I think you are on the right track, but I see it flipped. Most people did not have PCs at home. This was a device they had at work. They were trained to use it because it was a function of their job.
Then one day this Internet "thing" arrived and they wanted a device to surf the web. The only device they knew was the PC - by now it was Windows-based. So Wintel PCs spiked in sales. But if we are honest, they really weren't ready for your average person - far too complex. But it was almost the only tool available, so that's what they got.
But now tablets and smart phones let them surf and get email - without a lot of the problems. So consumers are slowly changing to that device. I say "slowly" because the sales curve continues to accelerate.
I believe the end result will be the PC will return to being a mostly-business device. We'll look back on the last 15 years as an odd spike between the Internet land rush and the arrival of the Internet Terminal.
Microsoft's mistake? Users have a tough time with change, and MS upset them greatly by creating a confusing interface. Users are much more willing to learn new controls for something totally different (airplane, boat, tablet) but get mad as hell if you change something they are already comfortable with (car, Windows).
One of my clients is a rather large international company. Win 8 is not allowed on the network, and nobody is allowed to buy a Win 8 PC without a signoff from IT. In a nutshell, their user testing showed a huge increase in support costs ("Helpdesk, how do I...").
Here's the odd thing - They put the same users (who sturggled with Win8) in front of Linux PCs and the users were much happier, and were able to figure out Open Office, etc. largely on their own. The conclusion was Linux support costs would be higher than Win 7, but less than Win 8. This triggered a fully-funded research project on the costs and benefits of offering a Linux option.
(Warning - car analogy ahead) It's like Toyota deciding to change from steering-wheel-and-pedals to a joystick and buttons, with no other option. What a surprise that users are holding off purchases.
I'm sure this seems like a crazy idea to non-filmmakers. Here's why this is important:
There are two things that are very important to us - the ability to use our existing lens investment, and "raw" data.
Pro still photographers shoot in "raw" format. We have the camera store raw sensor data (14 bits on mine), rather than "cook" it to a 8-bit JPEG (compressed, too). The massive increase in data lets us alter white balance, exposure, curves, etc. after the photo has been shot. This is a huge deal to photographers, and video guys never had it.
Well, until the RED camera arrived about 5 years ago. RED is a large sensor cinema camera that shoots in raw - that made it a game changer, even at a cost of $40k-$50K for a fully dressed rig. Last year, Black Magic Design shipped a small-sensor camera that shoot in raw, for US$3000. There are lots of things to dislike about that camera, but nothing anywhere close to that price shoots raw.
Back to the lens collection. Many of us have a collection of Nikon, Leica and Zeiss manual focus lenses. We look for cameras that can use these lenses, because it is the lens that draws the image on the sensor. When we want a certain rendering (soft, sharp, dreamy) we pick a lens that renders that way. There are a lot of good C-mount lenses that are too small to fit large sensor camcorders. They have become dirt cheap, since there is little use for them.
The digital Bolex give us the ability to shoot raw files, using old C-Mount lenses, and modern lenses via an adapter. That's a lot of good stuff, assuming the price is reasonable. Right now, only Black Magic Design is anywhere close.
The drawback? Well, sensor size is also very important to us, and the Bolex is small. In fact, the driving force for the dSLR video "revolution" is simply the size of the sensor. A large sensor needs a lens with a longer focal length to maintain the same field of view. Longer lenses tend to have a shallow depth-of-field, and that characteristic can be used to create blurry backgrounds. This keeps the viewer's eyes on the sharpest part of the image, and allows us to control where the viewer should look. This would be very hard to do on a 16mm camera, Digital Bolex, or Black Magic Design. It is trivial on a Nikon D800 or Canon 5D Mk III - but neither of these cameras shoot video in raw.
So we are in the middle of the raw-format revolution in video. Right now the combination of raw-format recording, interchangeable lenses and a large sensor is expensive. You can get 2-of-the-3 for about US$3000 today (camera only - no lens). This is a very interesting time for filmmakers.
They know they need to lay off people, so how do you select who to keep?
I suspect this move to eliminate remote work will cause some employees to quit (cheaper for the company than a layoff). The ones that come in, but bitch about it will be labeled non-team-players and eliminated next.
