Sony Shrugs Off Bad Press - Still A Strong Brand 281
netbuzz writes "The Sony brand name took a beating last year over all those burning batteries and the rootkit fallout, right? Wrong, at least according to a recent survey of 2,000 adults who are apparently willing to forgive just about anything ... if you give them the right reason. Other technology companies, most anyway, also fare well in the brand survey. From the article: 'According to the survey, the Sony brand finished a gaudy ninth among the "Top 20 Winners for 2006," sandwiched comfortably between a couple of saintly American icons: Oprah and the National Football League. Moreover, the respondents see Sony climbing to No. 4 among this year's gainers, right above Amazon and eBay. Moral: Build a better PlayStation and the American consumer will forgive all else.'"
Must've been expensive... (Score:3, Funny)
What was expensive was buying the survey (Score:5, Interesting)
Very clever PR. I'd take these results with a Great Salt Lake sized grain of salt. Don't let these sleazy PR hacks brainwash you into doing their work for them.
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"Transforming brands that transcend competition is the core value that drives Landor. It is what we've done for over 60 years. Our clients come to us for many reasons. Their single commonality is their desire to change perception..."
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No brainer (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No brainer (Score:5, Insightful)
It really is that people will forgive anything, at least if there's no personal memory of pain involved. I'd be willing to bet that those whose batteries caught fire aren't going to think so fondly of the Sony brand from now on. Everyone else will just think "oh, they must have fixed it by now" and move on.
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Aside from the Sony battery recall, can you name five other recalls in the last year? Can you name two? How about one? People have short memories unless they were personally affected, and often don't consider it an issue unless the effect hurt them in some way, like the fires you mentioned. Since the number personally hurt is usually a tiny percentage, the company does
Re:No brainer (Score:5, Insightful)
Almost everybody associates the problem with Dell, not with Sony. Quite honestly, they are right to. Dell sold the batteries, and they should have tested them to see if they were faulty. They also should have designed their chargers to prevent the problem.
Almost nobody with an exploding Sony battery purchased a package that said Sony on it anywhere.
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Good point on who the perceived source of the problem is, though I don't fully agree that it is right to blame Dell. Sure they should have done better testing, but Sony produced the faulty components and distributed them to many others than just Dell.
In a
Re:No brainer (Score:4, Funny)
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I'm not saying they DIDN'T break any laws, I'm asking because I don't know, and we may never will.. getting out of business like that just because someone accuses you without you being able to defend yourself (financially)
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Just like they shut down and went out of business for a while when Nintendo sued them for breaking the law.
What Lik Sang was doing, is actually illegal. They were selling equipment that was certified for use in the european union. The counter point is that it was the same equipment as the euro
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One reason for this difference in news coverage, I think, is that the mainstream news editors don't understand tech news all that well, so they err on the side caution. After all, they don't want to get sued
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The real reason for this is that Sony is one of the biggest advertisers on the planet.
Thanks for playing though.
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Of potential PS3 owners probably about 10%-20% know that the PS3 has been released and know what it costs, and many of those are (probably) anticipating a quick price drop; if the price rem
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Frontpage news, maybe not, but I've seen both covered quite extensively (i.e. in regular articles, not just "filler" side-bar articles) in at least 2 of the larger dutch newspapers. I assume others may have covered it as well.
Geek mentality (Score:2)
Put that this way, Vaio is an overpriced laptop (so as designer clothing, Rolex and Ferrari). But, it makes the owner looks cool. It is more important than anything else. As long as the product kind of works and the price tag remains high, Sony can get away with it... According to my biased samplin
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The problems have to be something that can be sensationalized in the main stream media before they become damaging...or at least make for a good viral email warning ("Sonya Soandso had her Sony Vaio in the back seat of her car. The battery exploded, killing the three occupants." type of thing). Once the media latches on, sensationalizes it and starts damning the company responsible, then does the damage occur.
The rootkit was (is) essentially innocuous to most computer users...it was there with the rest
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"The public" is slow. The perception comes from the 80s when everyone was drooling over the Walkman and Trinitron TVs. Which really were cool products.
Sturgeon's Revelation (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the 10% who see through the BS that are worth listening to.
-Eric
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Still can't find a citation but I'm told that Ben Franklin said that 9 out of every 10 men are living suicides. Might as well be dead. Whether he said it or not I wholeheartedly agree. Most men are walking around empty. They have no convictions and if they did they'd have no courage to go with them. All they have left are anger and helplessness.
