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Microsoft FAT Licensing Plan - No Big Deal?
prostoalex writes "InternetNews.com describes the reaction to Microsoft's decision on FAT licensing. It doesn't look like the company is expecting to make any significant money out of licenses (there's also a cap of $250K, so none of the big guys will have to pay millions to Microsoft). It also doesn't look like Linux companies are stressed over this decision. "We are only accessing FAT32 file systems, not using them. This licensing program is of little interest to SuSE", a Novell/SuSE spokesperson said."
Merry christmas to all.
The point has to be securing the patent. If they charge people to license something, they're establishing the fact that they do "own" this technology.
an alternative format should be used, if only for the principle of the thing.
For things like flash drives, and other portable storage devices FAT is good because it is pretty universally supported by most operating systems.
They're licensing FAT32 which isn't that old, in reality.
It's also very, very simple to speak.
And, it's coming into use as the filesystem of choice for digital cameras and memory cards to use (because of it's simplicity.)
Windows can read it out of box; so can Linux; OSX probably can too. That's all major OSes right there, with no drivers needed.
It's not great, but it's simple...and MS invented it...one of the few good things they've come up with, I'd say (Windows XP and Server 2003 being the others.)
$250,000 is chump change to Microsoft.
So why bother asking companies to pay for the licensing fees.
Even if the fees totaled to $100 millions, it's still relatively chump change to Microsoft.
One could wonder if they would use the money for Bill Gates' haircut funds.
I don't see how 'Merry Christmas' is going to spawn a flame war, are we so PC that we can't say the C word?
We're living in an MS-centric world; Either you're using NTFS or FAT. And FAT, is much easier to implement than NTFS. It also uses less CPU power than NTFS. There have been some comments in the iriver user forums regarding reformatting the device's drive with XFS or ext3. Again, processing power was the main issue with that.
for small devices and portable media like flash cards for its simplicity.
So simple in fact, many companies have rolled their own FAT-alikes that are backwards compatible with it and thus likely avoid licensing fees. M-Soft likely sees it as a opportunity to squeeze the last bits out of the old tech... such as "is your FAT system *really* compliant? Why not just buy ours and we guarantee it is!"
I don't see why this is worthy of a story...pretty common business practice out there.
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This isn't about making money, and it isn't about protecting a patent. This is simply an exercise for the benefit of the courts: Microsoft will be holding FAT (along with lots of other things) up as examples of how they're making their standards available to the competition.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Before anybody chimes in with yet another "patents aren't trademarks and don't have to be defended as vigorously" comment, I'd like to remind readers of the doctrine of laches, which states that a plaintiff who harms the defendant by delaying legal action (such as by submarining a patent for years) may not be able to recover damages for infringements that occurred prior to bringing the lawsuit.
It seems more likely that Microsoft is hoping this will bring 'complete' adoption of NTFS and WinFS, not that they were ever looking to make gobs of money from the licensing in the first place.
What are the current costs associated with licensing NTFS? Any information regarding the cost of licensing WinFS when Longhorn strikes?
It's simple, and it already can be read by Windows, Mac and Linux... including old releases of all three. If you're designing a device with not a lot of computing power and you don't feel like writing drivers...
Or why use fat when you have iso-9660?
I was discussing this with my nephew the other day. Basicly because one of the primary reasons that fat was so cool(sic) was the fact that everyone and their neighbor could use it. If you had a mac, amiga, atari-st, or even a word processor, all of them could do fat cause it's what was popular.
Better exists, but FAT was where it's at as far as intraoperability.
I still have alot of stuff on FAT, dispite the fact that I was not using microsoft for a signifigent period of time. Any bugger can read FAT. Hell, I haven't seen a floppy disk sold recently that wasn't preformated fat.
If this indeed is microsoft's IP, I think they are doing us a favor by charging for it. It's not like there are not alternatives.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
They're charging for their own implementation of it. Say you reverse engineer FAT (as virtually everyone has up to this point, its very simple and well documented now...). Then good for you. You're not required to spend a dime, or hire a lawyer, or sacrifice your first born or do anything whatsoever.
But M-soft did in fact create the standard and spec and if you want to be absolutely sure your FAT implementation is completely standards compliant...you can buy theirs. If you want.
