It's entirely possible that some people, or in deed all people to a degree, are sensitive to any resonances in their body with time harmonic signals.
There is no evidence that electromagnetic signals can have such an effect on biological systems. This would be a rather ridiculous proposition, considering that biological systems use chemical signaling almost exclusively. Such a link would be rather revolutionary to our understanding of biological systems.
Edison was a proponent of DC power for one reason: he owned the patents for it. DC does not actually have any merits. A DC generator is more complex, produces dirtier power, and is less reliable than an AC generator. The stress on lightbulb filaments is a myth, the filaments have too much thermal mass for the 60Hz to cause thermal cycling. Also, from a lightbulb's perspective, rectified AC is no different from normal AC, since the lightbulb doesn't care which direction the current is flowing.
It's a rough estimate. An accurate measurement is impossible, since it varies wildly with ear geometry and the type of music you listen to. Ear geometry affects the headphone efficiency. An earbud that fits perfectly will cause a higher SPL than one that does not.
In a reasonably quiet environment, 1/3rd of the way up is comfortable listening volume. In general, turning it up to the point where it feels loud means damaging your hearing, especially since the user is prone to inch up the volume as the ear adjusts to the higher level.
In short, the best way to kill your hearing is to use the volume control for noise cancellation. This works by reducing your ear's sensitivity and causes hearing loss. If you listen to your player in loud environments, you need some noise-cancelling or closed-ear headphones.
I guess I just don't see how you could learn anything from copying someone else's chip design and putting it into an FPGA. You can learn significantly more by just simulating the processor in a good simulator and figuring out how it works. The best way to learn is to read some books and create your own design from scratch.
Why would you want to bother trying to implement something like this on an FPGA? It's much cheaper to just buy a processor than try to squeeze one inside an FPGA. FPGAs are much slower and much more expensive than a custom chip (a high-end FPGA chip can cost $800 or more). Their only reason for existence is to implement stuff you can't buy. Implementing completely obsolete off-the-shelf chips seems rather pointless.
You can't increase the volume of a sound file unless said sound file was improperly recorded. The DAC in the iPod uses 16 bits, and you can't add any extra volume. You can add the perception of more volume by compressing the dynamic range, but that doesn't affect hearing loss. What you want is normalization, and the iPod already has that feature (it's called Sound Check and it requires iTunes to be configured in a certain way).
You couldn't listen to a walkman 8 hours a day, so it'd be much harder to damage your hearing. With the stock headphones, settings above about 1/3rd of the indicator will cause permanent hearing damage if used for over an hour a day.
I seem to remember that someone actually managed to get an injunction against a reviewer using such a clause. And the New York case only applies in New York. Courts in other states may very well rule such clauses legitimate. Most companies have similar, though sometimes less restrictive, clauses in their EULAs these days. Look at the Microsoft.NET Framework EULA, or the VMWare EULA.
"Right of sale" gives you the right to RESELL any software that you've paid for.
Not true. Unlike music CDs, software is licensed, not sold. With a CD, you own the media, and you have the right to resell it. With software, you still own the media, but you also need the right to copy the software into the computer's RAM in order to use the software. This is why you need a software license agreement.
It is perfectly, 100%, legal for you to sell software you've paid for on eBay. I do it all the time.
Granted, there is nothing illegal in selling software media. You are not copying it, so copyright law is not being violated. However, the purchaser will need a valid license to use the software legally. If a license is not transferable, they would be using the software illegally. If you know the license is not transferable, you would be guilty of contributory infringement if you sell someone else your media.
In fact, Cisco even managed to do this with hardware. If you buy a used Cisco product, you will have to pay Cisco a licensing fee (something like $1500) for licensing the firmware in that router. The case law is on their side.
And yes, companies HAVE paid lots of money for violating software contracts, in almost every case it's because they were using it without paying (or more often, paying ENOUGH).
One way this occurred is that they did not check if their licenses were transferable, and did not keep adequate records.
Just because it's printed on a sheet of paper in offical-sounding legalese doesn't make it the LAW.
Just because it's not THE LAW doesn't mean they can't sue you and win. And remember: in civil court, YOU have to prove that you are not guilty. Unless you have lots of money to give to lawyers, you do not want to go there.
