Yeah, pretty much. Monopolies themselves aren't necessarily illegal -- a monopoly can get gov't approval and be regulated, or it can play it safe and avoid the scrutiny of the justice system or consumer groups.
The Illegal part happens when a company with a monopoly starts abusing its monopoly to leverage new products. That's why the IE thing made such a fuss -- Microsoft were using their OS monopoly to force Netscape out of the market. They continue to do this, albeit on a smaller level. They push their own codecs that ONLY work in WMP and are not recognized in other media players (there's at least one codec that only works in WMP on Windows (it doesn't work on WMP on OS X)).
Luckily, many of their other applications don't have any intrinsically better aspects to elbow out competition, although they're still using their monopoly to push otherwise inferior products on their customers. No one would likely choose WMA as a codec format for audio, as it's worse than MP3 for size and quality, yet because it comes with the operating system, other players have been forced to include support. Now thanks to that, Microsoft is able to push its DRM'd WMA format on Windows-based MP3 stores and non-Apple MP3 players.
So yes, of course it's illegal for a company that holds a monopoly to abuse a monopoly. And that's exactly why Apple and Linux are able to get away with it -- they can't leverage monopoly power to force consumers/developers to do something, due to their decreased market share. That's the whole point of monopoly regulation.
The thing is, it's entirely possible to ship an operating system with a browser. Incorporating it deeply into the operating system where it causes security issues is another.
In Microsoft's case, incorporating the browser and operating system are what hurt the MS brand as a whole.
I actually believe the move to intel and the admission that "Windows will very likely run on our hardware" more as a move for them into a dell-like category, only with more to offer.
Currently, PC manufacturers only offer Windows. Soon, Apple will offer PCs that come with OS X but you can also buy Windows and run it on there. So by buying Apple hardware, you're able to run both.
Buying or building your own locks you into Windows only. (ignoring linux at the moment since it will very likely run on anything, anyway).
Why would someone buy a non-Apple at that point if they were at all curious? Apple's well-known for charging a bit more, but people who own Macs know that they usually do a very good job with design and they choose quality parts. How many Dells come with Firewire out of the box, let alone FW800? How many use SATA drives and not IDE? How many use dual processors?
Once Apple's hardware is more directly comparable to your standard BTO x86 box, the "hardware isn't worth it" argument will start looking more and more foolish. After all, Alienware does rather well despite costing even more than Apple yet only really excelling in the area of video cards.
With the current proposals, Apple looks poised to do quite well on the hardware front. People can buy the machines, play with OS X, and if they don't like it (or need Windows for something), can just boot into it. It'll be interesting to see if that's how it plays out.
I don't think it's a trend back, no. GUIs are incorporating command-lines into them, adopting more command-line style approaches. But they're not reverting backwards. I see it more as in both are moving forward.
So not so much a "gui/cl" spectrum, rather that the two are coming together more for a more complimentary approach.
I see the sequels as just "more marketing." Cheap to make, use off-the-shelf voice actors, no real marketing except a few trailers at the beginning of the next real DVD release of a full movie. The fans flock to pick it up, parents buy it for their kids, yet it's so under the radar that most people don't notice so their atrocity isn't really registered.
I wouldn't say they're heading back that way. Rather, that they understand that whole "right tool for the right job" mantra, and incorporating command line tools and functionality more fluidly into the general OS operation.
Linux and Unix do this to some degree, although the setups for the GUIs are often rather esoteric for many people so they don't get into the guts of it. It's similar in OS X. I think Linux/Unix puts the command line more in the forefront than OS X, and hence more powerful in its uses, but OS X does a great job of supplementing a GUI with command-line functionality.
At least in my opinion. Ultimately, I agree with you, and there's definitely a move towards "hey, you know, these things are damn useful, why are we trying to ignore the command line?"
I didn't say I prefer it. Just that for selling media, it's hard to convince people to buy it. Not because it's in their best interest, but because it presents it in a one-to-one transaction.
The DRM may cause some people to run in fear, but for others, it presents a sort of permanence. I know it's weird, but it makes people think "this is mine, not my buddies, and I didn't download it and I couldn't have just downloaded it, because it's protected." There is definitely a distinct mental separation between buying files that you can just give to everybody or trade online, and buying files that only you can use across a set number of computers.
