Week in review: Sony strikes again

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During the panel discussion, she said Qwest "absolutely" supports House of Representatives legislation sponsored by Rep. Diana DeGette mandating data retention. Mardosz said that instead of embracing data retention legislation, Qwest was skeptical of mandates from Congress. "There is no need for it, because companies are already doing the right thing," she said.

On another front in the privacy debate, AT&T has joined the fight to keep unauthorized data brokers from obtaining and selling its customers' calling records. The company's services division filed a lawsuit to block 25 unnamed "John Doe" defendants who have allegedly pretended to be customers to gain access to account information.

AT&T said the so-called data brokers had fraudulently obtained records for some 2,500 customers. AT&T says it believes the lawsuit will help the company identify the perpetrators through e-mail addresses and Internet Protocol addresses. Once it identifies the data brokers, the company plans to seek an injunction as well as a return of profits earned from selling customer information.

Meanwhile, two AOL employees have been fired, and AOL's chief technology officer resigned after the release of Web search data from thousands of AOL members prompted widespread criticism of the company. CTO Maureen Govern "has decided to leave AOL effective immediately," AOL Chief Executive Jon Miller wrote in an e-mail to employees.

The researcher responsible for the data being posted online and the researcher's supervisor, who reported to Govern, were fired, according a source close to the matter who asked not to be identified. In a separate e-mail to AOL employees, Miller said the company would create a task force to develop new best practices on privacy and will look at how long search and other data should be saved.

Net video plays
Sony, which has struggled to piece together a winning Web strategy, is paying $65 million for video-sharing site Grouper, the eighth-largest among the companies that host user-generated videos on their Web sites.

Online video is white-hot, and analysts have predicted that several big entertainment companies would begin shopping for video services that they could offer their audiences. All the entertainment moguls are said to want to duplicate the success that Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. has had with MySpace.com.

Through the purchase, Sony has helped establish a benchmark for other companies in the space and sent industry insiders speculating wildly about what market leader YouTube may be worth.

Sony's acquisition of Grouper, which owns less than 1 percent of the online video market, begs a rather obvious question about its far larger rival YouTube, which has 43 percent of the market: If a company were to buy YouTube tomorrow, what would it have to pay?

Amid the home videos of dancing teens and sporting events on YouTube, a well-crafted, 9-minute video makes a direct appeal to Americans to oust the Bush administration.

"People of America, we wish to share with you our thoughts on the events we experienced," says the narrator of "Iraq--the truth?" The narrator claims to represent those opposing the United States in Iraq. "Despite the madness we have endured, we see no harm in presenting you with the criminal nature of your newly elected emperor."

It's impossible to say for certain who created the video, but it's no doubt part of a growing and surprising trend at video-sharing sites. The democratization of online video through sites such as YouTube, Metacafe and Ogrish.com is allowing combatants on all sides of the ideological battlefield to make their version of events public.

Also of note
Microsoft released an updated version of an Internet Explorer patch to fix a serious security flaw introduced by the original version...Networking equipment maker Cisco Systems is spending $92 million to buy a small software start-up called Arroyo Video Solutions to ready itself for the new age of on-demand TV viewing...IBM made a resounding move into security by acquiring Internet Security Systems for $1.3 billion...An experimental feature planned for the German version of Wikipedia could eventually improve the quality of editing for the online encyclopedia and open its front page to public edits for the first time in years.

[Jamie_Foster]

Sony is badly managed

I remember when the SONY brand was iconic. They made the best TVs(Trinitron CRTs), the best personal stereos(the Walkman), the best Laptops(S series VAIOs were in a different league to Apple).
Basically when it came to Consumer Electronics only Matsushita(Panasonic and JVC) could match Sony quality. Sony was the Gold standard. Samsung and Lucky Goldstar were shoddy cheapo brands. This was how it was in the 1990s.
The problem for Sony is that now they also have 1. SonyBMG, 2. Sony Pictures, 3. Sony Computer Entertainment, 4. Sony Financial Holdings.
Today Sony Electronics loses money and is now left for dead by Samsung. Both in terms of components and finished goods. Sony quality is not what it was and they offer poor value for money.
The PS3 is a prime example. Instead of creating a video gaming console for the mass market, they have created almost a multimedia supercomputer with really expensive custom parts like the Cell CPU and the Bluray drive. They did this because they think people are going to crazy for Sony content and download over their 10Mbps broadband Sony Music, Sony Films, Sony video games. Obviously they encrypt this stuff with DRM - hopefully without a rootkit. Now they cut out the wholesalers and retailers and pocket all the money.
Its just like the Sony Connect debacle. They develope their own DRM, and tracks purchased from Connect only work on new Walkmans. They should have teamed up with MS and the Windows Media platform or Apple and the Fairplay Itunes platform. Connect has been a big flop and the software is almost unusable.
Howard Stringer the Bossman is way out of his depth. Today Sony is like the Titanic on course to hit a big Iceberg. Meanwhile the Captain has got a Cigar out and a bottle of the finest Whiskey.
Today those who want innovation and quality at a fair price choose Samsung.
The King is dead, long live the King.

[Andrew J Glina]

PS3

Don't forget that the PS2 was billed the same way as the PS3 is now. The PS2 has custom chips, and it has a DVD drive, which were expensive at the time. In the end, it became a console that could play movies, just like the PS3 probably will.

[Ipod Apple]

Sony Electronics loses money

www.analogstereo.com/audi_owners_manual.htm