I wouldn't mind for you to point out examples of corruption in the stock market. I would never never thought of corruption existing there.
Enron?:-) I'm not thinking of corruption in a market itself (as in the NYSE management) but in the people on the board and upper management of a company.
This indirectly affects the stock market, which depends on:
a) Accurate reporting of a company's financial position. Given that CEOs may recieve bonuses or other compensation based on their company's short term performance, there is an interest in falsifying data. This is deliberately broken all the time -- look for any time the SEC catches a company doing it and they have to "restate earnings". If you read the WSJ, announcements of earning restatements are pretty frequent.
b) Special treatment being given trades for friends of important financial services companies (such as brokerages or mutual funds), or to people at those financial services. This was recently in the news (it might have been the Freddie Mac scandal, not sure).
I think that drinking is probably more addictive than gambling...but then, I suppose that's a pretty broad statement to make.
expressing a fluorescent protein in zebrafish may sound harmless, but I think restricting such things for now is prudent.
I have to disagree. I think few people would disagree that biotech is a phenomenally influential tool.
However, I don't think that it's all that efficient to put a hold on biotech work and try to do research out of the hands of the public.
If a zebrafish escapes, it has a gene that is potentially very damaging -- it's easy for predators to see. It's unlikely to do very well. Glowing zebrafish will probably die out in the wild quickly, leaving only regular zebrafish. Nature is pretty robust.
On the other hand, there are a few things that we might want to avoid. One is introducing poisonous variants of nondomesticated edible fish. As long as it isn't too expensive to be poisonous, there's a pretty clear evolutionary advantage to an animal in being poisonous. A poisonous, say, tuna could take over and beat out the nonpoisonous tuna -- and then we wouldn't be able to just catch and eat tuna any more.
As long as we do our best to avoid things that clearly could have very negative side effects (such as the poisonous tuna above), I think we'll be okay. Dragging feet on technology has never worked. We're better off working with biotechnology and understanding it, and learning to deal with it. And enjoying its fruits.
Think of fire. Fire is can have *phenomenal* destructive value. You can literally wipe out thousands of acres of life with a flick of your fingers and the aid of fire. Many people have died from and been hurt by fire (and still are). However, we adopted fire, and learned to work with it, and would never dream of going back.
I agree that we will probably muck up some of the existing state of things. We'll probably wipe out some species and muck up some ecosystems. We've been doing that for a long, long time, though.
After all, what's the difference between a transgenic fish and a transgenic dog?
People build up mental barriers to doing things that are discouraged and rarely done. Nudity, for instance, is certainly not abnormal -- we ran around in the nude for zillions upon zillions of years. However, most folks in a Western culture still get uncomfortable when faced with stripping off their clothes in front of others. Hurting or abusing humans is one of these things that people have mental barriers about. By not allowing people to, say, run around and kill people, we keep the shock and horror of killing people alive. This is (arguably) a good thing, since a person that is horrified by killing people is less likely to kill people.
This is one reason why a lot of people complain bitterly about violent video games (though they tend to couch it in more emotional terms). It hits their mental barrier, makes them uncomfortable, and they worry about it destroying the barriers of others, resulting in people that are less averse to killing.
The same thing would be true of abusing the baby's face that you mention here. So, yes, I think there is a significant social difference between a glowing fish and a dog with a baby's face. Regardless of whether I have a problem with the dog, I can understand why a number of people *would* be upset with it.
Seriously, is Linux so arcane because you guys WANT it that way? To keep your club for the elite?
Linux is "arcane" because:
a) It takes a lot of work to make something easy-to-use. Most Linux developers are making software that *they* would want to use. They don't really want to spend an extra week adding toolbars and tooltips all over the place (not that toolbars make a program easier to use, but a lot of Windows folks are deeply attached to them)
b) Linux is a UNIX clone. UNIX is not like Windows. You cannot re-use much of your Windows experience, and the learning curve is much steeper.
c) If Linux is a club, it's the easiest to get into club in the world -- anyone can download Linux. You just have to be willing to learn.
d) Frequently, easy-to-learn implies stripped down from a feature standpoint. For example, regular expressions are extremely powerful. I would never dream of working with a text editor that couldn't do find-and-replace based on regular expressions, since I know how to use them. However, many Windows-based text editors will not include support for regular expressions because it makes things easier for folks that aren't familiar with the editor at the expensve of making the software much less useful to the folks that *do* know regex syntax.