Thats all this is.
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I suspect Microsoft current trend of licensing every protocol and file format they possibly can is not a small thing.
IANAL, yet I have the sneaky feeling the terms of those licenses preclude GPL products from using protocols or file formats covered by them, *even those licensed for free*.
As to whether or not those licenses are necessary is a great question. Do you really need a license to read an XML file? According to microsoft, you "may", since "Microsoft may have patents and/or patent applications that are necessary for you to license in order to make, sell, or distribute software programs that read or write files that comply with the Microsoft specifications for the Office Schemas.".
Worry.
A lot of peripherals like digital cameras have media that is pre-formatted as FAT-16, and use FAT-16 for storage.
This falls right in line with Microsoft's modus operandi.... Deploy software, services, or technologies for free to expand the customer base of your products, then years later, force them into a "better", more tightly controlled product by making the old product unusable. In this case, perhaps if they charge for FAT but not NTFS, people will use NTFS instead. (Not that I'm familiar with NTFS, and the goal is probably XP-or-better oriented instead.)
If you're designing a device with not a lot of computing power and you don't feel like writing drivers...
... then what? Use ISO9660?
Microsoft is probably trying to make a few more (million) dollars on the expanding USB/Flash/pen/key chain/thumb/etc. drive market, considering the initial file system is FAT.
If portable drive manufacturers don't want to pay M$, they can sell the drives unformatted and hope the average consumer knows enough to click 'yes' when Windows says 'the drive is not formatted do you want to format it now?'
wait...I'm almost agreeing with M$, that can't be a good thing
F7 doesn't work, ignore spelling and grammar
For those of you too lazy or of poor reading comprehension skills...
FAT is an old time file system created in the days of DOS. Its very simple, requiring little overhead in computation and space. Modern file systems are much more efficient at large media sizes, but for your floppies, flash cards and other small portable media, FAT works really, really well since you don't need a beefy device processor to handle it, and its simple enough to create the software to work with it that any competant OS programmer could write a FAT wrapper.
Microsoft is NOT charging for FAT itself. Most people for the past 20 years have reverse engineered FAT because it is very simple. It is widespread, virtually every widely used OS supports it. They're not trying to squeeze money from any of these people.
What they are charging for is their own implementation of FAT. Since they did in fact create the standard, presumably a microsoft licensed FAT implementation will be entirely compatible with FAT since they give you the code and official specs to base your system around. This is what they are charging for. Nothing else.
Now for those who are going to ask "but why would someone pay when you can find those reverse engineered specs easily...". Well, thats a business decision. Do you trust those specs enough? Or "just to be safe" do you want to pay microsoft for their guaranteed implementation?
And thats all this is about. Really, honestly, a non-issue.
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http://edition.cnn.com/2001/TECH/ptech/02/13/windo ws.xp/story.gates.jpg
http://www.pckurier.pl/archiwum/artykuly/wilczek_t adeusz/2001_02_6/gates.jpg
Sorry for my ignorance, but will this affect the freedos project?
Freedos Website
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
If they got a patent when they created FAT, it would be near the end of its life (FAT32 might have a few years to go). But other FAT implementations have been around since before the patent was applied for OR microsoft has simply ignored them. If you don't defend your patent with due diligance, (say, wait 15 years to sue someone) you can run into legal difficulties.
And since FAT implementations are nearly ubiquitous today, trying to sue them all would be an exercise in wasting time and the patent would expire before you've even begun litigation.
It seems pretty pointless to try and enforce the patent at this point. The article addresses this to an extent in m-soft's IP policy ideals...
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Good to hear. Given the trivial amount of revenue it will bring to Microsoft, it makes me wonder why they bothered at all. They could have made the terms much more onerous and expensive, but they didn't.
In fact, Microsoft has been pretty cool about licensing terms and pricing lately. Many corporate Linux users are dumping Linux because of the IP/SCO concerns, and from what I've heard, Microsoft is offering some very attractive pricing for those companies that are seeking to switch.
No, I don't have the exact pricing in front of me - I'm a developer, not some Microsoft shill, so you'll have to do your own homework. It really shouldn't be any harder than a call to your regional Microsoft sales representative, though.