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Re:Sturgeon's Revelation (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Sturgeon's Revelation (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, but they're only half right about that.
-Eric
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But, being a political junky, I *KNOW* bullshit and spin. 90% of people really don't.
-Eric
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Short Attention Spans (Score:2)
I won't bore you with my Sony stories, you have probably heard them before.
Which company (Score:2)
I'm right there with you - in regards to Sony Music.
Sony games on the other hand is a totally separate division, who has brought us a PS3 with Linux support. Just as you remember when a company does evil I try to remember when a company does good - and realize that really large companies are made of divisions that are almost totally independent in deed and leadership.
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Yup.
My favorite are the ones bashing Sony and therefore boycotting the PS3, while bashing MicroSoft and then playing their XBox/XBox360 (especially when then include tone of righteous indignatio
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The Minidisc was an amazing piece of technology that had no competitor but thanks to piracy concerns it was 're-tooled' to the point of being useless. Without the artificial limitations imposed by SME minidisc could have cornered the flash drive market before it got off the ground.
Sony DVD players work well enough but until r
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I tried doing that but I ended up living in a shed in the Antarctica pedaling a bicycle hitched to a generator.
All they need to do is (Score:5, Funny)
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Yeah, I have to agree... but that would be a sign that Sony "gets it" and as such I don't expect that to ever happen. So I feel safe in saying that yeah, I'd probably buy that :)
Sony is not interested in your freedom. In fact they can and will do everything they can to prevent you from having any as relates to them. Which is why they're not giving you full access
Sony (Score:2, Insightful)
Otherwise (Score:2)
Yahoo! Finance [yahoo.com]
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I - have - no - SONY!!!! <rrrrip!!>
No such thing.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sad but true..
Re:No such thing.. (Score:4, Insightful)
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The canard that there's 'no such thing as bad press' gets disproven again, and again, and again, yet someone always brings out the stock line that it doesn't matter much.
I'm going to let you in on a little secret us working as marketers try to keep to ourselves. The idea of 'bad press' keeps us up at night and working long hours to prevent.
Publicity can't turn shit into gold, regardless of whether it's positive or negative.
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Try telling that to William Hung. That guy rode that shit train all the way to the bank.
And Martha Stewart seems like a bad example, because I've seen her doing everything up to and including reality shows. And Bush...well, he got re-elected somehow. I think that little line takes into account that most people just aren't actually paying attention, so as long as your name is getting drilled into their brains through som
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Martha Stewart got fired from her reality show.
You ignored Enron, Worldcom, Iraq.
Bush got re-elected by making the other guys look worse than he was. That's bad press for the Democrats (I was for it before I was against it) That's more of a point in my favor.
Sony is currently succeeding based on inertia and the fact that some of their products aren't half bad. (I love my Sony universal
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Michael Richards is that you?!
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The write-up is wrong (Score:5, Funny)
Not So Sure (Score:5, Interesting)
And then I heard Sony was using their licensing agreements to prevent such a device.
Sony just refuses to do what is best for the consumer, be it root kits, memory card interoperability, or licensing rules like this.
I can certainly say that *my* image of them has tarnished over time, and I am now seriously thinking about buying HD-DVD just to spite them.
Re:Not So Sure (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Not So Sure (Score:4, Interesting)
Sony also would not allow VHS/Beta devices.
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Why would anyone have wanted to create such a device?
Can you point to an article about someone who did? (or wanted to?)
Unlike Blu-Ray and HD-DVD where the disks are the same size, and use basically the same hardware (with a slightly different wavelength to read I think), the only difference is software for the initial Media Format (heck even the compression codecs are identical).
I could swear that VHS and Beta used different cassette formats, and thats just the beginning of the is
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I was originally planning to sit on the fence regarding the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray format war until a dual format player was released. And then I heard Sony was using their licensing agreements to prevent such a device. Sony just refuses to do what is best for the consumer, be it root kits, memory card interoperability, or licensing rules like this.
Of course they are! Do you damn Apple for not releasing OSX on PCs? Microsoft for not allowing Halo on Playstation hardware? A Ford dealer for not selling you a Nissan 350Z?
