Slashdot Mirror

What worthy product have they even produced in the last two decades?

Heh, You kids.. must think that TV grows on trees

Pretty much everything in my house is designed by a Japanese or Thai or Korean company.

Obviously you don't have an iPad or a movie in your house :)

However you should also keep in mind that even foreign companies have US R&D teams (Sony, LG, etc.)

And of course Intel is based in the US (although it also has global R&D teams), and I know that ARM has a large presence in Austin even though it is a UK-based firm.

I have tested NVIDIA 3D technology with some games at it's awesome! The effect is even more real because you are actually interracting with the world. For example Left4Dead is great with 3D glasses. Now we just need more support from game developers.

What you want is not a 3D TV, but a Head Mounted Displays.

Right now, the best one does 720p@60Hz for 3D, not good enough. But I bet in 1 year this will be the next hot stuff to own.

Here is the list of the best one:

Sony Personal 3d viewer:

http://store.sony.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&categoryId=8198552921644817998#overview/hd

Wrap 1200VR:

http://www.vuzix.com/consumer/products_wrap_1200vr.html#features

and ST1080:

http://www.siliconmicrodisplay.com/st1080.html

like this
http://store.sony.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&productId=8198552921665925651

what, like this?

This is Sony. Their idea of a Captcha is, well, this (Google, BTW, returns the Captcha letters in plaintext if you search for it.

Even worse, the "captcha" is there in plain text if you view the source code, which means that bots (with some simple logic) can just read it plainly.

This is Sony. Their idea of a Captcha is, well, this (Google, BTW, returns the Captcha letters in plaintext if you search for it. Yeah, not so good on the "stopping bots" there Sony). Sony is simply incompetent when it comes to security: there is no other way to put it. Their vaunted PS3 secure bootloader? Yeah, turns out they don't know how to properly sign their keys (instead of using random numbers in the signature, they always used the same number, allowing anyone to discover their private signing key with basic algebra). These aren't difficult-to-implement, advanced security: this is literally the basic concept behind these types of security, which you can find explained on Wikipedia, implemented well in open source software which they could use, and they still can't get it right.

They probably have the source for all their software hosted on an unsecured FTP server somewhere, so that their developers can access it easily, relying on no-one knowing the IP to keep it secure. It would literally not surprise me, at this point.

First, let's start off by being civil, LOVE your sig.

Having said that, I was just reporting what Sony told me....Sony Safety Notice

> Sony wants to not use GPL-licensed code in its proprietary products.

Well, no. If you RTFA, it suggests Sony wants to use GPL-licensed code except for projects the license is actually enforced. They'll use the Linux kernel because the Linux kernel community doesn't bother with GPL enforcement. They don't want to use Busybox because the Busybox developers will sue them for license violations.

Maybe their other products are different but my Sony TV came with a paper explaining where to get the Linux sourcecode. It certainly looked like they made an effort to be compliant.

You can spend months trying to rewrite busybox, or you can just put the source code on your web site. It's not that hard. In fact, Sony already do it. GPL Compliance: put the source on your web site. That's all it takes. It isn't expensive or difficult.

May be. So far I rather get a simple TV than an ultra-full-featured, because I know there will be some features that will cause me inconvenience. As I said, I'm fully supporting the Smart TV because I think it's convenient in this epoch. As you said, they already have a computer on board, yet we're still requiring a separate box for the DVR, a separate for Cable, a separate for the WiDi (or what ever cable management system), another for audio receiver (although audio seems to be harder to include already due to the size of power amps, yet I need to wire all the speakers around the house).

My Google TV has an Atom processor inside, Ethernet, WiFi, 4G of internal memory and USB ports. I can stream movies from my NAS right into it, I can browse the Internet (when jerks like the networks and hulu don't block the content), and it has flash support so I can watch video from many websites.

So I'm wondering, why do I need more boxes and cables (other than perhaps power amps or game consoles at this moment). I'm just saying I'm not going to pay for more boxes when many of these capabilities are, to me, software based.

Remember that the EULA covers the software within the TV, not the TV itself since the TV is sold, not licensed. I would have simply written Sony a letter stating that (1) no, I don't agree to the terms of the EULA; (2) I bought the television, I own it and will not return it; (3) I will not intentionally use "the software", (4) but I intend to use the television to make use of all the advertised features of said television, and if you implemented those features in software rather than firmware, tough shit, and (5) suck it.

I found a EULA at http://www.docs.sony.com/release/Flyer_4138171111.pdf, is this what we are talking about?

actually, this "CAPTCHA" is even funnier

SLBVR isn't funny!

