I've never heard anything like that said, especially unequivocably.
Could you give me a good two or three examples of countries where the regulation of the supply of food causes starvation? Not countries like North Korea where starvation causes regulation of the supply of food.
Anyway, I think I understand free markets pretty well. We found this out in California when the power started going out. We found out the meaning of "whatever the market will bear". But just because companies found they could charge more for electricty and people would still buy it doesn't mean it benefited society as a whole. Nor did it help those (thankfully few) whose health was adversely affected by loss of power.
And I know I surely wouldn't want the same market speculators affecting the price of water who are affecting the price of gas and other petroleum products.
Why read and get involved in a meme when it just makes you unhappy?
I find Engrish funny. I find http://hanzismatter.com/ funny. I find it funny when the Tick could only speak high school French. I find it funny that the only words of Spanish Beavis knows are "Burrito" and "Spaghetti".
I guess I find language jokes funny. If that includes Engrish, then so be it.
It's actually a great parallel to what Bush 43 said about oil prices. He said we don't need CAFE regulations, we don't need producer regulations (well, except I guess $2B in exploration subsidies to the oil companies this year). He said let the market decide. If we run low on oil, the price will rise and people will find a more economic substitute.
Now, let's apply that same extension to what you said.
We'll just let the useage of water be regulated by the price of water and vice-versa. So, people will just use water until they can't afford to buy it anymore, and then they'll find an acceptable cheaper substitute.
Let them eat cake!
I don't think either scheme will work really. The moment water became truly scarce, there would be massive misery, and likely and economic collapse, and thus more massive misery.
An ounce of prevention is worth way more than a pound of cure here.
The 520/540 had built-in ethernet and modem. But when it came out, ethernet wasn't all that common.
The 5300 did not have built-in ethernet. But about the time it came out, ethernet became very common.
So people had to buy PCMCIA cards with ethernet on them (often modem too). These cards were very expensive ($400 wasn't uncommon). Additionally often the drivers stunk and the cards had external dongles (which were easily lost).
Plus, as the poster above mentioned, the speed of the 5300 was poor. It didn't run PowerPC software very fast, and the 68K emulator on the machine was an interpretive one (as opposed to dynamic recompiling) and so it ran 68K code very slowly. Most of the Mac OS was 68K code at that time!
The 5300 stunk. PowerPC Powerbooks were not really sought after until the G3-based PB 3400 came out (which also had built-in ethernet!).
Asahi being the Powerbook 100. It came out in October, 1991. I remember many people having Powerbooks (100,140,170) at that time.
So Apple had part of 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, and even a lot of 1995 because the 5300 didn't come out until August and people didn't realize the PB5300 sucked immediately.
That's enough time that the way the writer described it is reasonable. It's about 1/3rd of the total time that laptops have even existed.
You don't have 10 gauge in your house for sockets. That's used for 20A circuits. Most outlet circuits are 12 gauge. 14 gauge is even legal for 15A outlet circuits, but no one seems to use it.
It's not easier to modify AC voltage than DC. It was true in Tesla's day, it isn't true anymore. To do so at 60Hz means to need a relatively large transformer (wall-wart). DC-DC conversion using a switching transformer is more efficient for low voltages and moderate currents than AC-DC conversion. You can use a small inductor instead of a large transformer. And since the voltage regulation is in the DC-DC converter (switch mode power supply), you end up with higher efficiency than a transformer-based system, which produces a particular voltage in the secondary and then uses a linear regular to lower it to a voltage that can be maintained stably.
In other words, a switch mode power supply works as if it had a variable number of secondary windings, so that it can adjust automatically to changes in input voltages, instead of producing excess voltage and burning it off.
Additionally, I am not familiar with a regulator that uses a zener diode that you speak of. Can you explain this to me?
running 12VDC in your house is very inefficient...
on
The Demise of IP?
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· Score: 1
Just go back to the Tesla (AC) vs Edison (DC) battle in the early days.
Power losses in a transmission system are equal to the current multiplied by resistance of the wire. To deliver 120W at 120V AC means 1 amp. If the resistance in the wire is R, the loss of power is 1*R or R. To deliver 120W at 12VDC means you have to have 10 amps of current. For the same resistance of R, the power loss is now 10*R. It's 10 times larger.
