Interesting news/reviews/deals from the portable audio market
Theater Research/Elite Audio = Buyer Beware…: Josh Ray, on a Chinese company that sells terrible speakers with fake specs and awards. They’re using direct marketing (have the speakers loaded on a white van that goes around town…) to sell these at “ridiculously low” prices.
From the “don’t you just love them big companies” department: Sony, Philips, Panasonic fined for price-fixing in France: the fines, representing 1% of the companies annual revenus in the county, are €16M for former two (each) and €2.4M for the latter.
The Conseil found that the three manufacturers had colluded with their distributors to fix the [...]
There are reports that the malicious code Sony installs when you buy a copy-protected CD of theirs (the one that you can’t uninstall or your system gets crippled) reports on your music playing habits back home. [via]
UPDATE: Also: “A patent may allow Sony to ensure that no game would be playable from any console other [...]