USB flash drives are geek toys. Digital Cameras using FAT-formatted flash cards are much more common.
I am offering a direct replacement for FAT32. Fat is so .. demeaning and 32 is so .. yesterday. I am liscensing Portly64 to anyone who needs a break from the 1/4 million M$ fees, only 1/8 million.
It's perfectly logical considering what obsene percentage of the US population is overweight? First thought when the headline is Microsoft FAT Licensing Plan... maybe they should rename it the Microsoft FAT Loss Plan.
Here are a few benefits on face value...
- Level 1 support of ISO-9660 would kick you back to the days of 8.3 style file names. Level 2 and 3 would get you up to 32 characters, but that still isn't on-par with modern OSes.
- You'd need to go to Level 3 in order to fragment files, but then you run into non-support in older OSes.
- ISS-9660 has some character limitations in file names, which means a Windows user would be forced to rename certain files when dragging them over from their HD. With FAT32 supported, such glitches are impossible.
Forget about using Joliet... that's belongs to Microsoft too.
... But did I just see an add for OSDN personals? Does this mean there are finally some linux babes in our midst? Or just that I can meet other lonely geeks for $29.95?
I agree with your statement that the canonical implementation has some value, though.
With great power comes great fan noise.
FAT is positively not good for flash drives because these systems will begin to fail have a set number of writes to a specific area of the memory.
FAT has no methodology for spreading writes around the system, in fact it will write to the logical begining of the filespace most frequently, with the number of writes dropping as you travel further into the system. This leads to a flash drive to premature failure, thousands of writes to the begining of the disk (like say, the FAT table) making the entire memory space unusable (for FAT, anyways) while the end has been largely untouched.
Other, GPLed systems are much better for flash, such as JFFS. The only reason to use FAT is if you're interfacing with a windows box and are too lazy to provide translation.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
Don't the PC iPods use the FAT filesystem? Coincidence?
MS may be pulling a SCO or is creating a bogus case as an excuse to file an unjunction to shutdown kernel.org until the lawsuit is taken care of.
MS can drag this for decades and since kernel.org makes no money, MS does not have to pay a cent.
They can finally kill Linux.
http://saveie6.com/
Reading the other comments I'm seeing that this is being considered as a move to protect the patent. Thats probably true.
On a different point I see a few comments on how the maximum amount is $250,000 and that such a small amount it's not worth caring about. I don't know what companies you guys work for but my company could barely spare 1/10 of that given the recent market. I don't know of any company that turns around and goes "1/4 million is that all? Nope don't need to know what for let me just sign the cheque". I'm left wondering if this will be enough of an issue that small companies will look elsewhere for small filesystem. In my companies case it isn't an issue as we made the run for linux already. I assume that microsoft has to worry about driving away to many of the small customers.
The big guys may rule the world today, but they where nobodies 20 years ago and have to worry about those small fry that have the right combination of talent and luck.
Flash drives have a MTBF of something like 10,000 to 100,000 cycles of erase and rewrite with new data before failing. 10k on the cheap end, 100k on the expensive end.
How many times are you going to take a picture with that digital camera, anyway?
We are only accessing FAT32 file systems, not using them.
I'll remember that one when the RIAA come around. "I'm only accessing thousands of MP3s, not using them, so I'm off totally scot-free!"
mogorific carpentry experiments
Do you have anything at all to back up that statement? Linux adoption rates and server sales are increasing and recent surveys have shown that companies are saying that the SCO issues haven't affected their Linux choices in any way.
The filesystem world has got to be one of the most unorganized place. So unorganized I don't know how lawyers even want to deal with it.
For example sgi has xfs. xfs can be sneaked into linux. But xfs can be mounted remotely in a cluster via windows, solaris and irix. Theorectically you can do some of these things with windows filesystems too. There are so many damn loop holes, it's just a nasty place to try to come up with a straight profit if you ask me.
Windows can read it out of box; so can Linux; OSX probably can too. That's all major OSes right there, with no drivers needed.
Yes, OSX can. In fact even OS9 can. I'm not sure how far back it goes but I do remember reading a FAT32 formatted HDD on an OS8.5 machine.