[but document.getElementById('captchdiv').getElementsByTagName('b') is a start ...]

Judging from Sony's previous attempts at "security" (actually, this "CAPTCHA" is even funnier), I don't think hackers have much to worry about.

I noticed that I couldn't log in to EQ2 last night, but there was a post in the forums about SOE taking things offline for maintenance at 8PM PST (normally they do it at 7am PST). Then, I got this email in the morning:

We are writing to let you know that we have detected an unauthorized attempt to verify the validity of your Sony Online Entertainment ("SOE") Station Account name and password. We believe there was an attempt to use a scripted application of a large set of sign-in IDs and passwords against our network database. This attempt appears to include a large amount of data obtained from one or more compromised ID and password lists obtained from other companies, sites or other sources.

To protect you, we have locked your XYZ Station Account. To reopen the account, please contact SOE customer service at 1 (858) 537-0898 to verify your identity. We will walk you through the password reset process then.

Please note that your credit card number is NOT at risk. As a precaution, please review your account for unusual activity and please contact us at 1 (858) 537-0898; we will work with any users with whom we confirm have had unauthorized purchases with account wallet funds, and restore those funds.

We want to take this opportunity to remind our consumers about the increasingly common threat of account theft, as well as the importance of having a strong password and having a username/password combination that is not associated with other online services or sites. We advise you to create a new password that is strong, consisting of a combination of numbers, letters and special characters or symbols.
Thank you,
Sony Online Entertainment

If I ever get a tablet, I want one that behaves functionally identically to a laptop. I want to be able to run it as a command-line terminal, behave intuitively with Emacs and run a non-crippled browser. It doesn't look like this is going to materialise any time soon, so I'll stick to using my computers for what they're good for, and use dead-tree books for reading.

One day I'll own an e-book reader, but I don't want to be locked into downloading stuff only from Amazon. A while back, I gave my wife a Sony PRS 650 for her birthday, and it looks awesome.

So I used to play an online game with some friends called Star Wars Galaxies (SWG). Which is now seemingly forever dead. And so the fans decided to work on building their own servers with the given clients. You seem to know a lot about reverse engineering so my question -- when applied more broadly -- is simply this: how come I shelled out $50 for a piece of software back in the day, now that software can no longer be used and that's completely legal? I realize I probably agreed to a ToS that forfeited my right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness but I thought consumer protection groups were supposed to prevent this exact sort of thing from happening. Last part of this question is simply do you ever foresee SWG becoming public domain? Of course, it's mired in Lucas' copyrights as well as Sony's but at some point in the distant future, all that copyrighted stuff (including server code and artwork) is supposed to be public domain, right? What then? Is that even going to happen? Is Sony legally required to hang on to that server source code so that I can finally once again play SWG while watching Matlock in the nursing home? Why are consumer rights non-existent when it comes to software? Will the Library of Congress open up all that source? Source control history included? I know I'll probably be dead but I'm curious.

What about the Sony Vaio Z docking station Power Media Dock? It was advertised June 28 to be using ”an optical cable” and ‘Light Peak’.

http://presscentre.sony.eu/content/detail.aspx?ReleaseID=6836&NewsAreaId=2

It is available now, at $499.99,

http://store.sony.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&partNumber=VGPPRZ20A/B#features

Sony doesn't have to worry about this bug. Everything over their is protected by their start of the art text-based captcha

... the worst ever handled online security breach, here comes the plain-text captcha: http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/jsp/forms/generateCaptcha.jsp

Yes, you heard well. The catpcha is not an image, but HTML text with CSS to distort the text style! That is how things must be done in Sony, that explains SO MUCH!

The headline is not surprising at all, IMHO.

Perhaps, but you'll probably find that they don't count with anywhere near the same power since they're not owned by large corporations

No large corporations? With websites I can link? Really?

Great, see what you made me do? That's probably 15 years in prison for me, minimum.

No, but making it hidden by default will make it *even easier* for people to get scammed

1- no status bar by default. So when I highlight a link, it won't show http://hax0red.sony.com/redirect_visaCC_nigeria.html
2- no URL bar by default, meaning it's now loading that website, without the victim being able to see the URL (not that it will change much for stupid users)

People are stupid enough and are already clicking anywhere. dumbing bown the browser for the masses is not what needs to be done.

When are LED (not LED backlight, I mean true LED) monitors going to show up in a decent resolution?

Do you mean OLED?

We still have a long way to go there, I'm afraid. It's not that it's technically impossible, it's just damn expensive. Sony is selling a 7" OLED monitor for $3.5k - I can get a 30" IPS monitor for half that price!

