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Thanks for finding Revelation 11:18. Here's Sony's plan to reduce its ecological footprint.

Yes, I also watched Techmoan ;-)
This is not the full picture. It is a fact Japanese manufacturers flooded the world with cheap subsidized electronics in order to take over consumer market segments. EEC measures simply went into effect too late to matter. Limp dick US was too corrupt to do anything, even actual penalties were never enforced.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Right from the horses mouth https://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/...
and 1 hour long "Frontline: Coming From Japan [The Fall Of The US Television Industry] (1992)" video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

CSR/Qualcomm's AptX HD and Sony's LDAC both have the capability to transmit nearly 1 Mbps over Bluetooth. FLAC compression on a 24 bit/48k kHz stream can be supported in that bandwidth; FLAC compressed CD quality (16/44.1) can easily fit within the bandwidth. So yes, there is lossless Bluetooth audio, it's just lossless up to a certain point.

In fact, that's why so many audiophiles are excited about LDAC and AptX HD - you can now listen to lossless streaming audio from Tidal.com and HDTracks.

Geesh, even my TV's manufacturer makes the source code available... http://oss.sony.net/Products/L...

That's not really true in this case. The music industry's U.S. revenue was $7 billion in 2015. The TV and movie industry's revenue was $131 billion in 2014 So about $140 billion total.

U.S. ISP revenue was $97 billion in 2016. The U.S. consumer electronics industry revenue is over $200 billion. The Internet publishing, broadcasting, and search industry's revenue was about $110 billion in 2014. Total is over $400 billion. Nearly 3x bigger than music, movies, and TV. Yet they're made to bend over and comply with the wishes of the studios. The tail is literally wagging the dog.

It already destroyed Sony's audio electronics division. Sony was the top name in audio equipment in the 1970s and 1980s. Then in 1987 they acquired CBS records and renamed it Sony Music Entertainment. SME coexisted with Sony Electronics until 1998, when the MP3 player came to market. Sony Electronics came up with an MP3 player, but SME forced them to add DRM to it. Customers avoided it because it was impossible to take their existing CDs and simply copy the music over to a Sony MP3 player.

Sony's 1998 revenue was 1,128 billion Yen for the audio division (page 14), 660 billion Yen for the music division (page 15).

Their 2000 revenue was 935 billion Yen for the audio division (page 47), 709 billion Yen for the music division (page 498).

By 2003 their audio sales had atrophied to 683 billion Yen (page 20), vs 636 billion Yen in music sales (page 18). Music sales were about the same as 1998, but their audio electronics sales had been cut nearly in half because of SME demanding their products comply with their copyright protection requirements. (In 2004 their music division began a joint venture with BMG, so financials are not comparable from then on.)

That's not really true in this case. The music industry's U.S. revenue was $7 billion in 2015. The TV and movie industry's revenue was $131 billion in 2014 So about $140 billion total.

U.S. ISP revenue was $97 billion in 2016. The U.S. consumer electronics industry revenue is over $200 billion. The Internet publishing, broadcasting, and search industry's revenue was about $110 billion in 2014. Total is over $400 billion. Nearly 3x bigger than music, movies, and TV. Yet they're made to bend over and comply with the wishes of the studios. The tail is literally wagging the dog.

It already destroyed Sony's audio electronics division. Sony was the top name in audio equipment in the 1970s and 1980s. Then in 1987 they acquired CBS records and renamed it Sony Music Entertainment. SME coexisted with Sony Electronics until 1998, when the MP3 player came to market. Sony Electronics came up with an MP3 player, but SME forced them to add DRM to it. Customers avoided it because it was impossible to take their existing CDs and simply copy the music over to a Sony MP3 player.

Sony's 1998 revenue was 1,128 billion Yen for the audio division (page 14), 660 billion Yen for the music division (page 15).

Their 2000 revenue was 935 billion Yen for the audio division (page 47), 709 billion Yen for the music division (page 498).

By 2003 their audio sales had atrophied to 683 billion Yen (page 20), vs 636 billion Yen in music sales (page 18). Music sales were about the same as 1998, but their audio electronics sales had been cut nearly in half because of SME demanding their products comply with their copyright protection requirements. (In 2004 their music division began a joint venture with BMG, so financials are not comparable from then on.)

Sony already makes surgical huds with OLEDs that as 1280x720 with an 18mm diagonal. So thats about 2000ppi

http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/N...

