#66501 - Dwedit - Wed Jan 11, 2006 11:12 am
Now our GBAMPs are useless! It's a catastrophic end of teh world!!@!1
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#66502 - chishm - Wed Jan 11, 2006 11:25 am
Eh? What about Linux, or MacOS, or nearly any other OS? They are all able to read FAT.
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#66519 - keldon - Wed Jan 11, 2006 3:28 pm
So many things use FAT now. I am not sure how this is expected to change or enforce anything. For a start pretty much every MP3 player, USB disk drive and many digital cameras use FAT either for its storage format or as a layer to access their files.
So in the future all devices using FAT must pay for patent clearing. Hopefully this will become the first overruled patent which paves the way for to overrule 1-click-buy and T9 ^_^ (well the first I've heard of)
#66527 - Lynx - Wed Jan 11, 2006 5:05 pm
I kinda hope they can enforce it. That would mean FAT would go away, and nothing would easily talk to windows anymore (You'd have to install drivers to read whatever format you use).. So, why run windows at all? :)
Maybe it would be just the thing to help Linux on the desktop.
"This device uses EXT3 which isn't Windows Compatible. You will need to install the software on every machine you want to access your media from."
Uhh.. not a smart choice for M$
#66537 - keldon - Wed Jan 11, 2006 7:11 pm
That is not likely to happen. Manufacturers are more likely to invest in the clearing than in a platform with much less casual users. This is a good move from Microsoft moneywise. People aren't going to risk a format that does not support windows. It just gives microsoft free money just to be compatible with the users OS.
Either that or it does backfire and manufacturers just ship the device with drivers for alternative file formats.
#66546 - tepples - Wed Jan 11, 2006 9:56 pm
FAT dates from MS-DOS 1.0 (1981), which is so old that any patents have expired. The patents in this case refer to VFAT, the storage method for long file names under Windows 95 and later.
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