Companies exist to turn a profit based on a percieved customer need or want. Sony invested quite a lot of money into the development of Blue-Ray and is trying to recover from a gaping finacial wound brought on by that and the PS3. They would be very, very stupid to allow a dual-format player to exist this early in the game, w
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Halo not running on PS Hardware is due to licensing issues not technical issues. There are no technical issues stopping Bungie from compiling Halo for PS. Allowing Bungie to compile halo for PS would be outside the MS license agreement with them. Bungie would be foolish to not create and sell halo for PS if they could. On the other hand MS would be foolish to let them since they can license it exclusively.
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If Sony wants to create a standard, they ought to play nice. If they want a proprietary technology, they can feel free to fl
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Re:Not So Sure (Score:5, Insightful)
You're in luck. The part of Sony behind the PS3 seems to have heard your complaints.
The PS3
The group working on the PS3 have incorporated standards practically every place that made sense.
The few places they didn't:
Regarding Sony stance on Blu-Ray and their use of it in the PS3:
Yes, they decided to use an in-house developed format for the media storage. Since it WAS developed in-house I can hardly fault them for that.
Since even "poor PS3 sales" has already sold over 1 million units, thats quite a jump start on HD-DVD. Even if the system flops (which I hardly expect it to), If they ship 4-6 million units in North America in the next year, then they've probably cemented the lead for Blu-Ray over HD-DVD, unless stand-alone HD-DVD players drop in price dramatically, or the XBox360 add-on unit sells equally well.
Considering those possibilities its in Sony's best interest to hold on to the war of attrition as long as possible, since they probably can win it, with the help of the PS3.
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Re:They have a saying for that (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would you assume that Blu-Ray would prevail over HD-DVD, or if either of them will be successful at all?
There are several possible outcomes which should be considered:
There are dozens of other possible outcomes that I haven't even listed
Blu-Ray is not ensured success and a lot of its greatest strengths (like greater exclusive studio support) were gained under the assumption that the PS3 was going to be 'super successful'. Remember that most of the studios would have exclusively backed Blu-Ray when the PS3 was supposed to launch in Spring 2006, when that went away studios continued to support Blu-Ray because Sony was going to sell 2 Million PS3 systems at launch, an additional 2 Million units by the end of 2006 and have a total of 6 Million systems sold by March 1st 2007.
Hypothetically speaking, in March Sony may only have sold 3 Million PS3 systems worldwide and Microsoft could announce the Core XBox 360 being discontinued, the Bundle being priced at $300 and a HD-DVD compatible XBox 360 for $400.
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Ah, is it time for paid advertisement shills already?
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I think the PS3 will fail and take Blu_ray with it.
Yeah, right. (Score:4, Informative)
"... reduced headcount by 10,000 ahead of schedule. It is also on track with factory closures, asset disposals and winnowing its product line-up
It's good to read that things are going so well.
Oh? (Score:5, Funny)
They didn't even have to do that, apparently!
*Ducks.*
Marketing Lesson #1 (Score:4, Insightful)
It takes a whole lot to piss off a customer. DRM and broken batteries certainly isn't close enough. This is why Marketeers get all hot and sweaty about being the first brand that people think of. You can abuse your customers and they keep coming back for more. Lesser brand consumers generally won't tollerate the abuse and switch to sony and still get abused, but since it's "sony" they take it.
This one reason why Apple's switching campaign while noble and a general good for all who switch from Windows is so slow. It's why consumers of all kinds who switch to Linux won't switch because windows has some problems. They'll switch because of an application they can't get on windows. Given the way Microsoft is tightening the DRM and market segmenting nooses, most consumers will simply tollerate the abuse.
Lesson #1: Be #1 in the hearts and minds
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I'm a marketeer.
You can be one too.
Cause saving our brand is the thing to do.
Rootkits and DRM are not the way.
Here's what the Open Market has to say!
The POWER is OURS(tm)
o/~
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Okay now look. I have two points to make. The lesser one is that OSX is not necessarily a general good for all who switch from Windows. I use both daily, side by side, I use them both all day, and I am ordering software for the PC so I don't have to use the stupid fucking MacOS any more. It is horribly inconsistent, it is not very reliable (without doing anything but running some stan
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Image only can sell lots (Score:3, Insightful)
When you go into an electronics store and notice that Sony televisions are placed in their own private sections aways from the others.
