Mike McCarty wrote:
Tim wrote:
Tim:
They're just a storage medium, so they use what's put on them. It's up
to the computers using them as to how. We don't have "FAT" hard drives,
CDs, etc. We simply have drive and discs.
Mike McCarty:
This is untrue. Many discs and pseudo-discs come pre-formatted.
Some do, some don't. That doesn't mean that they're a FAT disk, it's
just a disk with an obese filesystem on it. You're, generally, not
prevented from reformatting them, either.
Certainly true. I wasn't trying to imply otherwise. However,
the reason I wrote that is that I believe that MicroSoft is
trying to get money from people producing preformatted discs
and pseudo-discs. That certainly seems to be the case from
perusing their website.
This might (be ever so slightly) an upside from the OSS point of view:
low margin USB stick manufactures might find it simpler just to tell
the user to format them, which opens the door to providing them with
a choice. It may even create a little anti-proprietary ire.
--
imalone