Well if you use non-retarded memory like say most CF storage then it's not a problem because the flash cells are never physically rewritten the same way twice. This keeps things like the beginning of the cells from wearing out while the later portions are never touched. For MMC and some other dump flash varients this logic has to be done in the controlling device rather than the memory itself.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
My understanding is that modern design flash devices do internal mapping to avoid this issue. e.g. just because you write to block 00003 doesn't mean that you've written to physical block 00003.
What your saying *is* true for CD-RW / DVD-RW media, where the device does not remap blocks on the fly and each sector has a very limited lifespan (CD-RW was 1000 writes IIRC).
I had a conversation with one of their licensing officers as I was afraid my 10-a-year GPS logger project was in danger. He explained this was an encouragement to have everyone implement FAT32 and LFN the same way, by using their reference design. All this to prevent incompatible implementations down the road.
Microsoft's fear is that a large camera or MP3 player manufacturer 'gets it wrong' and MS is blamed for things not working correctly. MS then has to invest in a work-around, handle patches, bad press etc..
The license comes with source code for a reference implementation, so it will save manufacturers time and R&D cost.
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
compared to italy and other much smaller countries,
where the entire country is fat
I really don't see the big deal, since, you can format these same cards, with WindowsXP, and any other Microsuck OS that supports them. I don't know how they could prove a manufacturer didn't use microsucks OS to format them in the first place, thusly already owning a license.
Don't Vote for Norm Dicks! http://www.nodicks2008.com Another nutless dirtbag that voted for the FISA bill!
M$ Marketing person reads in the morning paper that America is becoming increasingly obese.
While walking through the cafeteria, same person overhears two engineers comment about M$ owning a patent on FAT.
Light bulb goes off in the dim-witted marketing persons head - Cha-ching!
Of course, Linux companies aren't worried about it.
It's us overweight users and coders that should be afraid!
Let's see, after I make out my $699 check for SCO, I have to send how much to Bill & Co?
My mom always told me I was just big boned. I guess I'm just boned. Again.
"Kittens give Morbo gas!"
"I'm a developer, not some Microsoft shill..."
uh-huh
We are only accessing FAT32 file systems, not using them. ... As much as Clinton was accessing Lewinski.
How, preytell, does one "access" something without "using" it?
IANAABIDUG [I am not an artist but I do use Gimp]
;-)
http://iahu.ca:8080/finished.png
Merry Holidays!
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
They could always centralize kernel development in another country where the FAT patents are not recognized by law.
.
For those who really want to view pictures of an infamous "chief software engineer," here are the hypertext links.
cnn,
and
pckurier
eh? how does FAT = killing Linux? FAT isn't essential to the kernel or linux in general. Sure it might suck for the people who already have FAT partitions, but since the release of WinME hasn't Microsoft been makeing NTFS the default FS? Besides if there was a law suit the powers that be could probably have FAT removed from the kernel in less then an hour.
Or they could remove fat32 support from the kernel and make it available as a patch elsewhere.
Sort of like how redhat removed all mp3 support from 8.0 upwards, but you can easily get it back by installing a few third-party RPM's.
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
I mean, come one guys, that is the important question, yes or no?
Wil this be the end of all those windows emulators like wine en winex? What patented fat technologie contains their code-base...
Hope not, but will' see what steps Microsoft is going to take once the patent is fully endorsed.
Merry Christmas from the Netherlandes to you all!
M
MS is trying to reduce the number of MP3 players that expose an easy to use file system interface rather than whatever DRM-of-the-day system is popular. MP3 players are becoming an _exceedingly_ low margin, high volume business, and MS is trying to make it more expensive to give people what they want ("just plug your device in and it works").
If it wasn't a big deal, there wouldn't be a quiet but forceful attempt to invalidate the patents going on.
I've easily taken more than 100,000 images with my digital cameras. I've shot 29,892 sofar this year. My guess is I'll take another 1,000 to 1,500 by year's end. Just because you can't see yourself taking that many photographs that doesn't mean that others don't. PS, I'm not even working as a profesional photographer right now. When I was I took more photorgaphs a year.
From This Page (FAT File System Technology and Patent License)
# A license for removable solid state media manufacturers to preformat the media, such as compact flash memory cards, to the Microsoft FAT file system format, and to preload data onto such preformatted media using the Microsoft FAT file system format. Pricing for this license is US$0.25 per unit with a cap on total royalties of $250,000 per manufacturer.