Note that Apple's DRM license isn't nearly as draconian nor limiting as pretty much all other DRM-disabled music files, as it's easy to move the files, authorize computers, deauthorize computers, and so on, without needing to use obscure settings. You just go in iTunes and either play a file (which will pop up a box saying "log in to play" and won't pop up again for any other files bought by the same account) to authorize, and you click "Advanced > Deauthorize Computer" in the menu to disable that computer. I use the files I purchase off iTunes on 3 computers -- work, laptop, and desktop -- and have burned a CD backup of the files. I've even deauthorized, reformatted, and then reauthorized a computer without any hassle. As the DRM feels transparent for my regular usage, but prevents me from considering sharing it with other people by giving them a pure copy digitally, (I can just loan them the CD copy), I'm OK with that. I do feel like I own the files, since they're "licensed" to me.
I didn't say anything about people *liking* it. I buy from the ITMS and even I don't really LIKE it. But I understand why it's there. And because of it, I actually DO buy music from there. Why? Because I know that I can't just copy it off a friend. I can't talk to my girlfriend and say "hey this CD sounds cool, how about you buy it and I'll just copy it."
Of course, in reality I would just buy the CD and give a copy to my girlfriend, and the stuff I end up buying is stuff that no one in my immediate friend network would. But that's how I see it -- if people could mooch off a friend, they would. The DRM prevents that, and encourages people to buy their own music, which they do.
But no, I don't think they like it either. I was simply stating what I felt were the commercial reasons for most services to use DRM.
While it may not be entirely fair, I'm sure you'll agree that, as a developer, you can't just release a product and rest on its laurels indefinitely, especially in the extremely fast-moving software world. New products come out all the time, old ones are updated, and while some would argue that updates are just ways to make more money for no new features, in many cases these updates and newer products are adding a great deal of usefulness to the application.
For those just dealing with the same print material they've been using for years, a machine running OS9 and Quark 4 will still perform just fine. That doesn't keep Quark alive, though -- new software does. If they can't release the new software, what then?
Adobe was able to make the change, completely dropping PageMaker and creating InDesign. There are also plenty of relatively obscure desktop publishing and layout systems, such as Miles 33 and LaTeX, which are either very specific in their needs or very open, meaning they can't be "obsoleted" by new updates. Quark locking in to such a format that can't be easily moved to new systems is their own problem, and on they've been starting to pay for.
it's very hard to "sell" a media file that has no copy protection. Two reasons -- one, it's hard to get producers to agree to the format, as there's no protection in it for them; two, it can be difficult to convince buyers to buy an unprotected format because they can simply get a copy from a friend/p2p. Having a group of people all go in to buy one CD and copying to all of their computers is precisely what it's trying to avoid (the p2p stuff is more of a side effect).
That's why you're not seeing just MP3s from the majority of these companies. Those that do sell mp3s without DRM tend to be record labels or indie groups -- bleep.com, the mp3 branch of Warp Records, sells high quality mp3s.
While I agree with the sentiment, most people still call these files MP3. Personally, I applaud Apple's use of AAC, as it's actually a better format than MP3 -- it compresses smaller at the same bitrate, and it sounds better at the same bitrate. AAC rivals OGG in some sound tests.
WMA is one of the worst, beat only by Real's format and ATRAC3. Not that many consumers really care -- many of the artifacts and glitches in p2p-acquired mp3s aren't present in the first place, so the quality doesn't present itself as that different (plus they get no CD to compare it against).
Still, iPods don't play WMA files, and their dominance of the portable music scene pretty much guarantees that when people hear "you can't use Microsoft's service with your iPod," it will be relegated to a niche almost immediately./prediction
Yep, exactly. They had a near-monopoly on desktop publishing on OS9. Then Quark 5 comes out, late, buggy as hell, and... for OS9... well after OS X has been out (I think it came out right when 10.2 hit, which is when OS X started to pick up steam). Why release a new product ONLY on an old OS? It's like releasing an app that ONLY works on Win 98 right when Win2k comes out!
Then it takes them forever to release an OS X version, Quark 6. Which, while at least as stable as Quark 4, shows little real improvements. No attempts to incorporate new technology, little admission that there are new and often better formats for saving and exporting data.
InDesign comes out from the burnt remains of PageMaker as an OS X only application, and people start looking at it seriously. They really push it forward with the "CS" version, and it's really a solid product at that time. Now CS2 is out, with very solid XML support and just all around improvements. It's really drastically replacing desktop publishing applications.