When you go into a video game store and notice that the PlayStation brands are located at the front of the store and the rest are in small corners or at the back, behind the PS3 advertisements that are hanging on the ceiling.
When you go into a large retailer and notice that PlayStation games take twice the amount of shelf space for the same amount of games available than it's competitors.
Those are the signs that say that Sony "dictates" to some retailers how to put them in a positive way and how they "manipulate" their own image.
Here's Mr. Jow average's reasoning:
The product in front of my eyes in the diamond incrusted mahogany display that cost 1000$ has GOT to be better than the one in the back of the store, on the lower metallic cheap shelf with dust all over it that is priced at 500$. I don't need to do research, it's fairly obvious...
Yep - only techies really bash Sony.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The "techies" have been complaining about them and their proprietary, incompatible product releases since at least the era of the Sony "minidisc" format. But the public doesn't really care. If a Sony product turns out to be a "dud", it sort of fades away into non-existence, and their more successful products are still all over the store shelves, regularly recommended by magazine reviewers, store salespeople, and satisfied consumers.
"Techies" had nothing good to say about Sony's proprietary "memory stick" technology either. Yet I bought one of their camcorders (a TRV-730) which has proven to be an excellent buy as the years have passed, and it uses a memory stick for the still photo feature in it. Truthfully, when it was new, I preferred the physical format of the memory stick to the alternatives. The "SD" format is pretty darn similar in thickness, weight, and overall size
They're also a major motion picture studio, releasing quite a few films the public wants to watch and purchase, and some of the slimmer, ultraportable Sony Vaio laptops are among the "best in class". Of course, the PS2 wasn't exactly a marketing failure either - and I maintain that the PS3 has plenty of time to enjoy a good success too, if the right game titles start coming out for it and the price comes down a bit. (And why wouldn't it? PS2 prices had several significant drops over the years.)
What? (Score:2)
A more powerful playstation, yes. Better? Eh....that remains to be seen.
immune to democracy (Score:4, Insightful)
I've suggested several times in the past that it appears that democracy (as well as commercial democracy, voting with your dollars) breaks down around 10e6 to 10e8 scales. Once a governed population reaches this size, it can no longer assume that reasoned debate will be able to sway casual opinion at all. Once a customer marketplace reaches that size, no boycotts are effective and bad products don't change anything in the general perception, since so few people actually inform themselves. A politician or a company would have to be caught red-handed burying razorblades in the babyfood before the mass public will even notice and associate badness with the politician or company in question.
Blind fealty to parties and brands just compound this situation. A politician who is caught shredding the constitution is forgiven merely because they are in the favored party, as if that were salient. A technologically dangerous product is forgiven merely because the company spends a ton of cash on those "lifestyle" branding ads that don't even talk about their product anymore, completely contrary to logic.
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Any company that used Joe Satriani music ... (Score:3, Funny)
So to summarize.... (Score:2)
It's a Japanese view-- and it will hurt them badly (Score:5, Interesting)
And for good reasons:
* They've been hurt badly in every market they have; viz the iPod, Wii, XBox, and consumer electronics entertainment markets
* They've shown little respect for media consumers, viz the installable rootkit, and the HDDVD wars
* They've shown little innovation-- a former hallmark
* Their PCs break, they have rotten warranties, and they're not designed for real-world mobility; worse, they're anti-FOSS and have no formal Linux support mechanisms worth mentioning
The ultimate problem: their value proposition used to be high-- and priced high, but no longer leads the markets they're in-- they're followers now. They've had their lunch eaten by lots of astute competitors.
Dare I say it? Ok: they've jumped the shark.... sadly.
Re:It's a Japanese view-- and it will hurt them ba (Score:2)
I think the Linux support is pretty irrelevant but one thing I have noticed is that consumers in this country (the US that is) will not stand for the short product lifetimes of the more expensive Sony products. Sony has pretty much the smallest window of support for all of their systems and they typically do not release drivers for operating systems which come out during their window of support, let alone after it. I had an older Vaio with a neomagic graphics chipset for which the manufacturer had actually
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We totally agree.... the battery warranty expired in 90 days-- for a battery that cost 4x what a 108a/12v car battery costs.
Then, one of our notebooks had an exploding Sony battery in it. It melted, but the effect was noxious. Egads. I once waited eagerly for each of their new items. Now, they're easy to skirt on the aisles of the big-box retailers. Foo.