# A license for manufacturers of certain consumer electronics devices. Pricing for this license is US$0.25 per unit for each of the following types of devices that use removable solid state media to store data:
That is, they're licensing
- preformatted removeable solid-state media
- devices which use removeable solid-state media
So, unless you make solid-state media or consumer-electronics devices which use them, you're HOME FREE.Apparently, they're NOT (currently) requiring licenses for the (generic, in any/all cases, "we own this patented technology") USE of FAT (eg OS drivers).
IN fact, what it looks like, is Microsoft trying to make a few bux of the plethora of Digital Cameras out there.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
FAt is patented. This example shows how important the interoperability privilegue was that FFII got into the EU Parl proposal of the software patents directive. http://swpat.ffii.org
We're living in an MS-centric world; Either you're using NTFS or FAT. And FAT, is much easier to implement than NTFS.
You may go the other way: use the ext2 or anything best suited to flash and supply the opensource Windows driver for it. I think it will cost the community much less than $250000 to develop it for 2 main MS so-called OSes - '95 and NT.
And BTW: I have compared the early Unix v.6 file system implementation and FAT. It seems Unix v.6 is more economical in terms of both time and memory.
At least CompactFlash is electrically and logically IDE compatible, It means it has a MBR unless intentionally (By Bill's FAT license, for instance) made noncompatible. If so, you can move a partition every time a FAT area burns out. Of course, this approach sucks but if I have a source of burnt-out flashes it can make me a fortune.
Seems like Microsoft is adopting SCO's tactics now. They must be getting really desperate!
1. Find a large group of people [America's obese]
2. Charge a license for something they have no ownership over [the fat!]
3. Profit! $$$$$$
Okay, I know it's cheesy but I couldn't resist.;-)
picpix image polls. create - share - vote. fun!
May the moderators mod me down if this is going too far, but IMNSHO this is typical arrogant MS. They seem to think they're the only ones capable of implementing something correctly, despite all the evidence to the contrary. How many open standards (protocols, formats, etc) have they half-implemented (or just plain screwed up) and then claimed to have extended with their own half thought-out ideas? (Here's a tip MS: If you don't implement the whole standard in the first place, you're *branching* not extending, aren't you?). And how many times have closed-source competitors and open-source hackers re-implemented some format or protocol of MS's? And although I can't think of a good example off the top of my head, I seem to remember a number of times when the FLOSS implementation has been better and/or more flexible.
</rant>
Um. You take over 80 pictures a day? Every day? Worst troll...ever.
In a case where someone really does have the rights, who cares? I mean, it is there property, and just because they want to collect on it, is there right. Now if it was SCO, then I could see some room for complaint. But if the disk makers decide to move to some other format, that is fine. But in my mind, I don't see the big issue.
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
If you prefer, look at it this way - perhaps MS realise how much of a mess they've made of implementing certain things in the past, and so recognise that if they can mess it up, so can anyone else. That may be part of the reason why - acknowledging that they're nothing special when it comes to writing software.
Hell, recently there was a problem with LG not implementing the "cache flush" instruction on some of their CD drives, instead using it for "update firmware". That's a monumentally stupid thing to do when implementing an accepted standard. Given that that happened, don't you think it possible that some large manufacturer could mess up their FAT implementation?
It's official. Most of you are morons.
The major Japanese Electronics houses have been working on a "common" embedded Linux for electronics devices in order to avoid "Microsoft Tax" on their products.
This may be a way of warning them that they could be liable for more things than they thought.
B
All this to prevent incompatible implementations down the road.
Welcome to Spincity!
A decent technical overview of the FAT filesystem can be found here:
http://home.freeuk.net/foxy2k/disk/disk1.htm
mp3's are only for those with bad memories
I'm far from sure that LG are alone in this idiocy.
/dev/hdd, then the drive door won't open and no lights show after power on.
I've a pair of Acer 56k CDrom drives that are now behaving as if they have their flash cleared, since I moved a disk with Fedora core 1 installed on to it to the systems they were part of.
Resetting drive
Waiting for tech support to wake up after Christmas for confirmation but I suspect that Acer 652A-003 at least are LG compatable in the worst possible way.