I work with hundreds of different non-profit journals in my work, and we've seen an extremely drastic shift to InDesign. Even WE are moving to InDesign, for exporting documents to XML. InDesign accepts more formats, works with documents from those formats easier, and exports to such a variety that it's really become a great application.
I don't know if you've used something like Google Desktop or Spotlight, but I've found, in practice, that these systems are sort of "intelligently inheriting" metadata. So let's say you have a bunch of pictures in "Grand Tetons." They're all numbered "DSC001... DSC129," though, and you don't feel like messing with metadata. Searching for Grand Teton, though, will pull up that base folder, which, upon clicking, will open up with all of those images.
Obvious, perhaps, but an example of how these metadata transitions are going to occur in practice. There's no way to get people to manually type in metadata. But by watching how people are sorting their files, these systems can learn and add/subtract the appropriate metadata. And it can be basic things like learning how people are filtering in their Mail applications, or where files are being downloaded from based on the previous Google search or whatever. Since it will all be intra-computer data capturing, it'll be secure and private and just used for metadata.
I think it's a pretty neat approach, and as someone who also despises the idea of manually adding metadata except in specific cases, I hope it gets pushed more to fruitition.
Yeah, that's a weird thing about Samsungs it seems. My girlfriend's is the same way -- not a single normal ringtone. There's one that starts normally... then this voice says "Helloooo!!" and a techno song starts with the ring and the "helloooo!"
I was pleased when I discovered that my Motorola phone had normal ringtones. I was even more pleased to discover that all I had to do to get new ringtones was point the web browser at a.mid file or.wav and ta da, new ringtone. Now it's the prelude from FF6, which is both pretty, non-obtrusive, and sounds like a ring. Geek points, too, I suppose.
My (free) motorola also synch's up just fine with iSync via USB, although it has no bluetooth and I've never tried online/computer stuff with it.
What's doubly interesting is that the article states that OS X is a threat to Linux, while demonstrating that the real problem Linux faces is the fracturing caused by so many different distributions all running their own package managers.
Actually, they dropped the video connector with the last batch of monitors. They used to use ADC, which was simply DVI with a few extra plugs for USB support. As only their monitors used ADC, most everyone was forced to buy adapters for dual-monitor stuff.
So they gave up on it.
But yeah, the guts really aren't that different from a standard x86 computer's interior at this point. The video cards have a different chipset, most likely due to PPC and the mainboard, and the mainboards are customized.
As long as they're making those custom mainboards, they don't have much to worry about. That's what most of the most important drivers in the OS deal with anyway, and routing data around. So it's still enough to make them "customized machines" and "uniquely mac," but yeah, all that's really left after the Intel switch is the Mainboard.
It seems that stocks go up on rumors and down on news.
Of course, that's only really true when the rumors are positive rumors. Apparently the shareholders either felt that this was a bad rumor, or realized that it was news (due to being in reliable newspapers).
That's how I see it. I bought a dual Powermac because the insides are great, the OS interfaces with the hardware beautifully, and I prefer the experience. OS X is wonderful, but the fact that it's standardized hardware that is expensive because it's engineered and tested well, compared to Dell's "cheap cos we got a discount" methodology, and this change, while very interesting, doesn't change my love of my computer over the past year, nor my interest in continuing to buy Apple computers in the future.
After all, it's not like this does *anything* to Windows or Linux. All it does is give Apple a way of implementing their other hardware design decisions on faster and cheaper chips.
It's already a given that Apple has very specific specifications for chip design, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if they maintain specific Intel chips, despite what they're based off of.
Yeah, definitely. The biggest problem, IMO, is that the people who use outdated, poorly made software are almost always the first to Blame Someone Else for the problem. After all, those who actually make a choice about the software they use usually have a reason to select certain software in the first place.
I find it similar to the rise of WMA for audio. Anyone who knows anything about codecs will admit that the only thing that makes WMA "better" is that it compresses smaller and allows for DMA. It doesn't sound better than MP3, which is older, yet people who don't care will use it because "When I put the CD in, the program that pops up makes those files."
Then they bitch at Apple for not supporting WMA on their new iPod that they bought cos "they saw it on the TV."
I totally agree with you. I heard a report on public radio that briefly touched on price discrepancy for software, and how India's "brain boom" could quickly change the course of software on an international scale.