Re:It's a Japanese view-- and it will hurt them ba (Score:2)
Maybe I'm wrong, but I have for a while wondered if part of the problem was that the Japanese don't run Sony anymore and basically Americans (or their European white bread counterparts) do. American businesses have a "Drive up the stock price today! Sc
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Strong Brand w/Joe Sixpack but not Slashdot (Score:2)
Just like Bose... (Score:2)
Simplicity (Score:3, Informative)
90% of American consumers, know nothing or could care less, about DRM, proprietary hardware, etc. so, as long as they like a product, they will buy it. If the product is over-priced, for their specific incomes, they will not buy it.
The PS3 is a good value based on the hardware, involved, but most people don't care about that because they are not technically savvy. Most do not care if the PS3 includes a BR drive, either. People but consoles to play games. The public, at large, do not buy consoles to install Linux, to play around with homebrew, mess with clusters, etc. The crowd that does those things are in the minority, unfortunately. The PS3 is simply priced too high, for the average consumer and, is overkill, in terms of their needs. Force-feeding BR, which jacked up the price, big-time, was a mistake. Microsoft chose to modularize the 360, in terms of HD-DVD, and that was an excellent idea. They gave the consumer the choice and that kept the price down. I can afford the PS3, but I can't justify $600 for it. The only reason I'd buy it is for the BR, but I am in the minority on that one. I bought a 360 and the HD-DVD drive. I am very happy with both products and the entire service, as a whole.
I am not a fanboi of either company/system, but I have to admit, Sony has made some major mistakes this time around. The proof is out there.
Back to the American audience. I am American, if it matters. I will speak of Americans, here, as they since I am not a sheep:)
The majority of Americans are sheep, know very little and/or don't care enough to learn about the things, that matter around them. From politics, to technology, to rights as citizens, to government, and everything else, in between. They will take anything they like, regardless of it causes cancer, makes them fat, infected with DRM, etc. if it satiates their "must consume" at all cost mindset. You have to know that DRM keeps getting worse and worse because the majority of American, and the world at large, do not care enough to speak with their wallets, in terms of not buying such fucked up products. Corporations are slowly, but surely, ruling the world, making the laws, and are no longer selling us products, instead, only issuing us temporary licenses to use the products
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The majority of Americans are sheep, know very little and/or don't care enough to learn about the things, that matter around them. From politics, to technology, to rights as citizens, to government, and everything else, in between. They will take anything they like, regardless of it causes cancer, makes them fat, infected with DRM, etc. if it satiates their "must consume" at all cost
Wrong moral (Score:3, Informative)
The correct moral is that bloggers are a vocal minority and not trend-setting taste makers as previously thought.
Consumers are dumb (Score:3, Insightful)
The average consumer is dumb. He will buy everything, not even bothering to check what the company he is buying from is actually doing to him. Vendor lock-in doesn't exist to him, at best he'll ponder whether that means he has to get outta the mall before they close.
The attention span of a goldfish is actually longer than theirs. Now that I ponder it, it seems the average consumer is also the average voter.
Heck. The average person is just utterly stupid.
Sorry for the rant, it's just what I feel when I read stuff like that.
TVs and recievers (Score:3)
Ask a geek (Score:3, Informative)
The manipulation of subjectively perceived quality by manufacturers is inversely proportional to knowledge, particularly technical knowledge, of the consumer. A favorite example is bad audio gear which has enjoyed a reputation far higher than observation allows. Prime examples: a certain speaker manufacturer, and a certain absurdly high-priced-cable manufacturer.
People can be fooled by what sound like legitimate technical specs which are, in fact, techno-babble. Virtually meaningless wattage "standards" for amplifiers, for example, can turn a 50-watt RMS amplifier into one that puts out several hundred watts. A geek knows there's no such thing as "music power".
If you don't know enough to avoid getting burned, talk to a geek that does. And find a way to reward him/her for the studying that went into that expertise.
Its Ignorance. and Stupidity (Score:2, Insightful)
Not surprising, really ... (Score:4, Insightful)
The article is right, the Playstation cures much bad press.
Brand recognition does not work like this (Score:3, Interesting)
You can fsck up many times and still have a excellent name before people will remember ALL YOUR FAULTS AT ONCE.
It's like the greenhouse effect.
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Tell them: "The Sony CD's let viruses and hackers into your computer".
THAT will get their attention!