On Fri, Dec 05, 2003 at 07:29:57PM +0900, Curt Sampson wrote:
> On Fri, 5 Dec 2003, nick may wrote:
>
> > 1) are the memory cards in Japanese phones formatted using FAT?
> > http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/34348.html
>
> You betcha. Anything that uses an SD-card or a Memory Stick is almost
> certainly using FAT.
>
> What I can't figure out is the $250,000 cap on royalties. MS is going
> to make no noticable amount of money on this. I guess they just want to
> knock out the little players, or something.
All the cited patents relate to VFAT, the extension to FAT that allows
for long filenames and three separate time-stamps and was implemented
in NT 3.5 and then Windows 95, and to any very similar scheme. Many
(most?) devices that use FAT on flash cards still do not use this
extension. The claim on flash cards themselves is totally bogus
because this extension is not necessary to create a blank FAT
filesystem.
--
Ben Hutchings
All the simple programs have been written, and all the good names taken.
Received on Fri Dec 5 13:34:06 2003