They used China as an example. The average Chinese person makes, on average, something around $2000 a yr (I'm probably wrong, but it's an average) let's say. Average American makes around $45000 a yr. Windows costs $200 in the US. It costs a little less than $200 in China. In China, that's 10% of an annual income. In the US, a CAR is about 30% of an annual income.
Yet people wonder why there's a problem with piracy and copyright infringement.
That doesn't mean someone else can't add it in while keeping it compatible with BT.
If he wanted such complete control over it, he wouldn't've released it under the license he used, which allows people to modify and redistribute derivative works. So there's no reason that someone couldn't simply make AnonymousBT that logs onto the same networks.
I realize that a great deal of the clout around anonymous P2P is for illegal reasons, but I do think developing P2P distribution methods that allow for anonymity is important. Not for legal reasons, but for marketing ones. I'm kind of sick of banner ads that say "Shop Maryland Stores!" because it picks up my IP and compares it to a table to see where I live. I don't want to use a P2P network to download [legal] movie trailers and have the movie people see "hey, these people in Maryland are pretty excited about the movie, we should pay for a longer run there and spam them with ads."
There's a lot of technology and marketing that can put IP addresses to good use. Just like how I don't like being in the phone book because I don't want my address spread around despite not having anything illegal in my apartment, I don't like my computer address being spread all over the place either.
(not to mention things like if one of these p2p networks happens to get released with a security flaw, there's suddenly a road map to hackers for every IP address connected to the system where they can potentially exploit the user.)
I think the description given for Rodi is somewhat simplified, as for the majority of BT trackers there's a TON of people on them at any given time. So it wouldn't simply be 3 people, but rather that C's IP is bounced around to D and F, and F's IP is bounced to E and M, and M's IP is bounced to A and R, and so on. Even if each person bounced to 2 people, there'd be enough obfuscation to render it useless for logging.
I think I'll probably end up with a 360 and a Revolution in the next round (accidental pun!).
It's really too bad that Sony didn't come up with a name that involved some sort of spinning. Then we'd have no problem coming up for a name for this generation of consoles.
Then again, Sony seems to be the master of spinning hype and news... maybe they figured they didn't need to add it into the console's name as well -- people figured it was assumed.
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The Illegal part happens when a company with a monopoly starts abusing its monopoly to leverage new products. That's why the IE thing made such a fuss -- Microsoft were using their OS monopoly to force Netscape out of the market. They continue to do this, albeit on a smaller level. They push their own codecs that ONLY work in WMP and are not recognized in other media players (there's at least one codec that only works in WMP on Windows (it doesn't work on WMP on OS X)).
Luckily, many of their other applications don't have any intrinsically better aspects to elbow out competition, although they're still using their monopoly to push otherwise inferior products on their customers. No one would likely choose WMA as a codec format for audio, as it's worse than MP3 for size and quality, yet because it comes with the operating system, other players have been forced to include support. Now thanks to that, Microsoft is able to push its DRM'd WMA format on Windows-based MP3 stores and non-Apple MP3 players.
So yes, of course it's illegal for a company that holds a monopoly to abuse a monopoly. And that's exactly why Apple and Linux are able to get away with it -- they can't leverage monopoly power to force consumers/developers to do something, due to their decreased market share. That's the whole point of monopoly regulation.
In Microsoft's case, incorporating the browser and operating system are what hurt the MS brand as a whole.
Currently, PC manufacturers only offer Windows. Soon, Apple will offer PCs that come with OS X but you can also buy Windows and run it on there. So by buying Apple hardware, you're able to run both.
Buying or building your own locks you into Windows only. (ignoring linux at the moment since it will very likely run on anything, anyway).
Why would someone buy a non-Apple at that point if they were at all curious? Apple's well-known for charging a bit more, but people who own Macs know that they usually do a very good job with design and they choose quality parts. How many Dells come with Firewire out of the box, let alone FW800? How many use SATA drives and not IDE? How many use dual processors?
Once Apple's hardware is more directly comparable to your standard BTO x86 box, the "hardware isn't worth it" argument will start looking more and more foolish. After all, Alienware does rather well despite costing even more than Apple yet only really excelling in the area of video cards.
With the current proposals, Apple looks poised to do quite well on the hardware front. People can buy the machines, play with OS X, and if they don't like it (or need Windows for something), can just boot into it. It'll be interesting to see if that's how it plays out.