The current highest capacity is 8.5 TB native in StorageTek (From Oracle) T10000D. The highest capacity from IBM is 2.5 TB. Needless to say, IBM needs some publicity with imaginary product to fight against real product. Here is one year old article on the same topic. The imaginary capacity has gone up from 185 TB to 220 TB.

According to this, Sony is a publicly traded company on the NYSE, if the AG doesn't go after this, it just goes to show that they pick their targets.

I've always been curious if they can reproduce the NFC style wallets in Japan (Asia?) in the USA.

Here in Japan the train companies have NFC cards. The cards act mostly as cash. You put money on the card itself. I don't know exactly how the accounting works but AFAIK there's no server being contacted when you make a purchase. The system some how instantly deducts the money from your card and updates your history on the card.

This makes them super convenient unlike stuff like Square Wallet or even Google Wallet. You tap the card/phone on the machine and you've paid in under 1 second. No need to press anything, type any passwords, nothing.

The chips were later added to feature cell phones around 2006 so you could tap your phone instead of a card. You can also add more cash on them from your phone. Some Japan only Android phones also have them. Of course iPhone does not.

Trains, busses, many taxis, vending machines, convenience stores, some restaurants have the readers next to their registers.

Transactions are stored on the card and many laptops in Japan have built-in readers. My 2006 Vaio did. Touch your card to some spot on the surface of the laptop and get instant expense report for work/taxes. You can add credit to the cards on your laptop as well.

I have no idea how they prevent fraud given they can be updated locally (filling them with money without going through the proper channels). As for theft, scanning people as they walk by, they do seem to need to be within 1cm or so to read/update. I haven't looked into it though. On the other hand they aren't tied to any other money meaning they're basically like carrying cash. If you lose it all you lost is your money on the card and your purchase history. There's no "account" and it's not connected to any bank or credit card so the damage is minimized.

I have no idea if those would go over anywhere in the USA except maybe NYC, Chicago, SF. They arguably work in Japan because so many people commute so even if you never purchase anything they're super convenient for commuting (no need to buy tickets). Once you have one they end up being convenient for other things.

At the same time, I don't see anything less ever taking off in the USA. Google Wallet etc aren't more convenient than credit cards. Felica cards are.

http://www.sony.net/Products/felica/

I realize I think in SF the Clipper card and in London the Oyster cards are the same tech? But I don't think either can be used for anything other than trains/busses.

Also the chips don't need batteries so even if your phone battery dies you can still pay with the chip in your phone.

That's how they started in Japan and are still available that way. The basic system is Sony's Felica

http://www.sony.net/Products/felica/

The chips were added to phones around 2006 so you could just swipe your phone instead of your card. The advantage to the phone version (1) no separate card needed (2) can add funds on the phone, no need to go to a machine. Now-a-days tyhey're integrated into Japanese made Android handsets but of course not the non-Japanese made ones nor the iPhone.

Many Japanese laptops have readers. My 2006 Vaio has a reader. I can also add funds through it.

And this is why Slashdot needs a "Wrong" moderation.

a) The quote was specifically "computers", not "PC's"

b) He mentioned HP....but you conveniently ignored that one.

c) Sony made it's first computer (a PC even) in 1982, before the Mac

d) NEC still makes computers (servers)

e) Acer was making PC's in 1983, before the Mac

f) Fujitsu made computers in 1954, and PC's in 1981, before the Mac

But yeah...you were right about IBM & kinda right about Dell (though it could be argued it was just a rename of his PC's Limited...which started in 1984), so I guess 2 out of 8 is a good day for you....

Huh? Sony took Linux out of the PS3 as of system software 3.21 and sued George Hotz for putting it back in.

see http://www.sony.net/Products/Linux/common/search.html

Sony has hundreds of Products, used by tens of millions of people, in which Linux is used exactly in the way its meant to be.

They have one product (PS3) where they decided to drop Linux support (used by a few thousand people) in updated Versions of the product and stop distributing the original version of the product. *That* is not a problem with me at all. What is a problem that these updates were mandatory to continue using the product in a well-defined way, and i certainly dont appreciate that. Which is why i prefer products which are not subject to any kind of cross-financing by DRM schemes. Users who accept that they have a device where somebody manages the installed software for them and controls the choice of their service provider are out on their own.

Good luck typing a three-paragraph reply on a 4" sheet of glass. And good luck seeing your e-mail and something else on the screen at once. Or do you carry a Bluetooth keyboard for making replies?

