Slashdot Mirror
Father of PlayStation Admits Sony Mistakes
News for nerds writes "Following the news of Sony slashing its profit forecast due to the underperforming AV & PC divisions, Ken Kutaragi, president of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) known by the PlayStation brand, admitted he and other Sony employees have been frustrated for years with management's reluctance to introduce products like Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod, mainly because Sony had music and movie units that were worried about content rights. The PSP by SCEI is one of the first Sony products that support non-proprietary standards such as MP3 or H.264, and now SCEI considers opening up the UMD disc format employed in the PSP."
Dupe De-Dupe, De-Dupe-de-dupe-de Duuuuuuupe,
Dupe-eh de-Dupe!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
here
So when do we get to see the article /. editor admits duplicate?
This
At least they didn't screw up as big as Sega did. Sega cd, Game gear(I own one and love it), Sega Sature, and Dreamcast. Also Sony is a huge company so these few mistakes, IMO wont make it go under. Maybe if they get the soccer playing robots on the market sooner it wil make up for these mistakes :P
CmdrTaco better look out... Slashdot has a new dupe king in the making.
I think it's exemplary that Mr Yamashita decided that the PSP needed MP3 support. I think SCEIO could go a lot further by making the Playstation infrastrucure open source!
I have some great gaming ideas and would like to release them under the Playstation since emerging markets like Peru, Ghana, and Tuvalu still have the original PS as the main console.
Which is nice.
This is an example of what happens when companies turn into huge conglomerates. Eventually, you have competing interest and a piece of the business loses a major opporuntiy to grow further due to anoth business unit. Although I am not a proponent of government breaking up companies, I must say there are times it is actually good for the companies.
The one where Sony admitted the mp3 error was regarding their digital music players such as the minidiscs or hard-drive based. This is why their latest hdd players (and future) supports mp3 playback and maybe other formats that are more "universal" than lets say ATRAC.
This article mentions the UMD format to be opened
"We have already proposed UMD disc media as an open standard for everyone," he says. "The game profile will be unique for PlayStation Portable but movie and music should be a common application for everyone."
I blame the scape-goats
... I'm sure I'll enjoy the comments as much this time around.
Thanks for reposting.
Broken Sony junk:
Walkman.
PS.
PS One
PS 2.
Clie (which was a present for my brother).
Surround amp.
None of which was abused. I'll reconsider buying things from them when the stop making cheap shit that doesn't work. They have had, and squandered, plenty of chances from me.
Beep beep.
We've also managed to dupe this one: Sony to Standardize UMD Format
This new story dupes BOTH the mp3 error AND the UMD format.
Insightful!
here here
from what I read about japan when a japanese person describes themselves as "frustrated" with a situation what they mean is "I AM GOD DAMN FUCKING PISSED OFF AND YOU ARE GOING TO DIE!" ...
I was kind of amazed when the sony mp3 products suddenly turned up and now considering opening up the format for the drive?
Me thinks some corporate bloodletting has been going on.
The emergence of MP3 players has been built on the availability of terrabytes of stolen material being circulated. Is it in Sony's best interest to implicitly support this movement through the introduction of MP3 devices that will undoubtably be used to play, and encourag further dissemination of, pirated Sony content? I don't think it's an easy question to answer, and I can understand Sony's hesitancy.
It's not quite a dupe... the opening up of the UMD spec part has been added and I for one believe this would be good for Sony.
I did have a problem with a couple Sony devices: my Discman and a nice receiver from 3-4 years ago. Stopped working after just over a year and I do take care of my stuff.
But then again, I have a Sony 5-disc CD player and it's been working for 6-7 years with no probs.
All my other gear is JVC and Yamaha; have yet to be disappointed.
I missed the previosu story on this so this point may have been brought up already.