I've seen some places that simply made life unbearable to see who would put up with shit. Making people quit is cheaper than a layoff. BTW, that company failed badly. I was happy to hear the asshole boss lost everything when his secretary sued for sexual harassment.
My Mom is about 600 miles from me. I got an old IBM Thinkpad, removed the dead HDD, and put a Linux Live CD in the drive. I made a second CD for backup. Yeah - it's slow. But all she does is boot it, and launch FireFox. gMail, Google Docs, and Facebook lets her keep in touch with all the kids and grandkids. When the machine dies, I'll send her the next piece-of-crap laptop I have and she's back in business. I might give her a Chromebook.
My life is so much easier. No virus problems. No hard drive crashes. No backup required. When she does need help, it is usually with gMail, gDocs or FB. I log onto those sites and fix her problems.
She's used the the slow boot times. She turns it on and goes to the kitchen to make coffee, make a cake or.... whatever. She love that she can just turn it off. And the battery-that-lasts-15-minutes is fine for her. She treats it like a portable desktop (requiring AC), so It is like a built-in UPS. She loves that she can unplug it, move it to the kitchen, plug it back in - and it keeps going! Amazing stuff!
That is a good way to get an aching neck. When working with a screen, the top of the screen should be slightly below your eyes.
This is a myth. People get long-term injury due to this practice.
In the early days of CAD, we had constant complaints of "digitizer neck". CAD systems used a command line on the screen, and a digitizer tablet sitting on the desk for drawing. The digitizer tablet often had a plastic overlay with grids of icons. Clicking the icon on the tablet launched a command. The user were constantly looking up and down, causing pretty bad neck pain.
The solution was to raise the monitor so the mid-to-top-third was at eye level. Pain vanished same day.
Why did this work? The pain was not caused by moving the head up and down, it was a result of certain neck muscles never having a chance to rest. If the monitor was set too low, the back neck muscles were always in tension, and never got a chance to recover. If you set the monitor at a level that allows your head to balance, your neck muscles relax, and can recover.
A proper workstation setup: Raise/lower the chair so your knees are at-or-below the hips. Adjust the worksurface (keyboard/digitizer) level with your elbows, to allow your forearms to sit level. Adjust the middle of the monitor (or top 1/3) level with the eyes. Give it a day and tweak as needed. This won't work for everyone, but it is a great place to start. This method has worked for my clients for 30 years. Many have expressed that years of pain have vanish in a one or two days. Your mileage may vary.
Disclaimer: I should point out that this post conflicts with most of what I read, including OSHA documents. Since I have no expertise in this area, you should ignore my advice. Do what OSHA suggests, as government knows best. But if nothing else works for you, consider trying the above as an experiment.
Pick one (or two) work periods. Set the router to block all traffic to the WAN for your work period(s).
I have a 90 minute work period in the morning. I have the router block 9:00 AM to 10:30AM. The first hour of the day is review, prep, etc. for the work period. My phone beeps to let me know it started, and blocks phone calls. I'm amazed how well it works.
After 10:30, I spend the next hour dealing with people bitching that I was ignoring them. I intend to try other times. Anyone have thoughts on this?
You don’t need no gun control, you know what you need? We need some bullet control. Men, we need to control the bullets, that’s right. I think all bullets should cost five thousand dollars five thousand dollars per bullet You know why? Cause if a bullet cost five thousand dollars there would be no more innocent bystanders.
I guess you don't know this, but it is much easier to make a bullet than a gun.
For example, here's a company that makes and sells bullet molds.
Let's be fair on this though. Their concept of a "computer" was royally different than what we're using today.
Indeed. All these comment show that even very smart business leaders can't see very far into the future. And that's the point - Time Warner Cable's CFO also lacks that vision.
I started programming with a GE Multix on a Teletype. Yet I could grasp that these things could/would get smaller and cheaper. I was wrong about the flying car, however.
Bill Gates never actually made the 640K comment; it is falsely attributed to him. The other two quotes are accurate and very relevant to this conversation.
You'll note that I attributed the quote to "some guy". Gates said it wasn't him, but others claim it was said at a Seattle computer show. It has also been attributed to an IBM engineer. I don't know so I wrote "some guy".