Penny-Arcade. Do you have any idea what Penny-Arcade is? If you don't, I highly recommend you visit. It is the single most influential game site on the planet.
Honestly, I don't see how you can argue with Penny-Arcade.
Penny Arcade has a lot of strong opinions. Whether or not you agree with them on the N-Gage, I think it's the rare gamer that hasn't disagreed strongly with Penny Arcade on at least one occasion.
I remember the Halo "pounding nails through our dicks" cartoon, and while I agree that Halo sure ain't perfect, Bungie still made one hell of a mean game.
...and since you've obviously used the X-Arcade, maybe you can answer a question I have. Why are all the arcade-style joysticks intended for home use so expensive?
I mean, you call the X-Arcade cheap, and the cheapest variant of it is $100. The arcade control set you sell goes for $400.
Most of the components, however, are pretty cheap. Nice arcade buttons sell for around $1.50 a button, plywood is extremely cheap (unless you use Formica, not sure what goes into these things), and a joystick for $10.
The X-Arcade basic model has a joystick and nine buttons. The total component cost is maybe $30. That seems like an awfully hefty profit margin...perhaps it's just that so few people buy these things. As for labor, it's gluing and drilling a few holes. Where do the high prices come from?
Keep in mind that the abstracts have zero legal meaning. They are merely a convenience for someone looking for a patent.
The only thing that matters is the claims. These are numbered and at the top of the patent beneath the abstract and references. Claims may be individually invalidated. Microsoft has a number of elements in each claim -- these are lettered with lower-case letters.
To invalidate a claim, you must show that that claim is invalid. To fully invalidate a patent, you must invalidate all claims.
The first patent has four claims.
Each of those claims has elements that go beyond the basic functionality mentioned in the abstract -- they refer to mechanism. I think all of them refer to a checksum, signature, or invisible file. I'm not sure that these mechanisms are used by Rock Ridge.
Finally, if Rock Ridge indeed implements these mechanisms and is the earliest work to do so, we had better be *damned* sure that there was some form of publication of the concepts involved before April 1, 1993 (as the other poster mentioned, this is the filing date of the Microsoft applications). Otherwise, rather than Rock Ridge providing prior art for the Microsoft applications, Rock Ridge itself is infringing on Microsoft patents.
(Note that some industry standards organizations, like the W3C, require members to provide a public license to any IP they own specifically to allow anyone to implement the standard. Rock Ridge is an ISO standard, which does not, to the best of my knowledge, do this, but if it was based on an earlier standard, there may be such a license.
Microsoft may not be going after programs, but the issue is that they *could*.
However, FreeDOS (to the best of my knowledge -- I am not a FreeDOS developer) is kosher. Microsoft's patents cover the long filename extensions (there was an excellent analysis on a patent-by-patent basis early in this story by some poster). I don't believe FreeDOS does anything but 8.3, so it shouldn't need to worry about infringement.
I suppose what my point is is that her words carry weight (unlike a random posting from someone on a forum somewhere -- ironic, since I'm also arguing IP issues in the VFAT thread right now:-) ). A company is *still* going to check with their lawyers before making decisions that might depend on it, but the general mass of decisions that are affected by legal fears are significantly affected by her work.
Well...if the filesystem is not directly user-visible (i.e. this isn't a device that one plugs into a Windows computer and has pop up on the desktop) but stores a lot of small files, I suppose there's good reason.
One possible use would be on hard-drive based MP3 players, if metadata is stored in small files on the hard drives.
Another might be digital cameras that can take pictures in low quality mode.
You're probably right that the biggest use of FAT32 is on a system that plugs into Windows machines. Such a system is also likely user-visible, which means that VFAT is a good idea.
Wait a minute. You're telling me that this guy had the balls to pull off a (never-before-done) win that happens *1 in 100 billion* times? And this guy *openly* worked for the government group that verified the validity of casino games?