I think this was more of a test bed to see if they could pull out an old stealth patent and make it fly.
If this works, plan to see more in the future, with wide ranging consequences...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
(currently)
What makes you think Microsoft won't pull a Unisys on the major GNU/Linux distributors once businesses begin to adopt GNU/Linux distributions to replace Microsoft Windows?
You take over 80 pictures a day?
Do you work in professional photography? Are you a close friend of somebody who does? No? Then are you qualified to make ASSertions about what a professional photographer would consider a "reasonable" rate of still photography?
On another matter (because I strive not to merely regurgitate articles for karma in my messages) it is unlikely that Microsoft would sue anyone for patent infringement relating to FAT. Patent suits normally run $3m to $6m, and by stating in advance that a license is worth no more than $250k Microsoft is ensuring it would never collect more than that in damages. Moreover, Microsoft has a history of not suing for patent infringement. Although at any given time it is engaged in a dozen or more patent suits it is always on the receiving end. Lots of little companies have their eyes set on the Microsoft pot o' gold... Patent litigation is not at all profitable for Microsoft.
So in conclusion, the worth of the license is mainly in the canonical source code.
With great power comes great fan noise.
So if I understand you correctly, to maximize the lifespan of a flash memory card, like in a digital camera -- I should let it fill up completely (so as to "spread the writes" as evenly as possible), and only then delete the old files?
Someone else mentioned write cycles around 10,000 before a card starts to fail, but that's not a lot if you're using the thing every day, and take hundreds of shots per session. Which most folk won't do, of course.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
As afidel explained, each CF storage device has built-in wear leveling, which is transparent to host devices that use the CF card.
You may go the other way: use the ext2 or anything best suited to flash and supply the opensource Windows driver for it.
The Free file system best suited to write-few-read-many memory would probably be JFFS, but Google doesn't know about any efforts to implement a generic JFFS driver on Windows.
that Microsoft is not forthcoming with an English explaination of whatever the hell this is - and seems to be perfectly content in everyone wrangling and wondering just what the hell all the lawyer-speak on their FAT licensing page is.
(consipracy theory =+5) They're probably laughing at all of these posts and around the net with people trying to contemplat exactly what's going on.(/ct)
screw fscking them. Who wants to deal with a company like that? not me. Except for Office - which i have only for purposes of work compatibility - i'm MS free, damnit.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
Microsoft's fear is that a large camera or MP3 player manufacturer 'gets it wrong' and MS is blamed for things not working correctly. MS then has to invest in a work-around, handle patches, bad press etc..
You might want to take the MS spin with a grain of salt. I am sure they are just doing it to get some revenge on the OSS groups who have implemented Samba et al.
-a
Mail? Put "slashdot" in the subject to pass the spam filters.
In general I take somewhere between 300-400 pictures a day and I'm not a pro
Un-news
If you RTFA, you find that MS is charging a colossal 25 cents per unit to a $250K cap. I'd say that's a low margin. A 25 cent cost is not going to force implementation of DRM. With that 25 cent license comes a MS-designed reference implementation. It's just in place to protect MS and consumers from an inaccurate implementation of the spec.
There is no conspiracy. Thank you. Please come again.
Now if only the W3C could charge MS 25 cents for every incomplete implementation of CSS they distributed and all the other web standards snafus they created...
Thus, in other words, Microsoft is protecting themselves from Microsoft-like business tactics. Ah, the joys of the modern capitalistic business society!
So, do you use Flash cards to store photographs? And have you had any fail?
I think I have plenty basis for my ASSertion. Point 1: They are anonymous. Not incriminating in itself, but a heavy indicator. Point 2: It's just plain unrealistic. Point 3: They cited some large, yet precise, number--29,892. How would you come up with that figure? Unless you keep each and every image you take saved to your harddrive, ready to index and count at the touch of a button, it's highly unrealistic. Not to mention that it would take up about 120 GB if saved with any reasonable quality. ...oh yeah, and if you would have read the original troll, you would have noticed that they explicitly stated that the 30,000 pictures figure was NOT taken while they were doing photography as a profession.
I also find it odd that you make assertions as to whether or not I know professional photographers (well, you don't say it--you just insinuate it). Kind of hypocritical, no?