What about their memory sticks and the the iLink (although really 1394)? I'm sure there are others that Sony has used. They figure if you use their "standard", there is a chance for lockin and you will buy or licence their other products as well. Their digital cameras could easy be designed to work with CF, SM, XD, or SD etc but they force you to use their sticks (which are just as expensive as XD) because they can. Playing the lockin business model is catch 22 though, you need the market share to achieve effective lockin and lockin helps maintain and grow market share. Obviously their music formats never made it to critical mass but it was not a complete failure either as it did stay around for quite a few years. I wonder if the memory sticks will suffer the same fate in the future.
Dupe or not, I didn't comment last week so....
... no go. The worst thing is, is that Real Player was the easiest sofrware to use to update the MiniDisc player. If it weren't for RP, I probably wouldn't have used it (and taken it back). RP update servers seem to be down now, so I can't get the drivers for it.
I have a NetMD Minidisc player. I can apprecaite that Sony wants to enforce copyright, etc for its music units. As far as the box advertised 2 years ago, their OpenMG or SonicStage software was supposed to be really easy to use. So I bought a MiniDisc player. Having a RIO PMP 300 previsously, it was an improvment in capacity, quality and battery usage (it lasts much longer on a AA battery).
Having lost my original software disc (2 years ago), I've tried upgrading to newer software (SonicStage 2.0). I've tried for 20 minutes to upload songs to it -- importing music libararies
I warn everyone who thinks of buying Sony, that they use many proprietary formats (the memory stick in cameras, etc). Sony has probably lost many sales from my peers (business and friends alike) as a result. Unless they clean up their act, I cannot recommend them, good as their products might be.
Sony's desire to get royalties for their royalties, creating their own proprietary media when the market offers better alternatives is one of the reasons I own no Sony products.
When Sony announced the PSP, I was sold. A game system, portable video player, music player, PDA...the works. It seemed great. Then they announced I'd pretty much have to buy the shit I already own on their proprietary bullshit UMD format. If I already bought "Lost in Translation" on DVD and want to watch it on the road, I'm not going to drop another $15 for a UMD version.
Sony deserves to be bled dry, because maybe they'll realize it's better to sell much more products with less exclusivity than half as many and try and bilk every penny you can.
Hey /. editors. Do the PR thing and tell everyone it's not a dupe, It's the 'Best Of'. The Beatles and Elvis have been getting away with it for decades. Hell, that shithole of a network G4Techtv calls it 'retro'.
"Plans are for fools! Oglethorpe, the plutonian (Aqua Teen Hunger Force)
It's so obvious. it's ridiculous!
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
Console makers make the majority of their money on licensing. If they open up the source of the unit, they don't get paid. Don't be a fucking moron...
if i still had it all i would have a very large pile of Sony broken bits. quite a few walkmen including Sony Sports and Outback models, minidisc players, car stereos.... etc.
my brother told me he heard a saying "Sony makes the best equipment, as long as it has no moving parts". i could agree with that. their TVs and computer monitors are great. well, i never looked at the LCD/plasma displays too much but i know the CRT devices are among the best. the LCD/plasmas *look* darn good to me.
in addition to stuff i personally own, i have seen more than my share of Sony stuff at the college radio station i volunteer at. i do engineering work, so i deal with the broken gear. we never buy Sony if it's possible. non-commercial college radio is a pretty hostile enviroment. we have unpaid college students that do not take great care of stuff, and we are in a dusty basement area...... but the Sony gear just does not hold up like Technics or Tascam.
We had Technics SP-20 turntables that were at least 20+ years old, older than most all of our DJs. true workhorses, they lasted that long being used up to 24 hours a day 7 days a week 365 days a year. we sometimes have dead air slots, but they run at least 20 hours a day. that's damn impressive. they all spun 100% when they were pulled (still locked into perfect pitch). we replaced them in the last few years with Technics 1200s because we could no longer buy the toner arm replacement parts (they have not been available for at least 15+ years). the toner arms would get loose and molested from constant use, or things being dropped on them. we still today use the turntables alot, and the 1200 is the (club type) DJ standard. many DJs will lug their 1200s to shows including throwing them in the luggage compartment of an airplane. compare that to the CD players or minidisc decks we replace every 2 or 3 years.
because of our needs we often have very limited choices in products like CD players..... we still sometimes buy Sony ones and they always look nice, but they just don't hold up. we had ones right out of the box that were crappy (all 4 of them). they were looked at by the seller and even sent back to Sony. Tray loading players had a habit of eating CDs and in the process would put two deep grooves in the disc. ugh. we ended up modifying the players ourselves.
