"Bowing to market pressures, Sony Corp. finally unveiled a hard-drive-equipped Walkman that handles the popular, but rival, music format MP3." [via WSJ]

You're kidding, right? And this is a big deal? It's only the most popular distributable digital music format on the planet, and Sony's 'finally applying it to a Walkman' is news?

Sony, typically a fan of proprietary technologies like the ever-popular MiniDisc, (How many of you have MiniDisc players in your car? I thought so...) has been reluctant to embrace anything that they didn't invent themselves. Do I hear an organizational NIH syndrome at work here?

Sony may very well be the next great brand circling the drain.