Even so, I'm waiting anxiously. Got a Galaxy S II just a few days ago, and the new OLED screen on that thing (still 800x480, but finally without PenTile) beats everything I've ever seen in terms of contrast and subjective sharpness. When they finally get it into desktop monitors and TVs, the jump in image quality will be very noticeable.

Apple first with USB? PCs had them a year before the iMac. Plus back in the day, the only portable music player that would dare use firewire was the iPod.

Apple Computer is the new Sony for proprietary f-you lock-in.

Are you still using your Apple Bus Mouse with an ADB connector?

How about one of their TV's ? They run Linux you know.

You're headline is true. Your statement is incorrect.

That's what Sony DID do.
Take a look at the screenshots from the Sony app status page. http://ebookstore.sony.com/rme/
The Reader store screenshot looks an awful lot like mobile Safari..

“We have not changed our developer terms or guidelines,” Apple spokesperson Trudy Muller told Ars Technica. “We are now requiring that if an app offers customers the ability to purchase books outside of the app, that the same option is also available to customers from within the app with in-app purchase.”
  http://bit.ly/i133FF

Sony, Samsung and no doubt others already release the GPL / LGPL components to their firmware, e.g. here. I very much doubt Panasonic would be able to release the full source to their firmware even if they wanted to due to legal commitments. More likely they're referring to the GPL / LGPL pieces too, or bits they've accidentally infected with GPL code.

Screw their "online assets." The link to the contact list of offices for the law firm responsible is right here. Sony's corporate contact numbers are here. I suggest that each of their offices should receive a good few calls Monday, letting them know what we think about free speech and about restraining it.

It takes a lot fewer calls to pull off a denial of service than it takes packets.

MJPEG isn't a part of MPEG-LA, yes. But everyone is still saying one thing, your saying another. I'm not sure what else to say. Even the Sonys own manual on page 27 says, and I'll quote "File format: Movies: MPEG-4 Visual" It says nothing about MJPEG or h.264.

Here: http://products.sel.sony.com/opensource/

Stupid slashdot

You mean like this?

What happened to Star Wars Galaxies? Wasn't that supposed to be the best Star Wars MMORPG?
Never mind Jedi, you can be Boba-Fett or Han Solo type of character if you want to. If they just put a bit more effort into marketing and design, it could be a LOT better I think...
http://starwarsgalaxies.station.sony.com/en_US/players/guides.vm?id=70000

I would say that there is a lot of information around your average hyperlink (This is a dangerous page) but the search engines are not yet taking advantage of it.
This guy is an idiot, someone shut him up.
For example the link in the summary has a lot of text around it that could be used to sort it. This is an adverstiment, they have nothing to do with us

Just like we don't need 200 more programming languages to solve problems that are easy if you actually know the languages that exists we also do not need to extend html with things that are already present today.

... and that is exactly why those who are called early adapters take the risks they do.

What looks great, or is involving, is not necessarily a commercial success in the living room. Consumer electronics companies are killing themselves (sometimes, literally) in their attempts to get products into the living rooms of Mom and Pop America.

The television is the most complex appliance that has been allowed into the family living rooms here in the US. Have you noticed how all the companies are trying to disguise their computers as televisions lately? Have you noticed how many televisions run Linux nowadays?

An electronics box in the living room* is the Holy Grail for Consumer Electronic Companies in the United States.

________________________________________________________________
*For some reason, set-top boxes do not seem to count, probably due to the distrust of cable companies.

Interesting comparison. In addition to the color scheme choice you mention, the image usage is certainly different between the two versions and alludes to a difference in what English-speaking customers and Japanese-speaking customers perceive as a big business's formal/consumer website. To me, it looks like the English version has a significant "corporate" feel (no people in main image; if there were any, most of those people would be in business casual), whereas the Japanese version has emphasis on a personable feel (people in generally typical, common clothing). Of course, the target audience probably has a lot to do with how the sites are designed: JP - primary customer base and your everyday customer, EN - probably mostly corporations as customer.

Here is an example I found:

- Sony Japan homepage: http://www.sony.co.jp/
- Sony USA homepage: http://www.sony.com/

Sony USA presents an overall Flash-based primary website, complete with an intro/splash page, whereas Sony Japan appears to use Flash only for their interactive content on their own primary website. While Sony USA directs your attention to the product (and, for example, points out how you can save money if you're a student), Sony Japan has images that conjure up uses for products and interactivity with customers (e.g., Sony Japan's alternating banner at the top of site: camera for destination photos, Sony science program, 3D TV, Football fandom).