Over a short wire, R is small. But for the wires in your house, it can be a lot. 18-ga wire has a resistance of about 0.006 Ohms per foot. It's easy to have 100 feet of wire between the fusebox and the socket in your house. That's 0.6 Ohms. At 1 amp, 120VAC that means the voltage drop is 0.6V. You've lose 0.5% of your power you tried to deliver. At 10 amp, 12VDC that means the voltage drop is 6V. That means you lost HALF the power you tried to transmit to the socket.
Does this sound like good change?
And all wall-warts are not horrible inefficient. I have a large collection of switching-mode wall-warts. These can easily be 70% efficient.
I think going to DC could be good. We'd get rid of countless rectifiers. Although I'm not sure that it would save any power, since you have to rectify either way. But you would save on material costs at least.
But that's not what I meant. Want to construe my words a way they weren't and call me a liar over it? Go ahead. But such comments are meaningless since that isn't what I meant.
I meant that the title of the topic "Xbox 360 Very Unstable" isn't correct. And you said why yourself, just because some people report crashing doesn't mean as a whole it is very unstable. I'll tell you what, I'll bring the subject up when I'm racing on PGR3 on Live later today. We'll all get a good chuckle over it is my guess.
That's a weird experience you've had. My 360 (two days old now) has worked great, and my brothers (since last Friday, a Mt. Dew unit) has also. It's ridiculously loud and hot, but what can I do?
I agree the thing about having to log in two people to play two-players games is very very weird. It sure wouldn't work in a kiosk at the store! It does work once you do it though.
All in all, I'm very impressed. The Live integration is great.
I know MS lost money on Xbox, that was obvious just by opening one up. But this doesn't seem to be the same. Making that thing for $379 (wholesale price) is easy if you just count actual parts cost.
There's NO WAY they are paying $141 for a graphics chip. Graphics cards can be had for that, and they have markup, power supplies and connectors! And $55 for the accessories (exclusive of HD) in premium pack?
An ethernet cable, wireless controller and headset? I can buy the wireless controller for $50 retail, and it has a 55% channel margin plus MS profit! Ethernet cable is $1 tops. Headset is poop (I have it), I could get it made for $2-$2.50. Oh, I forget the video cable, it's a bit fancy, but again, it is available retail for $40 ($30?) at a 55% channel markup plus MS profit! I'd guess the video cable can be made for $8. Probably less, but it does have a switch and laser diode on it. So, $11.50 exclusive of the wireless controller, and the wireless controller probably costs $15 to make (I can't guess from parts, I'm going from margin on that one). Sounds like it's $27 for accessories, plus the HD cost, no way its near $100.
The device has 1700 parts in it. Lets assume the parts are 99.9999% reliable. That means one in 500 units contains a bad part. 500,000 were sold, that means 1,000 bad ones. And that doesn't count units that are damaged due to shipping.
Now, I'm sure MS is doing a better job than 1 in 500 bad ones. But still, even at 1 in 5,000 there would be 100 out there. Does it still seem odd to find stories of a dozen ro a couple dozen that don't work?
I have one, it's got quite a workout over the last two days. I've played PGR3 almost exclusively, and it is not crashed one bit. Used nearly every feature too! In fact, it's running right now.
This guy got a bum unit. It happens. Ridiculous to put an article on it on slashdot.
I have two beefs with with the unit. First it is loud/hot. And you cannot simply put it in a stereo cabinet to get around the noise. it'll get too hot. Second problem is that in PGR3, I set the view to "in-car", and often when the next race starts, it has changed the view to something else, and I have to switch it as it counts down "3,2,1...".
Great idea if you can forge them yourself. Otherwise, you're letting someone else in on your secret.
Two people can keep a secret, if one of them is dead.
Besides, now that there are cameras, you assume they will pick up a stolen car, but not one with forged or stolen plates? That's convenient to your argument, but doesn't really make sense.
If you can use forged plates, I can use stolen ones. Either the cameras look up every plate instantly and match them against the car that should have them (in which case forged plates and stolen plates won't work) or else they don't, in which case stolen plates or forged plates work great.
Yeah, you could do something stupid, like jacking a car.
Alternately, you could steal a car from a airport parking lot, just before your other crime, and the owner won't notice in time.
Besides, the most important thing is that they can't figure out who you are from your car. It'd be nice if the car is not known as hot too. But most important is they can't just look DMV (or whatever) records to find out who just robbed that store.