This is actually pretty interesting -- gaming may be the only widespread nomilitary industry where hardware security actually sells. (I'm dubious about financial services, as they are unlikely to be hammered on as much.)
The rules of gambling and the odds are pretty straightforwards -- furthermore, it's difficult to falsify results for sports gambling in particular.
The stock market involves corruption and cronyism -- Fortune 500 upper echelons and financial service companies have too many close ties.
The concern that gambling is *addictive* is legitimate. However, one should also point out that TV and video games can be addictive and produce a loss of resources...but people don't have a problem with them.
As it happens, I don't gamble -- but I look at drinking as being more negative than nonexcessive) gambling. Drinking is addictive, stupid, and causes short term and long term physical and mental damage. Gambling is only addictive and stupid. Both can become quite expensive and life-damaging.
PJ may be the highest-profile female member of the Linux community I'm aware of. She's doing legal work rather than coding, but damned if she hasn't done a hell of a lot for the Linux community and public perception during the last few dark months.
Someone who can come out and say "IAAL, and based on my research this person is in the wrong" is an awfully big deal. The FSF does a lot of legal work too (though in the software world it seems to stick mostly to FSF-owned software...even if it does a lot of nice technology civil rights work), but they don't often sit down and post their analyses.
The problem is that, while a lot of Linux developers are very smart, logical people, they sure as hell aren't lawyers (Linus: "I just ignore patents, since I really don't like them"). So far, most non-code help Linux has gotten (with the notable exception of documentation) has been paid by companies rather than volunteer, in the spirit of the Linux community. The legal area is one where a helping hand is terribly appreciated.
PJ is amplified by her Groklaw project. Groklaw tends to be regularly amplified in public awareness by Slashdot. Slashdot reaches people on both sides of the SCO issue (reading IBM's filings sounds suspiciously like PJ's work is helping them out) as well as in the mainstream media. CNN and the AP regularly use Slashdot as an "early warning" system for things that might be interesting to check out.
PJ is probably currently the single most influential person combatting Linux *legal* FUD. It used to be technical FUD was the only issue that Linux had to worry about, and folks did a pretty good job at shooting it down. Legalisms, however, left folks at a loss, and resulted in massive semiinformed arguments on Slashdot and other forums (which I certainly am guilty of taking part in).
Thanks, PJ. You've probably done more for Linux's marketshare in the last few months than anyone putting out, say, a VM patch.
I'm an idiot and misread "JFFS" as "JFS". JFS and YAFFS might well replace FAT in many embedded devices.
The problems start coming in when the reason devices use FAT is for easy Windows interoperability -- plug it in and it works. It's a big deal if you can just appear to be a USB Mass Storage device (takes care of the storage device level), and let the standard Windows filesystems do the filesystem work (takes care of the filesystem layer). You can plug a keychain drive into any Windows machine and just *use* it.
VFAT and FAT32 are independent concepts. VFAT applies to long filenames, and is an extensions that may exist on FAT16 (as it did in Windows 95) or FAT32.
One may use FAT16 with or without VFAT or FAT32 with or without VFAT.
If you have a valid copy of windows you have a license for FAT.
No.
You are not the one who is liable for infringing. Microsoft cannot sue you for using an infringing device. The company that sold you the other system that uses FAT (a Sony digital camera, a copy of Linux, etc) is the one who is liable for infringing. And they do not have a valid license for FAT.
We also remind Microsoft that if they dont accept the agreement, that the antitrust people are waiting in the wings.
Clinton's gone. This is the Bush administration. Microsoft need fear nothing.
You are right that "defend it or lose it" is a trademark concept, but there *is* a very rough patent equivalent. A patent owner may not sue for damages incurred over six years ago. So if you let things slide for too long, and the person has stopped producing the infringing product, you can't do anything to him.
Thank you for your excellent reading. This should definitely be modded up. However, I'd like to add a couple of comments.
First, by your reading, it seems that only VFAT is affected. This is bad, but not as bad as it could be.
Second, some other people have posted that the license applies only to embedded devices. This has nothing to do with the infringing or noninfringing nature of Linux. All this means is that the only group Microsoft has offered to license to *legally* use long filenames on FAT is the embedded folks. This means that there is currently no option (if indeed the VFAT kernel module infringes, as it appears to do) for Linux folks to have uninfringing use. There is no requirement for Microsoft to provide such a licensing option, and they may sue for damages regardless of whether or not they provide such an option.
