Yup. The greatest thing about Android, iOS and Windows 10 is all the terrific software that nobody asked for and nobody can uninstall.

You pay for it; Google/Apple/Microsoft benefits from it. A terrific arrangement.

(I didn't read the article, so...)

What exactly is "data science"?

Agreed.

Sounds like Google is using this as an excuse to limit support on otherwise perfectly good hardware to an arbitrary six-year limit as defined by a vendor. Never mind that fact that devices can very easily be upgraded to newer linux versions.

They've already ended product support for their "Do no evil" mantra.

People cutting the cable cord dont consume much local programming to begin with. Thats why they had cable.

Wrong. I cut the cord because I was doing exactly the opposite of what you suggest: I was watching mostly local programming. The other cable TV content I watched I figured I could live without. So, why pay for what I could get for free.

Incidentally, when watching OTA there is no added delay to broadcast reception that you would get via cable, satellite service, etc. I used to call friends on the phone during football games, wait for a game score to happen, and then cheer loudly - between 8-15 seconds before they would see it. Fun! :-)

Couldn't have said it better myself. Thank you, Chas.

If the bot's (or bots') comments are to be kept, then is it not reasonable that everyone (legal U.S. citizens) should be able to use a bot to post comments to the FCC?

I mean, if they allow one man's set of bot comments then, legally, don't they have to accept everybody's bots' comments?
 
If they don't, are they infringing freedom of speech?

That's the way I read it, too.

Yeah, get off our lawn!

"3,583 Bytes Free". Get it right.

Typing in programs? Maybe you're thinking of the magazines Compute! or Compute's Gazette. Compute had programs for all sorts of different systems. Compute Gazette was strictly for Commodore VIC-20 and C64.

My first computer was the VIC-20, bought in 1983. "3,583 Bytes Free" greeted me every day. I eventually got the 8K expansion card, giving me a little over 8K of available RAM. I used a 1530 Datasette for storage and a 1660 modem (300bps). I still remember being able to keep up with 300bps: so slow I was able to read text as it came down the line. I still have the VIC-20, but the AC adapter is dead. :-(

Less than 2 years later, I bought a Commodore 64 - I believe late 1984 or early 1985. "38911 Basic Bytes Free". I eventually equipped it with a 1541 floppy disk drive, a 1670 modem (1200bps) and a non-Commodore dot matrix printer. I used that Commodore 64 during my last year of high school and, later, through my college career. It was quite the workhorse.

In 1992, I bought my first "PC compatible" computer, a Packard Bell that had a 386 SX-20 processor, 130mb hard drive and, I think, 512k RAM. It also had 5-1/4" and 3.5" floppy drives and I put in a 1200bps modem. It had a 14" monitor which I still used for my nearly-headless NAS server until about 2016, when I decided I wanted more desktop real estate. If you put that monitor into 1024x768 @60Hz, your eyes would explode from the jitter. :-)

Probable disclaimer from Microsoft:

Users of Microsoft Visual Studio for Mac OSX may find certain features of Visual Studio do not function as expected under the Mac OSX platform. For those users, we recommend using Visual Studio on a Microsoft Windows-based platform, to improve reliability.

Translation:

You didn't really expect us to write quality software for a competing OS that didn't eventually drive you over to Windows, did you? Silly user...

"...comes with 'incredible extreme' all-metal body..."
"The touch strip offers on-screen button..."
"Schiller, Apple SVP, said it was time Apple gotten rid of the dedicated function keys"
"Apple says, twice as larger than the older one"

Summary written by Tomik and Bellgarde: http://familyguy.wikia.com/wiki/Tomik_and_Bellgarde

It seems to me that this is an example of corporations quite clearly forcing consumers into something they don't want. They only way to stop them is to NOT buy these devices.

I have 2 older iPods, a smartphone, a surround sound a/v receiver, CD players, MP3 players, ancient transistor radios, etc., and NONE of them work with USB headphones. All of them work with standard audio jacks. I'm not investing in new headphones, dongles, cables, etc.

This would be an ideal solution, however...
In an NSA/corporation controlled world, we must be mindful of what smartphone manufacturers define as "hardware switch". By definition, such a switch would use physical/mechanical hardware to completely deactivate the hardware itself (in this case, the radio). However, I can tell you now that if smartphone manufacturers have any say, any hardware switch" would merely trigger a software action that would put the phone into Airplane mode. Thus, we end up needing Snowden's device to make sure the radio is truly deactivated.