Slashdot Mirror
A New Global Memory Card Standard
Lucas123 writes "The MultiMedia Card Association has approved a new memory card standard called the Multiple Interface Card (miCard). The card will make transferring pictures, songs, and other data between electronic gadgets and PCs easier. Twelve Taiwanese companies are preparing to manufacture the new miCard. 'The compatibility with both USB and MMC slots means most users won't need separate card readers anymore. MMC cards fit most consumer electronics, while USB connections are built into a wide range of IT hardware...'" Initial cards will hold 8 GB; the maximum the standard supports is 2,048 GB.
Would the RIAA and MPAA approve of this ease of use? And would SONY approve?
A new standard that will unify ALL the others... where have we heard this before?
computerworld could use some of these, so they can store some pictures:
http://images.google.com/images?q=miCard
Yeah!! Yet another format. It's great that there's a CF adapter for most formats out there so I don't have to worry much.
Oh, how I like the Web 2.0 or Apple sounding name: miCard.
The compatibility with both USB and MMC slots means most users won't need separate card readers anymore. MMC cards fit most consumer electronics, while USB connections are built into a wide range of IT hardware...'" Initial cards will hold 8 GB; the maximum the standard supports is 2,048 GB.
...Of course, since most older MMC card devices can't read anything over 4GB,
you'll still need to upgrade either your storage or your devices (or both).
I applaud the direct USB compatibility and the increased capacity, but don't kid us with claims of backward compatibility. Everyone already has 2-4GB MMC/CF/SD/XD cards in all their devices nowadays, and the industry needs to find an artificial reason to upgrade. Nothing more, nothing less.
Please, lets do something other than FAT.
more memory cards is what we need..
really.
why are you looking at me like that??
Anyone know what the physical form factor specifications are?
Every mans' island needs an ocean; choose your ocean carefully.
Sheesh, no kidding. Is there anything else, though, that's read/write on pretty much all OSs?
You know the thing about UDP jokes? I don't care if you get it or not.
USB and MMC interface without a seperate card reader? Are they saying they plan on making a "once and for all, unified, card", that's bigger than most current cards? A USB plug is bulky... no matter what plug. Or am I not understand fully?
2 Tebibytes should be enough for anyone.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I use ext3 on my portable usb harddrive. Works fine in windows using FS Driver.
but how many Libraries of Congress is 2048GB?
What does this do that previous ones don't? Why is this so much better than existing technology that it will supplant it?
The USB interface is a nice feature, but a USB nub is pretty clunky, and is, in and of itself, bigger than competing media cards. XD and microSD are both smaller than a USB connector. Every format is flatter (CF, XD, SD, MMC, MemoryStick). How is this going to be better than any of those? If it doesn't have a standard USB nub, then is it going to need an adaptor, therefore defeating the while "card reader not required" argument?
I really only see three markets for these cards. Large: currently filled very well by Compact Flash. Medium (a niche): filled by SD. And small: where microSD is doing well [I was routing for xD].
PS. "Taiwan's miCard chosen as global memory card standard" by the companies invested in promoting that standard. Check the list of supporters. It's all media manufacturers. There are no device designers on the list (possible exceptions are BenQ and Asus).
2048 Gigabytes *should* be enough for anyone...
I think it's great that SD/MMC has taken hold as a "standard" of sorts. CF was once the king, but is too big by today's standards. SDMMC is good because it's not TOO small (i.e., I'd expect my own mother to lose a microSD card but not an SD card), and it has a wide range of applications like SDIO cards for wi-fi and other uses. And, the adapters for micro/miniSD make sense too.
Now, if only they can convince Sony to at least stop making their OWN formats obsolete...
Oh, no. Rosie O'Donnell is just warming up with you.
Don't you know, Rosie is the new Cthulhu!
One Card to rule them all, One Card to find them, One Card to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them?
Experience teaches only the teachable. -AH
FAT is ubiquitous and can be read by nearly all operating systems, so it is hard to displace. However, given such a high capacity, these cards will have many video recording applications and hence something besides FAT is needed because of the 4GB limit. I doubt the format is a problem because you'll be able to just format it to whatever you need.
"What lies behind us, and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." Ralph Waldo Emerson
Sure but how many users have that installed already? It's a matter of native support if they want mass adoption, not some third party option being available that grandma won't or can't figure out how to load.
They're competing with essentially plun-n-play stuff now. If people have a choice between plug-n-play and "install drivers, hope it works, reboot and then plug" there's no need to guess which one the average consumer will go for.
You know the thing about UDP jokes? I don't care if you get it or not.
There's always RAW. But personally I prefer to have my meat trimmed and cooked.