Third, my reading is that your argument about the patents being invalid due to prior art is incorrect. The relevant section is USC 35, Part II, Chapter 10, Section 205. The relevant clauses are (a) and (b). (a) does not apply because it only relates to prior art as produced by others. (b) does not apply because it refers to *public* use or sale -- not a couple of MSDN members or whoever got to play with Chicago betas. Windows 95 was released in August, 1995. This is less than a year before the patent application in April, 1996.
RTFA it's for portable devices like cameras and mp3 players. That doesn't even risk embedded Linux devices since they can use other filesystems.
Read the patents. They *do* cover things that the Linux FAT driver does. The fact that Microsoft is not currently offering to license rights to let people use FAT in embedded in a noninfringing manner is irrelevant -- the point is that the Linux FAT driver *could* be attacked at any point.:-(
If you RTFA (Wait, what was I thinking! This is/.) you would find that this only applies to consumer electronics (DVD players, TV's, etc.) and portable memory devices, like Compact Flash and those little USB memory sticks. At least for right now. And it only counts if it comes preformatted from the mfr.
If you read the patents, you'd notice that they are not specific to hardware implementations. What Microsoft does or does not currently demand is irrelevant -- the fact is that they *could* demand Linux royalties.
I suspect this will drive most manufacturers to not format their media, or it will drive them to an open format, like jffs.
JFFS is an unacceptable alternative. The two filesystems have wildly different goals. FAT is simple and can be implemented in a small amount of space.
Slashdot Mirror
I wouldn't mind for you to point out examples of corruption in the stock market. I would never never thought of corruption existing there.
:-) I'm not thinking of corruption in a market itself (as in the NYSE management) but in the people on the board and upper management of a company.
Enron?
This indirectly affects the stock market, which depends on:
a) Accurate reporting of a company's financial position. Given that CEOs may recieve bonuses or other compensation based on their company's short term performance, there is an interest in falsifying data. This is deliberately broken all the time -- look for any time the SEC catches a company doing it and they have to "restate earnings". If you read the WSJ, announcements of earning restatements are pretty frequent.
b) Special treatment being given trades for friends of important financial services companies (such as brokerages or mutual funds), or to people at those financial services. This was recently in the news (it might have been the Freddie Mac scandal, not sure).
I think that drinking is probably more addictive than gambling...but then, I suppose that's a pretty broad statement to make.
expressing a fluorescent protein in zebrafish may sound harmless, but I think restricting such things for now is prudent.
I have to disagree. I think few people would disagree that biotech is a phenomenally influential tool.
However, I don't think that it's all that efficient to put a hold on biotech work and try to do research out of the hands of the public.
If a zebrafish escapes, it has a gene that is potentially very damaging -- it's easy for predators to see. It's unlikely to do very well. Glowing zebrafish will probably die out in the wild quickly, leaving only regular zebrafish. Nature is pretty robust.
On the other hand, there are a few things that we might want to avoid. One is introducing poisonous variants of nondomesticated edible fish. As long as it isn't too expensive to be poisonous, there's a pretty clear evolutionary advantage to an animal in being poisonous. A poisonous, say, tuna could take over and beat out the nonpoisonous tuna -- and then we wouldn't be able to just catch and eat tuna any more.
As long as we do our best to avoid things that clearly could have very negative side effects (such as the poisonous tuna above), I think we'll be okay. Dragging feet on technology has never worked. We're better off working with biotechnology and understanding it, and learning to deal with it. And enjoying its fruits.
Think of fire. Fire is can have *phenomenal* destructive value. You can literally wipe out thousands of acres of life with a flick of your fingers and the aid of fire. Many people have died from and been hurt by fire (and still are). However, we adopted fire, and learned to work with it, and would never dream of going back.
I agree that we will probably muck up some of the existing state of things. We'll probably wipe out some species and muck up some ecosystems. We've been doing that for a long, long time, though.
Good comment, though I disagree with some of it.
After all, what's the difference between a transgenic fish and a transgenic dog?