The smallest of my android devices has a screen diagonal of 5.5". And FYI yes, I carry a bluetooth keyboard with me (since about 4 years - used it to type email on my Nokia e71/e63 - three paragraph replies were no problem at all). Still Galazy Note II + Galaxy Tab I + Bluetooth keyboard + Apple mouse together still weight less than a Laptop and run longer than a laptop. Sufficient for 99% of my mails, and even most documents/presentations).

You made a mistake in punctuation. I fixed it for you. You're welcome.

This is a quote from Sony Global Earning release. Maybe you should leave my comments alone.

"Sales increased 112.1% year-on-year (a 125% increase on a constant currency basis) to 300.4 billion yen (3,851 million U.S. dollars). This increase was primarily due to the consolidation of Sony Mobile from February 2012, partially offset by significantly lower sales of PCs resulting from a decline in unit sales."

http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/financial/fr/index.html

Sony:

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/08/02/sony-loses-312m-in-last-quarter_n_1731696.html

Sony Loses $312m In Last Quarter On Weak Gaming And Mobile Sales

...but Sony's mobile phones are not in that Division they are in Sony has their own Game division "Mobile Products & Communications" Should we see what they say!!!

"Primarily due to the lowering of the annual unit sales forecast for PCs, sales are expected to be lower than the May
forecast. Due to the above-mentioned decrease in sales and the impact of unfavorable exchange rates, operating
results are expected to be significantly below the May forecast. Due to the consolidation of Sony Mobile, sales
are expected to increase significantly year-on-year. Operating results are expected to deteriorate significantly
year-on-year primarily due to the large remeasurement gain recorded in the prior fiscal year for Sony Mobile.
On a pro forma basis, had Sony Mobile been fully consolidated from the beginning of the previous fiscal year, a
significant increase in sales and a significant improvement in operating results would be anticipated."

That right ladies and gentleman Android is profitable for Sony, Microsoft Windows isn't!!

These are the financial figures http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/financial/fr/index.html

Curiously, Sony have decided to design and standardise a new 128-bit encryption algorithm named Clefia. I wonder if it's as secure as they claim...

My first "netbook" without an optical drive was a Sony Vaio Picturebook - like this one: http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/News/Press_Archive/199809/98-085/index.html. I used it happily on the road until about 2003, when I upgraded to a Victor Interlink - like this one: http://www.kemplar.com/jvc_741.php.

Both still work, and the Victor with Linux still puts most netbooks to shame.

You mean, like this pre-Palm device? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Apple_Newton_MP100.jpg

Or, like this pre-Newton device. The Sony PTC-300 preceded the Apple Newton by two years, and it had permanent icons along one side, and sometime, icons along the bottom, depending on the app.

By the way, the PTC-300 was preceded by two other Sony models: PTC-500 and PTC-550.

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?

Wow. [citation needed] much? Let's go down the list, shall we?

1) Not only can I find no evidence of a $500M figure ever having existed before your comment, but if they had made a settlement for a half billion dollars, Sony wouldn't exist today. Their operating income last year was just $342M (source). Fat chance that Sony could survive a $500M settlement hit. By all indications (i.e. because it's not mentioned in their annual filings from that year and there are no followup stories to be found), this did not impact their bottom line in any sort of meaningful way.

2) As for what the settlement actually was, they paid up to $150-175 per customer that damaged their PC in an attempt to remove the rootkit (see here), plus $5.75M in settlements to various states (source). That's it. It probably cost them less than $10M to settle the whole thing.

3) For a quick example of a company that can take a hit like the one you talked about, we all remember the Microsoft EU antitrust case from a few years back, right? The one regarding media players, where they were fined roughly $600M, and had followup fines of roughly $250M and $1.44B, all of which were extensively covered in the news since they were, at the time, the largest fines ever handed down by the EU (more info). But Microsoft was able to absorb the hit. Of course, they could do that since their operating income last year was about $24B (source), which is roughly 70x that of Sony's.

4) As for your DOJ claims, I can't find anything about government computers being infected (though I wouldn't doubt it) or the DOJ being involved at all. In fact, they never got involved, despite the public outcry and requests that a criminal investigation be launched.

Aside from government computers getting infected, is anything you said true, or are you just routinely off by a few orders of magnitude when quoting figures, as well as prone to making up stories that have little basis in fact?

use proprietary connectors everywhere

If I remember correctly, PS3 has standard USB connectors, when 360 has proprietary modified USB (different voltage and different physical connector).