While it's all well and good to admit the mistakes, the proof will actually be if they actually CHANGE to avoid these mistakes in the future. I hope they do.
"Plans are for fools! Oglethorpe, the plutonian (Aqua Teen Hunger Force)
I'll take the hit to my Karma.
:(
Johnny Carson is dead.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6504289/
RIP
AC
You just confirmed the stupidity of every Steeler fan. It's "Hear, hear", not "here, here".
...
And the Steelers can't hold a candle to Green Bay. How many Superbowls (not to mention championships) have the Steelers won in the last 25 years? I thought so
...wouldn't that scare away companies that like to make games with trade secrets? Would it be a good thing if it means less games for PSP?
I'm sure that's why they are still only considering it as opposed to doing it right away. They seem to love making money whenever a game/song/movie is successful, I'm sure, so when they see the relative freedom of MP3's/PC games/etc., they don't want their cut of success to dry up.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
The PS2 was the first console to run Linux "out of the box". Sony opened the PS2 a little with PS2 Linux, an open Linux distro that runs on PS2 HW. It was apparently a strategy by Sony to get official game developers started on something programmable, but cheaper than the dedicated HW dev system. But it's in a cage: it doesn't run on the actual HW (instead, a kind of HAL that emulates the HW on the HW itself), and the OS must boot on a firmly DRM'ed DVD. And Sony prohibits the distribution of PS2L SW (apps, drivers, etc) on discs, so a LiveCD that boots into your wicked port of NetHack could never compete with their latest NBA licensed blockbuster. Maybe now that they're opening the UMD, they'll open the Magic Gate to Linux on PS{2,3}. That could put cheap, powerful, consumer-stable grade multimedia HW (subsidized by gamers) under the control of Linux programmers, who could target a market of millions of potentially Interneted consoles. That would really steal the thunder (and developers, developers, developers, developers) from Xbox - go, Sony, go!
--
make install -not war
The first Playstation I ever bought was DOA. The only reason I have a PS2 is the games, obviously, but I'm always waiting for a "disc read error" to surface.
SNACKS ARE AWESOME
While my PS2 makes a regular habit of breaking, and my friend's PS1 had a motor that was at times.. angry, I have to vouch for the quality of their Walkman. And I mean the CD-playing kind, the kind that were called Discman up until a few years ago, when the original Walkman was no longer relevant. I got one three years ago, and that thing has taken all kinds of abuse. It's been dropped on concrete so many times that the hold switch is smashed in (but still works!), and recently it fell out of my pocket while I was shoveling and was literally full of snow. A half hour of shaking and blow-drying later, the thing was as good as new. I hate to defend Sony, I really do. But once in a while, they do some good stuff.
Sony has made more than one mistake in the past. I know several people who really could afford anything who bought basically Sony only but will never buy Sony for the forseeable future.
The reasons are various. First of all, thanks to Sony Media lots of their stuff is crippled, Region Codes which are hardest to remove from any manufacturer, no decent two way transport of media files in almost any of their devices. The obscure Atrac conversion in their MP3 players, lousy quality of their PCs and add to that at least here in Europe one of the worst customer services ever in existence, combined with repair costs which are higher than a new device from another company, and you can see why Sony has a bigger problem than they admit on their hands.
Also add to that that their retailers are totally frustrated because, they were taken away the support business (which was done in the past by the retailers themselves in many cases) and the profit margins even of the high end devices are close to zero, driving the smaller shops away from Sony.
The Support problem started when Sony centralized all support, before Sony had this kind of luxury structure Apple still has with small shops who do all the small stuff and have good personal, Sony wanted it big and basically drove those shops away trying to cash in on a centralized structure. Add to that constant problems caused by Sony media which resulted in catastrophicly castrated devices and lots of problems which often caused Sony hardware to fail shortly after the warranty expired and you have a huge mess on its hand.
