Re: [NTLK] [OT] New Sony eReader PRS-600: Newton/Kindle Killer?

Hmmm...

My beef with Sony goes back to the fiasco that was MiniDisc - what
could have been an excellent format and replacement for compact
cassettes sunk by marketing & protection driven paranoia, thusly ...

OK, you can record your own original music. But don't try copying it
digitally, because although it's your own composition we use SCMS so we
think you're a copyright cheat.
- then -
OK, you can get music on to a MiniDisc with a computer, but not those
nasty MP3 things, and no way are you getting your music back off of a
MiniDisc.
- then -
OK, you can put those nasty MP3 things onto a MiniDisc - but we'll
torture you with the horror that is SonicStage to do it. And you still
can't get them back off.
- then -
OK, you can put those nasty MP3 things on and we'll play them natively
- but only if you use an even more horrible version of SonicStage, and
only with certain models of recorder, and definitely *not* with a Mac !
- then -
OK, we'll let you use some truly godawful software to get your music
onto a MiniDisc with a Mac. But only with certain (different) models of
MiniDisc recorder, and you still can't get your music back off again.
- then -
OK, we'll let you get your music back off again, but only with certain
(different *again*) models of recorder.

The whole sorry story took something like 11 years to get from the
first point on the list to the last=2
0(not to mention the money spent on
buying the next model along), and it was pretty much all utterly
unnecessary. Technologically there was no reason for most of the
stupid, petty and downright annoying roadblocks Sony seemed determined
to put in the way of people simply using their products. All they did
was make consumers (who in some cases had actually bought MiniDisc
recorders, then discovered the restrictions and took the product back
to the store and exchanged it for an MP3 player/recorder) ditch the
format.

That's *my* Sony horror story... with the array of MiniDisc recorders
I've got, I could almost do a version of "Deck of Cards" with them... !

- Tony

-----Original Message-----
From: Ed Kummel <tech_ed@yahoo.com>
To: newtontalk@newtontalk.net
Sent: Wed, Sep 2, 2009 11:21 pm
Subject: Re: [NTLK] [OT] New Sony eReader PRS-600: Newton/Kindle Killer?

Yeah...but we all need to remember what kind of citizen Sony is. I have
a long
memory and as such do not forgive Sony their indiscretions so readily.
And you
don't really need to go back very far either...One thing we should
NEVER forget
is Sony's treatment of their customers as criminals and illegally
spying on
people and their misuse of the public trust. Add into that, the
hundreds of
dollars of support calls their customers had to endure to fix what
never should
have occurred in the first place! Then there is Sony's ill
egal use of a
licensed
icon for an illegal product! I am, of course, talking about Sony's Root
Kit
fiasco. I personally had to deal with this. My family (mom, sister and
wife)
were all *infected* by this mess that Sony had propagated and did
little to
nothing to compensate me for my hours of trying to discover what the
problem was
and then when I finally found the problem, the hours necessary to
repair the
Sony inflicted torture! I had
  already dispised Sony for their proprietary hardware/software use, so
this root
kit of Sony's did little to make me hate them further. As such, I have
made it
my *PERSONAL MISSION* to make sure that the internet does not forget
what kind
of citizen Sony is. And to make their purchasing decisions based on the
knowledge that Sony does not care about their customers, because you
are first
and foremost a criminal that they need to protect themselves from and
that you
have no recourse but to comply with Sony's demands (Sony is one of the
major
backers of the RIAA along with the other major record lables).
So please, bear in mind, that when you purchase a Sony product, you are
buying
into a closed architecture that leads only to Sony and possibly being
taken
advantage of by Sony's bean counters for ways to pull even more money
out of
your pockets.
Ed
web/gadget guru
------------------------------------------------------------------------

By Richard Fe
ynman, Physicist, Nobel winner (1918-1988)

"There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number.
But it's
only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to
call
them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers."

--- On Tue, 9/1/09, Ryan Vetter <physicalconstants@yahoo.ca> wrote:

From: Ryan Vetter <physicalconstants@yahoo.ca>
Subject: Re: [NTLK] New Sony eReader PRS-600: Newton/Kindle Killer?
To: newtontalk@newtontalk.net
Date: Tuesday, September 1, 2009, 5:21 PM

<snip>

Sony really has a home run product here, and I don't say that about
much out
there.  And they surprised all of us too with the release of these new
eBook
Readers.  We all thought they were going to be coming out at the end of
the year
or even early next year.  Unfortunately, demand is so high that they
can't keep
stock.

Other than availability problems, well done Sony.

Ryan

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Received on Wed Sep 2 22:09:05 2009