$100 would be about 3 orders of magnitude cheaper than the going price for this kind of service. While mass production is an extremely profitable business, there is little money to be made by making one-off designs. The economies of scale just aren't there. Even simple sheet metal work is a lot more expensive than $100. Not to mention, the software used to design things like laptop casings (Solid Edge and competitors) costs hundreds of thousands of bucks. If you wanted it milled out of a chunk of aluminum, just the material would cost more than $100. Injection-molded plastic is cheap, but the NRE is very high, and it only makes sense for mass production.
In short, unless you have at least a $5 million dollar budget, you really have no business developing laptops. That's the price if you use mostly off-the-shelf parts. A fully custom design can be 10x to 20x more expensive. Just look at the balance sheets of computer companies and check out how much money they spend on R&D. Custom work requires an extensive investment of time and money.
What's with all the anonymous cowards replying? The thing is, there is nothing bloated about ubuntu, mandriva, or suse. I'm not that stupid. All the extra services have been turned off, there is nothing running except kernel services and Gnome. Yeah, you can use it on a 200MHz computer. But it's really not worth the time or the effort, given how slow it is.
Don't you think that if there were any useful results, we would have fusion already? It's not like the other scientists think "Oh, yeah, i can reproduce cold fusion. Let's not do anything with this revolutionary discovery.". The scientific community does not exile people who simply publish experiments that are hard to reproduce. Pons and Fleischmann's discovery was a fabrication, not just a poorly-documented experiment.
You have a totally screwed-up conception of how the law works. You are almost completely wrong, on every point.
the first is the one you mention: it's delivered after-the-fact. you've already bought the s/w, and a lot of stores won't take open boxes back, so it's a major headache if you don't agree with the terms.
You don't BUY the software. You pay money in order to enter a contract with the owner of that software. By paying money, you have acknowledged that you accept the terms of the contract, whatever they may be. Generally, you can read the EULA on the manufacturer's website or request that they send you a copy.
Second, the terms are unilaterally imposed. You have no opportunity to negotiate the way you could/would if you were in fact negotiating a contract.
This is true of almost any contract. If you are entering into a contract with a company, it's generally a take it or leave it proposition. Try negotiating the terms of your cellphone contract, or an apartment lease, or an insurance policy. Hell, most contracts these days even restrict you from disputing the terms of that contract in court -- and this is legal! Read up on mandatory arbitration provisions someday.
But for me, the biggest concern (illustrated by the Brick EULA) is that they can list any kind of terms they want. How legal the terms are comes down to a judge. Companies add all kinds of additional terms that simply don't exist in property law: neither physical nor 'intellectual'.
That's kind of the whole point of a contract -- to impose requirements onto two parties that are not already imposed by law. The parties of a contract are already expected to follow all applicable law. After all, there isn't a law that says you have to pay $55.84 a month to have a cellphone and that you have to pay $400 if you decide to cancel service.
Copyright law allows content owners to decide who gets their content, but the EULA extends this authority over how you use the content.
Wrong. Copyright law prohibits anyone from using a copyrighted work without the owner's permission. The copyright owner is free to impose _any_ conditions they may require in exchange for permission to use the content. There is nothing in copyright law that says software has to be sold for a fee or that licenses have to be indefinite. If I wanted to, I could lease software for a monthly fee or prohibit you from using it to harm animals or prohibit you from talking about it to anyone. This would be perfectly enforceable.
Once Ford has sold you the car, they have (essentially) ZERO say over how you use it.
That's because Ford _sells_ you the car. Software is licensed via a contract, not sold. If you _lease_ a car from Ford, they could do any of the things you mentioned. For example, they could make the lease non-transferable, require you to keep the car clean, specify what kind of parts you can use, specify that they are not liable for accidents, restrict your right to sue them in court, and even specify how many people can ride with you. As long as your name is on the dotted line, it's perfectly legal to do this.
There have been plenty of court cases upholding EULAs. In a few cases, even provisions such as prohibiting negative reviews have been upheld. If you don't agree to the EULA, but use the software, you are essentially committing piracy, since nothing else gives you the right to use the software. And plenty of companies have paid lots of money for violating software contracts. But hey, don't let that stop you from spouting misinformation.