I had it outside my stereo cabinet, I couldn't take the noise. So I put it inside, and it gets far too hot with the door closed, and with the door open it's as loud as outside the box and even hotter! And I even made sure to put the enormous power supply outside the cabinet.
This stinks. I didn't expect to have to mod my living room to play this thing.
Using a stolen car for thieves to cover their tracks is quite common. And using stolen tags or plates to do so is the reason that police get so freaked out if they find out you don't have the right plates on your car (swapped with someone else) or if your plates are stolen. They assuming you did this as a plan for a larger (probably violent) crime.
The first iPod was $399. This invited many guffaws from MD owners/manufacturers, CD Walkman owners, and memory-based mp3 owners/manufacturers, even current mp3 jukebox (HD) owners.
I do agree Apple is distrupting Sony quite a bit. But they aren't exactly attacking the market as a whole from below. In fact, they really pushed new bounds as to how much you could charge for a music player.
What does this new console have the others didn't? Graphics ability. So that's what launch titles implement and market.
Nearly every console works like this. Look at Sony shipping Twisted Metal as a launch title with PS1 and PS2. Or heck, look at Ridge Racer which shipped as a launch title with PS1, PS2, PSP, DS and Xbox 360.
Additionally, the development cycle has been so short for 360 that you're mostly just going to get reworked older titles with new graphics. Kameo is the exception, being a game which has been in development for 3 years plus, and apparently still has major gameplay flaws!
You just can't expect much from launch titles. It's not a black mark against MS. Most consoles don't ship in the US until they've been out in Japan long enough to garner a few worthwhile titles (only exceptions are DS, PSP, Xbox and Xbox 360). I'd say in 5 months you'll see the worthwhile titles, but since April isn't a bit time of the year for gaming, I'll say 8 months.
You're confusing the setting of a movie with the subject of a movie. This is about space movies, presumably movies about space.
Aliens is no more a movie about space than Die Hard is a movie about skyscrapers.
Aliens is set in space. But all it is is an action movie/thriller. Monsters show up, monsters get shot. Those monsters aren't from around here. But space doesn't have much to do with it.
At least T2 didn't make the list.
And Dark Star is terrible. I don't have anything against low-budget movies, but Dark Star just isn't entertaining. YMMV. I rewatched Stargate two weeks ago, and found it was as boring as I remembered. I think I actually like the series better.
Total Recall? I enjoyed it. But it's not nearly good enough. Blade Runner? Takes place on earth, space is hardly even mentioned, there's no space travel. Sure, it's sci-fi, but it's not a space movie. I'm surprised you didn't suggest "Robocop". It's as good as "Starship Troopers", and it's futuristic too!
I agree, the Contact book was a lot better than the movie. The book actually covered a lot of science topics (the multiple modulations on the signal), and in dumping all that for the movie, it lost a lot.
Didn't you notice? People are never interested in talking to people they're with. For no apparent reason, conversations are always more interesting if the other person is on the other end of a cell phone link from you.
Ever seen a group of teenagers walking the mall or walking home from school? One's always talking on the phone.
Awards shows are the original reality shows (well, outside of sports).
The key to them is they are a cheap way to get big-name stars. Just give out some trinkets, and if you do it right, big stars will show up and then people will watch your show, then you can sell ads during it.
That's the long and short of it. Qualifications don't really come into play.
And getting a 2nd supplier for a component isn't quite as easy as you make it out. This is a better defense against what NVidia did to MS (withhold try to renegotiate the pricing) than for covering regular component shortages.
For a regular shortage, it'll take so long to get the 2nd source up and running (even with the rights to do so) that it won't save you a lot of pain.
But it eliminates the possibility of a company being able to withdraw their component and put your production on hold indefinitely.
I also doubt the hard and optical drive sourcing is handled this way. It's probably more like Xbox, where they simply make sure components are interchangable and thus they can change suppliers at will, instead of retaining the rights to make components themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
Catalysts are not consumed in production (by definition). So, it's just a startup cost, not a production cost.
Personally, I'm a little suspicious as to whether this is truly a catalyst or a consumeable.
I've never heard anything like that said, especially unequivocably.
Could you give me a good two or three examples of countries where the regulation of the supply of food causes starvation? Not countries like North Korea where starvation causes regulation of the supply of food.