(eg. memory sticks)

If I remember correctly, early PS3 had both SD and memory stick built-in when 360 had proprietary memory cards. Arguably they got removed, like 2 of of the original 4 USB ports, but that was cost reduction and both SD and MS got removed at the same time.

try to lock you in to their products at every turn

If I remember correctly, PSP was the first Sony device to ever support MP3 natively, back in a time where WMA was the only supported format on the Microsoft side. There's a famous Krazy Ken interview.

overcharge for replacement batteries

Let me google this for you.... Oh yes you can get plenty of replacement batteries, from Sony (more expensive) or random 3rd parties (less expensive) - the decision is yours. I wonder if replacing batteries on iPhone/iPad/i* or Zune is so easy.

install viruses on your PC without asking, makte CDs that won't play on PCs

Ok Sony Music *is* really evil... But for their defense, they're the only divison, with Sony Pictures, controlled by the western side of Sony, not Japan, and having american "values". The rest of Sony made sure rootkits were prohibited forever see section 4.2.1 so that music and movies guys would be burnt at the stake if they ever did this again.

I work for an Australian CCTV wholesaler and we're already getting emails offering buying leads for alternative manufacturers (Pixim for instance)

I disagree with the general sentiment that the average consumer is blissfully ignorant of Sony's malfeasance when it comes to content protection. While the average consumer may not understand it from a big picture perspective, Sony's current position in the market has already been crippled by consumer reaction to how they protect their content.

Here's Sony's FY2009 sales by segment (slide 4). Their music division had 522.6 billion yen in sales for FY2009, or about $5.25 billion. Here's Apple's sales for roughly the same period (PDF warning). In FY2009, Apple sold $8.09 billion worth of iPods, and had ~$4 billion worth of music sales in the iTunes store.

What does everyone remember Sony being famous for? The Walkman. When the MP3 market took off, everyone just assumed that Sony would be a big player in it. Sony was synonymous with expensive but high quality portable music players, so it was natural to expect a fantastic MP3 player from them. But Sony's music division somehow managed to force their electronics division to encumber their MP3 players with heavy DRM. At first they wouldn't even play MP3s - you had to buy/convert to some proprietary format which, in preventing you from trading songs or converting to MP3, made it extraordinarily difficult just to put your music on the player. People warned each other in droves to stay away from it.

As a result, Sony has a negligible presence in the MP3 player market today. In order to protect their music division which has approx $5 billion/yr in sales, they missed the opportunity to grab the lead in a new electronics product market where the current leader makes over $12 billion/yr. They let the tail wag the dog, and paid dearly for it.

*I don't think GE's a member anymore, but it's impossible to know for certain how much of their revenue came just from NBC-Universal

Really?

Page 34 of GE's 2009 earnings report: Revenues, NBC Universal, $15,436,000,000; Segment Profit, NBC Universal, $2,264,000,000.

Yeah, it's impossible to know for certain that NBC-Universal made $2 billion in profit last year. Sony Pictures, by the way, collected ¥705,237,000,000 (~ $8 billion) in revenue for FY 2010, and only ¥42,814,000,000 (~ $519 million) in profit; Sony Pictures includes not only MPAA-relevant stuff but TV shows just like NBC-Universal. That's from SONY's annual earnings report, which is admittedly not the first Google result, but whatever, it wasn't that hard to find. (http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/financial/ar/2010/index.html)

When you consider how little of Sony or GE's total revenues have to do with their movie-making divisions, and how much Google's revenues are based on Internet services supposedly threatened by these letters (practically all of Google's revenue) I think you can easily realize how much more money Google would be willing to spend on a fight than the MPAA. That is, if these angry letters Google received had any real meaning other than to try to scare the individuals who usually receive them.

The limit on drive capacity is not switching speed, but focal spot diameter. If this is a 405nm laser, its minimum focus spot will be exactly the same size as the spot of existing Blu-Ray lasers (they're 405nm, too). What am I missing?

That somebody somewhere along the line hasn't thought about the implications of what they're talking about?

The laser described is a _100W_ laser. Because of the short pulse length, I'm not sure if this makes it a class 3B or class 4 laser, but in either case safety equipment including a failsafe keyswitch is legally required. This is not consumer equipment. It is not going to be built into a consumer-grade optical disc player. Ever.

But if it were, which is of course theoretically possible, then the original Sony press release has more technical details that I can't claim to entirely understand, but which do suggest some rationale for the claims.