Yeah, and I could compute ten billion digits of Pi on my pocket calculator. It would just take an awful long time, just like starting Firefox on that machine of yours. Also, ever consider getting an account so you don't look like such a retard?
Well, if you redefine what proprietary means to suit your argument, then there's no problem with saying DRM doesn't have to be proprietary. Problem solved. It's just a shame it is so intellectually bankrupt.
That is the most common definition of the word "proprietary" when talking about a standard. I'm not redefining anything here. There are very few standards that are completely free. There are some that are royalty-free with no strings attached, but you have to pay thousands of dollars for each copy of the specification. Most are not that way.
By your definition, formats like MP3, MPEG-4, and AAC are proprietary. All of them are covered by patents, and require licensing. However, they are not generally considered proprietary, because licenses are available to anyone willing to pay the appropriate fees and royalties. Many companies have done that, and there is plenty of competition.
For a start: the GPL isn't in the same category as HDCP -- it's not a contract for a start.
The GPL is most certainly a contract. Any software license is a contract between the copyright owner and the licensee. It most certainly specifies how you can and cannot use the software. For example, linking proprietary code to GPL code is prohibited. Removing the copyright notices is prohibited. You may not incorporate GPL code into a proprietary codebase. You are prohibited from changing the terms of the GPL. You are prohibited from relicensing the code. These prohibitions are necessary to enforce the integrity of the GPL.
Like I said, do some research.
I think you need to do some first. How about starting with this?
Unless you install an ancient version (which would not have any useful software available), Linux will be much slower than, say, Win98. GNOME is a memory hog, X11 is a memory hog, and Linux is not designed to work on slow hardware. It might be okayish without X11, but don't even think about running X on anything less than a 600-700MHz CPU. The requirements are about the same as for WinXP -- the system itself eats up about 256 megs. It may run with less than that, but it won't be usable. I _have_ seen Win95 installed on a 386 SX with 8MB of RAM. That's the extremely slow 16MHz, 16-bit bus version of the 386. It ran, but it was so slow that it was not even funny. That's about how well Linux will run on a 166MHz computer.
Well, when I think "proprietary", I usually think of an interface/protocol/format that is used by one company and is not licensed to anyone else. Examples: game console discs; Sony MemoryStick; Apple FairPlay. If it can be licensed under reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms, it's not proprietary. Examples: DVD CSS, European satellite cards, CableCard, etc. Note that this does not mean it has to be free or has to have no strings attached. Obviously, you cannot violate specifications. That is true of any standard -- almost all of them are licensed with the requirement of fully complying with it. Even the GNU GPL has a clause that prohibits you from modifying its terms.
Except that Apple would lose control over the "system as a whole" which allows for their famous integration and good user experience.
Why should Apple be able to control what the user does with his/her legally purchased music player? Nobody is stopping them from providing the experience, they would just have to open up their APIs to others. It's not like they'll be forced to close iTMS or somehow make it less seamless. Of course, if I don't care about the "experience", I would have the ability to purchase music from an iTunes competitor and use their DRM scheme. I've never thought that a dollar for a DRM-encumbered, FM-quality version of a song was a good deal (128 Kbps? Apple needs to get with the program).
Note that you have not offered any arguments that support your position. Why does DRM have to necessarily be proprietary? There are many DRM protocols which are completely open. For example, the new HDTV digital cable standard. DRM simply means restricting the end-user's copying of content. As long as there is a well-defined protocol for doing that, it would not be proprietary. As in, every portable device could support a single standard for DRM-encrypted music.
Are you going to count the costs of toilet paper in the corporate bathroom? Bandwidth, hosting, and server costs are entirely negligible. It costs less to run an enormous site than to keep one full-time employee around. They charge 1.00 per ~3MB download. The bandwidth for that costs what, 0.01 cents? Triple that for hardware expenses? You don't even need many employees to run this stuff. In fact, I doubt they have more than 30 or 40 people running that whole show. And they sell millions of songs per week. That's millions of bucks coming in. If they make 30 cents off each song, that's a ton of money.