So not so much a "gui/cl" spectrum, rather that the two are coming together more for a more complimentary approach.
I see the sequels as just "more marketing." Cheap to make, use off-the-shelf voice actors, no real marketing except a few trailers at the beginning of the next real DVD release of a full movie. The fans flock to pick it up, parents buy it for their kids, yet it's so under the radar that most people don't notice so their atrocity isn't really registered.
Linux and Unix do this to some degree, although the setups for the GUIs are often rather esoteric for many people so they don't get into the guts of it. It's similar in OS X. I think Linux/Unix puts the command line more in the forefront than OS X, and hence more powerful in its uses, but OS X does a great job of supplementing a GUI with command-line functionality.
At least in my opinion. Ultimately, I agree with you, and there's definitely a move towards "hey, you know, these things are damn useful, why are we trying to ignore the command line?"
The DRM may cause some people to run in fear, but for others, it presents a sort of permanence. I know it's weird, but it makes people think "this is mine, not my buddies, and I didn't download it and I couldn't have just downloaded it, because it's protected." There is definitely a distinct mental separation between buying files that you can just give to everybody or trade online, and buying files that only you can use across a set number of computers.
Note that Apple's DRM license isn't nearly as draconian nor limiting as pretty much all other DRM-disabled music files, as it's easy to move the files, authorize computers, deauthorize computers, and so on, without needing to use obscure settings. You just go in iTunes and either play a file (which will pop up a box saying "log in to play" and won't pop up again for any other files bought by the same account) to authorize, and you click "Advanced > Deauthorize Computer" in the menu to disable that computer. I use the files I purchase off iTunes on 3 computers -- work, laptop, and desktop -- and have burned a CD backup of the files. I've even deauthorized, reformatted, and then reauthorized a computer without any hassle. As the DRM feels transparent for my regular usage, but prevents me from considering sharing it with other people by giving them a pure copy digitally, (I can just loan them the CD copy), I'm OK with that. I do feel like I own the files, since they're "licensed" to me.
Of course, in reality I would just buy the CD and give a copy to my girlfriend, and the stuff I end up buying is stuff that no one in my immediate friend network would. But that's how I see it -- if people could mooch off a friend, they would. The DRM prevents that, and encourages people to buy their own music, which they do.
But no, I don't think they like it either. I was simply stating what I felt were the commercial reasons for most services to use DRM.
For those just dealing with the same print material they've been using for years, a machine running OS9 and Quark 4 will still perform just fine. That doesn't keep Quark alive, though -- new software does. If they can't release the new software, what then?
Adobe was able to make the change, completely dropping PageMaker and creating InDesign. There are also plenty of relatively obscure desktop publishing and layout systems, such as Miles 33 and LaTeX, which are either very specific in their needs or very open, meaning they can't be "obsoleted" by new updates. Quark locking in to such a format that can't be easily moved to new systems is their own problem, and on they've been starting to pay for.
That's why you're not seeing just MP3s from the majority of these companies. Those that do sell mp3s without DRM tend to be record labels or indie groups -- bleep.com, the mp3 branch of Warp Records, sells high quality mp3s.
While I agree with the sentiment, most people still call these files MP3. Personally, I applaud Apple's use of AAC, as it's actually a better format than MP3 -- it compresses smaller at the same bitrate, and it sounds better at the same bitrate. AAC rivals OGG in some sound tests.
WMA is one of the worst, beat only by Real's format and ATRAC3. Not that many consumers really care -- many of the artifacts and glitches in p2p-acquired mp3s aren't present in the first place, so the quality doesn't present itself as that different (plus they get no CD to compare it against).
Still, iPods don't play WMA files, and their dominance of the portable music scene pretty much guarantees that when people hear "you can't use Microsoft's service with your iPod," it will be relegated to a niche almost immediately. /prediction
Then it takes them forever to release an OS X version, Quark 6. Which, while at least as stable as Quark 4, shows little real improvements. No attempts to incorporate new technology, little admission that there are new and often better formats for saving and exporting data.
InDesign comes out from the burnt remains of PageMaker as an OS X only application, and people start looking at it seriously. They really push it forward with the "CS" version, and it's really a solid product at that time. Now CS2 is out, with very solid XML support and just all around improvements. It's really drastically replacing desktop publishing applications.