People build up mental barriers to doing things that are discouraged and rarely done. Nudity, for instance, is certainly not abnormal -- we ran around in the nude for zillions upon zillions of years. However, most folks in a Western culture still get uncomfortable when faced with stripping off their clothes in front of others. Hurting or abusing humans is one of these things that people have mental barriers about. By not allowing people to, say, run around and kill people, we keep the shock and horror of killing people alive. This is (arguably) a good thing, since a person that is horrified by killing people is less likely to kill people.
This is one reason why a lot of people complain bitterly about violent video games (though they tend to couch it in more emotional terms). It hits their mental barrier, makes them uncomfortable, and they worry about it destroying the barriers of others, resulting in people that are less averse to killing.
The same thing would be true of abusing the baby's face that you mention here. So, yes, I think there is a significant social difference between a glowing fish and a dog with a baby's face. Regardless of whether I have a problem with the dog, I can understand why a number of people *would* be upset with it.
Seriously, is Linux so arcane because you guys WANT it that way? To keep your club for the elite?
Linux is "arcane" because:
a) It takes a lot of work to make something easy-to-use. Most Linux developers are making software that *they* would want to use. They don't really want to spend an extra week adding toolbars and tooltips all over the place (not that toolbars make a program easier to use, but a lot of Windows folks are deeply attached to them)
b) Linux is a UNIX clone. UNIX is not like Windows. You cannot re-use much of your Windows experience, and the learning curve is much steeper.
c) If Linux is a club, it's the easiest to get into club in the world -- anyone can download Linux. You just have to be willing to learn.
d) Frequently, easy-to-learn implies stripped down from a feature standpoint. For example, regular expressions are extremely powerful. I would never dream of working with a text editor that couldn't do find-and-replace based on regular expressions, since I know how to use them. However, many Windows-based text editors will not include support for regular expressions because it makes things easier for folks that aren't familiar with the editor at the expensve of making the software much less useful to the folks that *do* know regex syntax.
Penny-Arcade. Do you have any idea what Penny-Arcade is? If you don't, I highly recommend you visit. It is the single most influential game site on the planet.
Honestly, I don't see how you can argue with Penny-Arcade.
Penny Arcade has a lot of strong opinions. Whether or not you agree with them on the N-Gage, I think it's the rare gamer that hasn't disagreed strongly with Penny Arcade on at least one occasion.
I remember the Halo "pounding nails through our dicks" cartoon, and while I agree that Halo sure ain't perfect, Bungie still made one hell of a mean game.
...and since you've obviously used the X-Arcade, maybe you can answer a question I have. Why are all the arcade-style joysticks intended for home use so expensive?
I mean, you call the X-Arcade cheap, and the cheapest variant of it is $100. The arcade control set you sell goes for $400.
Most of the components, however, are pretty cheap. Nice arcade buttons sell for around $1.50 a button, plywood is extremely cheap (unless you use Formica, not sure what goes into these things), and a joystick for $10.
The X-Arcade basic model has a joystick and nine buttons. The total component cost is maybe $30. That seems like an awfully hefty profit margin...perhaps it's just that so few people buy these things. As for labor, it's gluing and drilling a few holes. Where do the high prices come from?
Keep in mind that the abstracts have zero legal meaning. They are merely a convenience for someone looking for a patent.
The only thing that matters is the claims. These are numbered and at the top of the patent beneath the abstract and references. Claims may be individually invalidated. Microsoft has a number of elements in each claim -- these are lettered with lower-case letters.
To invalidate a claim, you must show that that claim is invalid. To fully invalidate a patent, you must invalidate all claims.
The first patent has four claims.
Each of those claims has elements that go beyond the basic functionality mentioned in the abstract -- they refer to mechanism. I think all of them refer to a checksum, signature, or invisible file. I'm not sure that these mechanisms are used by Rock Ridge.
Finally, if Rock Ridge indeed implements these mechanisms and is the earliest work to do so, we had better be *damned* sure that there was some form of publication of the concepts involved before April 1, 1993 (as the other poster mentioned, this is the filing date of the Microsoft applications). Otherwise, rather than Rock Ridge providing prior art for the Microsoft applications, Rock Ridge itself is infringing on Microsoft patents.
