>>http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/18/intel-wants-to-charge-50-to-unlock-stuff-your-cpu-can-already-d/
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>How is this different from developing an application and then coding various levels of functionality which are sold at different level licenses e.g. basic, advanced, professional? I don’t see any issue here.

It's one thing to do that to corporations, who probably do the same thing to their own products and fully understand the logic behind it. It's completely different to tell the general public that they've bought a car with a six liter engine at the price of a four liter engine, with the two extra liters just lying there locked until they pay the rest.

With software, it's different - you get the disk with everything because, obviously, nobody can afford to churn so many different disks for each combination of options, so only those that are paid get installed. But processor is hardware, it's installed physically on the motherboard, and it's sold as a separate model, not the top model with a few options excluded. And now they're selling, what, a software upgrade to unlock the hardware we already own? What's next, a monthly subscription to pay for cooling the processor or else it may shut down or melt?