From TFA: "The design puts a tubular metal cage around the driver, “like a NASCAR roll cage,” Kor claims."
So all the load bearing parts are metal. What we really have is a tube-frame car with a plastic body. Great job suckering Wired into providing free advertising.
"I think there is a world market for about five computers.... No one else, he said, would ever need machines of their own, or would be able to afford to buy them" - Thomas Watson - IBM
"There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home." - Ken Olsen - Digital Equipment Corp
"640K ought to be enough for anybody" - Some guy...
In my younger days, I purchased vinyl 45 RPM singles for hit songs, and LP records for albums. For the car, most people used 8-track cartridges. They sucked, because the tape slides against itself internally, causing "wow and flutter". They also wore out as the lubrication was consumed. I was unusual because I'd record them to cassette tapes. Soon the 8-track got a bad reputation, and people switched to recording their own cassettes. The industry cried foul - we were "stealing" from them. Rather than selling multiple 8-track cartridges (due to wear), they only sold a single cassette or LP, and users would freely copy them. Oddly enough, sales rose.
When the CD came out, the industry raised the price about 50%, claiming it cost more to produce than vinyl records. We accepted that "fact", and repurchased most of our music collection.
A funny thing happened - the CD-R arrived. Suddenly we could make copies of a music CD for $1. People felt screwed. We knew the record companies screwed the bands, and we knew they were overcharging us, but charging 15 times the cost of a CD-R pissed a lot of people off.
Soon, we had a CD at home, and perfect copies at work, in the car and at the girlfriend's house. Wear it out? No problem - burn another copy. Find a new artist? Burn a copy for a friend. In theory, you'd think this would have caused a massive sales drop, since the earlier formats wore out and the CD did not. Yet, while the industry argued they were losing sales, it turned out to be the period of highest sales in history.
Then Napster and MP3 players appeared. Suddenly the industry was in a panic. The MPAA began an aggressive attack on downloaders, and sued anyone they could find as a scare tactic. Even though past history showed that sharing was a form of viral marketing, they wanted to kill it - perhaps because they have little control over it.
To my ears, nothing wrecks a song like Autotune (sounds like fingernails on a chalkboard to me) compressed to MP3. Most new music sounded too processed and too compressed. In a sea of over-processed crap, I'm finding it hard to find music I want to buy. So I don't.
The music industry doesn't understand the people like me buy music because my music-geek friends would share. Without that discovery vector, I'm simply not exposed to anything I'd buy.
Which is why I am stunned that Cadillac is using this in a car. In fact, they are bragging that this is better than buttons. Because what we need in our cars is more shit that takes our eyes off the road.
We know how this will end. Someone will get killed because a Cadillac driver was trying to do something the REQUIRES his eyes to be looking at the dash. A sharp attorney will realize this is a design flaw. They will find email and disgruntled ex-employees that will show this was known in advance, and... well, you know the rest.
I've learned through trial and error what cards actually work on my camcorder. For still photography, I've always been a SanDisk fan. But every class 10 SanDisk SD card I have used is unable to support the highest quality recording on my Canon camcorder. Oddly, class 10 Transend cards work fine. It appears the class 10 rating is a read-speed rating - not write-speed. I've tried 6 different SanDisk cards over the years and they continue to disappoint.
Why device manufacturers insist on using VFAT and FAT64 boggles my mind.
This whole situation is just pure laziness, and a reason why people should point and laugh at Nikon for paying danegeld.
I guess you don't realize that devices like my TV, Blu-Ray player, projectors, etc. all read FAT-formatted SD cards. So you're asking Nikon to lose compatibility with all those devices. They would also have support calls about cards not working, etc.
Couldn't Nikon skirt the whole patent (the enforceable and legally-tested claims, anyway) by just shipping the camera with unformatted flash, making users format them on a PC, and ignoring long VFAT filenames by only looking at the 8.3 part?
As a general rule, Nikon (as all camera manufactures) doesn't supply a memory card with their cameras.
I would if they walked into BestBuy, approached the cashier and said "Please send this $100 for a windows license to Microsoft. Oh, no, I don't need a copy, thanks."
I think it's more like your buddy is fighting cancer and a big thug wants a dollar to make sure nothing happens to his car in the hospital parking lot.