The Wii3D or whatever their next console is going to be is going to do the same thing the 3DS did to the PSP, to the PS3 and the 360. Take a gimmick they have perfected, perhaps add another gimmick, but increase the graphics and remove the one advantage the other two have.

As I understand it... Sony now has 3D TV support on the PS3. In effect, Sony has beaten everyone else to market on this. Of course, from what I understand, only one company makes 3D TVs at this point... Sony.

Also, it only works with certain games released in the past few weeks.

Confusingly, it means the diodes are at the front instead of the back relative to the pixel microlenses.

Notice, if you will, that the only Memory Stick, Memory Stick Micro, Memory Stick Pro, and Memory Stick Pro Duos you see bear the company name Sony or that of one of the few strictly sublicensed partner company brand names. Sandisk/Lexar are two examples of such companies, with Sandisk being a direct partner with Sony for the Memory Stick spec. You will find SD cards from Sandisk, Lexar, Crucial, Kingston and numerous other companies. I hope that answers your question about which format is more open and prevalent. There are several companies offering hardware adapters to allow SD cards to be compatible with Memory Stick slots. The SD spec is easily (and more cheaply) licensed for use in all kinds of devices - industrial, commercial, and consumer, from what I've determined.

As for the DRM question: Sony only uses non-compatible proprietary DRM formats for everything, as a rule. Usually Windows-locked by default in any implementation. For the Memory Stick cards, it is optional to use, and is called MagicGate, a software/hardware duality. See: ATRAC. See also: MagicGate [1]. This is not to say enterprising individuals haven't taken care of this issue, it's just a fact of their track record as a company. The SD card DRM [2](CPRM 1|2) scheme on the other hand, is able to be licensed and used in Open Sauce (for a fee), for whatever reason one might choose to do so, and is rarely if ever enforced even when it is present, and is software mostly reliant on software, with the DRM itself only fully working if a CPRM capable device is present for key negotiation. It's been bypassed for years by programs like DVDShrink, etc.

For an example: Sandisk SD cards that contain media/programs/etc of whatever type on the card at retail. You can copy the stuff straight to your hard drive without any trouble, or format the card, again, without any trouble, and proceed to use them. The data isn't locked, even though the DRM is present. Try this with the content that comes on those special MSD cards once for an unhappy experience. Try to erase the data off the card, and you are prevented, so you are stuck with a partially full card from the get-go. Ditto attempting to copy the data.

[1] Note: I apologize for using a Wikipedia link, but I couldn't find any direct information on MagicGate from the Sony website, other than their support section saying that Memory Stick cards or devices without MagicGate can't use ATRAC-based files (it seems the spec page for MagicGate no longer exists or was removed); also listed on the Sony site were several pages on which devices contain it and which do not.

[2] Note: Two best links I found dealing with CPRM.

Bio-mod this thing and you have what you are after: http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/News/Press/200708/07-074E/index.html

http://www.sony.net/Products/Linux/common/search.html

(Would i have cheched that before, maybe i'd have bought a p-series. The "instant mode" is linux)

Manufactures already have programs to take back their junk in order to comply with the WEEE EU directive. This has been law now for more than 5 years. Rather than discussing this idea as something theoretical lawmakers in the US would be well advised to study if an how this works in Europe.

I agree that the content still needs to be created, but I think that funding that content creation can change.

I'm a retired software developer, and the idea of giving away software and still making money was kind of hard to get my head around initially. Shifting the value to the support side was a unique concept (to me).

Let's look at a major content IP holder, like Sony: http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/financial/ar/2008/qfhh7c00000htnf4-att/SonyAR08-02.pdf

Less than 10% of their revenue comes from the content side of the house (Sony Pictures). Two-thirds of their revenue comes from their Electronics division. The purpose of their Electronics division is to make hardware that plays, records and manipulates content.

While we can postulate that copyright infringement harms the content side of the business, I'd wager that it benefits the hardware side of the business. You need PCs, DVD burners, MP3 players, LCDs, media, etc. for all that infringed content, after all.

It's like Linux to the electronics industry in general. Why do Intel, Dell, HP, Nokia, Motorola, IBM, etc. *pay* people to develop Linux? It sells hardware, the part of their business they really care about.

Music, movies, books - they are the software of the applicable hardware. Just as Sony funds the content creation, other profiting manufacturers need to do the same (Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, etc.). That's the paradigm shift that needs to happen. The content isn't their business anymore. It's the only way they will survive.

