Here's what a few of you had to say about some of our recent stories. To post a remark in our feedback forums, enter your comments in the text box at the end of any story (registration required). Additionally, you can jump in on the hottest discussions about our most popular blog posts through the links at the bottom of this page.
Re: Goodbye TV, Hello Broadband
By Robert Lemos
From: Joel Gomer
We, too, had satellite television and decided to remove TV from the household. It works well for us and allows choices for the whole family. We have instead spent less money on a beefy DVD collection. The benefits are obvious: All news and breaking stories we get from Google and other internet sources, and we wait for the season shows to arrive on DVD. In the end, we spend less than cable, own what we watch, and view it when we want with little or no advertising.
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Re: In Praise of the Zune
By Leander Kahney
From: Jeffry
You're having trouble navigating the iPod's wheel? Wow. My 9-year-old would be more than happy to help you and is quite proficient at it. To compare the Zune interface to that of the iPod is comical, if not downright sad. I was at Best Buy yesterday where they had the brown Zune. The comment I heard at least half a dozen times as people where handling it was, "You must be @#$^ing joking."
And regarding the editorial comments of the Apple magazines, what about your own? Granted, removing bias is really humanly not possible, especially when you compare a forward-thinking, innovative company like Apple to the worst of the "I'd better steal it as I can't design it" Microsoft. The Zune is nothing more than a bad Newton (and that was really bad).
Cheers (and I'm serious about my son helping you with the iPod wheel).
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Re: Blackjack: Jackpot, or Bust?
By Eliot Van Buskirk
From: Keshar
EBay sells adapters for the Blackjack. Use the adapter and you can use any standard stereo headphone jack. I also bought an adapter that included a mike and a headphone jack. It did not work as I thought. It only worked hands-free. Windows Media played through the phone speaker, while calls came through the headphone.
What's needed now, in my opinion, is what comes with the Cingular 2125: a Y adapter for hands-free and power. That way in the car/travel/home/etc. you could charge up and listen to headphones or line-out to the car/home/office stereo (with the eBay adapter). Of course, Bluetooth solves this problem. But stand-alone A2DP receivers are scarce.
If you can't road-trip with it, it's a useless music phone. But I still love it. Best phone I've owned.
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Re: The Virtual Taxman Cometh
By Clive Thompson
From: Joshua Fisher
This is the most bogus, ill-conceived article I have ever seen. As a federal contractor, I built compliance systems for the Internal Revenue Service's Small Business/Self-Employed division. I can't believe Wired News allowed this to be published. This author knows nothing about taxes or the IRS or how it works. Until there is an exchange of cash for the items there is no income. Once that exchange occurs then there is taxable income and, in theory, one pays taxes on the income.
This is garbage. If you mine a gold nugget out of the Earth, the IRS does not tax you. When you sell it they do.
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Re: The Virtual Taxman Cometh
By Clive Thompson
From: Eric Starrett
It's going to be very tricky for the IRS to tax World of Warcraft players for their characters and the items on those characters because under Blizzard's agreement, everything in the game is owned by Blizzard. If the IRS attempts to tax players for those things, then it opens up the can of worms that players can now claim ownership of the virtual characters and items. This would open up an extremely messy legal situation for players, Blizzard and the IRS, particularly from the virtual ownership angle.
I don't know how Second Life plays out under this scenario – it depends on how Linden Lab views players and their characters.
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