Had I but one point to give, it would go to you.

I, like many of us, have used both companies' products, and for a while alternated with each generation from one to the other (going back to, I believe, the AMD All-in-Wonder card series). But until the three items you've laid out are addressed, I'm sad to say that my future purchases will consist exclusively of NVidia boards.

Unless they are taking my financial data, I just don't care about any of this. Let them research my use patterns, etc. Let them know if I want a Slap-Chop or visit the Pirate Bay. Don't steal my banking data, don't buy stuff online using my logins, and don't steal my identity. Otherwise, it doesn't matter to me.

Can someone convince me otherwise? Not being sarcastic here. I see a lot of "I hate this" posts, and "see, this is what they're doing," "this is how you get around it," etc., but I haven't noticed anyone (could have missed it) pointing out, other than general principle, which I do get, why I should care.

I'm by no means new to /. or to computing - maybe I'm just tired in my middle age, but I'm not just not angered by this. And you won't convince me (without actual proof) that the iPhone/Android devices we use doesn't do similar things, almost entirely in attempts to make the products we use better for us, to make our interactions with them smoother and more intuitive. Human-machine interaction is NOT an easy thing to get right, and it takes a lot (understatement there) of research and information to improve it. From everything I see, MS, Google, and the (much hated by me personally) Apple are simply doing just that - trying to make their products more intuitive so as to appeal to their user bases in an effort to gain market share. In the end, this is aimed at benefiting both us as users AND the companies who provide the devices and OSes that run them.

TLDR: I left all that shit on. My bank account is intact, and my children haven't been kidnapped.

I worked for them for 9 months in IT as a sysadmin (left for an unexpected opportunity) - the culture from an employee perspective was actually really nice. A "de-stress" room with dim lights, wall-mounted continuous waterfall, and divans / recliners for naps whenever you wanted; free beverage bar (non-alcoholic); fun management staff who were not over-the-shoulder types. Of course, I wasn't there long enough to get a fully-informed insiders opinion on every facet of the business, but I can say that I went in expecting to hate it, and was pleased to find that this wasn't the case.

This isn't the same as customer experience, I know, but mine has been similar to those who have already posted - mostly positive, with less frustration than anticipated - so I thought I'd mention what things were like on the inside, limited though my time there was.