The playstation basically saved the Sony hardware division without it this division would have made huge losses already. Sony really has a problem, but it is far bigger than only a few mp3 player models which they have missed out.
With Sony PC and AV sales slumping, and their movies selling more than ever, with their music failing less badly than much of their (sparse) competition, Sony will surely move towards free/cheap HW, subsidized by draconian DRM on their media products. They might be opening some of their HW and formats, but only to universalize their platforms, so more of their media can be controlled.
--
make install -not war
Now let's see if they learn from it.
"Do I dare disturb the universe?"
Some of Sony's stylish computers do look very nice, but then they should be as they are now more expensive than similar equipment produced by Apple (just compare the prices of their laptops and slimline monitor solutions and you will see what I mean). This says a lot about Sony's computers at the moment, yes they look nice, but they are still PCs after all, and Dell can produce something similar at a lower cost. Apple's computers not only look good, but actually work better by not using Windows. Sony have a choice, learn either from Dell or Apple, or stick to making Playstations that allow you to play games.
This is completely expectable - every time Sony electronics produces a gadget which plays a non-DRM music format (MP3 etc), someone in Sony Music starts screaming bloody murder. I know I saw a specific reference to this in an interview some time ago but it's lost to me now.
However, Sony has been producing MP3 players (walkman brand CD portables and also car stereos) for a number of years now - it's just that they are marketing them primarily as "ATRAC Walkman" which also happens to play MP3 as a side feature. The bundled crappy software produces ATRAC discs which suck large asteroids through thin straws (it has no ID3 for starters) and has no support for MP3 whatsoever. However, feed the discman with an MP3 data disc and it will play happily. The in-car stereo I have (a Sony CDX-R3300) is actually marketed as an MP3 car audio player.
until I arrived at a local electronics store and noticed a pile of returned Sony NetMD players sitting in the discount bin. Against my better judgement, I bought one and I am still sorry for doing so.
As a MiniDisc player, the unit was great will exceptional battery life and great sound quality. When I attempted to use the NetMD functions of the unit, the reason for so many returns became obvious, mainly to do with the absolutely atrocious software that is used to transfer MP3 or WMA files to the unit (as many are aware, the NetMD players convert MP3s or WMA files to Atrac before uploading to the MD player). It took nothing less than a miracle to find a way around the nearly useless software after Googling for a while, but I did. If I hadn't found the Simpleburner/Nero work-around to Sonicstage, I would have returned the unit just like the other dozen players sitting in the return bin.
From my own experiences, I think simple economics and word of mouth had the most impact on Sony's decision. After all, if your biggest competitor and market leader, Ipod, is not forcing MP3 copy restrictions on their player, how do you expect your model to work?
Timothy of Slashdot Admits Duping Mistake...
Wasn't that what killed the Indrema Linux based video game console? They couldn't get any money from potential licenses and investors to finish the thing, and went bankrupt.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Sony did not learn their lesson from the Betamax, now did they? They repeated the mistake with the 8MM video tape machines. Also the Laser Discs, I think.
Rather than have a closed standard, use an opened one that other companies share, but make your product better quality and features.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Must be a record! (The other was regarding the Cell)
As the head of SCE, damn right he thinks letting the iPod become number 1 is a mistake. That's what happens when you have a conglomerate.
IMO, Sony is the only other company that can topple the iPod because it has the money to design stylish electronics.
It's always easy to take pot shots as losers after the game is over. But in this case, you are wrong and just demonstrating your ignorance of standards and what open means.
In the 80's when Betamax and VHS were contending for the home VCR market and home Camcorders, neither Sony nor JVC (who licensed VHS) were obvious losers or winners. And nothing about VHS was open; it was just as much of a proprietary and licensed technology as Betamax was.