Of WHAT!?
Family, friends, myself, co-workers, anything I see that happens to be remotely interesting on my lunch break in the city... There's a lot to take pictures of. What's really nice is that I wanted to take a lot of pictures in the past, but traditional photographyis so expensive, it's really prohibitive. With my Sony and a few packs of CD-RWs, I can take hundresd of thousands of pictures of anything and everything and then re-use the discs after I've culled what I really want to keep. After all, you have to take into account that you can't just walk up to something and take one picture and get it right the first time. You need to try different exposure and aperature settings, different ISOs, etc... Then you need to experiment with lighting, time of day, angles. So in the end, an amateur like me might take 10-30 pictures of one subject, just to get that one really cool image. So, 300-400 per day is pretty realistic for a non-pro. Pros, take far more. For example, just to get the right image for a porno movie cover, Asia Carerra once said they literally take about 1000 photographs and wittle it down to the one image that's just right. That's the only way to take pictures. If you just walk up to something and take one picture, you are risking having zero usable images. I came back from my trip to Australia last year with about 45,000 images. Many of them very similar, but only one out of a grouping would actually make the cut for posting on a web page or printing. I'm very particular about the lighting, composition and color. I'm sure not everyone can relate to me on this, but I'm willing to be I'm in the majority compared to most users of digital cameras. After all, one's life should be well documented in images for posterity. Look at all the pictures of James Dean that were taken of him just in daily activity. How else would Morissey have been able to have James Dean as a part of his life, if those images didn't exist.
Un-news
Because FAT is well suited to digital media? No, it's got no features designed for the job... they have to implement functions like wear leveling below the file system. Because it's secure? Reliable? The vast aftermarket in diagnostic and repair tools for FAT, and in security software, indicates otherwise. Its only value is that it's the lowest common denominator for Microsoft's operating systems, so that's what everyone uses.
Which is a compelling reason to use it, but also a reason why this move of Microsoft's should be viewed with alarm: what they're doing is charging manufacturers a fee to remain compatible with Microsoft! What's next? CIFS? Wouldn't that put the cat among the canaries?
They cited some large, yet precise, number--29,892. How would you come up with that figure? Unless you keep each and every image you take saved to your harddrive, ready to index and count at the touch of a button, it's highly unrealistic.
How hard is it to find . -name .jpg -print | wc and then add that to the number of images that one's image library management software reports has been burned to discs?
Not to mention that it would take up about 120 GB if saved with any reasonable quality.
30 DVD+Rs worth? And is 4 MB/photo necessary, even for archival?
you would have noticed that they explicitly stated that the 30,000 pictures figure was NOT taken while they were doing photography as a profession.
To adapt an old saying: You can take a photographer out of the profession, but you can't take the profession out of the photographer.
JFFS?
;-)
What the heck is that, and does it work on a Mac or Windows box?
You see, about 90% of the people with digital cameras plug them into a PC. Via direct from the camera or via a $10 compact flash reader. You're not going to get JFFS to "whatever" translation in a $10 device.
About 9% of the remaining people plug cameras or CF readers into Macs.
Which leaves like 1% of all CF users that are using it for some sort of other storage, or plugging them into a Linux box.
So using JFFS on a CF card is exactly worthless. Sorta like an iPod that plays OGG
FAT is useful in the device market because everything can read and write to it (i.e. Macs, Linux, Windows). Not true of NTFS.
Everyone keeps thinking about an entire computer when they think of the file system. This is targeted around *devices*, most commonly CF cards (or SD cards, or whatever), and keychain fobs, which come pre-formatted as FAT. And if they're not pre-formatted, then the camera maker or device maker will have to pay a license fee for the ability for format an unformatted card. And they'll choose FAT as their format, because then the device can be read in any computer without special software requirements (which would require the camera maker to write drivers for every OS they wanted the camera to attach to).
If you sign an NDA they will let you see the legal documents the *prove* they own anything called or related to fat...even the fat that is in the abdominal area! So people have to become anorexic ( probably spelled that wrong ) or pay the M$ tax!