Yeah - I get all that. In principle, I agree with you.
But the practical is different. Nikon has it's hands full with its primary competitors, and a shrinking market. Smartphones are killing the compact camera market, and new "mirror-less" cameras are eating into the D-SLR market. Canon and Sony make lots of products outside the camera business, but 75% of Nikon's sales are dependent on cameras and lenses. They are being super aggressive in the D-SLR segment to make up for that revenue, and trying to find something to fit in the space between the smartphone and D-SLR. And they need the support of Microsoft, Apple and Adobe for processing those files. Right now, they need friends - not another enemy.
I suspect the Android camera is an experiment to see if consumers will accept a compact camera that does pretty much everything a smartphone does, except for phone calls. Do consumers want Android-based cameras? Nikon makes just a single model with Android. It could be a flop, and something Nikon might drop. Do the sales justify an expensive legal fight in the USA - Microsoft's home turf.
I'm sure they see two giants (MS and Google) about to face-off in a war, and they will pay the MS "tax" and sit this one out. This is a bit like someone fighting cancer who decides not to get involved in a conflict between nations.
Nikon is fighting for survival, so I think we should give them a pass on this one.
One less brand to ever appear on my shopping list.
Help me understand - you are mad at the victim? Do you stop talking to friends because they paid for Windows? Don't buy anything with a Samsung-made component?
I'm sure Nikon looked at the cost of fighting and decided it made business sense to pay them. Consider the volume of Android devices Nikon sells vs. Samsung and other cell phone companies. If it doesn't make sense for the cell phone vendors, it is unlikely to make sense for Nikon to fight in court.
Frankly, your anger toward Microsoft might be better directed at Microsoft. And Google. Why hasn't Google challenged this?
Slashdot Mirror
If only there was a way to communicate in real time, via 2 way voice...
Someday.... someday...
I think you are on the right track, but I see it flipped. Most people did not have PCs at home. This was a device they had at work. They were trained to use it because it was a function of their job.
Then one day this Internet "thing" arrived and they wanted a device to surf the web. The only device they knew was the PC - by now it was Windows-based. So Wintel PCs spiked in sales. But if we are honest, they really weren't ready for your average person - far too complex. But it was almost the only tool available, so that's what they got.
But now tablets and smart phones let them surf and get email - without a lot of the problems. So consumers are slowly changing to that device. I say "slowly" because the sales curve continues to accelerate.
I believe the end result will be the PC will return to being a mostly-business device. We'll look back on the last 15 years as an odd spike between the Internet land rush and the arrival of the Internet Terminal.
Microsoft's mistake? Users have a tough time with change, and MS upset them greatly by creating a confusing interface. Users are much more willing to learn new controls for something totally different (airplane, boat, tablet) but get mad as hell if you change something they are already comfortable with (car, Windows).
This.
One of my clients is a rather large international company. Win 8 is not allowed on the network, and nobody is allowed to buy a Win 8 PC without a signoff from IT. In a nutshell, their user testing showed a huge increase in support costs ("Helpdesk, how do I...").
Here's the odd thing - They put the same users (who sturggled with Win8) in front of Linux PCs and the users were much happier, and were able to figure out Open Office, etc. largely on their own. The conclusion was Linux support costs would be higher than Win 7, but less than Win 8. This triggered a fully-funded research project on the costs and benefits of offering a Linux option.
(Warning - car analogy ahead) It's like Toyota deciding to change from steering-wheel-and-pedals to a joystick and buttons, with no other option. What a surprise that users are holding off purchases.
I'm sure this seems like a crazy idea to non-filmmakers. Here's why this is important:
There are two things that are very important to us - the ability to use our existing lens investment, and "raw" data.
Pro still photographers shoot in "raw" format. We have the camera store raw sensor data (14 bits on mine), rather than "cook" it to a 8-bit JPEG (compressed, too). The massive increase in data lets us alter white balance, exposure, curves, etc. after the photo has been shot. This is a huge deal to photographers, and video guys never had it.
Well, until the RED camera arrived about 5 years ago. RED is a large sensor cinema camera that shoots in raw - that made it a game changer, even at a cost of $40k-$50K for a fully dressed rig. Last year, Black Magic Design shipped a small-sensor camera that shoot in raw, for US$3000. There are lots of things to dislike about that camera, but nothing anywhere close to that price shoots raw.