(Note that some industry standards organizations, like the W3C, require members to provide a public license to any IP they own specifically to allow anyone to implement the standard. Rock Ridge is an ISO standard, which does not, to the best of my knowledge, do this, but if it was based on an earlier standard, there may be such a license.
Microsoft may not be going after programs, but the issue is that they *could*.
However, FreeDOS (to the best of my knowledge -- I am not a FreeDOS developer) is kosher. Microsoft's patents cover the long filename extensions (there was an excellent analysis on a patent-by-patent basis early in this story by some poster). I don't believe FreeDOS does anything but 8.3, so it shouldn't need to worry about infringement.
Oops, you're right.
:-) ). A company is *still* going to check with their lawyers before making decisions that might depend on it, but the general mass of decisions that are affected by legal fears are significantly affected by her work.
I suppose what my point is is that her words carry weight (unlike a random posting from someone on a forum somewhere -- ironic, since I'm also arguing IP issues in the VFAT thread right now
Well...if the filesystem is not directly user-visible (i.e. this isn't a device that one plugs into a Windows computer and has pop up on the desktop) but stores a lot of small files, I suppose there's good reason.
One possible use would be on hard-drive based MP3 players, if metadata is stored in small files on the hard drives.
Another might be digital cameras that can take pictures in low quality mode.
You're probably right that the biggest use of FAT32 is on a system that plugs into Windows machines. Such a system is also likely user-visible, which means that VFAT is a good idea.
Wait a minute. You're telling me that this guy had the balls to pull off a (never-before-done) win that happens *1 in 100 billion* times? And this guy *openly* worked for the government group that verified the validity of casino games?
That isn't greed at all. It's just stupid.
ChicoLance,
This is actually pretty interesting -- gaming may be the only widespread nomilitary industry where hardware security actually sells. (I'm dubious about financial services, as they are unlikely to be hammered on as much.)
I'm dubious.
The rules of gambling and the odds are pretty straightforwards -- furthermore, it's difficult to falsify results for sports gambling in particular.
The stock market involves corruption and cronyism -- Fortune 500 upper echelons and financial service companies have too many close ties.
The concern that gambling is *addictive* is legitimate. However, one should also point out that TV and video games can be addictive and produce a loss of resources...but people don't have a problem with them.
As it happens, I don't gamble -- but I look at drinking as being more negative than nonexcessive) gambling. Drinking is addictive, stupid, and causes short term and long term physical and mental damage. Gambling is only addictive and stupid. Both can become quite expensive and life-damaging.
C:\>tracert life.liberty.pursuit-of-happiness
Error: life.liberty.pursuit-of-happiness unreachable.
They already have that in Chicago.
A random cash jackpot to encourage voters or over 100% turnout?
PJ may be the highest-profile female member of the Linux community I'm aware of. She's doing legal work rather than coding, but damned if she hasn't done a hell of a lot for the Linux community and public perception during the last few dark months.
Someone who can come out and say "IAAL, and based on my research this person is in the wrong" is an awfully big deal. The FSF does a lot of legal work too (though in the software world it seems to stick mostly to FSF-owned software...even if it does a lot of nice technology civil rights work), but they don't often sit down and post their analyses.
The problem is that, while a lot of Linux developers are very smart, logical people, they sure as hell aren't lawyers (Linus: "I just ignore patents, since I really don't like them"). So far, most non-code help Linux has gotten (with the notable exception of documentation) has been paid by companies rather than volunteer, in the spirit of the Linux community. The legal area is one where a helping hand is terribly appreciated.
PJ is amplified by her Groklaw project. Groklaw tends to be regularly amplified in public awareness by Slashdot. Slashdot reaches people on both sides of the SCO issue (reading IBM's filings sounds suspiciously like PJ's work is helping them out) as well as in the mainstream media. CNN and the AP regularly use Slashdot as an "early warning" system for things that might be interesting to check out.
PJ is probably currently the single most influential person combatting Linux *legal* FUD. It used to be technical FUD was the only issue that Linux had to worry about, and folks did a pretty good job at shooting it down. Legalisms, however, left folks at a loss, and resulted in massive semiinformed arguments on Slashdot and other forums (which I certainly am guilty of taking part in).