I work with hundreds of different non-profit journals in my work, and we've seen an extremely drastic shift to InDesign. Even WE are moving to InDesign, for exporting documents to XML. InDesign accepts more formats, works with documents from those formats easier, and exports to such a variety that it's really become a great application.
Quark really blew it.
Obvious, perhaps, but an example of how these metadata transitions are going to occur in practice. There's no way to get people to manually type in metadata. But by watching how people are sorting their files, these systems can learn and add/subtract the appropriate metadata. And it can be basic things like learning how people are filtering in their Mail applications, or where files are being downloaded from based on the previous Google search or whatever. Since it will all be intra-computer data capturing, it'll be secure and private and just used for metadata.
I think it's a pretty neat approach, and as someone who also despises the idea of manually adding metadata except in specific cases, I hope it gets pushed more to fruitition.
I was pleased when I discovered that my Motorola phone had normal ringtones. I was even more pleased to discover that all I had to do to get new ringtones was point the web browser at a .mid file or .wav and ta da, new ringtone. Now it's the prelude from FF6, which is both pretty, non-obtrusive, and sounds like a ring. Geek points, too, I suppose.
My (free) motorola also synch's up just fine with iSync via USB, although it has no bluetooth and I've never tried online/computer stuff with it.
What's doubly interesting is that the article states that OS X is a threat to Linux, while demonstrating that the real problem Linux faces is the fracturing caused by so many different distributions all running their own package managers.
So they gave up on it.
But yeah, the guts really aren't that different from a standard x86 computer's interior at this point. The video cards have a different chipset, most likely due to PPC and the mainboard, and the mainboards are customized.
As long as they're making those custom mainboards, they don't have much to worry about. That's what most of the most important drivers in the OS deal with anyway, and routing data around. So it's still enough to make them "customized machines" and "uniquely mac," but yeah, all that's really left after the Intel switch is the Mainboard.
Of course, that's only really true when the rumors are positive rumors. Apparently the shareholders either felt that this was a bad rumor, or realized that it was news (due to being in reliable newspapers).
After all, it's not like this does *anything* to Windows or Linux. All it does is give Apple a way of implementing their other hardware design decisions on faster and cheaper chips.
It's already a given that Apple has very specific specifications for chip design, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if they maintain specific Intel chips, despite what they're based off of.
I find it similar to the rise of WMA for audio. Anyone who knows anything about codecs will admit that the only thing that makes WMA "better" is that it compresses smaller and allows for DMA. It doesn't sound better than MP3, which is older, yet people who don't care will use it because "When I put the CD in, the program that pops up makes those files."
Then they bitch at Apple for not supporting WMA on their new iPod that they bought cos "they saw it on the TV."
Note that this has been fixed in Tiger. Including the "paper tape" bug.
OT, but that's definitely one thing I like about LCDs -- the screen measurements are entirely accurate, regardless of how large the bezel is.
They used China as an example. The average Chinese person makes, on average, something around $2000 a yr (I'm probably wrong, but it's an average) let's say. Average American makes around $45000 a yr. Windows costs $200 in the US. It costs a little less than $200 in China. In China, that's 10% of an annual income. In the US, a CAR is about 30% of an annual income.
Yet people wonder why there's a problem with piracy and copyright infringement.
If he wanted such complete control over it, he wouldn't've released it under the license he used, which allows people to modify and redistribute derivative works. So there's no reason that someone couldn't simply make AnonymousBT that logs onto the same networks.
There's a lot of technology and marketing that can put IP addresses to good use. Just like how I don't like being in the phone book because I don't want my address spread around despite not having anything illegal in my apartment, I don't like my computer address being spread all over the place either.
(not to mention things like if one of these p2p networks happens to get released with a security flaw, there's suddenly a road map to hackers for every IP address connected to the system where they can potentially exploit the user.)
I think the description given for Rodi is somewhat simplified, as for the majority of BT trackers there's a TON of people on them at any given time. So it wouldn't simply be 3 people, but rather that C's IP is bounced around to D and F, and F's IP is bounced to E and M, and M's IP is bounced to A and R, and so on. Even if each person bounced to 2 people, there'd be enough obfuscation to render it useless for logging.
It's really too bad that Sony didn't come up with a name that involved some sort of spinning. Then we'd have no problem coming up for a name for this generation of consoles.
Then again, Sony seems to be the master of spinning hype and news... maybe they figured they didn't need to add it into the console's name as well -- people figured it was assumed.