Of course, since most older MMC card devices can't read anything over 4GB, you'll still need to upgrade either your storage or your devices (or both).
Why? Have your old devices stopped working? Mine have not and I've got more than enough flash cards for the forseeable future. Time marches on, sometimes things get better. My six year old CF based Cannon camera is still a champ, but it shipped with a 16MB card! 64 MB cards were just enough for a weekend, 256MB cards were nice and the 1GB card I have is strictly overkill. My newer of the same takes MMC and I knew it's limitations when I bought it. 1GB cards are enough to get as much video as the device has battery. I'm looking forward to HD video devices that will tax this new card.
The big reason to move seems to be licensing. FTFA:
Slam, that's a lot of money. Hopefully, they see the same logic for OGG and friends. I'd really like it if my next camera did not come with a CD full of Windoze shit and that everything worked out of the box.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
...several Years ago...Blah
Tm
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
That's what the driver CDs are for. "Grandma" still has to use those in order to use her camera (or so she thinks), so it can be easily included with the installation process.
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
sometimes you can't install additional drivers on customers machines, plus keeping windows without ext2/3 support can be useful to limit damages when dual boot systems are infected.
Of course a virus that screws the raw disk or the partition table dosn't need ext2/3 filesystem support to ruin a linux install, but most of them simply infect files they find on windows volumes.
FAT is an obsolete piece of junk, but i don't see it as a real problem on memory cards. Also, its wide use is probably the only reason Microsoft still didn't enforce their patent.
"2,048 Gb should be enough memory for anyone"... where have we heard this before?
unfortunately, to be universally accessable it needs to be fat. ntfs for windows would work but write support is not complete across platforms or is in a functional beta state. ext2 would work but drivers would need installed on a number of OSs to use it. if this is released @ 8GB, i wonder what system then plan on using?
Cool, a new slot for my next multi-card reader!
Is there anything else, though, that's read/write on pretty much all OSs?
Ask those idiots at M$ why Vista only works with FAT/NTFS and ignores better, royalty free formats. Ext2 was common when they got XP out the gate six long years ago. While you are at it, you can ask them why their format tools can only make a 32GB FAT partition and file system. Steve Jobs may have some questions to answer too, but I don't know what file systems Apple works with.
Oh, I see, M$ has a FFS2 system that does wear leveling but presents a FAT disk to the computer and they charge royalties on it. Now you know why they have not moved on. Too bad for them the new system avoids their royalties and will be saving the makers a big 40 million bucks. FTFA:
I hope they do the same with their music players and OGG, having been burnt so badly by Plays for Sure DRM.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The image shows that they can be used with an adapter to fit an existing SD card slot. Thank you very much, this is exactly what I wanted from this thread
That article was useless without it.
You can't take the sky from me...
A few manufacturers already make something like this- neat SD cards with a USB "tail" on them, built right into the card. it's not a full connector, just the flat, plastic part with the contacs, and it has a foldable "sheath" that allows the SD card to have the normal dimensions when the USB connector is not in use.
This way, it fits in the camera (or whatever) and can be plugged into any computer with no hassle whatsoever. It seems like a pretty good all-around solution if you ask me.
I think it'd be better to just pick an existing standard than to create yet another new one.
One of these days, I'm going to cut you into little pieces.
udf is the closest thing to a more modern universally supported fs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Disk_Format The only big issue is that XP can't write to it. (Mac, Linux and many other OS's can read and write udf, atleast MS is finally coming to the party with read write in Vista.)
Welcome to teh intartubes:
Avian Reproduction System
It does the job, is simple to implement, and is supported on a lot of software. The myriad drawbacks are really quite minor compared with these benefits.
We already have to put up with different memory card formats when we switch devices and phones, Mini SD, SD, XD, MMC etc. etc., and these people are creating a totally new format that we can all call a standard and not have to worry about it all any more?!
Forgive me for being a tad sceptical at that logic.
The same effect can arise out of the "ro" flag in fstab.
And of course, MMC has already been stillborn for years. It's used by experimenters because the standard is slightly easier than SD to implement, but with dedicated chips to handle the grunt work, there's again no use for MMC. CF is slipping because the zillion-pin connector is too bulky. SD is still going strong with the introduction of SDHC, though the fact that the original standard puked at the 2GB mark is pretty embarassing.
However, USB's speed limit is going to become an issue pretty soon. What would be nice is a physical box size for SATA memory sticks. They're going to happen anyway, but if they all happen with different shapes (like USB memory sticks), you won't be able to design a camera or mp3 player that uses them as internal storage.
