Date: Wed, 13 Jan 2010 13:57:32 -0800
From: Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com>
To: skeptic@lists.johnshopkins.edu
Organization: Dis-
Reply-To: skeptic@lists.johnshopkins.edu
Subject: Re: Not fully thinking it through

Quoting Markus Poessel (mpoessel@aei.mpg.de):

> In fact, after writing to the list, I thought about writing to Sony,
> and  went to their webpage. After being sent to a number of other
> webpages,  none of which contained contact information for the issue I
> had (at least not in a form intelligible for me), I gave up. It's one
> way of avoiding,  criticism, I guess.

An acquaintance of mine, Scottish author Charlie Stross, put it best:

  In general Sony's engineers seem to have the free hand in designing the
  prettiest, friendliest, most well-built machines possible.  They get to
  develop advanced technology, or buy it from competitors at any price.  At
  the cutting edge of consumer electronics, their design process has the
  grace and elegance of a tea ceremony.  Their products have a soul.

  Then, at a certain point during development, the engineers take their
  slick, shiny prototype up to the thirteenth floor, and leave it on a
  massive smoked glasss table in an dark, empty conference room.  They go
  home silently, and drink sake in a melancholy their wives cannot
  understand.

  Back on the thirteenth floor, a team of crack marketeers emerges and
  starts handicapping the prototype.  They add bloatware that links to
  unyielding vaporware Web sites, disable hardware for unlocking in future
  updates, install seven gigs of designer screen saver 'introduction'
  movies.  They disable any meaningful way to use the device without buying
  into a distributed network of an occult protocol.

  Meanwhile the CEOs stalk each other in bamboo rooftop forests, their
  katanas gleaming with the blood of intra-corporate informants as they
  search to battle for supremacy.

  At home, the engineers try to forget what could have been.  At one point,
  they have drank enough sakes to allow themselves to cry a single,
  desperate tear.

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/12/why_i_dont_use_windows.html

--
Rick Moen                       "Fine.  The use of the passive-aggressive voice
rick@linuxmafia.com             is to be discouraged.  Whatever, MAN."
                                                            -- FakeAPStylebook