NatureScapes.net Forums

I just read two articles about Kodak now getting involved in bitcoins and is creating its own cryptocurrency.  I will be the first to say I don't understand an of the cryptocurrency models - it all seems like a huge pyramid scheme to me. That said I must say the company sure seems like it is grasping for straws.  So sad.

Here are links to the articles I read through Photography Bay.


[font="Times New Roman",serif]http://www.photographybay.com/2018/01/09/kodak-is-launching-a-new-cryptocurrency-for-photographers/?awt_m=J7mykjI_kP62xu&awt_l=GMQww[/font]

[font="Times New Roman",serif]http://www.photographybay.com/2018/01/10/kodak-at-ces-gets-even-weirder-with-a-3400-bitcoin-mining-rental-scheme/?awt_m=J7mykjI_kP62xu&awt_l=GMQww[/font]

Ed read this article, it explains what the "Kodak" name is doing.
https://www.dpreview.com/opinion/338027 ... -kodak-did

signgrap wrote:Ed read this article, it explains what the "Kodak" name is doing.
https://www.dpreview.com/opinion/338027 ... -kodak-did

Thanks for posting this link Dick. OK, I understand that the Kodak name has been licensed and used in this scheme. Being a rather conservative business person myself, I, for the life of me, cannot understand why a company with the brand recognition and reputation of Kodak would grant a license to use their name in an uncontrolled manner. You never know what is in the future.  There may come a time when Kodak - the original one - develops something that just clicks.  The brand may be tarnished so much by the licensees indiscriminate capitalization of whatever "halo" the name had in the past that any legitimate future enterprise is inhibited.  A company's reputation and integrity is associated through its branding. Once its branding is tarnished any future endeavor will also be tarnished.

Ed Cordes wrote: I will be the first to say I don't understand an of the cryptocurrency models - it all seems like a huge pyramid scheme to me.

I stay away from BitCoin.  In my opinion, it will not catch on as a standard currency. It's volatile and unstable.  It's not issued/backed by any specific country.  Basically, you can't trust it. BitCoin is for people who have money to play with.  Gamblers.  Like a hot stock, the kind you don't understand why it is hot

People who have invested in BitCoin are promoting BitCoin.  Duh


As for Kodak itself, the original company.  Sad indeed what happened to it.

Another big name retailer that didn't see it coming and adjust, Sears, is no more in Canada.

South Korea is poised to make the trading of Bitcoins illegal...other countries will likely follow suit, ending the fiasco.
Competition and superior minds are what put Kodak at the bottom of heap...they are gone, but their pollution will remain forever.

I live in Corning, NY, about 1 1/2 hours away from Rochester, the home of the original Kodak. Many of my friends in the Rochester area are retired from Kodak. It is so sad to see what has happened to this company which, in its day was an innovative leader. It is also ironic that, back in the day, they developed digital technology and shelved it as they calculated that nothing could replace their "yellow box". Steven, you are correct in saying that superior minds that weren't afraid to "think out of the box" (pun intended) could move into the future and create an entire new industry and expand photography, image making, scientific and medical equipment and on and on.
Back in the early '80s when we got our first computer for the office (IBM with 2 floppy drives and 128K), I remember telling my staff that " This machine was designed with slide rules and calculators. Wait and see what we get when computers are used to design computers". Well here we are and business people and companies like Kodak are gone like the proverbial wagon wheel wheelwright who was relegated to relative obscurity.

What is really ironic, back in the late 90's and early 2000's Kodak made senors that were very good at the time and even had a digital camera that used Nikon lenses if memory serves (sometimes it doesn't). I believe they made sensors for sometime and eventually sold them off when CMOS senors took over.

signgrap wrote:What is really ironic, back in the late 90's and early 2000's Kodak made senors that were very good at the time and even had a digital camera that used Nikon lenses if memory serves (sometimes it doesn't). I believe they made sensors for sometime and eventually sold them off when CMOS senors took over.

I had two Kodak digital cameras, the DC210 (1152 x 864) and the DC290 (1792 x 1200).  The DC210 was just not enough pixels but the DC210, though only 2MP, had enough to fill the monitors of the day or nearly so and it had GREAT color.  The basic design of most digital sensors, the Bayer filter, was a Kodak invention so at the beginning they lead the field.

In the end, however, they were a company that sold razor blades and couldn't figure out how to make money selling the razors themselves.  Most great companies have an arc that, during its peak, appears to be unbeatable, but few remain at the top for more than half a century and often way less than that.  My mom worked for Montgomery Ward and it's now pretty much a placeholder in history.  Sears is soon to follow, but like MW there reign was nearly a century.  


Brian

Ed Cordes wrote:Back in the early '80s when we got our first computer for the office (IBM with 2 floppy drives and 128K), I remember telling my staff that " This machine was designed with slide rules and calculators.  Wait and see what we get when computers are used to design computers".  Well here we are and business people and  companies like Kodak are gone like the proverbial wagon wheel wheelwright who was relegated to relative obscurity.

Ah, the memories.  My first "IBM clone PC" had two 5.25 floppy drives and no HDD.  A monochrome monitor.  It was awesome for that time.  Cost about $1,300 CAD.  I could code and run computer programs on it.  

Right around that time Bell wanted to get a service off the ground....almost like a newsfeed kind of thing.  I forget how it reached my computer in the first place.  They wanted to charge several cents a minute or something like that.  It didn't catch on.  Of course, eventually came the internet.