After 2 years of examination the U.S Patent and Trademark Office has reversed its two earlier unofficial decisions and decided that Microsoft's File Allocation Table file system constitutes a "novel and non-obvious" system enabling it to be patented. This coupled with Microsofts plans to charge licensing fees for use of the system could cause many problems for open-source operating systems that implement the file system, or even to mp3 players. Elsewhere, APCMag.com has an interview with Microsoft's "open source point man" Martin Gregory.
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Member since:2005-10-02
Member since:2005-09-23
And it's this lack of backwards compatibility that has ensured MS's success, not the other way around, as LIP contends.
Him telling someone to open their minds is insanely funny.
On topic, this really won't effect anything. Personally, I eliminated FAT a loooong time ago for my uses, and if MS wanted to enforce this, it would be easy for everyone else to do so as well. USB key makers and the like could ship EXT2 read/write drivers with their products pretty easily.
Member since:2005-07-06
If you had actually bothered to look in the Save As menus for any Office program, you would see that you have the option of saving files in a previous version of the format.
No shit Office 97 can't read Office 2003 if you've saved the files with Office 2003 compatibility only. Sure, blame Microsoft for your ignorance. Tool.
Member since:
2005-07-06
You know I'm not talking about those. Open up your freaking mind.
Microsoft's success can largely be attributed to how much effort they put into backwards-compatibility.