Slashdot: "Microsoft to Charge for FAT File System"

[Giaguara]

stoid, your avatar confuses me.

well. one more reason to love any otehr than FAT file systems.

and i feel so good not having anythign that uses FAT32, or not having any more even a copy of m$ office or windoze mediaprayer .. if i didn't have to test sites on IE that'd be gone too. actually .. i probably still trash IE, it's not my progblem if the other users see something wrong when they aren't using firebird/safari/mozilla/netstcape/links...

 

[psxndc]

Re: Re: Re: Re: nitpicky correction...

Originally posted by stoid
With implementation of .NET in Longhorn, it is possible that Microsoft may even be wrangling in the entire internet. The internet was developed so that anyone could freely access information, but Microsoft seems to have every desire to stifle that freedom.

OK, I'll bite... Trying to be as polite as I possibly can be, and asking as someone that used to develop .NET applications, do you have any idea what you're talking about? Seriously. .NET is a system to develop applications within. Another example would be a Java framework. It actually has nothing to do with the Internet. I can develop a .NET program that sits on my machine and knows nothing about the world outside my Ethernet card.

I'm sorry, I just don't understand the context of what you are talking about. Do you instead mean MS' implementation of Digital Rights Management? That at least can be used in a "restricting information" argument.

-p

 

[jettredmont]

Re: Re: Re: nitpicky correction...

Originally posted by psxndc
And on the other hand, you're saying that it will cause a detriment to keychain makers because Windows only recognizes FAT file systems. Following that though, to be fair to the keychain makers, you're saying that Windows should support all existing extfs2, ReiserFS, XFS, ad naseum because to do otherwise would be unfair since keychain makers that do decide to switch have to have their drives be compatible somehow?

No. The problem isn't that Windows doesn't support File System "X". It is that Windows supports (without installing additional, non-Microsoft software) ONLY Microsoft-developed and Microsoft-licensed file systems.

Thus, the proven, admitted, monopoly in the OS market gives rise to an anti-competitive advantage in a non-OS market (90+% of small-device manufacturers can not support a non-Windows-native file system). This is, more or less, the definition of illegal use of monopoly powers.

Were Windows to support virtually *any* modern, open file system (ie, that supports long file names and rudimentary FAT-style attributes, which is, virtually all file systems in use today) then the above claim would be significantly diminished.

I don't buy this. Windows can interface with whatever it wants and does not have to support a single product that people think it should but doesn't.

Well, Mr Sherman disagrees.

A Monopolist is not subject to the same market freedoms as the rest of us. They are not permitted to support only their own technologies (say, Internet Explorer) while making it significantly more difficult to replace such with another technology (say, Netscape).

It's a product that people choose to buy. If it does not have the features you want, or connect to the peripherals you have, don't buy it. People have the option not to and MS shouldn't be bound to implement features in it's products that it doesn't want to.

The picture you are painting here is precisely what has been discreditted in court. Microsoft has a monopoly because consumers do not have a choice!

Again, were Microsoft not a monopolist, this all wouldn't matter, and Microsoft could freely demand its pound of flesh for using its proprietary file system and the world would use something different and Windows' market share would fall to zero. But Microsoft is the holder of a quite stable monopoly, and there is NO way any significant portion of the world will choose to use a different operating system which actually works with their peripherals, and thus NO way that peripheral makers will make their devices incompatible with stock Windows.

 

[psxndc]

Originally posted by DeusOmnis
They could make a law about having to "always" charge for licences or "never" charge for licences... in fact, it could be part of the patent.

The patent could even restrict how much the licence pricing can change by percentage. A licence cost cannot be raised by more than 10 percent per year or something like that.

This sort of law is definately needed since many standardizations are created by independant companies (with patents).

A) you couldn't lay out licensing terms in your patent. A patent is a description of your invention and embodiments of it. It is not designed to be a business document.

B) Making laws about always or never charging licensing fees is a bad idea because how will you know what your business strategy will be in 5, 10, or 20 years? Say an inventor came up with a great idea that she thought was cool, but not all that useful. She decides to patent it anyway. She, being young and altruistic, decides to put in her patent that she will never charge a license fee because really, she never expects to make money from it. Apple comes along and says "We love your technology. We want to use it". The inventor, still altruistic, says "sure, go ahead". Years go by and living in the Real World (tm) has taken its toll on the inventor. She has very little money, she lost her job in the .com bubble and she can't find a job. On top of this, every major company is using the pantented technology. But her patent says she can't ever charge a licensing fee. She certainly can't afford a patent infringement litigation. What is she supposed to do?

