You know nothing, John Kim.

I'm looking right at them and I can barely tell the difference.

EDIT: Also, it was a big moment in my life as a fanboy when I learned to accept that filmmakers making changes or choices I don't like is -- as Allison once said about Tom Hooper -- probably not because they hate me personally. In some cases they know things we don't, in others it's just because they're not good at their job.

Though I am still half-convinced the Matrix sequels were deliberately fucking with us.

Well for the most part yes (For film at least), virtually indistinguishable. But the Ravens beak is about twice the size and has more of a snub nosed tip (The crows is basically a sharp point).

"Hey George, is it cool if we change the three-eyed crow to a raven?  That won't ruin anything, will it?"
"Oh... they're not the same thing?  Oops."

And seriously, who gives a shit? See, this is the kind of thing that makes me never want to adapt anything ever. Fanbases are typically both extremely vocal, and extremely terrible writers, and don't have a clue about what works well in one medium and what works well in another.

Game of Thrones is pretty much the most impressive adaptation I've ever seen when it comes to juggling an insane sprawling story and making it work in a compressed run-time. And frankly, given how far the quality drops in the last 2 books, I hope the show-runners stray even further from the source material going forward.
I would love if they basically compressed the majority of those 2 books into a single season.

That's very interesting. Why is that?

It's more that the fourth and fifth book are dull and repetitive. Every Brienne chapter in CROWS is the same. Every Tyrion chapter in DRAGONS is the same. Every time they eat a meal Martin stops the story to give us a detailed recipe. I'm planning to read the final two books if they're ever released, as I'm already well in for a penny, but I genuinely think the show is at the point of doing a better job of telling the story than the books. It boils it down to the interesting bits, still takes the time to let the characters be more than just cardboard cutouts, and when nothing interesting is happening in the books it does a good job of coming up with something in the proper spirit for both plot and character.