Yup, just like the iPod, the new computers from the
House of Steve Jobs™ come in Apple-white and ‘Sleek Black’


The new 2GHz Apple MacBook arrived yesterday, stocked with an Intel core duo processor that boasts “up to five times the raw speed of even the fastest iBook.” The notebook comes with the variety of bells and whistles you’ve come to expect from Apple laptops, including a 13.3” glossy widescreen display, an 80GB hard drive (up to 120GB with customization), up to 2GB of RAM, built-in Bluetooth and wireless-ready (802.11g) AirPort, an optional DVD-burning SuperDrive, and a built-in iSight camera. Designed for broad multi-media use, the MacBook comes stocked with iLife ’06 for juggling images, video editing, and music production in conjunction with Apple’s Front Row navigation and an included remote control.

By the way anyone noticed that this is the fourth Apple-related post on this web page?? Guys, we’re turning into MacZombies, and it’s time we did something about it.

Let’s all go get these.

Muhahahahahahaha

Regarding the ownership issue, there are two different kinds of ownership related to the Beatles’ music. Apple Corps and EMI Music own the master recordings and have what are referred to as “performing rights.” They control how these recordings – the Beatles performing the Beatles songs – are used. They get all proceeds from the sale of Beatles CDs and would also profit from Beatles songs sold online should that happen.

Michael Jackson’s ownership is in the publishing rights for the Beatles catalog (or actually just a portion thereof). Publishing rights basically means the control of the sheet music. Anyone who prints lyrics to Beatles songs, plays a Beatles song on the radio or does a cover of a Beatles tune pays the owner of the publishing rights (who then also have to kick back a certain amount to the owner of the performing rights).

So what does Jacko actually own? The Beatles original publishing company back in the day was a company called Northern Songs. That company was purchased by ATV in 1969. Michael Jackson acquired the Beatles songs when he bought ATV in 1985. In 1995, Jackson merged ATV with Sony’s publishing business creating a new firm, Sony/ATV Music Publishing and reducing his actual stake in the Beatles songs to about 50% (still worth about $500 million). Sony/ATV owns about 4,000 songs in total including some from Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and Stevie Nicks but the 200 or so Beatles tunes represent two-thirds of Sony/ATV’s profit.

Given Michael Jackson’s financial problems lately, he is in the process of restructuring his finances. Rumors suggest that will include selling off half his share in Sony/ATV. Sony is known to be assisting him with his restructuring because they want first dibs on Jackson‘s share of Sony/ATV if it gets sold given how profitable it is.

This case is not as frivolous as you seem to think. The Beatles formed Apple Corps in 1968 well before Jobs & Wozniak formed Apple Computer in 1976. Trademarks are there to allow a business to exist clearly separate in the minds of the public from other businesses. For example if you started a company called “Madhatter Records” today and it became remarkably successful and I later started a business called “Madderhatter’s Music”, I bet you would be pissed. And rightfully so.

Apple Corps originally sued Apple Computer and they settled out of court and Apple Computer promised at that time not to get into any part of the music business so that the public would not be confused about two companies named Apple existing in the same industry.

Apple Corps sued Apple Computer again in 1989 after Apple started selling music software and again they settled out of court with Apple Computer paying $26 million and agreeing to not use the word Apple on music related products. This most recent lawsuit is Apple Corps’ response to Apple Computer’s iTunes.

When the Beatles and Steve Jobs somehow both decided to call their companies Apple, someone would inevitably be singing the song “I’m a Loser.” In a court battle over whether iPods and iTunes will still be allowed to carry an Apple logo, a British judge ruled that Apple Computer has a store and a music player and does not publish music by its own artists, and the music itself doesn’t have Apple logos on it, so there’s no harm, no foul.

Taking a conciliatory tone toward Apple Corps, the Beatles’ company, Apple CEO Steve Jobs held out the olive branch:

“We have always loved The Beatles, and hopefully we can now work together to get them on the iTunes Music Store.”

But former Beatles roadie and now Apple Corps manager Neil Aspinall was obviously not happy with the decision:

“With great respect to the trial judge, we consider he has reached the wrong conclusion…We will accordingly be filing an appeal…”

Four largest record companies defeated in behind-the-scenes battle to charge different prices for songs; downloads still 99 cents, paper says.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) – Apple Computer said that it has renewed contracts with the four largest record companies, ensuring that songs will still be sold at 99 cents each, according to a news report Tuesday.

The record companies had been pushing Apple to allow different pricing for tracks, especially the ability to charge higher prices for new material from top-selling artists, said the Financial Times.

The companies – Universal, Warner Music (Research), EMI and Sony BMG – were forced to accept Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ pricing because the iTunes music store has so much influence over the U.S. download market, the report said. The iTunes music store accounts for 80 percent of paid downloads.

The newspaper says that some labels were considering signing short-term contracts with Apple now and then bringing up the issue again in the near future.

