yuki Idei Chairman and CEO Sony Corporation of Japan 7-35 Kitashinagawa 6-chome Shinagawa-ku Tokyo 141, Japan Howard Stringer Chairman and CEO Sony Corporation of America 550 Madison Ave, 9th Floor New York, NY 10022-3211, USA Dear Messrs. Idei and Stringer: Kudos to Sony for creating the recent NetMD extension to the Minidisc format! NetMD is a boon to users and is certain to increase the format's success. On behalf of the Minidisc's community of users, may I extend our appreciation. Indeed, the high-speed audio downloading capability and improved computer integration of NetMD highlights a surprising omission in Minidisc: its lack of a facility for taking audio recordings directly from Minidisc to PC. It is puzzling, how can Sony's Minidisc, so perfectly suited to digital field recording, be so unsuitable for getting the recordings it makes onto a computer? Anyone wishing to transfer live Minidisc recordings to a PC for further processing or distribution faces an arcane and lengthly procedure that rarely produces the best results. And ironically, the ones most affected by this bottleneck are precisely those pursuing Sony's worthy adage, "Go Create!" As the heads of Sony's both technical and artistic divisions, you are in a unique position to bring Sony's technology into harmony with the needs of artists. It is with faith in Sony's commitment to serving the creative ambitions of its customers that I ask you to please address this unfortunate gap in Minidisc's otherwise well-rounded feature-set. The Minidisc is a wonderful audio format that, like the millions of individuals it serves, deserves to reach its full potential. Sincerely,

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