Well, Ferrari doesn't assemble their cars from GM spare parts, unlike Alienware. It's not like there is anything to building a computer. Especially a crappy gaming machine, where there is no consideration for things like noise and power consumption. Just for reference, it takes me about 1.5 hours to assemble a computer. The only reason to buy stuff from Alienware if you are lazy, don't mind overpaying by quite a bit, and/or will need technical support.
I am as big an Apple fanboy as anyone else, but let's admit it, they are being douchebags here. DRM that is not proprietary would be a good thing for the entire industry. The iPod can stand on its own merits, it's not like it's hard to find music for 99 cents. In short, there is no good reason for the iTunes DRM to stay closed, and the law would be doing the right thing. And I really doubt that Apple is losing money on iTMS. There is zero overhead, and the margin is big enough to make plenty of cash.
The real issue here is that the law will make it possible for iTunes competitors to sell tunes to iPod users. This is what Apple is really afraid of, since they get a nice solid revenue stream from the music subscription business. In short, it's a non-issue, and Apple is just afraid that the playing field will become level for the other competitors.
Dude, it's not very difficult to tell whether such email is genuine or not. A real VC company is well-known and has a physical location, a website, and people you can talk to and negotiate with. Did you even read the damn article?
I found the technique here. Method 4 is what I'm referring to. You can use a metal or plastic spoon, and it won't leave any scratches or cause damage to the housing. The glue is flexible, so it will just stretch and the housings will eventually open. The site also has a lot of other useful information.
One thing I found useful is to hotglue the wires where they enter the cup so they cannot move. This prevents the wires from breaking.
Well, the downward spiral started in the 80s. I am not too familiar with patent history, but I seem to remember that is when software patents came into existence (don't quote me on this, I may be wrong).
In any case, patents are very profitable for large corporations, since they can use them to keep competitors out of the market. For instance, you can't just come in and start manufacturing PC hard drives or CPUs, because the existing manufacturers have all the patents and they are usually cross-licensed. It's the same with software, business methods (just try starting an eBay competitor), and so on. I don't see any reason why Republicans would be against a broad patent scope, since it seems to be rather profitable for large companies.
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It's entirely possible that some people, or in deed all people to a degree, are sensitive to any resonances in their body with time harmonic signals.
There is no evidence that electromagnetic signals can have such an effect on biological systems. This would be a rather ridiculous proposition, considering that biological systems use chemical signaling almost exclusively. Such a link would be rather revolutionary to our understanding of biological systems.
Edison was a proponent of DC power for one reason: he owned the patents for it. DC does not actually have any merits. A DC generator is more complex, produces dirtier power, and is less reliable than an AC generator. The stress on lightbulb filaments is a myth, the filaments have too much thermal mass for the 60Hz to cause thermal cycling. Also, from a lightbulb's perspective, rectified AC is no different from normal AC, since the lightbulb doesn't care which direction the current is flowing.
It's a rough estimate. An accurate measurement is impossible, since it varies wildly with ear geometry and the type of music you listen to. Ear geometry affects the headphone efficiency. An earbud that fits perfectly will cause a higher SPL than one that does not.
In a reasonably quiet environment, 1/3rd of the way up is comfortable listening volume. In general, turning it up to the point where it feels loud means damaging your hearing, especially since the user is prone to inch up the volume as the ear adjusts to the higher level.
In short, the best way to kill your hearing is to use the volume control for noise cancellation. This works by reducing your ear's sensitivity and causes hearing loss. If you listen to your player in loud environments, you need some noise-cancelling or closed-ear headphones.
I guess I just don't see how you could learn anything from copying someone else's chip design and putting it into an FPGA. You can learn significantly more by just simulating the processor in a good simulator and figuring out how it works. The best way to learn is to read some books and create your own design from scratch.
Why would you want to bother trying to implement something like this on an FPGA? It's much cheaper to just buy a processor than try to squeeze one inside an FPGA. FPGAs are much slower and much more expensive than a custom chip (a high-end FPGA chip can cost $800 or more). Their only reason for existence is to implement stuff you can't buy. Implementing completely obsolete off-the-shelf chips seems rather pointless.