Back to the lens collection. Many of us have a collection of Nikon, Leica and Zeiss manual focus lenses. We look for cameras that can use these lenses, because it is the lens that draws the image on the sensor. When we want a certain rendering (soft, sharp, dreamy) we pick a lens that renders that way. There are a lot of good C-mount lenses that are too small to fit large sensor camcorders. They have become dirt cheap, since there is little use for them.
The digital Bolex give us the ability to shoot raw files, using old C-Mount lenses, and modern lenses via an adapter. That's a lot of good stuff, assuming the price is reasonable. Right now, only Black Magic Design is anywhere close.
The drawback? Well, sensor size is also very important to us, and the Bolex is small. In fact, the driving force for the dSLR video "revolution" is simply the size of the sensor. A large sensor needs a lens with a longer focal length to maintain the same field of view. Longer lenses tend to have a shallow depth-of-field, and that characteristic can be used to create blurry backgrounds. This keeps the viewer's eyes on the sharpest part of the image, and allows us to control where the viewer should look. This would be very hard to do on a 16mm camera, Digital Bolex, or Black Magic Design. It is trivial on a Nikon D800 or Canon 5D Mk III - but neither of these cameras shoot video in raw.
So we are in the middle of the raw-format revolution in video. Right now the combination of raw-format recording, interchangeable lenses and a large sensor is expensive. You can get 2-of-the-3 for about US$3000 today (camera only - no lens). This is a very interesting time for filmmakers.
In the Southern US, we say "Pri-ya'll".
They know they need to lay off people, so how do you select who to keep?
I suspect this move to eliminate remote work will cause some employees to quit (cheaper for the company than a layoff). The ones that come in, but bitch about it will be labeled non-team-players and eliminated next.
I've seen some places that simply made life unbearable to see who would put up with shit. Making people quit is cheaper than a layoff. BTW, that company failed badly. I was happy to hear the asshole boss lost everything when his secretary sued for sexual harassment.
My Mom is about 600 miles from me. I got an old IBM Thinkpad, removed the dead HDD, and put a Linux Live CD in the drive. I made a second CD for backup. Yeah - it's slow. But all she does is boot it, and launch FireFox. gMail, Google Docs, and Facebook lets her keep in touch with all the kids and grandkids. When the machine dies, I'll send her the next piece-of-crap laptop I have and she's back in business. I might give her a Chromebook.
My life is so much easier. No virus problems. No hard drive crashes. No backup required. When she does need help, it is usually with gMail, gDocs or FB. I log onto those sites and fix her problems.
She's used the the slow boot times. She turns it on and goes to the kitchen to make coffee, make a cake or .... whatever. She love that she can just turn it off. And the battery-that-lasts-15-minutes is fine for her. She treats it like a portable desktop (requiring AC), so It is like a built-in UPS. She loves that she can unplug it, move it to the kitchen, plug it back in - and it keeps going! Amazing stuff!
Naw - just a guy, who's been at the wrong end of a legal gun.
OS? I don't need no stinking OS.
Google "Forth"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forth_(programming_language)
That is a good way to get an aching neck. When working with a screen, the top of the screen should be slightly below your eyes.
This is a myth. People get long-term injury due to this practice.
In the early days of CAD, we had constant complaints of "digitizer neck". CAD systems used a command line on the screen, and a digitizer tablet sitting on the desk for drawing. The digitizer tablet often had a plastic overlay with grids of icons. Clicking the icon on the tablet launched a command. The user were constantly looking up and down, causing pretty bad neck pain.
The solution was to raise the monitor so the mid-to-top-third was at eye level. Pain vanished same day.
Why did this work? The pain was not caused by moving the head up and down, it was a result of certain neck muscles never having a chance to rest. If the monitor was set too low, the back neck muscles were always in tension, and never got a chance to recover. If you set the monitor at a level that allows your head to balance, your neck muscles relax, and can recover.
