True.
And their business model isn't a perfect analogy with the music industry, so their comparison doesn't hold true.
Btw I know I'm playing devils advocate here.

But the music industry are in fact middlemen between consumers and the artists themselves, and their product (revenue) comes from the music itself (songs, on cd, downloaded, ..) but not tshirts, posters, concerts, .. as usually the artist benefits most of that.

Rovio can be compared to the artists (who also sell themselves). Their main product are downloads of their games. Anything else that is copied (tshirts, posters, toy dolls, ..) can indeed be seen as free publicity, which will help make their brand stronger, which in the end results in more sales of their core product: downloads of their games.
And those producers that pay for a license to make related products, are seen as additional income streams, but licensing the Angry Birds brand is not their core business.
If enough illegal dowloads of their full games become available, or other people will make clones of their games (think angry owls/bad birds/..) and this causes a significant drop in sales of their own games, they'll also have to react (by legal means) to survive as a company, as their main income stream is treatened.

If you want to compare to the music industry, then compare them to artists. Most (small) bands don't earn a lot from cd sales, getting known is better for them, even if it's by illegal downloads, as this will mean they'll become more popular, do more and bigger concerts, sells related things (posters, tshirts, ..) and so on, and these are things that increase their income.

Also my opinion.. probably a discussion will end being around technicalities (legal catching radiowaves or not)..

Marketing/branding research already investigated shop layouts and paths shoppers make since many years. This is nothing new.
The only difference is that in the past it was small scale. It started somewhere in the 1960ies/70ies, you had actual people in a shop and observing how shoppers walked around (seems most enter a shop, turn to the right and go around in a big circle).
Later security cameras were used to do this, just record everything and have someone watch the tapes later and draw out the path.
Probably now some automatic computer tracking is added to it, so you don't need a person watching all the tapes and tracking individual paths..

Only big difference now with cellphones is that it's done on a much larger scale, they can track everyone around the shopping centre and even know when people come back..

If you're interested in this, read the book Buyology by Martin Lindstrom. HE did tests how effective marketing/commercials/.. are for decision making using brain scans/eeg/...
Seems most decisions are made instant by our unconscious, and only (milliseconds) later our conscious mind tries to 'explain' why we made a specific decision.

Thanks for the suggestion.

Another interesting book is Buyology by Martin Lindstrom.
He's in advertising and researched the influence of ads whilst taking brainscans of people..
Very interesting book. Seems most of the time our decision to buy/not buy/do/.. and all our actions are made almost intantly, but only later our conscious has to 'explain' it to ourselves..

True but that espionage is to help their own industry.
I don't think most fake parts found are espionage/sabotage attempts (except for a few military-specific components).

Fake parts are just a huge problem in the electronics industry - for everyone.

I repair old pinball machines, some people I know also do and always look for sources of obsolete ics.
It's amazing how many times you find a 'stock' of obsolete parts that's available.. sometimes the scam is clear (datemarks that are too recent) but sometimes it's not so obvious and only after testing you see that the parts you received are fakes..

I'm only interested in the results of this mission when they find samples of leather godesses :-)

Yes, it's ancient technology. Eproms were used in pinball machines starting from 1977 up to a few years ago (now usb-sticks are used to update them).

Also my opinion.. I loved the Amiga.. about 20 to 15 years ago. It's part of my youth. Whilst cleaning up my basement yesterday even still found a box full of Amiga Format magazines - still don't want to throw them away, reading back some gamereviews brought back good memories.. I even still have the last AF issue upstairs between my collection of books.

But the Amiga nowadays as a system ? It's nostalgia, but not something I would invest/waste time on anymore.

http://ki4u.com/
here's the website. After reading the title I was also going to suggest this. Buy one for your keychain, an dmaybe some of the new dosimeter decals they have now, stick them on your car or house window..

What you often hear is wrong..
If performance is really important for your product, you have to thikn about it from the beginning and in every step.

Very true - half of the stupid proposals are just because mp's want to get their name out in the press and say 'look I did something this year'..
Sometimes they either hardly know anything about the technology, or they are just so narrow minded that they don't consider it can apply to much more than they think of.

The law was good for dealers in arcade machines/pinball machines who could suddenly get some good deals in Greece.. (you still can btw, just got a mail with someone from Greece offering me pinball machines for sale :-)

In Belgium (and a lot of other countries) too..
speeding/red light/.. tickets just get sent to the person the car is registered to.
On the reply form for the ticket you can provide details if someone else was driving at the time. If you refuse to do, you get the ticket..

It was not only squids but other deep-see fish that were discovered when submarines could dive deeper and deeper.

I remember reading as a kid some old books/magazines from the 1960ies about the amazing discoveries of weird deep-see fish that were done as submarines started to explore the deep see. They discovered fish living at debts that were not thought to be able to exist..there wasn't any mythological about them, no information or stories that they existed.. scientists up to then believed the bottom of the ocean was just dead as there was no light and pressure was too high. So they were amazed to discover some fish had adapted and could live in thi environment.

I remember watching a documentary about spontanious human combustion in school during english class (about 20 years ago)..
Half of the class was spooked because it was such a weird topic..

I remember they discussed some deaths (showing burn marks on floors, carpets, ..) but scientifically there wasn't any explenation yet..
Anyone know if there's one now ?

In most countries (afaik but I'm not an accountant/lawyer with international experience) there are restrictions..

Especially the first months/year a company starts, the people who run it can be held personal liable.
So don't think of starting a company, getting loans from a bank, increasing debt by not paying your suppliers, and just declare yourself bankrupt after a few months and get away with it. If your business plan wasn't wel defined and you didn't raise enough initial (own) capital to survive 1 or 2 years, you can be held liable (and prevented of starting a new company for the next years)

Same for the last 6 months or so when a company goes bust, all transactions can be examined and reversed, so ie the owner can't sell assets to himself/friends for a price that is too low.
Had this once at a startup company that was in trouble, an employee that left wanted to buy a laptop from the company that he had used, but the director would not do this as he was afraid to be liable if the curator later decided the laptop had been sold too cheap.

Any why limited-liability companies are allowed - to allow for big companies to form. In a Ltd, investors can only lose the amount money they have invested and not more.
If you wouldn't have this protection, no-one would invest anymore in a company, as the risk would be too big when they were also held personally liable for part of the debts.