And in fact, JVC's VHS was only a success in the consumer market, and was inferior in some respects. Betamax formats designed for prosumer and professional markets took over (and still own) the high end. JVC's ridiculous VHS-C format was taken over by Sony's 8mm format, which was a much more appropriate format for camcorders (flying erase heads, smaller transport, etc) until much later when DV came out.
Sony didn't invent LaserDisc, but it was also far ahead of the crappy VHS standard, and the only game in town prior to DVD.
There are not and will very likely never be open manufacturing standards for tape and disk transports. If you are thinking about published and interoperable formats for media, well that is a different discussion.
Sony's huge mistake has been thinking that they matter enough to make all their memory parts proprietary and DRMed to death.
From MagicGate/MemoryStick to ATRAC formatted audio, Sony arrogance has lead them into becoming obsolete. If everything you own is Sony, it isn't as big of a problem, but increasingly people want things from different vendors to work together, and the more you try to use Sony consumer gear with other stuff, the more annoying Sony's lock-in crap becomes, and the less of it you want to deal with.
Beta. You are right, Beta was an untter failure in the consumer world. However, Sony wasn't unjustified in thinking it might work. The reason is, Beta (in the case Betacam, not Betamax) is the shit, the reference in the pro world. To this day, the standard to which everything gets compared is Betacam SP. Whenever a new format comes out, you always hear the pros talk about how it compares to Betacam. That's actually why everyone fell in lvoe with DV, because it is as good as Betacam SP (both in subjective quality and objective measurements) but is digital.
So given their success in the pro world, they weren't unjustified in thinking their consumer format would be a winner too. Their critical mistake, which is the same as the rest, is that you have to open it up in the consumer world. In the pro realm, things are expensive enough and specialized enough that single vendor, proprietary solutions will work. It's expected even. You can afford to have multiple incompatible standards. It's not a problem to have a Betacam deck, a MII deck, an SHVS deck, etc all in the same facility.
That kind of shit doesn't work at home. 99.9% of people aren't going to go and buy a bunch of different equipment so they can get everything they want. They are going to buy the one that gives them the most access and stick with it. Also, they are going to be drawn to the cheaper solution. Well, when you are the only kid in town, things will be more expenisve. They don't necissarly have to be, they just are because of how companies work.
However, at least in the case of Beta, I have to give Sony some credit. They had reason to believe they could get the consumer world to love their standard as they pros already loved it. Even MD I have to give them credit on. You could do custom, portable, digital music before MP3 players were on the scene. They really just need to learn to open and license their technologies. They often aren't bad technologies, but being proprietary isn't going to work.
From Merriam Webster Dictionary
Main Entry: steal
intransitive senses
1 : to take the property of another wrongfully and especially as an habitual or regular practice
2 : to come or go secretly, unobtrusively, gradually, or unexpectedly
3 : to steal or attempt to steal a base
transitive senses
1 a : to take or appropriate without right or leave and with intent to keep or make use of wrongfully b : to take away by force or unjust means c : to take surreptitiously or without permission d : to appropriate to oneself or beyond one's proper share : make oneself the focus of
2 a : to move, convey, or introduce secretly : SMUGGLE b : to accomplish in a concealed or unobserved manner
3 a : to seize, gain, or win by trickery, skill, or daring b of a base runner : to reach (a base) safely solely by running and usually catching the opposing team off guard
By unlawfully disseminating Sony content you have stolen it. You have also taken away, in that they don't have it anymore, their rightful ability to control it's distribtion.
To quote Milk Chan, "You dumbass!"
It's a very dark ride.
I guess I shouldn't have assumed it, because that is part of what sony had to consider. If in '98 they would have come out with a MP3man I think it definately would have increased piracy. At this point probably not.
By releasing a MP3 player they may also weaken any legal argument against filesharing networks they may try to sue. Just something to consider.
May I suggest you read the definition of property some time?
property
1.
1. Something owned; a possession.
2. A piece of real estate: has a swimming pool on the property.
3. Something tangible to which its owner has legal title.
4. Possessions considered as a group.
2. The right of ownership; title.
3. An article, except costumes and scenery, that appears on the stage or on screen during a dramatic performance.
4.
