Microsoft's FAT patent upheld

Maybe we can get some excessively-nourished people to dump boxes of XP or Vista in Boston Harbor, under the slogan of "Get rid of shameful American FAT!"

Too bad that money prevailed again... If MS seeks to enforce its patents and wants to get royalties, this will mean that every consumer device using storage like digital photo cameras, USB-keys, MP3-players will no longer be legally attachable to GNU/Linux.

Since the (bigshot) companies can afford to pay a few pennies per device more, this simply means that MS has yet another weapon to throw back GNU/Linux. Consumer devices will not be adapted to run a different Open Filesystem. Electronics manufacturers won't do it, because it would mean the requirement to ship filesystem drivers for Windows again with every doohicky and we all know how Windows people react to configuring stuff themselves.

I know that USB-keys run fine with Ext2, Ext3, ReiserFS, XFS, JFS. Problem with that is that they become unusable as a portable storage mechanism between GNU/Linux and Windows machines (I don't have to mention the fact that there are far more Win machines out there than GNU/Linux machines).

I think that Microsoft should enforce it. Then lets see what happens. They don't have enough lawyers - what am I saying - not that many lawyers exist. They'll have to bring them in on work visas. They can do that.

I have a Creative Zen 20gb MP3 player http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B000BLEW9I.02.LZZZZZZZ....

which i got from my lovely wife for Xmas, this nice piece of hardware came with a CD full of windows drivers and Creatives mediaplayer/ripper, now i'm going to make a general assumption here (i might be wrong but i doubt it) that other manufacturers do the same so why would shipping a device with say an additional say Ext2 driver be any different from the way it is now?

Now i can't speak for USB Flash devices as i don't have any but things like my USB bluetooth dongle, digital camera and such all came with driver disks so i really have a hard time believing that shipping a driver with a device is a hardship regardless of what the driver is for

A bit off topic but i was well impressed that this player has good linux support plugged it in and PCLinuxOs spotted it right away not a driver install to be seen, a quick install of Gnomad and Gnormalise which are supplied by PCLinuxOS as standard and i was ripping away like their was no tomorrow even the protected ones that Windows baulked at, don't ya just love the freedom of linux, i of course own the CD's in question.

FAT filesystems are directly derived from CP/M's. There is no innovation in moving the allocation data from amongst the directory data into a separate table. Nor is there innovation in the way the long filenames work on FAT; several other such systems existed before VFAT. Finally, there are several parallel implementations, at least one of which is ~20 years old. In short, I can't see any grounds at all for granting the patent in the first place.

The next issue is the myriad devices which already use FAT. Digital cameras, memory sticks, MP3 players, 'phones... millions of them. And suddenly the court has given who a monopoly over all of this established technology?

AC: Read my lips: No new taxes - George Bush Sr. 1988.

Hey, George Sr. didn't break that promise.

He didn't create new taxes, he just raised the existing taxes.

Contrary to popular belief, he never really broke his promise.

:)

Kind of like his son, the current President. He told the American People that British intelligence informed him that Saddam was looking to buy enriched uranium in Africa. He failed to mention that the US intelligence agencies had already heard these rumors, and proved them false. He already knew that Saddam was not trying to buy uranium, but that's not what he told the American people.

George W. said that British intelligence told him that Saddam was looking to buy enriched uranium in Africa. That was an absolutely true statement. After all British intelligence had told the white house. Did it matter if W. knew it to be false?

If Tony Blair told George W. Bush that Dick Cheney had purple Skin, and then George W. told Don Rumsfeld that Tony B. said 'Dick's got purple skin', W. would not have lied. The truth about the color of Dick Cheney's skin is irrelavent.

Technically, George W. Bush did not lie to the American people, he said something he knew was untrue, but he never lied.

Parsing politician's speech is a favorite family pastime here in Chicago. We're not called called the 'Windy City' because of the lake breezes, but because of our politicians.

I guess it depends on what the meaning of 'is' is.

:)