I've written to the SATA folks to ask them to define such a physical memory stick standard. If you think it's a good idea, please do the same.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
We don't need another standard. A few days ago at Wal Mart I saw Wii-branded product that is really slick. It is an SD card, but the back of the card has been notched out so that the last few millimeters are the width of the little PCB that is in the connector part of USB. So the card fits in SD slots as normal, and the back side can be directly plugged into a USB slot.
Here it is.
Here is a similar product with a slide on sleeve. I assume that might be needed for physical compatibility with some SD slots?
Here is a SanDisk combo SD / USB memory card, but I don't like it as well because it has moving parts which can break.
These products are pure genius. Personally, I think the SD standard should be updated to increase supported capacity, so we can use a ubiquitous form factor long into the future. I don't know about the rest of you, but I have these worthless PCMCIA memory cards lying around, which I replaced with now worthless CF memory cards, which I've now replaced with SD. I don't want another change, and we don't need anything smaller than Micro-SD. So only bandwidth and capacity need to increase, which the SD standard can be modified to support (while maintaining backwards compatibility) as the technology improves.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
FAT32 supports up to 8TB volumes in 2k and xp under certain conditions, and generally 127GB volumes will work fine on win9x. Microsoft nerfed their format tool to ensure that people used ntfs instead. See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/184006/EN-US/
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Will this format have proprietary specs?
Anything newer than Windows 95 OSR2 (with the irritating exception of NT 4) supports FAT32, including most Free operating systems. This allows partitions of 64GB or more, although starts to have quite a large minimum allocation unit size at these sizes.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
2048GB should be enough for anyone.
This is the upgrade of the MMC standard to beyond 8G. That was "planned obsolescence" in the sense that everybody knew that eventually, we'd need a new standard for that. But every other flash standard has done the same because it didn't make sense to design a standard for 4G+ cards in the days of 8M and 16M cards.
"Backwards compatibility" means that you can use your old cards in new devices conforming with the new standard. They also gave you a small card format and direct USB compatibility. Those are nice features; if they didn't care about backwards compatibility, they could just have chosen a new, small format that was incompatible with all your old cards.
Although it's sort of a technical duplicate; it looks simple and sturdy. But more important:
"Officials expect local companies to save $40 million in licensing fees thanks to the card, in addition to profiting from sales."
If enough companies use this, it will be the standard for, say, at least ten years. So everybody complaining 'great, just wat we need; another standard'; please think again.
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
I think he was talking about the 4GB filesize limit, which is a serious problem for video recording.
A driver CD doesn't help me when I walk into the local public library, hoping to use webmail to send a picture to a friend...
Procrastination -- because good things come to those who wait.
FAT had a 2GB limit on file sizes. Even this isn't really a problem for video though; just dump the DV stream to a load of consecutive files. It will be split along timecode breaks when you import it into your editing app anyway. If you really wanted, you could also output a .mov (or similar) file which referenced the individual files, so you just needed to import a single file into your app.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
In fact, there was a recent New York Times article regarding the very subject of bird penises.
Make Slashdot readable! See journal.
I wonder how long it will be before Sony release their "similar enough to fill the same needs except more expensive and totally incompatible with anything except Sony hardware" version.
How about ISO 9660 or UDF?
The whole idea of the host computer (or camera, music player, etc) controling the filesystem on memory cards like these is rather repulsive anyway. This is consumer electronics stuff; cards shouldn't corrupt and become unusable until a reformat just because you pull them out without "ejecting" them.
The cards should be smart cards, with a storage API for the hosts to use for storage and retrieval. How it is actually done should be up to the processor in the card.
Yes, that would mean new drivers on every OS, but the initial pain of that is worth it in the long run.
How about UDF?
...but with my Ultra-Porn, 2048 gigs is not enough.
Many posters are commenting here that FAT works across all operating systems and that's why it's being used. If these manufacturers came out with a new file system specification (say, based on BSD UFS), I doubt it would be a big deal for Microsoft, Apple, and the Linux Kernel developers to include it in there.
The reasons we are stuck with FAT is:
1. Simplicity. This is huge for embedded devices (IE, the things that do the writing to all of these cards). A read-only FAT driver can be implemented in a few kilobytes of (compiled) code. It requires trivial amounts of memory to operate (only a few hundred bytes). I've written a bootloader for an embedded product that could load an OS from a FAT partition and it was under 10 kilobytes. A read-write implementation is not much bigger and the memory requirements are similarly trivial. No other major file system out there can claim this. Particularly, modern file systems like NTFS require huge amounts of memory (comparatively) due to the complex structures they need to maintain, and have massive, complex code to read and write.