1. A characteristic trait or peculiarity, especially one serving to define or describe its possessor.
2. A characteristic attribute possessed by all members of a class. See Synonyms at quality.
5. A special capability or power; a virtue: the chemical properties of a metal.
Definition of steal:
From Merriam-Webster dictionary
Main Entry: steal
intransitive senses
1 : to take the property of another wrongfully and especially as an habitual or regular practice
2 : to come or go secretly, unobtrusively, gradually, or unexpectedly
3 : to steal or attempt to steal a base
transitive senses
1 a : to take or appropriate without right or leave and with intent to keep or make use of wrongfully b : to take away by force or unjust means c : to take surreptitiously or without permission d : to appropriate to oneself or beyond one's proper share : make oneself the focus of
2 a : to move, convey, or introduce secretly : SMUGGLE b : to accomplish in a concealed or unobserved manner
3 a : to seize, gain, or win by trickery, skill, or daring b of a base runner : to reach (a base) safely solely by running and usually catching the opposing team off guard
Nowhere in the definition do I see the criterion of "and you can't use it". Nor does "economic harm" appear. You are correct, words do mean things. It appears finding out what rather common words like "steal" mean would be a fruitful exercise for you.
Furthermore, even using your own personal standard of denied use, when material is copied to file sharing networks Sony can no longer exercise its right to control distribution.
Read it many times, and it applies perfectly to the subject matter of the discussion.
1. Something owned; a possession.
2. The right of ownership; title.
Those two in paticular seem quite relevant. What's your point?
Nobody owns information. Neither copyright nor patents give any person or entity ownership of anything. What you get is a monopolistic privilege to produce or make copies of something.
The interesting word here is take/appropriate. When you copy something, you COPY something. We have a separate word for copying, because it simply isnt the same as taking. However much people try to argue about it, the important distinction is in the action you perform, and copying IS NOT the same as taking.
Also, "intellectual property" is not property, even though "property" is in the name. Nobody owns "IP", you only get privileges to copy or make/sell things.
And you cannot take away their ability to control distribution any more than they already have by selling the stuff. The legal right will always stay with the patent/copyright holder, and you cannot steal that right. Everything can be copied as long as there is access to it. It is illegal to copy copyrighted material in most cases, but as long as the material is sold to one person, the holder loses the ability to control (illegal) distribution.
My penis is big ... in Japan!
:-O
It works!
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
I wish that would mean there wouldn't be regional lockouts on the Playstation 3. But I doubt it.
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
What you get [with a copyright on a work or a patent on an invention] is a monopolistic privilege to produce or make copies of something.
What you get with a title to a piece of land is a monopolistic privilege to occupy the land. So is real estate not property?
I would have bought a NetMD player without hesitation if it had played MP3s and if one could transfer files without reencoding. Even if Ipods had been as cheap.
So is Sony giving up on MD? Or am I finally going to get my MP3 MD player? (Make it with a screen the size of current HD Mp3 players, or Rio's MP3 CD players, and I'll buy two.)
re.. re.. Post!
Moderators: Please note that "bonch" is a known fanatical psycophant whose obnoxious offtopic rants are legend here on Slashdot. It doesn't matter what the topic is, he'll find a way to scrape in some pointless Microsoft shilling. While nobody expects us to love Microsoft in any way, his particularly tepid style of calling anyone he replies to "troll" or "liar" because he happens to disagree with whatever they're saying is well documented and should not be rewarded. If anything, bonch is the type of person that should not be part of the open source/free software community. He is an anathema to all that is good about free software.
/. subscriber, I invite you to look through some of his posting history. I guarantee that you'll be hard pressed to find someone that is more "out there" than bonch. You'll also probably notice he's got quite an AC following. Don't just read his posts, make sure you go through the replies.
I'm posting this so that you (the moderator) have some context to consider bonch and not mod him up whenever he posts his filler preformatted rants about installing Windows or whatever that unfortunately get him karma every single time and allow him to continue posting his trademark toxic crap (read on) day in and day out. You may consider this a troll - I consider it community service. And I ain't kidding.
