Patent Office Rejects Microsoft's FAT Patent | The Coffeehouse

Bogusrabin

Patent Office Rejects Microsoft's FAT Patent

sbc
GW R/Me

Good news for other OS's and hardware manufacturers (i.e. usb disks). One less thing for FOSS developers to worry about.

Manip

...Assuming Microsoft don't fight the ruling...

manickernel
anticipate consequences..

Why would anyone want to patent crap to begin with?

rjdohnert
You will never know success until you know failure

Bogusrabin wrote:
Patent Office Rejects Microsoft's FAT Patent

One word of advice for PubPat. Dont be so arrogant. this could come back to bite you right on the a*$. Microsoft will have to appeal this and it might be necessary for them to win. If microsoft cannot protect their assets then they are totally screwed. This could be the beginning of the end.

ChrisChance
;)

Please god say they patented ntfs atleast LOL

Tom Malone

rjdohnert wrote:
Bogusrabin wrote:Patent Office Rejects Microsoft's FAT Patent

One word of advice for PubPat. Dont be so arrogant. this could come back to bite you right on the a*$. Microsoft will have to appeal this and it might be necessary for them to win. If microsoft cannot protect their assets then they are totally screwed. This could be the beginning of the end.

Don't you think its odd if its a matter of upholding assest that the eu refuses to uphold american patents.

The ability to patent ideas is a very dangerous policy, as it stops compitition in an area, its not like in most fields where they patent a particular way of doing something, like a chemical formula. So if another company comes up with a different chemical with the same effect with a different formula, that allowed and is of course competitve.

IP patents are of course on ideas not things, so where does it end.

pedershk
Mugshot

ChrisChance wrote:
Please god say they patented ntfs atleast LOL

Actually, that might be kinda hard, as NTFS is pretty much a complete rip-off of HPFS, the collaborative effort of Microsoft AND IBM on the now semi-forgotten OS/2.

Manip

manickernel wrote:
Why would anyone want to patent crap to begin with?

You think FAT is crap?! What do you call a GOOD file system?

Sven Groot
My name has 9 letters. Coincidence? I think not...

Manip wrote:

manickernel wrote: Why would anyone want to patent crap to begin with?

You think FAT is crap?! What do you call a GOOD file system?

NTFS, for instance. Come one, FAT was designed for floppy disks. As a result, it's not really good at handling really large volumes, and its failsafe mechanisms are laughable. I've never lost a bit on an NTFS drive, the same can't be said for FAT.

Rossj

Manip wrote:
manickernel wrote:Why would anyone want to patent crap to begin with?

You think FAT is crap?! What do you call a GOOD file system?

BeFS. NTFS. ReiserFS. JFS. Ext3. FAT has severe limitations in this day and age, fine for digital cameras, not good for high use 120Gb disks.

Manip

So just to be clear, you guys are suggesting we format floppy disks and 64mb Flash disks sticks with NTFS?

Rossj

Manip wrote:
So just to be clear, you guys are suggesting we format floppy disks and 64mb Flash disks sticks with NTFS?

Haha not at all. I think we are merely suggesting that FAT* is weak in comparison to most other file systems.

Tom Malone

Manip wrote:
So just to be clear, you guys are suggesting we format floppy disks and 64mb Flash disks sticks with NTFS?

This patent filing may actually mean that floppies and flash disks, that you might need to move from one computer, to another, may be better off with fat, as it can be read/write by nearly all platforms.

Manip

Rossj wrote:
Haha not at all. I think we are merely suggesting that FAT* is weak in comparison to most other file systems.

Well I think you have no clue what your talking about.. NTFS and its Linux counterparts are optimized and designed to handle large file volumes and on anything smaller than 3Gb you simply shouldn't be using it. All putting NTFS on a small device would do is eat up space and make the device slower.

Anyway FAT is better at recovering from series hard disk damage unlike NTFS which can recover well from small problems only.

manickernel
anticipate consequences..

Gee,

I am sorry I picked on FAT Tongue Out

FAT is GOOOOOOOOOOOD! I like FAT.

New logo... Got FAT?

Rossj

Manip wrote:
Rossj wrote:Haha not at all. I think we are merely suggesting that FAT* is weak in comparison to most other file systems.

Well I think you have no clue what your talking about.. NTFS and its Linux counterparts are optimized and designed to handle large file volumes and on anything smaller than 3Gb you simply shouldn't be using it. All putting NTFS on a small device would do is eat up space and make the device slower.

When we the last time you saw a 3Gb drive in a new computer? I also never suggested that you should put NTFS on a small device, in fact I don't believe I mentioned any particular storage medium at all. I just mentioned that FAT is weak. There's no need to get narky and accuse me of not knowing what I am talking about - for all you know I could have worked on a version of DOS (I didn't but YOU don't know that - yeah sure you might have as well - but I would have expected a little more info from a DOS developer.).

Here's why I think it is weak (Microsoft obviously do as well otherwise they would not have deprecated it for the desktop):

No per-user permissions.
8.3 filenames.
Directory structure hacked in FAT16 because FAT12 only let you save things in the root.
Single error in the F.A.T. can blow the whole thing up (and No, the backup didn't help - it's just another fragile entity waiting to break).
The FAT was stored at the start of the disk, and the data was potentially at the other end of the disk, means you *have* to rely on caching (give the closeness of entried in the FAT I suppose this is an advantage - easily cacheable).
Using a first fit algorithm for insertion generates high-fragmentatation which leads to the need for defrag-ing more frequently than other FS'.

Manip wrote:

Anyway FAT is better at recovering from series hard disk damage unlike NTFS which can recover well from small problems only.

[/quote]

Assuming that the serious hard disk failure didn't zap the file table and the backups you mean? I can't believe you are arguing with Microsoft over this - it's they that dumped FAT on the desktop.

Why do you feel so compelled to defend FAT file systems, when asked for better file systems I gave a list ...

Manip

Because you sitting there saying how useless the FAT file-system is sounds silly when you THEN contradict yourself saying you would use it on small devices. I am not suggesting you use it on modern hard-drives (and I never wrote that) but shockingly there are other types of devices around and for those FAT isn't useless. It is a very nice solution in fact.

Rossj

Manip wrote:
THEN contradict yourself saying you would use it on small devices.

Now you're just plain putting words into my mouth Smiley

Manip wrote:
I am not suggesting you use it on modern hard-drives (and I never wrote that)

Manip also wrote:

Anyway FAT is better at recovering from series hard disk damage unlike NTFS which can recover well from small problems only.

jonathanh
My mod color is red

Bear in mind that this is not a patent on all of FAT. It's a patent on how to implement long filenames in FAT in a backwards-compatible way.

Rossj

jonathanh wrote:
Bear in mind that this is not a patent on all of FAT. It's a patent on how to implement long filenames in FAT in a backwards-compatible way.

My camera gives names to the images that are 8.3. Does this mean Sony didn't need to pay a license fee?

shreyasonline
Push The Limits !

Now Microsoft will start to patent even "ASS HOLE" and every one will have to pay to use it !