Anyway, I think I understand free markets pretty well. We found this out in California when the power started going out. We found out the meaning of "whatever the market will bear". But just because companies found they could charge more for electricty and people would still buy it doesn't mean it benefited society as a whole. Nor did it help those (thankfully few) whose health was adversely affected by loss of power.
And I know I surely wouldn't want the same market speculators affecting the price of water who are affecting the price of gas and other petroleum products.
Why read and get involved in a meme when it just makes you unhappy?
I find Engrish funny.
I find http://hanzismatter.com/ funny.
I find it funny when the Tick could only speak high school French.
I find it funny that the only words of Spanish Beavis knows are "Burrito" and "Spaghetti".
I guess I find language jokes funny. If that includes Engrish, then so be it.
It's actually a great parallel to what Bush 43 said about oil prices. He said we don't need CAFE regulations, we don't need producer regulations (well, except I guess $2B in exploration subsidies to the oil companies this year). He said let the market decide. If we run low on oil, the price will rise and people will find a more economic substitute.
Now, let's apply that same extension to what you said.
We'll just let the useage of water be regulated by the price of water and vice-versa. So, people will just use water until they can't afford to buy it anymore, and then they'll find an acceptable cheaper substitute.
Let them eat cake!
I don't think either scheme will work really. The moment water became truly scarce, there would be massive misery, and likely and economic collapse, and thus more massive misery.
An ounce of prevention is worth way more than a pound of cure here.
The 520/540 had built-in ethernet and modem. But when it came out, ethernet wasn't all that common.
The 5300 did not have built-in ethernet. But about the time it came out, ethernet became very common.
So people had to buy PCMCIA cards with ethernet on them (often modem too). These cards were very expensive ($400 wasn't uncommon). Additionally often the drivers stunk and the cards had external dongles (which were easily lost).
Plus, as the poster above mentioned, the speed of the 5300 was poor. It didn't run PowerPC software very fast, and the 68K emulator on the machine was an interpretive one (as opposed to dynamic recompiling) and so it ran 68K code very slowly. Most of the Mac OS was 68K code at that time!
The 5300 stunk. PowerPC Powerbooks were not really sought after until the G3-based PB 3400 came out (which also had built-in ethernet!).
Asahi being the Powerbook 100. It came out in October, 1991. I remember many people having Powerbooks (100,140,170) at that time.
So Apple had part of 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, and even a lot of 1995 because the 5300 didn't come out until August and people didn't realize the PB5300 sucked immediately.
That's enough time that the way the writer described it is reasonable. It's about 1/3rd of the total time that laptops have even existed.
You don't have 10 gauge in your house for sockets. That's used for 20A circuits. Most outlet circuits are 12 gauge. 14 gauge is even legal for 15A outlet circuits, but no one seems to use it.
It's not easier to modify AC voltage than DC. It was true in Tesla's day, it isn't true anymore. To do so at 60Hz means to need a relatively large transformer (wall-wart). DC-DC conversion using a switching transformer is more efficient for low voltages and moderate currents than AC-DC conversion. You can use a small inductor instead of a large transformer. And since the voltage regulation is in the DC-DC converter (switch mode power supply), you end up with higher efficiency than a transformer-based system, which produces a particular voltage in the secondary and then uses a linear regular to lower it to a voltage that can be maintained stably.
In other words, a switch mode power supply works as if it had a variable number of secondary windings, so that it can adjust automatically to changes in input voltages, instead of producing excess voltage and burning it off.
Additionally, I am not familiar with a regulator that uses a zener diode that you speak of. Can you explain this to me?
Just go back to the Tesla (AC) vs Edison (DC) battle in the early days.
Power losses in a transmission system are equal to the current multiplied by resistance of the wire. To deliver 120W at 120V AC means 1 amp. If the resistance in the wire is R, the loss of power is 1*R or R. To deliver 120W at 12VDC means you have to have 10 amps of current. For the same resistance of R, the power loss is now 10*R. It's 10 times larger.
Over a short wire, R is small. But for the wires in your house, it can be a lot. 18-ga wire has a resistance of about 0.006 Ohms per foot. It's easy to have 100 feet of wire between the fusebox and the socket in your house. That's 0.6 Ohms. At 1 amp, 120VAC that means the voltage drop is 0.6V. You've lose 0.5% of your power you tried to deliver. At 10 amp, 12VDC that means the voltage drop is 6V. That means you lost HALF the power you tried to transmit to the socket.