A proper workstation setup: Raise/lower the chair so your knees are at-or-below the hips. Adjust the worksurface (keyboard/digitizer) level with your elbows, to allow your forearms to sit level. Adjust the middle of the monitor (or top 1/3) level with the eyes. Give it a day and tweak as needed. This won't work for everyone, but it is a great place to start. This method has worked for my clients for 30 years. Many have expressed that years of pain have vanish in a one or two days. Your mileage may vary.
Disclaimer: I should point out that this post conflicts with most of what I read, including OSHA documents. Since I have no expertise in this area, you should ignore my advice. Do what OSHA suggests, as government knows best. But if nothing else works for you, consider trying the above as an experiment.
Pick one (or two) work periods. Set the router to block all traffic to the WAN for your work period(s).
I have a 90 minute work period in the morning. I have the router block 9:00 AM to 10:30AM. The first hour of the day is review, prep, etc. for the work period. My phone beeps to let me know it started, and blocks phone calls. I'm amazed how well it works.
After 10:30, I spend the next hour dealing with people bitching that I was ignoring them. I intend to try other times. Anyone have thoughts on this?
You don’t need no gun control, you know what you need? We need some bullet control. Men, we need to control the bullets, that’s right. I think all bullets should cost five thousand dollars five thousand dollars per bullet You know why? Cause if a bullet cost five thousand dollars there would be no more innocent bystanders.
I guess you don't know this, but it is much easier to make a bullet than a gun.
For example, here's a company that makes and sells bullet molds.
http://leeprecision.com/bullet-casting/black-powder-molds/black-powder-minie-bullet-molds/
Let's be fair on this though. Their concept of a "computer" was royally different than what we're using today.
Indeed. All these comment show that even very smart business leaders can't see very far into the future. And that's the point - Time Warner Cable's CFO also lacks that vision.
I started programming with a GE Multix on a Teletype. Yet I could grasp that these things could/would get smaller and cheaper. I was wrong about the flying car, however.
MPAA = Motion Picture Association of America
RIAA = Recording Industry Association of America
Dammit. You're quite correct. Good catch.
Bill Gates never actually made the 640K comment; it is falsely attributed to him. The other two quotes are accurate and very relevant to this conversation.
You'll note that I attributed the quote to "some guy". Gates said it wasn't him, but others claim it was said at a Seattle computer show. It has also been attributed to an IBM engineer. I don't know so I wrote "some guy".
So I'm three-for-three?
From TFA:
"The design puts a tubular metal cage around the driver, “like a NASCAR roll cage,” Kor claims."
So all the load bearing parts are metal. What we really have is a tube-frame car with a plastic body. Great job suckering Wired into providing free advertising.
I've filed this next to -
"I think there is a world market for about five computers. ... No one else, he said, would ever need machines of their own, or would be able to afford to buy them" - Thomas Watson - IBM
"There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home." - Ken Olsen - Digital Equipment Corp
"640K ought to be enough for anybody" - Some guy...
In my younger days, I purchased vinyl 45 RPM singles for hit songs, and LP records for albums. For the car, most people used 8-track cartridges. They sucked, because the tape slides against itself internally, causing "wow and flutter". They also wore out as the lubrication was consumed. I was unusual because I'd record them to cassette tapes. Soon the 8-track got a bad reputation, and people switched to recording their own cassettes. The industry cried foul - we were "stealing" from them. Rather than selling multiple 8-track cartridges (due to wear), they only sold a single cassette or LP, and users would freely copy them. Oddly enough, sales rose.
When the CD came out, the industry raised the price about 50%, claiming it cost more to produce than vinyl records. We accepted that "fact", and repurchased most of our music collection.
A funny thing happened - the CD-R arrived. Suddenly we could make copies of a music CD for $1. People felt screwed. We knew the record companies screwed the bands, and we knew they were overcharging us, but charging 15 times the cost of a CD-R pissed a lot of people off.
Soon, we had a CD at home, and perfect copies at work, in the car and at the girlfriend's house. Wear it out? No problem - burn another copy. Find a new artist? Burn a copy for a friend. In theory, you'd think this would have caused a massive sales drop, since the earlier formats wore out and the CD did not. Yet, while the industry argued they were losing sales, it turned out to be the period of highest sales in history.
