Sorry, Sony was a great engineering company, worthy of being respected, until they sold out and became a content creation company. Look at how the hobbled the mini-disc years ago. Sony deserves absolutely no respect these days.
While I can totally see where you are coming from, I think it is not fair to say that sony does not deserve any respect whatsoever anymore. They were innovators at first, too and have come a long way since.
I do not agree with sony's content creation affairs, however they continue to innovate with good products (e.g. look at the digital cameras, camera sensors etc.)
More often than not, there is no clear distinction between good and bad, certainly less so with amazingly huge companies such as sony, apple, exxon etc.