Does this sound like good change?
And all wall-warts are not horrible inefficient. I have a large collection of switching-mode wall-warts. These can easily be 70% efficient.
I think going to DC could be good. We'd get rid of countless rectifiers. Although I'm not sure that it would save any power, since you have to rectify either way. But you would save on material costs at least.
But that's not what I meant. Want to construe my words a way they weren't and call me a liar over it? Go ahead. But such comments are meaningless since that isn't what I meant.
I meant that the title of the topic "Xbox 360 Very Unstable" isn't correct. And you said why yourself, just because some people report crashing doesn't mean as a whole it is very unstable. I'll tell you what, I'll bring the subject up when I'm racing on PGR3 on Live later today. We'll all get a good chuckle over it is my guess.
That's a weird experience you've had. My 360 (two days old now) has worked great, and my brothers (since last Friday, a Mt. Dew unit) has also. It's ridiculously loud and hot, but what can I do?
I agree the thing about having to log in two people to play two-players games is very very weird. It sure wouldn't work in a kiosk at the store! It does work once you do it though.
All in all, I'm very impressed. The Live integration is great.
First of all, I didn't curse any anyone.
The name of the topic (thing I replied to) is:
"Xbox 360 very unstable"
I said it is not. And it is not. This guy got a bum unit, like I said. That doesn't mean Xbox 360 is very unstable.
Now, I maybe I could have repeated the topic name before my comment as to it not being true. I could do better.
But you could perhaps at least not curse at people when you're saying they said things they didn't say.
I know MS lost money on Xbox, that was obvious just by opening one up. But this doesn't seem to be the same. Making that thing for $379 (wholesale price) is easy if you just count actual parts cost.
There's NO WAY they are paying $141 for a graphics chip. Graphics cards can be had for that, and they have markup, power supplies and connectors! And $55 for the accessories (exclusive of HD) in premium pack?
An ethernet cable, wireless controller and headset? I can buy the wireless controller for $50 retail, and it has a 55% channel margin plus MS profit! Ethernet cable is $1 tops. Headset is poop (I have it), I could get it made for $2-$2.50. Oh, I forget the video cable, it's a bit fancy, but again, it is available retail for $40 ($30?) at a 55% channel markup plus MS profit! I'd guess the video cable can be made for $8. Probably less, but it does have a switch and laser diode on it. So, $11.50 exclusive of the wireless controller, and the wireless controller probably costs $15 to make (I can't guess from parts, I'm going from margin on that one). Sounds like it's $27 for accessories, plus the HD cost, no way its near $100.
500,000 sold. A couple bad ones. Surprising? No.
The device has 1700 parts in it. Lets assume the parts are 99.9999% reliable. That means one in 500 units contains a bad part. 500,000 were sold, that means 1,000 bad ones. And that doesn't count units that are damaged due to shipping.
Now, I'm sure MS is doing a better job than 1 in 500 bad ones. But still, even at 1 in 5,000 there would be 100 out there. Does it still seem odd to find stories of a dozen ro a couple dozen that don't work?
I have one, it's got quite a workout over the last two days. I've played PGR3 almost exclusively, and it is not crashed one bit. Used nearly every feature too! In fact, it's running right now.
This guy got a bum unit. It happens. Ridiculous to put an article on it on slashdot.
I have two beefs with with the unit. First it is loud/hot. And you cannot simply put it in a stereo cabinet to get around the noise. it'll get too hot. Second problem is that in PGR3, I set the view to "in-car", and often when the next race starts, it has changed the view to something else, and I have to switch it as it counts down "3,2,1...".
Great idea if you can forge them yourself. Otherwise, you're letting someone else in on your secret.
Two people can keep a secret, if one of them is dead.
Besides, now that there are cameras, you assume they will pick up a stolen car, but not one with forged or stolen plates? That's convenient to your argument, but doesn't really make sense.
If you can use forged plates, I can use stolen ones. Either the cameras look up every plate instantly and match them against the car that should have them (in which case forged plates and stolen plates won't work) or else they don't, in which case stolen plates or forged plates work great.
Yeah, you could do something stupid, like jacking a car.
Alternately, you could steal a car from a airport parking lot, just before your other crime, and the owner won't notice in time.