I can't afford a sig!
this is a phat idea... :|
-judging another only defines yourself
In general I take somewhere between 300-400 pictures a day and I'm not a pro
Man get a life... instead of making one up
No, this is Slashdot. So we must all continue to maintain that this is yet another satanic pitch to rule the world (especially when the evidence is otherwise).
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
That would pretty much be necessary.
Just because the kernel is developed elsewhere, if it contains infringing code, it would most likely not be legal to use that kernel in a place where FAT was protected by law.
Putting FAT into the kernel if you're required to pay for it would be a very bad move.
The patch, however, would pretty much be simple.
Odds on, someone would produce an 'auto' app that'll install it automatically if you clickc an icon from the very early days.
No but MS can easily make a bogus case about copyright and patent infringement and cite the SCO case as an example. They could then use the case to file the unjunction. Clever legal strategy.
Yes its clean room of course but MS can appeal for years and since kernel.org is not making money, MS does not need to compensate them for doing so.
http://saveie6.com/
A company has one year (365 days) from the time they first sell an invention to get their FAT axes into the patent office and make an application for a patent. If they blow it by even one day, their bright idea is prior art and can never be patented.
What is in those four patents that wasn't in WIN 95? Here is the link to the USPTO patent number search page: http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/srchnum.htm
Plug in those patent numbers M$ has on their web page and look at the dates. Are they less than 365 days after WIN 95 was released? Or are they more?
Even if M$ ever had a patent on FAT (which they never did), every patent prior to mid 1987 has expired. They have a lifespan limited by law, and old patents before 1995 had 17 years lifespan from the day the USPTO received the patent application. Most patents are not granted until 18 months of examination, so the date of issue is not the date the clock starts ticking. Therefore FAT would be public domain by now even if it ever had been patented (which it wasn't because M$ didn't invent it).
M$ is charging $250,000.00 for something in the public domain. That is legal, but there is nothing illegal about you, or me, selling the same thing if we can find damn fool suckers willing to pay us a quarter-megabuck for it.
The patents are apparently in regards long filenames, meaning cameras just need to follow the 8.3 filename format to by pass the problem.
Incidently I've use digital cameras from 4 different companies & all 4 kept to the 8.3 name format (eg DSCF0004.JPG), maybe they have nothing to worry about afterall.
Yeah but the difference is that SCO case is weak at best, the Linux powers that be know they have a good chance of beating the case. The Linux powers that be know they have no chance against a FAT patent lawsuit, and we be forced to comply with Microsoft and remove the code. Once the code is removed there wouldn't be anything for Microsoft to sue over or drag out.
MS is not aiming to make money out of the licenses. What they likely are trying to archieve, is to try to envision the FAT market for the next 5-10 yrs. If you try to look at the picture with the 5 yrs, glasses, you'll see things changing. With many people facing lawsuits, you can imagine the direction that open source community can take. The tactic, as it seems, is to scare the hell out of the open source community and practically eliminate any competition. It's very simple and effective! ...or is it that simple? How about this move of MS, creates the environment where people just start creating their own file systems. Think about it this way. China is creating their next generation DVD's. They can just as well create the next generation vFAT, the Enhanced vFAT! Now, you tell me, is this helping or hurting MS?
I wouldn't give kudos to MS for inventing it, it is popular because it is ubiquitous, not because it has a high goodness/simplicity ratio, and of course that popularity is what leads to it being even more popular, due to network effect. An abstract file-system interface for devices like these would probably be much more useful, and let the devices implement the actual file system in a manner suited to the media.
But, what would make sense for the media?
Filesystems are pretty much *the* layer of abstraction between physical ones and zeros and the operating system.
There doesn't exist a single filesystem that's "better suited" to use on say a flash card than on a disk...If anything, there are some less suited. Something that dutifully journals everything and writes/rewrites one specific section, repeatedly, with every other operation you do, might be bad (premature failure) but other than that, there's nothing that would make a filesystem better for flash memory than something else.
You could certainly *optimize* the filesystem (i.e. MS optimized their X-Box DVDs with variable linear speed drives to place the largest files on the outside rim, to maximize throughput on access) but that's just an arbitrary allocation in an already known and defined filesystem format.
According to the U.S. Deptartment of Justice, Microsoft is a monopoly on the desktop and has used illegal methods to further that monopoly and hinder competition.