You can't increase the volume of a sound file unless said sound file was improperly recorded. The DAC in the iPod uses 16 bits, and you can't add any extra volume. You can add the perception of more volume by compressing the dynamic range, but that doesn't affect hearing loss. What you want is normalization, and the iPod already has that feature (it's called Sound Check and it requires iTunes to be configured in a certain way).
You couldn't listen to a walkman 8 hours a day, so it'd be much harder to damage your hearing. With the stock headphones, settings above about 1/3rd of the indicator will cause permanent hearing damage if used for over an hour a day.
I seem to remember that someone actually managed to get an injunction against a reviewer using such a clause. And the New York case only applies in New York. Courts in other states may very well rule such clauses legitimate. Most companies have similar, though sometimes less restrictive, clauses in their EULAs these days. Look at the Microsoft .NET Framework EULA, or the VMWare EULA.
"Right of sale" gives you the right to RESELL any software that you've paid for.
Not true. Unlike music CDs, software is licensed, not sold. With a CD, you own the media, and you have the right to resell it. With software, you still own the media, but you also need the right to copy the software into the computer's RAM in order to use the software. This is why you need a software license agreement.
It is perfectly, 100%, legal for you to sell software you've paid for on eBay. I do it all the time.
Granted, there is nothing illegal in selling software media. You are not copying it, so copyright law is not being violated. However, the purchaser will need a valid license to use the software legally. If a license is not transferable, they would be using the software illegally. If you know the license is not transferable, you would be guilty of contributory infringement if you sell someone else your media.
In fact, Cisco even managed to do this with hardware. If you buy a used Cisco product, you will have to pay Cisco a licensing fee (something like $1500) for licensing the firmware in that router. The case law is on their side.
And yes, companies HAVE paid lots of money for violating software contracts, in almost every case it's because they were using it without paying (or more often, paying ENOUGH).
One way this occurred is that they did not check if their licenses were transferable, and did not keep adequate records.
Just because it's printed on a sheet of paper in offical-sounding legalese doesn't make it the LAW.
Just because it's not THE LAW doesn't mean they can't sue you and win. And remember: in civil court, YOU have to prove that you are not guilty. Unless you have lots of money to give to lawyers, you do not want to go there.
$100 would be about 3 orders of magnitude cheaper than the going price for this kind of service. While mass production is an extremely profitable business, there is little money to be made by making one-off designs. The economies of scale just aren't there. Even simple sheet metal work is a lot more expensive than $100. Not to mention, the software used to design things like laptop casings (Solid Edge and competitors) costs hundreds of thousands of bucks. If you wanted it milled out of a chunk of aluminum, just the material would cost more than $100. Injection-molded plastic is cheap, but the NRE is very high, and it only makes sense for mass production.
In short, unless you have at least a $5 million dollar budget, you really have no business developing laptops. That's the price if you use mostly off-the-shelf parts. A fully custom design can be 10x to 20x more expensive. Just look at the balance sheets of computer companies and check out how much money they spend on R&D. Custom work requires an extensive investment of time and money.
What's with all the anonymous cowards replying? The thing is, there is nothing bloated about ubuntu, mandriva, or suse. I'm not that stupid. All the extra services have been turned off, there is nothing running except kernel services and Gnome. Yeah, you can use it on a 200MHz computer. But it's really not worth the time or the effort, given how slow it is.
Don't you think that if there were any useful results, we would have fusion already? It's not like the other scientists think "Oh, yeah, i can reproduce cold fusion. Let's not do anything with this revolutionary discovery.". The scientific community does not exile people who simply publish experiments that are hard to reproduce. Pons and Fleischmann's discovery was a fabrication, not just a poorly-documented experiment.
You have a totally screwed-up conception of how the law works. You are almost completely wrong, on every point.
the first is the one you mention: it's delivered after-the-fact. you've already bought the s/w, and a lot of stores won't take open boxes back, so it's a major headache if you don't agree with the terms.
You don't BUY the software. You pay money in order to enter a contract with the owner of that software. By paying money, you have acknowledged that you accept the terms of the contract, whatever they may be. Generally, you can read the EULA on the manufacturer's website or request that they send you a copy.
Second, the terms are unilaterally imposed. You have no opportunity to negotiate the way you could/would if you were in fact negotiating a contract.
