Is Microsoft mad or just greedy?


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oeyvind said:

They were just waiting for it to be an indespensible thing before they want to start charging.......

Bad news for manufacturers, bad news for consumers.

So beta start stocking up on CF cards now! heeheheeeeeee

BUY BUY BUY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D
 

In business sense, nothing wrong to do that. For consumers, it is a right procedue to charge for something that they create. Free in the past does not mean free forever, most of us are simply taking advantage of not paying.


One old saying:
In this world, there is no free lunch.


Mandrake Linux started off without profits, what has it come to imagine if there is no donations for their development? How many of you actually uses their Linux but still donate a little money like $10 to them? Business exists to profit, else there will be no employment if there is no money to pay them.


Do you have a choice? Yes, just get a film camera instead of a digital camera.
 

actually the price they charge is not really alot. 0.25C mayb in usd or something.. equal to about at most 50c or even uk, 1.5, your cf basically cost 50 at least, its quite impossible that a manufacturer will increase the price due to that. its like a bo pian situation. also, they have locked it to 250000 (dunno how true is that) so if they are going to use it for long, they just pay 250000, i think they will get the license to produce unlimited amount.
 

Del_CtrlnoAlt said:
actually the price they charge is not really alot. 0.25C mayb in usd or something.. equal to about at most 50c or even uk, 1.5, your cf basically cost 50 at least, its quite impossible that a manufacturer will increase the price due to that. its like a bo pian situation. also, they have locked it to 250000 (dunno how true is that) so if they are going to use it for long, they just pay 250000, i think they will get the license to produce unlimited amount.
A quarter? That comes to about S$0.45. Less than our GST increase in 1 Jan! :bsmilie:
 

as dpreview says....

what if the manufacturers don't format the cards 1st before shipping? :think:
 

And what if camera makers remove the formatting capability and formatting can only be done on Windoes PC? ;p
 

mpenza said:
And what if camera makers remove the formatting capability and formatting can only be done on Windoes PC? ;p

you still need to read and write in FAT?
 

rncw said:
you still need to read and write in FAT?

Not everyone uses linux or Unix .... that's one .....

Almost all equipments uses FAT / FAT32 , just like Canon / Nikon Digital Camera. They may have to come out with some other standards already.
 

blurblock said:
Not everyone uses linux or Unix .... that's one .....

Almost all equipments uses FAT / FAT32 , just like Canon / Nikon Digital Camera. They may have to come out with some other standards already.

Thats why pirated softwares exist; to prevent microsoft from becoming more greedy.
 

actually I don't think microsoft has a legal claim anymore.

Under patent laws, its already been quite sometime CF cards have been in the market, and IIRC, if the patent holder didn't say anything about infringing the patent when CF first came out, they automatically lose all rights to the patent.
 

Necroist said:
actually I don't think microsoft has a legal claim anymore.

Under patent laws, its already been quite sometime CF cards have been in the market, and IIRC, if the patent holder didn't say anything about infringing the patent when CF first came out, they automatically lose all rights to the patent.


Interesting information. Any link to read or you think? Me interested in such laws/rights.
 

Necroist said:
actually I don't think microsoft has a legal claim anymore.

Under patent laws, its already been quite sometime CF cards have been in the market, and IIRC, if the patent holder didn't say anything about infringing the patent when CF first came out, they automatically lose all rights to the patent.

I think you might be getting mixed up with Trademarks. They are definately 'use it or lose it'.


Patents are however supposed to expire after 10-15 years. After that the design is supposed to go into the public domain. The idea is that after that time you have covered your development costs and the idea should go to the community.
Unfortunatly the US allows companies to renew their patents and continue to extract licence fees out of every one else for the idea.

There are claims of prior art on the MS patents - so in the end it may only apply to the recent FAT32 version, if that...
(The US patent office no longer investigates patent applications - they now take the line that some one will mount a legal challenge if they are wrong. This unfortunatly favours the rich, the cashed up companys like M$ wave their cash at lawyers to make sure no one is 'stupid' enough to challenge the patent, making it easier to pay 'licence' fees instead.)

Microsoft obviously want to be the 'troll under the bridge' collecting a toll for any device that requires a computer or network connection in it.

Note the patent claims cover the format. CF/flash/etc manufacturers will just stop preformatting them. But the troll will be still extracting it's toll for any device that wants to use FAT as it's on disk format. (I.E the cam makers, the MP3 player makers, etc).

I notice MS is trying to push a new DVD menu programming language as well - presumably eyeing off the large market in DVD players and wanting to extract a toll from every device in that market as well.
 

I wonder if most people here just like to gossip or make noise about things they don't understand. :rolleyes:

If anyone bother to read even Slashdot, they will know that the patent applies to several aspects of VFAT not FAT itself. One is the changing of file names from eg "MICROSOFT" to micros~1 and several other aspects. In fact, someone mentioned that digital cameras may not apply as they do not use this feature. This patent was filed in 1995 and granted in 1996. I remember FAT32 and VFAT came out together with Win95 so...

Secondly, they only charge those derived from them and not those who had done a clean-room reversed engineered version. So if you invent and patent something, you do not want to collect royalty fees? Ask IBM then, they have one of the biggest if not the biggest patent portpolio in the IT industry and makes no quibble in collecting it.

Thirdly, at US$0.25/S$0.45 per piece capped at US$250,000 per manufacturer, this is a minor sum. Have you thought out what you can buy with 45 cents?!? Soft drink at hawker center? No. Tea-o? Mostly 50 or 60 cents.

Per CF, the currency fluctuation would wipe out the difference in say a 256MB card. The amount is also less than the 1% GST increase on 1 Jan if you buy a CF costing more than S$45, which is 128MB and above... Anyone notice that?!? :rolleyes:

They are also not really making money. I mean at the cap of US$250k, how many manufacturers are there? 10? 100? At 100, the max amount possible is US$25m, one time. Microsoft earns that amount in less than 1 month :eek: . Look at their latest financial agreement...

No wonder people say that Singapore is filled with people who whines a lot. :rolleyes:
 

Mirco$oft is not mad, just a very powerful and typically capitalistic monopoly. BTW the FAT file system is one of the worst performing file systems existing today. It's still around because it's a simple system, and it is easy to write device drivers for and consequently has been adopted in many devices. Almost every other current file system outperforms FAT in terms of performance, limitations and fragmentation. If this hits the market real bad, then it's just a matter of time before someone or some company writes another FS for embedded devices, or we adopt existing royalty-free file systems.
 

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