I had a 2004 Passat - was perhaps the biggest money pit of a car I ever owned. I spent much of my time at the dealership with numerous recalls and had a very enjoyable 57-mile drive with faulty coils (https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news03/vw_coils.html). German Engineering will be forever considered a threat.

I've found that the only way to get Comcast to respond in earnest is to open up an FCC complaint. I had proof that they had over-billed me for months charging me fees for equipment I didn't own (I use a cablecard + HDHomerun). The rep said that they would only be able to credit me a single month. After contacting the FCC, I got direct attention from someone who was capable of speaking without a script and received a rather large check. You just know for every story like mine, there's hundreds of others that didn't get satisfaction. That's why Comcast has enough money to buy their own legislation. Screw Comcast sideways.....greedy bastards.

Wish I had mod points. The audio jack is also a fantastic analog input mechanism as evidenced by widgets used for guitar effects/practice and credit card readers like the square reader (although its days may be numbered with the eventual transition to chips).

Good luck tracking me!! I copy all of my code from Stackoverflow!

Duh, why would Apple get rid of a headphone jack? Don't they sell Beats headphones now?

Posting and losing some mod points. I think there should be a clear message to politicians: Do you want your name associated with the most hated company in America? Make sure they know how vile Comcast is and tie them to it. .

Blowing mod points.... there is a common economic model that describes where each candidate would have to reside in order to obtain the most votes from their particular brand of lunatic fringe. Look up the Hotelling model. This explains why the candidates in a two party system are just the top and bottom of a shit sandwich.

Interesting perspective, but Microsoft obviously did something bad enough to compel them to pay Caldera at least 155 million (http://www.windowsitpro.com/article/news2/microsoft-settles-dr-dos-antitrust-lawsuit) . Something tells me if this was just a blip in a beta, they'd take it to court.

IANAL, but I recall that Microsoft got in a bit of trouble because early versions of Windows were designed NOT to run on top of Digital Research DOS. Not going out of your way to support something is one thing, being exclusionary and abusing a monopoly position is another

As a software developer, I've had job interviews that have required drug tests and criminal background checks. Are you telling me, we shouldn't have a full picture of who we're hiring to run this country?

Tell that to Brian May! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_May)

Losing my mods to reply. Like everything to do with media, the reason was not because it was technically impossible, but legally impossible. Do you recall the Diamond Rio? Mp3.com? Few folks do. They were the first commercial mp3 player and most popular site for mp3 music and they were pretty incredible at the time. Diamond had to fend off lawsuits after releasing the device. Mp3.com was sued into oblivion and now there's Google Music, Amazon Cloud, and Apple's copycat offering. Apple had considerable capital and in a post-Napster world there were more execs interested in a legitimate model for downloading music. THAT's why the RIAA is killing innovation. Jeez, it's not like this is ancient history....

But look at the UI!!!!!!!elventyone!!! Microsoft has given us the "Safe Mode" option. Except it's not an option. And I doubt it's safe.

Look at it, they were an underdog hemorrhaging money. Jobs comes back from close contact with Disney with a penchant for pillaging stuff that's freely available and repackaging it in the most closed way possible. Disney also pillages the Public Domain, stealing from myth and fable and then adding a tiny circled 'C', making it their own. If you don't believe you, they've got a million lawyers with pillow-cases full of legal briefs to beat you down with. It's clear that disembodied spirit of Walt Disney is running Apple.