Thanks, PJ. You've probably done more for Linux's marketshare in the last few months than anyone putting out, say, a VM patch.
I'm an idiot and misread "JFFS" as "JFS". JFS and YAFFS might well replace FAT in many embedded devices.
The problems start coming in when the reason devices use FAT is for easy Windows interoperability -- plug it in and it works. It's a big deal if you can just appear to be a USB Mass Storage device (takes care of the storage device level), and let the standard Windows filesystems do the filesystem work (takes care of the filesystem layer). You can plug a keychain drive into any Windows machine and just *use* it.
JFFS is an unacceptable alternative. The two filesystems have wildly different goals. FAT is simple and can be implemented in a small amount of space.
Doh. I misread "JFFS" as "JFS".
The grandparent post is probably correct, though I'm still not sure whether FAT and JFFS have sufficiently similar goals.
VFAT and FAT32 are independent concepts. VFAT applies to long filenames, and is an extensions that may exist on FAT16 (as it did in Windows 95) or FAT32.
One may use FAT16 with or without VFAT or FAT32 with or without VFAT.
If you have a valid copy of windows you have a license for FAT.
No.
You are not the one who is liable for infringing. Microsoft cannot sue you for using an infringing device. The company that sold you the other system that uses FAT (a Sony digital camera, a copy of Linux, etc) is the one who is liable for infringing. And they do not have a valid license for FAT.
We also remind Microsoft that if they dont accept the agreement, that the antitrust people are waiting in the wings.
Clinton's gone. This is the Bush administration. Microsoft need fear nothing.
You are right that "defend it or lose it" is a trademark concept, but there *is* a very rough patent equivalent. A patent owner may not sue for damages incurred over six years ago. So if you let things slide for too long, and the person has stopped producing the infringing product, you can't do anything to him.
:-)
Of course, that isn't very relevant here.
Thank you for your excellent reading. This should definitely be modded up. However, I'd like to add a couple of comments.
First, by your reading, it seems that only VFAT is affected. This is bad, but not as bad as it could be.
Second, some other people have posted that the license applies only to embedded devices. This has nothing to do with the infringing or noninfringing nature of Linux. All this means is that the only group Microsoft has offered to license to *legally* use long filenames on FAT is the embedded folks. This means that there is currently no option (if indeed the VFAT kernel module infringes, as it appears to do) for Linux folks to have uninfringing use. There is no requirement for Microsoft to provide such a licensing option, and they may sue for damages regardless of whether or not they provide such an option.
Third, my reading is that your argument about the patents being invalid due to prior art is incorrect. The relevant section is USC 35, Part II, Chapter 10, Section 205. The relevant clauses are (a) and (b). (a) does not apply because it only relates to prior art as produced by others. (b) does not apply because it refers to *public* use or sale -- not a couple of MSDN members or whoever got to play with Chicago betas. Windows 95 was released in August, 1995. This is less than a year before the patent application in April, 1996.
RTFA it's for portable devices like cameras and mp3 players. That doesn't even risk embedded Linux devices since they can use other filesystems.
:-(
Read the patents. They *do* cover things that the Linux FAT driver does. The fact that Microsoft is not currently offering to license rights to let people use FAT in embedded in a noninfringing manner is irrelevant -- the point is that the Linux FAT driver *could* be attacked at any point.
You're seem very proud of your accomplishments, but that doesn't mean you can look down on your peers who haven't accomplished the same.
Of course he can.
Now, the question is whether we want to force everyone to go through the large amount of work that he did.
If you RTFA (Wait, what was I thinking! This is /.) you would find that this only applies to consumer electronics (DVD players, TV's, etc.) and portable memory devices, like Compact Flash and those little USB memory sticks. At least for right now. And it only counts if it comes preformatted from the mfr.
If you read the patents, you'd notice that they are not specific to hardware implementations. What Microsoft does or does not currently demand is irrelevant -- the fact is that they *could* demand Linux royalties.
I suspect this will drive most manufacturers to not format their media, or it will drive them to an open format, like jffs.
JFFS is an unacceptable alternative. The two filesystems have wildly different goals. FAT is simple and can be implemented in a small amount of space.