Yeah, more stuff checking for and receiving updates and potential tracking. I'll pass.
I discovered the wonder of FLAC late last year. No going back now.

Because who cares about the customers? The music industry sure doesn't.

What portable devices play FLACS?

Reeks of DRM miles away. Wouldn't touch that with a mile long pole. Obviously last desperate attampts by the dinosaur that is music industry to keep hold of their power over customers. Big music labels should just die and be buried already.

iRivers, Creative (I think), and some phones if you look hard enough. So not the iPod or Zune.
MP3s are what I use, because they're small and because I'm not some nutjob audiophile, though AACs are great when I rip my CDs to iTunes and buy music off iTunes (which I have given up on these days).

Gaming laptops? ;) Then again I don't see that much point. You need good speakers/Headphones and hearing to hear the difference and portable music devices have neither. I sure don't with my shitty 50€ speaker set on my PC.

Are they trying to turn every music file into a mini advertising platform or something? The idea is idiocy. How many different background programs would be needed to play these music files, I wonder, and how much memory would get eaten up?

Yeah, when I had my Xfi hooked to my 5.1 with optical, there are things that I can hear differently here and there, and same with my in ear Seinheissers, but it's not like....a giant difference. As long as it's not a crap MP3 I'm usually good haha. It is nice to have it though, and then compress it when you need it on the go.

Just the idea of a program downloading megabytes and megabytes of information on its own is pure evil. I hate when things like Acrobat decide to download its huge update without prompting me first. Voluntarily doing this fo ALL my music files... no way! :)
In the end, where is the problem of visiting last.fm for all this information if I'm interested? I don't want extra information about all the music on my hard drive anyway.

See http://flac.sourceforge.net/links.html#hardware
As far as I know most Cowon iAudio and iRiver devices play FLAC.
Cowon regularly updates their firmware so if FLAC support isn't available for a device of theirs, it can be added later.
A few months ago I read in a test that mp3 is the most efficient codec for portable devices as far as power usage goes.
FLAC, ogg and other codecs use more battery power to play the same song.
Than again, with enough battery time like the Cowon iAudio 7, it doesn't matter much.
That's spoken from experience as I own one.
That depends on the quality of the mp3.
However it's possible to hear differences, especially with VBR mp3s.

Yeah, I would definitely keep a FLAC library for home listening and an MP3 library on your portable media player. Programs like dBpoweramp make this really quick and easy.

I think it depends on device. I know VBR MP3 and probably VBR anything use up more power. On my Zune I use to use LAME VBR MP3 and since I switched to 192 CBR WMA my battery life is much better, and iPods probably work best with AAC. Then again, I've never had my Zune die on me either, lol.

Several brands of portable players were tested.
Both CBR and VBR mp3 were tested, together with several other common formats.
WMA was only tested in CBR if I remember correctly.
The conclusion was based upon all players.
Main conclusion was that mp3 was the most power efficient codec, followed by either AAc or WMA.
I don't remember how OGG, FLAC and APE were doing.
SHN wasn't tested.
It's possible Zune is better with WMA and iPod with AAC.
I'm glad I have a device that offers support for various codecs, even though I only use mp3 and FLAC on mine.
FLAC solely because I'm too lazy to convert to another format.

it's funny that not a single comment on the original wired article was even remotely positive about this idea.

I gotta agree, if I want to know tour dates or something I'll keep track of that. I don't need a background check on every song I listen to.
And what's this nonsense about updates to the music? Do my songs needs patches now? Did they decide to add another guitar or something?