This is true of almost any contract. If you are entering into a contract with a company, it's generally a take it or leave it proposition. Try negotiating the terms of your cellphone contract, or an apartment lease, or an insurance policy. Hell, most contracts these days even restrict you from disputing the terms of that contract in court -- and this is legal! Read up on mandatory arbitration provisions someday.
But for me, the biggest concern (illustrated by the Brick EULA) is that they can list any kind of terms they want. How legal the terms are comes down to a judge. Companies add all kinds of additional terms that simply don't exist in property law: neither physical nor 'intellectual'.
That's kind of the whole point of a contract -- to impose requirements onto two parties that are not already imposed by law. The parties of a contract are already expected to follow all applicable law. After all, there isn't a law that says you have to pay $55.84 a month to have a cellphone and that you have to pay $400 if you decide to cancel service.
Copyright law allows content owners to decide who gets their content, but the EULA extends this authority over how you use the content.
Wrong. Copyright law prohibits anyone from using a copyrighted work without the owner's permission. The copyright owner is free to impose _any_ conditions they may require in exchange for permission to use the content. There is nothing in copyright law that says software has to be sold for a fee or that licenses have to be indefinite. If I wanted to, I could lease software for a monthly fee or prohibit you from using it to harm animals or prohibit you from talking about it to anyone. This would be perfectly enforceable.
Once Ford has sold you the car, they have (essentially) ZERO say over how you use it.
That's because Ford _sells_ you the car. Software is licensed via a contract, not sold. If you _lease_ a car from Ford, they could do any of the things you mentioned. For example, they could make the lease non-transferable, require you to keep the car clean, specify what kind of parts you can use, specify that they are not liable for accidents, restrict your right to sue them in court, and even specify how many people can ride with you. As long as your name is on the dotted line, it's perfectly legal to do this.
There have been plenty of court cases upholding EULAs. In a few cases, even provisions such as prohibiting negative reviews have been upheld. If you don't agree to the EULA, but use the software, you are essentially committing piracy, since nothing else gives you the right to use the software. And plenty of companies have paid lots of money for violating software contracts. But hey, don't let that stop you from spouting misinformation.
Yeah, and I could compute ten billion digits of Pi on my pocket calculator. It would just take an awful long time, just like starting Firefox on that machine of yours. Also, ever consider getting an account so you don't look like such a retard?
Well, if you redefine what proprietary means to suit your argument, then there's no problem with saying DRM doesn't have to be proprietary. Problem solved. It's just a shame it is so intellectually bankrupt.
That is the most common definition of the word "proprietary" when talking about a standard. I'm not redefining anything here. There are very few standards that are completely free. There are some that are royalty-free with no strings attached, but you have to pay thousands of dollars for each copy of the specification. Most are not that way.
By your definition, formats like MP3, MPEG-4, and AAC are proprietary. All of them are covered by patents, and require licensing. However, they are not generally considered proprietary, because licenses are available to anyone willing to pay the appropriate fees and royalties. Many companies have done that, and there is plenty of competition.
For a start: the GPL isn't in the same category as HDCP -- it's not a contract for a start.
The GPL is most certainly a contract. Any software license is a contract between the copyright owner and the licensee. It most certainly specifies how you can and cannot use the software. For example, linking proprietary code to GPL code is prohibited. Removing the copyright notices is prohibited. You may not incorporate GPL code into a proprietary codebase. You are prohibited from changing the terms of the GPL. You are prohibited from relicensing the code. These prohibitions are necessary to enforce the integrity of the GPL.
Like I said, do some research.
I think you need to do some first. How about starting with this?
Unless you install an ancient version (which would not have any useful software available), Linux will be much slower than, say, Win98. GNOME is a memory hog, X11 is a memory hog, and Linux is not designed to work on slow hardware. It might be okayish without X11, but don't even think about running X on anything less than a 600-700MHz CPU. The requirements are about the same as for WinXP -- the system itself eats up about 256 megs. It may run with less than that, but it won't be usable. I _have_ seen Win95 installed on a 386 SX with 8MB of RAM. That's the extremely slow 16MHz, 16-bit bus version of the 386. It ran, but it was so slow that it was not even funny. That's about how well Linux will run on a 166MHz computer.