With these examples, I wonder if the Japanese style of website design isn't really to insist on cluttering, but instead on making their site as welcoming and personable as possible to their viewer. Perhaps this aim (if plausible) may explain the incorporation of emoticons and pastels and people in the website designs. And, if this is the case, I also wonder if this is based on the Japanese culture where politeness and respect is tantamount.*

* Not Japanese, never been to Japan. (Yet, anyway. I want to go!) Just presenting what I know from what I've deduced from Japanese dramas, and travel shows and books on Japan.

"XP is 9 years old and Win7 is a very good replacement for newer machines,"

Because there's a lot of hardware out there that does not have drivers for Windows 7

For example, there are no USB streaming drivers for Sony Digital8 camcorders. Sure, these are older (2000-2007) tape-based digital camcorders, and you could argue "Make them buy new!", but if you're buying new camcorders along with new operating systems it can get very expensive very fast.

Ultimately you're correct, over time it makes more sense to just go with Windows 7 as 16 and 32gb of ram becomes the standard and programs are written to take advantage of the space while 32-bit XP is limited to 4gb, but in 2010 there's still a lot of hardware not Windows 7 compatible, and compatibility modes only go so far.

I spent many years first as Fedral Sales Manager and then Vice President of Sales dealing almost exclusively with the US Government and its affiliated agencies and contractors. Your statement "I don't think the government buys anything from Sony, other than a few consumer electronics for conference room. Most of the time the government purchases from dedicated contractors like Lockheed, Northrop, Raytheon, et cetera." is simply untrue. The US Government purchases a great deal from Sony, see http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/mkt-government/resource.latest.bbsccms-assets-mkt-gov-latest-gsacontracts.shtml and http://www.ivci.com/international_videoconferencing_news_gsa_contract_gs-35f-4259d.html and https://pro.sony.com/bbsccms/assets/files/mkt/gov/downloads/gsa_catalog.pdf. This does not even touch upon the COTS (Commercial Off the Shelf) purchases where the government agency simply buys what it needs from a local vendor right off of the shelf. There are already procedures in place for prohibiting purchases from vendors that do not meet the terms of their contracts with the US Government. In the case of GSA contracts, they are subject to losing the GSA contract and being prohibited from applying for a new one.

I spent many years first as Fedral Sales Manager and then Vice President of Sales dealing almost exclusively with the US Government and its affiliated agencies and contractors. Your statement "I don't think the government buys anything from Sony, other than a few consumer electronics for conference room. Most of the time the government purchases from dedicated contractors like Lockheed, Northrop, Raytheon, et cetera." is simply untrue. The US Government purchases a great deal from Sony, see http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/mkt-government/resource.latest.bbsccms-assets-mkt-gov-latest-gsacontracts.shtml and http://www.ivci.com/international_videoconferencing_news_gsa_contract_gs-35f-4259d.html and https://pro.sony.com/bbsccms/assets/files/mkt/gov/downloads/gsa_catalog.pdf. This does not even touch upon the COTS (Commercial Off the Shelf) purchases where the government agency simply buys what it needs from a local vendor right off of the shelf. There are already procedures in place for prohibiting purchases from vendors that do not meet the terms of their contracts with the US Government. In the case of GSA contracts, they are subject to losing the GSA contract and being prohibited from applying for a new one.

In the current market, hardware-only e-book makers like this have no chance at all. Amazon has their e-book library, B&N has one, Sony has one... the proliferation of e-libraries isn't a problem in itself, except each is tied to the same brand of hardware, and nothing else. With iTunes and iPhone apps, Apple has pushed media lock-in further than I ever thought would be successful. I congratulate their shareholders, but I still think it's a terrible idea. It's like we're reverting from the era of the Internet back to proprietary BBS's like GENie Online and (old) AOL, where everything was bundled together and walled up.

A virtual video studio where they can act out a play and then watch themselves is very experiential and gets to use technology they might not have a chance to play with on a large scale.

Sony did something similar with Sony Wonder in New York when I was younger. I went as a kid and thought it was the coolest thing that I could make my own tv show and I kept the certificate they gave out for years. There were lots of buttons and options for older kids and a big green screen and heat sensitive cameras for everyone. In the years since, it looks like they've modernized the tech but kept to the same concept.

Easier to see it than try to explain:

http://vaio-online.sony.com/prod_info/vgn-ux17gp/

It depends on the website. I'm no expert and you need an account to view the actual site but the lack of alt texts on the images and using images as titles, here, does not bode well for screen readers.

Digital Cinema 4K is defined as 4096×2160 progressive (compare with ATSC HDTV standards 1920x1080 interlaced or 1280x720 progressive).