Besides, the most important thing is that they can't figure out who you are from your car. It'd be nice if the car is not known as hot too. But most important is they can't just look DMV (or whatever) records to find out who just robbed that store.
Way too loud, Way too hot!
I had it outside my stereo cabinet, I couldn't take the noise. So I put it inside, and it gets far too hot with the door closed, and with the door open it's as loud as outside the box and even hotter! And I even made sure to put the enormous power supply outside the cabinet.
This stinks. I didn't expect to have to mod my living room to play this thing.
You either steal plates or steal a whole car.
Using a stolen car for thieves to cover their tracks is quite common. And using stolen tags or plates to do so is the reason that police get so freaked out if they find out you don't have the right plates on your car (swapped with someone else) or if your plates are stolen. They assuming you did this as a plan for a larger (probably violent) crime.
Look at the claims of openness from SUN and others before. Open and Open Source has been a monstrous buzzword for years.
The first iPod was $399. This invited many guffaws from MD owners/manufacturers, CD Walkman owners, and memory-based mp3 owners/manufacturers, even current mp3 jukebox (HD) owners.
I do agree Apple is distrupting Sony quite a bit. But they aren't exactly attacking the market as a whole from below. In fact, they really pushed new bounds as to how much you could charge for a music player.
What does this new console have the others didn't? Graphics ability. So that's what launch titles implement and market.
Nearly every console works like this. Look at Sony shipping Twisted Metal as a launch title with PS1 and PS2. Or heck, look at Ridge Racer which shipped as a launch title with PS1, PS2, PSP, DS and Xbox 360.
Additionally, the development cycle has been so short for 360 that you're mostly just going to get reworked older titles with new graphics. Kameo is the exception, being a game which has been in development for 3 years plus, and apparently still has major gameplay flaws!
You just can't expect much from launch titles. It's not a black mark against MS. Most consoles don't ship in the US until they've been out in Japan long enough to garner a few worthwhile titles (only exceptions are DS, PSP, Xbox and Xbox 360). I'd say in 5 months you'll see the worthwhile titles, but since April isn't a bit time of the year for gaming, I'll say 8 months.
You're confusing the setting of a movie with the subject of a movie. This is about space movies, presumably movies about space.
Aliens is no more a movie about space than Die Hard is a movie about skyscrapers.
Aliens is set in space. But all it is is an action movie/thriller. Monsters show up, monsters get shot. Those monsters aren't from around here. But space doesn't have much to do with it.
At least T2 didn't make the list.
And Dark Star is terrible. I don't have anything against low-budget movies, but Dark Star just isn't entertaining. YMMV.
I rewatched Stargate two weeks ago, and found it was as boring as I remembered. I think I actually like the series better.
Total Recall? I enjoyed it. But it's not nearly good enough.
Blade Runner? Takes place on earth, space is hardly even mentioned, there's no space travel. Sure, it's sci-fi, but it's not a space movie.
I'm surprised you didn't suggest "Robocop". It's as good as "Starship Troopers", and it's futuristic too!
I agree, the Contact book was a lot better than the movie. The book actually covered a lot of science topics (the multiple modulations on the signal), and in dumping all that for the movie, it lost a lot.
Didn't you notice? People are never interested in talking to people they're with. For no apparent reason, conversations are always more interesting if the other person is on the other end of a cell phone link from you.
Ever seen a group of teenagers walking the mall or walking home from school? One's always talking on the phone.
Awards shows are the original reality shows (well, outside of sports).
The key to them is they are a cheap way to get big-name stars. Just give out some trinkets, and if you do it right, big stars will show up and then people will watch your show, then you can sell ads during it.
That's the long and short of it. Qualifications don't really come into play.
And getting a 2nd supplier for a component isn't quite as easy as you make it out. This is a better defense against what NVidia did to MS (withhold try to renegotiate the pricing) than for covering regular component shortages.
For a regular shortage, it'll take so long to get the 2nd source up and running (even with the rights to do so) that it won't save you a lot of pain.
But it eliminates the possibility of a company being able to withdraw their component and put your production on hold indefinitely.
I also doubt the hard and optical drive sourcing is handled this way. It's probably more like Xbox, where they simply make sure components are interchangable and thus they can change suppliers at will, instead of retaining the rights to make components themselves.