If you're a
For example, in this recent post bonch not only calls the OP a troll but attempts to "tell it like it is" while making some vague argument about "MS". Yes, if you're confused, you're not alone. The reply (modded +0) proceeds to simply destroy his bogus argument. You will notice he did not reply. This is what some people call "drive-by advocacy". A sort of I'll just leave you with my thoughts here and move on to the next flamebait kind of deal. In fact, he almost never replies because he knows that his fanatical arguments simply do not hold up to any sort of discussion. It's not that he's chosen the wrong cause - he's just going at it in a completely wrong way.
More? Just read though this post and the subsequent replies. I guess this stands on its own.
More? Bad spelling in astounding conspiracy theories, more offtopic FUD and uninformed "I'm right, look at me" rants, promptly proven wrong. Worse even, bonch wants to be Bill Gates, apparently (that first one is a winner). I mean, really. You think?
FUD, FUD, FUD, FUD, offtopic FUD, and more FUD. This guy is like the Monty Python SPAM skit, but with FUD and more FUD instead of canned meat. Amazed yet? Don't forget that KDE and Gnome make you dumb, and it's all a Slashdot conspiracy. How low do you want to go? Maybe as low as this?
The infamous Slashdot Front Page Troll? Nuclear fireballs? It goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on (troll?). Like the energizer bunny. Or take these two, which stretch the definition of weird.
It's up to you. We can get rid of this guy and make Slashdot a better place. I don't know about you, but I'd rather take the trolls and crapflooders over people like "bonch" any day. And I sure as hell don't want to be categorized along with him. This is not how you advocate free software, period.
is that the only example? Seems the other vertically integrated Japanese (Toyota, Honda...) are doing quite well.
In a counter example, the Toyota Prius is an entirely vertically integrated design and manufactured car. It's selling like hotcakes (no inventory leftover and long waiting lists) and has allowed Toyota to cut costs with larger profit margins; already 5 years ahead of any auto maker except for Honda.
Mitsubishi is the "only" unprofitable Japanese car maker.
Now let's take Sony. All the Playstations have been designed, built, and supplied in-house (including future PS3 fab factories) which has allowed Sony to make quite-a-bit of profit, dominate the console market, and practically propping up the earnings for entertainment division.
If you compare this to stocks, it's much like asset allocation where you spread out your risks so any one area doing badly doesn't hurt the overall.
I'm not sure where the "big vertical company is bad" point is, but I can appreciate the point that sticking your head in a hole in the ground with proprietary technology is stupid.
Sony has always made junk, they've just make a little better junk than everyone else. Essentially they provide a product that is 10%-20% better sounding or better looking or better to use than a competitor yet the cost of components or quality is the same or lower. After a while (or right away) the thing just falls apart. I guess it's a tough trade off. Would you rather a product that performs like crap but lasts a long time, or something that works well and lasts a little? Sony is the latter.
but I would assume that you also get ownership to the land when you buy something.
What is ownership of anything other than the right to exclude others from using said thing?
There is nowhere in patent or copyright law anything about ownership.
Then why is chapter 2 of U.S. copyright law entitled "Copyright Ownership and Transfer"?
The basic rule is that ideas and thoughts cannot be owned.
Thoughts aren't copyrighted until fixed in a tangible medium. Even then, ideas aren't subject to copyright; only expressions are. Patents, on the other hand, are far from ideal thanks to an underfunded USPTO.
"Intellectual property" is not a scarce resource.
Works of authorship and recent inventions are scarce resources in all WTO member states, but only because the officials elected before you were born say they are.
I bought an MD player and deck in 97 or 98. At the time it was fabulous, at least as a direct replacement of cassette tape. If Sony would have paid attention and done the right thing, MD players could have easily been ubiquitous and maybe even have stopped the iPod (sorry, a little hyperbole to keep you reading).