Then Napster and MP3 players appeared. Suddenly the industry was in a panic. The MPAA began an aggressive attack on downloaders, and sued anyone they could find as a scare tactic. Even though past history showed that sharing was a form of viral marketing, they wanted to kill it - perhaps because they have little control over it.
To my ears, nothing wrecks a song like Autotune (sounds like fingernails on a chalkboard to me) compressed to MP3. Most new music sounded too processed and too compressed. In a sea of over-processed crap, I'm finding it hard to find music I want to buy. So I don't.
The music industry doesn't understand the people like me buy music because my music-geek friends would share. Without that discovery vector, I'm simply not exposed to anything I'd buy.
Which is why I am stunned that Cadillac is using this in a car. In fact, they are bragging that this is better than buttons. Because what we need in our cars is more shit that takes our eyes off the road.
We know how this will end. Someone will get killed because a Cadillac driver was trying to do something the REQUIRES his eyes to be looking at the dash. A sharp attorney will realize this is a design flaw. They will find email and disgruntled ex-employees that will show this was known in advance, and ... well, you know the rest.
I've learned through trial and error what cards actually work on my camcorder. For still photography, I've always been a SanDisk fan. But every class 10 SanDisk SD card I have used is unable to support the highest quality recording on my Canon camcorder. Oddly, class 10 Transend cards work fine. It appears the class 10 rating is a read-speed rating - not write-speed. I've tried 6 different SanDisk cards over the years and they continue to disappoint.
Why device manufacturers insist on using VFAT and FAT64 boggles my mind.
This whole situation is just pure laziness, and a reason why people should point and laugh at Nikon for paying danegeld.
I guess you don't realize that devices like my TV, Blu-Ray player, projectors, etc. all read FAT-formatted SD cards. So you're asking Nikon to lose compatibility with all those devices. They would also have support calls about cards not working, etc.
Oh yeah - FAT is part of the SD standard.
https://www.sdcard.org/developers/overview/capacity/
Couldn't Nikon skirt the whole patent (the enforceable and legally-tested claims, anyway) by just shipping the camera with unformatted flash, making users format them on a PC, and ignoring long VFAT filenames by only looking at the 8.3 part?
As a general rule, Nikon (as all camera manufactures) doesn't supply a memory card with their cameras.
I would if they walked into BestBuy, approached the cashier and said "Please send this $100 for a windows license to Microsoft. Oh, no, I don't need a copy, thanks."
I think it's more like your buddy is fighting cancer and a big thug wants a dollar to make sure nothing happens to his car in the hospital parking lot.
Yeah - I get all that. In principle, I agree with you.
But the practical is different. Nikon has it's hands full with its primary competitors, and a shrinking market. Smartphones are killing the compact camera market, and new "mirror-less" cameras are eating into the D-SLR market. Canon and Sony make lots of products outside the camera business, but 75% of Nikon's sales are dependent on cameras and lenses. They are being super aggressive in the D-SLR segment to make up for that revenue, and trying to find something to fit in the space between the smartphone and D-SLR. And they need the support of Microsoft, Apple and Adobe for processing those files. Right now, they need friends - not another enemy.
I suspect the Android camera is an experiment to see if consumers will accept a compact camera that does pretty much everything a smartphone does, except for phone calls. Do consumers want Android-based cameras? Nikon makes just a single model with Android. It could be a flop, and something Nikon might drop. Do the sales justify an expensive legal fight in the USA - Microsoft's home turf.
I'm sure they see two giants (MS and Google) about to face-off in a war, and they will pay the MS "tax" and sit this one out. This is a bit like someone fighting cancer who decides not to get involved in a conflict between nations.
Nikon is fighting for survival, so I think we should give them a pass on this one.
One less brand to ever appear on my shopping list.
Help me understand - you are mad at the victim? Do you stop talking to friends because they paid for Windows? Don't buy anything with a Samsung-made component?
I'm sure Nikon looked at the cost of fighting and decided it made business sense to pay them. Consider the volume of Android devices Nikon sells vs. Samsung and other cell phone companies. If it doesn't make sense for the cell phone vendors, it is unlikely to make sense for Nikon to fight in court.
Frankly, your anger toward Microsoft might be better directed at Microsoft. And Google. Why hasn't Google challenged this?