Basically, you need flexibility with these things. A patent you think is awesome may in fact be worthless and vice versa.

The system is not nearly as broken as everyone on /. makes it out to be mainly because they don't understand the bigger picture behind economics, the law, and patents.

btw, here's a thought for everyone to chew on: Having a patent doesn't give you the right to make anything. It only gives you the right to prevent other people from making it.

-p

 

[Nermal]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: nitpicky correction...

Originally posted by psxndc
OK, I'll bite... Trying to be as polite as I possibly can be, and asking as someone that used to develop .NET applications, do you have any idea what you're talking about? Seriously. .NET is a system to develop applications within. Another example would be a Java framework. It actually has nothing to do with the Internet. I can develop a .NET program that sits on my machine and knows nothing about the world outside my Ethernet card.

I'm sorry, I just don't understand the context of what you are talking about. Do you instead mean MS' implementation of Digital Rights Management? That at least can be used in a "restricting information" argument.

-p

I'm not 100% certain myself, but I believe that MS wants to put new features into Longhorn that allow ASP.NET web applications to draw dialogues etc like a Windows desktop app does. This, and other things, will be done using custom functionality built into IE 7. Basically, web applications won't look like websites as they do now, but will use "advanced functionality" in IE 7 to make them look like desktop apps. If you try to open these Web apps on a non-IE browser, then they simply won't work.

I also am an ASP.NET developer, and I spend quite a lot of time testing the server-generated code with Safari. It can be quite a mission getting it looking the same as it does in IE! The .NET framework basically says "you're not running IE, so I'm not going to give you any object positioning code", which results in controls being squashed up, or in the wrong places. You then have to spoon-feed the code to the offending* browser, which is quite a chore!

* I'm using MS' definition of "offending" - anything that isn't Internet Explorer

 

[Sunrunner]

May M$ burn forever in the hell of a thousand screams and feel the pain of a thousand deaths.

 

[tny]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: nitpicky correction...

Originally posted by psxndc
OK, I'll bite... Trying to be as polite as I possibly can be, and asking as someone that used to develop .NET applications, do you have any idea what you're talking about? Seriously. .NET is a system to develop applications within. Another example would be a Java framework. It actually has nothing to do with the Internet. I can develop a .NET program that sits on my machine and knows nothing about the world outside my Ethernet card.

I'm sorry, I just don't understand the context of what you are talking about. Do you instead mean MS' implementation of Digital Rights Management? That at least can be used in a "restricting information" argument.

-p

At one point .NET was more a wide strategy for Microsoft computing than a development environment. MS found that the .NET label was too confusing for users, as it meant to many things (Passport, Longhorn, Palladium, WinFS, as well as what eventually came to be called ".NET") and limited the use of the brand.

 

[psxndc]

Re: Re: Re: Re: nitpicky correction...

Originally posted by jettredmont

Well, Mr Sherman disagrees.

I had quite an exhaustive reply rebutting everything you said. I had even read through the Sherman (and Clayton Act Amendments) Act and found no mention of using your own technology to bully others (it is mainly about price fixing or giving different treatment to different parties for equal goods) but then I read parts of the judge's opinion. I'll need to read more, but I really don't see what they did that violated they parts of the Acts that he cited. But he's a judge and I'm not. Oh well. :-(

-p

 

[Xapplimatic]

Go ahead M$ .. make our day!

I hope they do.. I hope they charge out the a$s!! It will alienate everyone that much more from Micro$loth... In fact.. who needs their shoddy FAT system nonsense anyways? Pordable players? They don't have to store windows media files on FAT.. it will sit just as pretty (if that's what you'd call it) on a UFS/UDF formatted disk.. No reason to worry about this hub-bub.. Just another attention and cash squeezing ploy from Redmonds which will help spur their demise!

"The tighter you squeeze that grip, the more users will slip through your fingers!"

 

[patrick0brien]

Originally posted by Giaguara
if i didn't have to test sites on IE that'd be gone too.

-Giaguara

I'm sure you've though of this, but in the slim chance you haven't you could put Safari into MSIE clothes with the terminal command:
defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu 1
and using that menu switch to the MSIE user agent.

You could then probably trash IE.