Are they kidding me ?
Dec 9, 2003 at 3:58 AM Post #2 of 25
sooner or later im gonna get a mac...watch
wink.gif
 
Dec 9, 2003 at 4:05 AM Post #3 of 25
Quote:

Originally posted by ProFingerSk8er
sooner or later im gonna get a mac...watch
wink.gif


I did... and all it took was an iPod
tongue.gif
 
Dec 9, 2003 at 4:13 AM Post #4 of 25
Sadly they're not, although quite honestly it was a bit dense of the manufacturer's to implement a FAT file system. It's pretty straightforward to do, Tim Patterson wrote the original in a couple of weeks as I remember, but of course, is someone else's work. There are plenty of interfaces where you could have hooked up a new file system although the down side would have been a device driver being required. I think we can look for a lot more behavior from Microsoft like this. Now that they have saturated their markets, the only alternative to continue gaining revenue is to squeeze every drop out of the turnip. Since they are a monopoly, they can get away with it and we have some really horrendous times in front of us before Microsoft gets crushed.
 
Dec 9, 2003 at 4:26 AM Post #5 of 25
Yeah, but sitting back until this has been adopted as pretty much a defacto standard for interoperatability by most PDA, MP3, and digital camera manufacturers is ludicrous. While the CFA & others starting writing specs, did MS ever hint at this ?

No.

Now they think they've got every device & media manufacturer by the short hairs...

I don't think so.

I think it's illegal...
 
Dec 9, 2003 at 4:35 AM Post #6 of 25
That IS an interesting legal question since failure to enforce your copyright does lead to problems enforcing it later. I'm not sure though that this is true for patents. After all, look at what Rambus did with PC Memory. At worst, I think a court would rule that they had no rights to the royalties, but I don't think it's illegal to ask for royalties. Bill has done a lot worse than that in his day. I don't care how much money he has, he disgusts me because of his morally bankrupt behavior.
 
Dec 9, 2003 at 4:44 AM Post #7 of 25
Quote:

Originally posted by gpalmer
Bill has done a lot worse than that in his day. I don't care how much money he has, he disgusts me because of his morally bankrupt behavior.


My sentiments exactly...
 
Dec 9, 2003 at 4:51 AM Post #8 of 25
Oh brother.
I'm surprised that someone has not launched a case that they deserve royalties on tap water for being the first one to combine two hydrogen molecules with one oxygen molecule. I hope it was never demonstrated with powerpoint.

Good think he didn't invent firewire. Or the internet.
rolleyes.gif
 
Dec 9, 2003 at 4:55 AM Post #9 of 25
Quote:

Originally posted by ProFingerSk8er
sooner or later im gonna get a mac...watch
wink.gif


Quote:

Originally posted by Voodoochile
Good think he didn't invent firewire. Or the internet.
rolleyes.gif


Leave that to Apple and Al Gore who's on their board of directors
tongue.gif
 
Dec 9, 2003 at 5:06 AM Post #10 of 25
You know I was kicking it around and the case this really reminds me of is the old gif format one. Compuserve had the patent forever and never enforced it, UniSys took them over and started going after royalties. It killed the format overnight, which is really too bad because it was very efficient, even if it was just a straightforward implementation of past practice. I wonder if the electronics firms will kowtow or if we will get an age of incompatibility thrust on us instead.
 
Dec 9, 2003 at 6:26 AM Post #12 of 25
MS has a lot to lose with this gambit. They are banking that flash memory manufaturers would rather pay the fee than have people install drivers to read the volumes. But, how can MS tout the newest version of windows as a highly compatible multimedia platform if they don't support whatever new filesystem flash memory devices use?

So, I think that in the interum memory manufaturers will pay the fee for a year or so, but eventually will switch to a different filesystem. I wouldn't be suprised if this file system was open souce, both to avoid future fees like this and to speed up development.

A nifty solution would be to store the drivers for the filesystem on a small FAT16 portion of the flash memory, which will allow the drivers to be installed or have a program that lets the card be accessed if you can't install the drivers (on a limited access machine, for example). FAT16 is not covered by this patent.

What I want to know is if the reverse engineered, open source drivers that are part of the linux kernel will be affected. I can just see MS saying "take those out now, or we sue", or would that be anticompetitive behavior?
 
Dec 9, 2003 at 6:36 AM Post #13 of 25
It seems that Microsoft may be sending up a trial balloon by capping the fees at $250,000 per license. I would guess that if the industry accepts this regressive "tax" on what was commonly taken to be a public good, they may well hike up the fees at a later point.
 
Dec 9, 2003 at 11:07 AM Post #14 of 25
Quote:

Originally posted by ProFingerSk8er
sooner or later im gonna get a mac...watch
wink.gif


Not to get to off topic but if you think Apple and Steve Jobs are any different you're sadly mistaken. In fact in recent months they've shown signs of being even worse.

I do believe this would also be similar to mp3's. Fraunhofer, who owns the patents to mp3's, have been threatening to start charging for usage now for a years. This is where the OGG format grew from and I could see a similar scenario occur if Microsoft pursues charging.

My suspicion would be manufacturers will come up with their own file system standard and then force Microsoft into implementing support for it in their OS. This isn't a far stretch if Microsoft hopes to continue being competitive moving the OS into the future making it even more user friendly with plug and play type devices it would have no choice but to provide support. This would take time though so in the meantime the consumer would be the one to get the shaft because they would be the ones that need to install drivers/software until Microsoft finally breaks down and implements plug & play support. What might even be more likely is the manufacturers band together and threaten to come up with their own and Microsoft backs down.
 
Dec 9, 2003 at 2:27 PM Post #15 of 25
What an arse! What is he thinking?? Doesn't he realize the impact this has on his publicly-perceived image? I guess he has to give all those lawyers he has on retainer something to do all day, right?

Makes me wanna re-install Linux and go open source from now on.
 
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