Well, when I think "proprietary", I usually think of an interface/protocol/format that is used by one company and is not licensed to anyone else. Examples: game console discs; Sony MemoryStick; Apple FairPlay. If it can be licensed under reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms, it's not proprietary. Examples: DVD CSS, European satellite cards, CableCard, etc. Note that this does not mean it has to be free or has to have no strings attached. Obviously, you cannot violate specifications. That is true of any standard -- almost all of them are licensed with the requirement of fully complying with it. Even the GNU GPL has a clause that prohibits you from modifying its terms.
Except that Apple would lose control over the "system as a whole" which allows for their famous integration and good user experience.
Why should Apple be able to control what the user does with his/her legally purchased music player? Nobody is stopping them from providing the experience, they would just have to open up their APIs to others. It's not like they'll be forced to close iTMS or somehow make it less seamless. Of course, if I don't care about the "experience", I would have the ability to purchase music from an iTunes competitor and use their DRM scheme. I've never thought that a dollar for a DRM-encumbered, FM-quality version of a song was a good deal (128 Kbps? Apple needs to get with the program).
Note that you have not offered any arguments that support your position. Why does DRM have to necessarily be proprietary? There are many DRM protocols which are completely open. For example, the new HDTV digital cable standard. DRM simply means restricting the end-user's copying of content. As long as there is a well-defined protocol for doing that, it would not be proprietary. As in, every portable device could support a single standard for DRM-encrypted music.
Are you going to count the costs of toilet paper in the corporate bathroom? Bandwidth, hosting, and server costs are entirely negligible. It costs less to run an enormous site than to keep one full-time employee around. They charge 1.00 per ~3MB download. The bandwidth for that costs what, 0.01 cents? Triple that for hardware expenses? You don't even need many employees to run this stuff. In fact, I doubt they have more than 30 or 40 people running that whole show. And they sell millions of songs per week. That's millions of bucks coming in. If they make 30 cents off each song, that's a ton of money.
Well, Ferrari doesn't assemble their cars from GM spare parts, unlike Alienware. It's not like there is anything to building a computer. Especially a crappy gaming machine, where there is no consideration for things like noise and power consumption. Just for reference, it takes me about 1.5 hours to assemble a computer. The only reason to buy stuff from Alienware if you are lazy, don't mind overpaying by quite a bit, and/or will need technical support.
I am as big an Apple fanboy as anyone else, but let's admit it, they are being douchebags here. DRM that is not proprietary would be a good thing for the entire industry. The iPod can stand on its own merits, it's not like it's hard to find music for 99 cents. In short, there is no good reason for the iTunes DRM to stay closed, and the law would be doing the right thing. And I really doubt that Apple is losing money on iTMS. There is zero overhead, and the margin is big enough to make plenty of cash.
The real issue here is that the law will make it possible for iTunes competitors to sell tunes to iPod users. This is what Apple is really afraid of, since they get a nice solid revenue stream from the music subscription business. In short, it's a non-issue, and Apple is just afraid that the playing field will become level for the other competitors.
Dude, it's not very difficult to tell whether such email is genuine or not. A real VC company is well-known and has a physical location, a website, and people you can talk to and negotiate with. Did you even read the damn article?
I found the technique here. Method 4 is what I'm referring to. You can use a metal or plastic spoon, and it won't leave any scratches or cause damage to the housing. The glue is flexible, so it will just stretch and the housings will eventually open. The site also has a lot of other useful information.
One thing I found useful is to hotglue the wires where they enter the cup so they cannot move. This prevents the wires from breaking.
Well, the downward spiral started in the 80s. I am not too familiar with patent history, but I seem to remember that is when software patents came into existence (don't quote me on this, I may be wrong).
In any case, patents are very profitable for large corporations, since they can use them to keep competitors out of the market. For instance, you can't just come in and start manufacturing PC hard drives or CPUs, because the existing manufacturers have all the patents and they are usually cross-licensed. It's the same with software, business methods (just try starting an eBay competitor), and so on. I don't see any reason why Republicans would be against a broad patent scope, since it seems to be rather profitable for large companies.