The Sony SRX-T110 4K projector costs around $114k, not a million!

You want to expand on that? The only thing I can think of with broader appeal than that, is Pizza. Actual bread, cheese, tomato, to your door in 30 minutes or less.

Everquest II did that. WoW countered with Chinese, but that turned out to be an April Fool's prank. The EQII /pizza command, however, was real, but I believe it's been discontinued.

of the fact that there are TWO names on the box for the game?

Sony (Sony Online Entertainment actually) couldn't have made the types of changes they did. Unless Lucas Arts signed off on them, probably not unless Lucas Arts actually gave the directive to *make* the changes.

SOE is run by gamers, why would they want to wreck something they know is great?

As far as this being the end of Star Wars Galaxies, it's 12 servers out of 25, the game is by no means dead. Actually looking at the forums http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/posts/list.m?topic_id=816422 its the same ones that have been in a free character move state for a while now.

You shouldn't be. Most TV's these days have a full computer inside them, and a large percentage of them run Linux. Here's the list of Sony TV's that run Linux, for example.

If you do, you can get a 14 day trial:

http://launcher.station.sony.com/

Make a character in the Vanu Sovereignty (my empire/faction) and around 8pm Eastern look for people with the tag "Ghosts of the Revolution". Tell them N1H1L (nihil) sent you and that you're looking into the game. Someone will be able to help you. Get TeamSpeak because that's how we coordinate our group of 30 to 60 players. i'm on most Wednesday nights and every Thursday night. /t N1H1L {text} will talk directly to me (like whisper in other games).

Our website:
http://gotr.net/

Some of our vids:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SP33HNkdz5g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQFVsNlB2UE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zttq2KxZt4M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfBPDVHKxJU

OK, that's enough whoring for me. Hope to see you in the game. :)

... it has removed the final reason for the open source world to care about Sony.

I thought ImageWorks (of Sony Pictures) had recently opensourced OSL, Scala Migrations, Field3D, PyString and Maya Reticle or at least made them community endeavors. I can't seem to find the source code for browsing on OSL and some of the other projects are pretty tiny but if that's true it's a good sign on ImageWorks' part.

I'm certain they by and large use GPL LGPL in their products like their TVs and SOE using PostgreSQL over Oracle.

Writing off the PS3? Probably. They probably realized Linux support buys them little over the Wii and XBox360 despite what I and everyone else thinks. But the rest of Sony might have hope.

Planetside has added brags for pvp accomplishments though their "Merit Commendations" system.

> Chess is not funner because you can teleport your piece all over the map and make any one of your pieces attack another.
Let me know when the world scale of chess leaves the microscopic 8x8 and reaches the macroscopic 1 million by 1 million.

> There's no sense in making a huge world with diverse regions and items, then giving the player the ability to hit any one of them at a whim.
1. Maybe you should go study the masters of this: Casino games _already_ do this, and they make _billions_. Let me know when WoW reaches that level.

2. I am not against environments such as snow, desert, tropical forest. They serve a purpose.

This bullshit of having to wait a week after clearing a raid instance is bad enough, but having to to constantly waste 20 minutes just to simply to get to an instance because I am the first one there when I have _already_ been there, is pure stupidity. And good luck when the 2nd person there to help summon everyone else, bails. And good luck when you try to summon who doesn't meet the "level requirements" for that instance.

> If a player could have started off in a room with a portal to any level in SMB,
I never suggested any such thing. If you actually read what I wrote was "Want to travel back to any city you have previously reached. Bam, there.". Having waypoints, or check points, to places you have _already_ been, is a good thing. WoW _already_ does this. I am complaining about the time it takes. I am paying to play with my friends, not sit on my ass because the game forces me to wait for them. This is the problem that WoW tries to solve in a half-baked manner.

Why do you think Star Wars Galaxies has this ??

> Players have to be bored to enjoy the game.
Let me know how many professional games you have worked on, let alone shipped.

> In a game like Majesty, what's the average length of a game? 1-2 hours?
You completely miss the point. There is something called "Game Density." Bigger Worlds are NOT better, because the average density of _interesting_ things for the player to do goes down, compared to games played on a single screen. This is what the WoW designers didn't have a fucking clue about when the game first came out, making you travel between the 2 continents and not giving you your mount until level 40! They have done a MUCH better job when they introduced the Blood Elves, but they still don't "get it" about "Dead Time." Paying 2x or 4x the gold cost, for 1/2, or 1/4 flight times is a much needed step in the right direction. Lowering the mount down to 20 is another band-aid solution.

--
Wow (TM) is the McDonalds (TM) of MMORPGs.