I used to buy because it was the first legal service available in my country, it was DRM free and they had an all you can eat offering that was amazing. They also had the best selection of non-mainstream artists and a lot of back catalogs.

That slowly changed, first they killed the all you can eat, then they started regional licensing (so albums I had purchased or bookmarked in the past were no longer available to me in my region) and then they started losing artists and labels as those labels went to other services.

If I could find something now that was equivalent to what they offered when I signed up I would do it immediately.

I know that my problem is that I don't live in the U.S.

Most of the useful legal services are really only available there.

He already answered that. As far as I can tell most countries do not have access to it. That was sort of the point with the main post. Most legal options are only available in the states. I, for example, live in Austria. At this time I can legally access a couple of music streaming sites, iTunes music and films (but not TV Series) and a bunch of services selling Austrian and German productions.

Amazon MP3 purchase is not an option. Netflix, Hulu, and Pandora are blocked. Last.FM has been crippled.

iTunes is really the only option for films, but the selection is limited. It also changes. Movies I had saved to my favorites were no longer available when I decided to rent them. May that are available to purchase are not available to rent.

You do realize that this particular program was started in 2007, right?

Well, we have known for quite some time that is is not just possible to use your dumb phone as a roving bug while it is turned off, but that it has actually been done.

http://news.cnet.com/2100-1029-6140191.html

So even though you sound a bit (albeit justifiably) paranoid, you might not be paranoid enough.

Yes, it is being eaten up. By the capitalists. It's pretty frikkin obvious. We could have avoided a lot of the problems we have now if the owners, shareholders and executives had been willing to pay fair wages. If they want low taxes someone somewhere has to be paid enough to pay them.

But they didn't want to do that.

Instead they paid less, encouraged a credit based economy that sucked even more value out of the earnings of the masses, yet another transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top. So now we have a situation where living wages are becoming a fiction, libtards are telling people to get bootstrappy while ignoring the fact that there is a lot of simple shit work that still needs to be done and should be paid a living wage for, the wealthy are encouraged to ignore any responsibilities or understanding of a social contract (look it up Americans, especially you Christians, it's a useful albeit foreign concept) and everything is going to hell.

Basically, capitalists can either agree to pay out decent wages and have low taxes on their investments, or they can subsidize their businesses with social services paid for through higher taxes. Low pay, low taxes and no social network is just the road to Detroit.

I'm sorry, I understood soundguys post to be claiming that those devices existed, not just that they could exist, and that the AC was calling him out on it. That made it hard to interpret your post correctly. Sorry.

That said, this idiot is out of here.

Both posters were looking for bluetooth headsets that could replace a hearing aid. The important part of the post you were replying to was this "If I could replace them with smart earpieces, I would in a heartbeat, but there's so much fluff and garbage out there that without links, it's almost impossible to find what you're talking about."

In other words, he wanted specific links to products that would fit his requirements and NOT a basic listing of any link google would find if searched for "bluetooth headset". You just gave him the same list of fluff and garbage he was trying to avoid.

Wow. I know this is slashdot and no one ever rtfa's, but you managed to completely ignore the question from the original poster, AND the comment you were replying to. If you're going to play smart-ass with LMGTFY, you might want to at least have entered a relevant search string.

Looks like at least one child got left behind...

It seems as though the unlocked iPhones are GSM only.

You do know that you can turn off cellular data on almost every smartphone out there right? Yes, even the iPhone.

And I pay $9.70 for 1000 minutes, 1000 sms and 1GB full speed data with data being throttled but unlimited after.

Did I win?

Minecraft. That game had my boy learning about basic circuits insude of a week, exploring file systems, learning gimp, messing about with configuration files, learning 3d modeling and basic animation and he finally ended up installing and maintaining his own server. Ive had to refresh out of date knowledge to keep up with him.

The best thing about it is that I get to have as much fun as he does, and we have branched off into video editing in order to share the stuff he has made. It piqued his curiosity so much that he has started to show an interest in programming as well.

Now if I could just find a way to kill his League Of Legends habit...

And at what age would you propose basic diddling become a part of the curiculum?

I don't know, sounded plenty bizarre to me.