Online music sales increased 194 percent last year to 352 million units, according to the report.

It seems that in the face of music piracy, record companies are left with little choice…and an even lesser margin of bargain.

After going through a few articles on making Live CDs for various Linux distros, I found a rather interesting article on booting Damn Small Linux from a USB drive and tried it out.

Damn Small Linux, as the name implies, is damn small. It takes about 50 megs and is, obviously, totally free. The UI isnt great and might remind you of older versions of windows (like 3.0 and 3.1), but its size more than makes up for this. Plus, its extremely stable and has all features that any other linux distro would.
Click here.
Use the link above to follow the tutorial that I used – its extremely easy to follow – and boot linux from a USB drive. It’s uber-geeky, having Linux in your pocket.
And the best part – as its like a live CD, it can run without any partitions/uninstallation.

Ever opened the apple site without installing Quicktime

Well, it looks something like this:

The following members are requested to send their articles for the newsletter latest by SUNDAY, 30th APRIL 2005

• Tushar Gupta
• Manas Gautam
• Aayush Kumar
• Raghav Khullar
• Bharat Agarwal
• Rijul Jain

G

Man has always been fascinated by the world of web.In today’s world the web technology is advancing so fast that we need to keep pace with it, infact, move yards ahead of it !

Exunclan.com is going CMS based.Some of the features are listed below :

1) Recent on going news in Exun on frontpage
2) Member registration – have their profiles
3) Downloads of multimedia of EXUN events to members
4) Calendar for members
5) Forum
6) To Do list – individual for members.
7) Newsletter publication
8) Gallery of event photos
9) @exunclan.com email account for members (if it is possible)

Right now I am working on the script and interface.Suggestions are welcome.

Now, something about the web team of exun.

Exun Web Designer Qualifications

1.) All the web designers have to have a good knowledge of softwares like Flash,Photoshop,Dreamweaver,Frontpage etc.
2.) Complete HTML,CSS,DHTML
3.) Little bit javascript knowledge (classes IX and above)
4.) Backend languages – PHP,ASP,PERL etc. (Classes XI & XII)

PS:.If someone knows something more than expected its superb.

I have introduced a Web Designing/Development Group for Web Designers of Exun.Here, we will discuss the following :

1) Creating informative, non-browser specific, non-resolution specific,content rich websites that can be used by every person on the Internet, regardless of browser, platform, or settings.

2) Tools – making the best use of softwares mentioned above.Softwares like link popularity checkers,SEOs ( Search Engine Optimizers),Website creating softwares like Yahoo Web Page creator etc.

3) Languages – Creating Active Server Pages,PHP,JAVA applets,javascripts,perl
4) Appearance – navigation,structure,browsing ease etc.
5) Content

In September (most probably) EXUN WEB TEAM will be conducting the web designing competition in our school.Soon we will also conduct sessions on backend languages and advance web scripting.

So all those people who are talented in this field are requested to post their comments along with the languages and softwares which they know and email.

PS:.Members including webmasters,flash animators,graphic designers,backend programmers of the team need to join the group.

Varun Khetarpal
Head Web Designing
(Exunclan)

All members who wish to contribute to our newsletter are requested to submit their articles latest by Friday, 28th April 2006.
You can submit the articles to any one of the following-

• Dhruv Kumar
• Gursartaj Singh Nijjar
• Akul Dayal

Please give a hard and soft(to be sent by email) copy of your document.
Thanks
Gursartaj

After Learning a few simple and a few complex encryption algorithms I have come up with one of my own it took a lot of time to figure it out. I wanted to see if any one of you is able to decrypt a message encrypted using it to check security as I am planning to use it in a software of mine for software display.

The following message has been encrypted using a 7 letter key. I want to see if anyone even slightly interested in cryptography is able to decrypt it even if you are not in Exun.

Ciphertext:

ABD4D2D699C7E3D6D083EBE8E594CCC6D9D799B4
D9C7D7DCE2EDD5D884C683B5E8DCE9D1D383DADE
E8D5D8D7C4E0ECE0E3D7CED7DBE8DE94C7CED3DA
DEE2E8C9DDD7A0

Key:
*******

If anyone is able to solve this or if you have any queries please post a message in the comments section.

I recently downloaded the Beta version of MSN Messenger 8.0 alias Windows Live Messenger. After installing and running the software I noticed that as in every version the have changed the GUI but after exploring a bit I was completely disappointed. This is a perfect example of the most buggy software release I’ve ever seen. It takes ages to sign in and it keeps showing some strange error all the time while logging in. When it signs in then anything you do leads to the thing crashing . Send a file and it’ll crash, start webcam n it’ll crash, sometimes even leaving it alone makes it crash! No wonder its in Beta. I am still wondering if Microsoft released it without testing or something. The GUI and the new features are great but too many bugs.

You can download it if you want from here Windows Live Ideas – Homepage

==Gaurav Misra