Done and done: http://www.sony.net/Products/Linux/Download/category5.html#1

No, PS3 has not made any money and it may never make any.

http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/financial/fr/index.html
Sony videogames division in the past three years (PS3 era+R&D, including PS2 and PSP):

2006 ===== 75 (positive)
2007 = -1,969 (negative)
2008 = -1,265 (negative)
2009 ===== 51 (positive)

Total 2006-09 === -3,108

(in million US$)
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=111003

Yes it does, and surprisingly, so do many many more Sony products:
http://www.sony.net/Products/Linux/Download/search.html

Seeing that more than two dozen recent Sony cameras already run Linux ( http://www.sony.net/Products/Linux/Download/category14.html ), I find this new piece quite obsolete.

Yes it does, and surprisingly, so do many many more Sony products:
http://www.sony.net/Products/Linux/Download/search.html

Seeing that more than two dozen recent Sony cameras already run Linux ( http://www.sony.net/Products/Linux/Download/category14.html ), I find this new piece quite obsolete.

Nice, that is not the only model which is running Linux. Actually, my own camera (eighteen months old) seems to be running Linux as well:
http://www.sony.net/Products/Linux/Download/DSC-W90.html
Here is a list of their products using Linux, as I understand:
http://www.sony.net/Products/Linux/Download/search.html

Nice, that is not the only model which is running Linux. Actually, my own camera (eighteen months old) seems to be running Linux as well:
http://www.sony.net/Products/Linux/Download/DSC-W90.html
Here is a list of their products using Linux, as I understand:
http://www.sony.net/Products/Linux/Download/search.html

I still have the historic Sony D-50 (nice picture here) my father bought for me in 1984. It was called portable but it ran on AC power only. However it was astounding back then how you could make a CD player that small. I don't use it but it still works fine. A jewel of elegance and function in electronics.

Sony uses the Linux kernel too in its HDTVs and many other products. Here is the link to download the source (cookies and JS required).

http://www.sony.net/Products/Linux/notice.html -> Personal Communicator

So far most of the replies here are bemoaning the fact that the transfer distance is only 3cm, but from reading Sony's Press Release it appears obvious why the distance is restricted such.

The protocol is promoted to be "touch-and-go", not requiring any setup or user intervention. Thus you simply "touch" (meaning bringing within 3cm) a device and an action is performed automatically - such as downloading your photos or displaying a video.

This has the possibility of simplifying connections (we'll have to wait and see if it works) and the 3cm distance makes it such that you have to consciously activate the connection, possibly saving you from embarrassing situations.

Maybe I misread TFA, but this doesn't strike me as aiming to be competition to W-USB. The press release states that it's intended for transferring large files over short distances - for example, from your video camera to your TV.

It's meant to simplify file transfer, not power USB devices or peripherals.

If Blu-ray becomes the dominant video format (over DVD and downloads), how much income (from sales and licensing) does this bring to Sony? I know Blu-ray is primarily "Sony's format," but there's a lot of "partners" in the Blu-ray Disc Association. Will this Blu-ray related income be worth the loss in gaming income?

Year: Gaming operating income/(loss), total operating income
2007: (¥232 billion), ¥72 billion
2006: 9, 226
2005: 43, 146
2004: 68, 99
2003: 113, 185
2002: 83, 135
2001: (51), 225
2000: 77, 223
1999: 136, 339
1998: 117, 520

Sony's Annual Reports (big freakin' PDF files): http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/financial/ar/Archive.html

You never played that "one of these things doesn't look like the others" game as a kid huh?

Also, the only thing that Sony seems to have in common with the others are their Memory Sticks.
All of five seconds of googling turns up this

And here's a press release.

The other two, Micron/Lexar and Samsung, good question.

Financial data.

Net income of just over a billion US dollars. Not irrelevant quite yet.

agreed .. digging at the imdb entry for Speed Racer reveals the Sony F-23 which was unveiled last year with a japanese spec sheet here. The only major camera innovation i've seen in hollywood recently is the 3ality stuff who have probably upgraded their rig to use the latest Sony CineAlti. Done correctly you should have multiple images layered like the old disney cartoon/cell techniques to give an almost 3-D effect on a layered screen without the need for 3-D glasses .. (it looks pretty cool if you've ever seen it) .. but if you don't know what you're looking at i could see where someone just says that it just looks like it's all in focus due the crispness of the image that better reflects what we can naturally see than a typically transposed camera shot

Original Sony press release with video.

The first CD was not an ABBA CD. It was "52nd Street" by Billy Joel reference.