Their optical disc format held 230MB way back then, even the first MP3 players had 64 and sometimes only 32MB of fixed flash. Getting nearly 4x storage on a single MD for MP3s, $5 media and -- the part Sony never did get right -- MP3 playback and computer connectivity would have been huge back then. There was a Palm/MD player someone put together as a concept on the MD user web site even back then that suggested what they could have done.
Sure, you can get 1GB flash cards now, but back then you couldn't, and Sony would have had such a huge market that all they would to have done was just add flash sockets (and not MemoryStick, another mistake).
As it was they refused MP3 and are now just a dusty relic on my shelf I don't know what to do with.
That must be a record.
You know it's nice to have so many links in a story to provide context and background but it gets a little tough to figure out which link is the key one the story is about.
Maybe we should make it a practice that when you put a lot of links in a story you make the key link boldfaced.
Insert witty sig here.
JVC was not the only company that made VHS players, and they got the MPAA to release movies on the VHS format more than the Betamax format. JVC licensed the VHS standard to others, something that got the VHS standard used over Betamax.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Fraid not. Roglisburgen really sucks.
Opening up UMD has no value other than allowing PCs to write to UMD-Rs or UMD-RWs for their PSPs. Nobody is going to be interested in a 1.8GB format like this when DVD writers have just gone dual-layer (8.5GB) and blu-ray is around the corner.
It's just another oddball optical format. If they start selling movies in this format it's not going to take off. How many people are going to want to buy movies in two formats just so they can play them on their PSP? They are going to just want to rip their DVDs to DIVX and burn UMDs for their PSP.
In fact, they now have these "Mini-DVDs" with kids movies coming out for miniature portable DVD players like the Cyberhome CH-MDP2500.
The world does not need any more optical formats for prerecorded movies (or music for that matter).
The buttons, base booster & LCD displays all cease working over time.
Sony Professional make top gear but their consumer stuff is crap.
just because you can copy money, and print your own, does that make it okay?
Notice how Sony's latest digital cameras, starting with the F828, have both MemoryStick and CompactFlash slots that can even harbor microdrives.
In the same product line, now the RAW files are more accessible.
Estamos como estamos porquè somos como somos.
Laser discs were a product of Pioneer, not Sony. Cost was a huge factor in their failure in America. The cheapest you could usually find new laser discs for was about $30 a disc. They were also quite large, which probably didn't help. Stories of bit rot just added to the negativity.
Making DVDs cheaper played a huge role in their ultimate success. The smaller size helped, but I suspect if DVDs were $30 or more a disc, most consumers would have passed on this format as well.
Not selling enough? Lower the damn price.. *sniff sniff* I smell the ill fated death of the Atari Lynx again. It's overpriced stench fills the room. Funny..
I really don't understand why anyone can have anything but complete and total apathy towards sporting events like these.
If Pittsburgh wins, it profits me nothing. If they lose, it profits me nothing.
However, if you have money riding on the outcome, THEN I understand why you'd be so interested.
The words "take" or "appropriate" imply that "and you can't use it". If I take something from you, you can't use it. If I appropriate something of yours, you can't use it.
In filesharing, you don't "take" or "appropriate" ANYTHING! You make a COPY. If you had a television set and I used some kind of device to make an exact replica of that television set, would I have "taken" your television? The correct answer is NO.
Sony's hardware is all about locking up the user. Region codes on games are silly, except for the fact that they force Japanese consumers to pay roughly $80 for a game that sells for $50 in the US. But, get real, how many people are going to learn a foreign language fluently in order to save $30 on a video game?
You buy products from some consumer electronics vendors, and you have freedom to mess with them and use them in new ways. With Sony, you pay good money to be put in a cage.
Note to Sony: "I'm sorry, but..." may sound very polite in Japanese, but it still means "No." Consumers who are aware will not willingly buy from a vendor who tells them "no" about everything, the way Sony does. I have a PS2--bought before I was aware--and I would love to have one of the spiffy new slim ones, but I am not giving you any more money for stuff that is crippled with region codes. When the PS3 comes out, it may be great...but if it has region codes, you have already lost at least one sale.