2. Reliability. I know this seems counterintuitive for such a lousy file system, but FAT is fairly resilient both to power failures (or card yanks), and more subtle corruption such as bad drivers or media defects. Sure, it may corrupt and lose your file, but it very rarely destroys the entire file system and lose the rest of the files on there. This is again because of the simplicity of the structures and the fact that very little needs to change on disk when a modification is made. Remember how many times Windows 95 crashed? How many times of that did you get major FS damage? Compare and contrast with Ext2.
So, yes, FAT is a terrible file system compared to modern ones. But there's a reason everyone uses it.
Right! So can you tell me exactly how to set this "ro" flag in the nonexistent fstab on Windows ?
Nobody's worried about a Linux virus infecting a Windows box.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
I somehow doubt that the settings in fstab would matter to Windows at all.
Information doesn't want to be anthropomorphized anymore.
Or rather: is that 2 TB in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
Thank you! Finally someone who actually knows what they're talking about rather than repeating other people's misconceptions.
Like you said, FAT32 can go really large, but Microsoft intentionally disabled support for formatting FAT32 partitions larger than 32GB. Many non-MS tools can format a larger FAT32 drive, that Windows 2000/XP will happily mount.
The bigger problem though, is all the 16-bit garbage apps that are typically present on FAT32 systems. Windows 98 is a very dirty thing. It likes to destroy anything it doesn't understand, so mounting a large FAT32 partition under these crusty old Dos Shells is disastrous.
Ideally, I'd like to see a simplified, open file-system for removable media. Something that could be trivially supported in future releases of all major operating systems. It certainly doesn't need balanced B-trees or any such perks, just a basic system that requires very little memory to operate, making it easier for consumer devices to safely access it, and easy for any OS developer to write a quick kernel driver.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
It has been, SDHC (Secure Digital "High-Capacity"). It replaces the FAT16 file system in the SD spec with FAT32, still patent-encumbered MS file system. 8GB cards are out, some new devices support it and some older ones have firmware updates for it. I don't know whether miCard uses FAT32 or a different file system "to save $40 million in licensing fees " as the article says
=S
...only about a half a Library of Congress? They can do better than that.
true enough, but if you cannot format a drive larger then functionally that limit is true. linux or osx will format high capacities but windows would need a 3rd party utility or a patch.
really, the initial disks @ 8gb wont have any issues and im not entirely sure why a current standard would have memory cards higher than 32gb anyway. by the time 32+ gb drivers are commonplace this standard SHOULD be replaced. IMHO
That's assuming you don't have any shots longer than 10 minutes. And without knowing the latency of the card who can say if it is suitable for video editing or acquisition. And some of us like to work uncompressed which brings up even more issues. It's got the bandwidth for one, maybe two, streams of uncompressed SD, but not even close for a single stream of uncompressed HD. I'll stick to my RAID.
+0 Meh
I don't see why the devices can't be whatever file format the spec designers choose. People are already used to getting driver disks with new hardware. Just make sure that the readers ship with a Windows 'driver' that installs the file system that has been standardized on by the designers. I would say that I have a harder time getting Windows users NOT to install the disks that come with new hardware than I have getting the too install. Heck, a lot of MP3 players won't even work without installing proprietary applications. Why can't this be the same. You can be sure that when every single Linux distro can access the memory cards right out of the box, that MS will be happy to include the file system into the next spin of Windows. They might even push it as a 'Windows Update'.
Ok so I have SD cards for my camera, XD cards for a second camera, Memory stick duo pro for my PSP, My ipod has it's own propriety format, and my Wii can read SD cards.
So exactly why do we need another format? First off if this is a format to end all formats I'm going to have to go out and buy a version of everything I mention that uses this format, except they don't have a PSP, they don't have an Ipod and then don't have a Wii version of it and never will. Why is that? Why couldn't they just use Flash or SD? Those are two of the oldest?
The reason explains all this. You couldn't sell PSP memory at a premium if everyone was already making it. That fact alone tells why this format has a low longevity. Besides which we all already have SD cards/Flash memory/Xd/duo pro, this format just means not only do we have to convert our hardware but we'll have to shell out the money to convert our memory. And at an 8 gig initial offering that's likely going to be 200 bucks a stick at least. Toss in the fact that if you have 4 devices that use it, you need 4 sticks?
Sounds like someone's going to get a good profit if the format sticks, personally I'm going to have to say "no". If they want to sell the format make it interchangeable with all the other formats (you can't), make it extremely cheap (they won't) or go back in time and instead of SD and flash offer this, and make the feature set WORTH switching to it (they can't, they won't, and they are unable to).
What the industry really needs is a memory card standard that is totally open with absolutely no fees required to produce memory cards, card readers or software for it (unlike SD where you need to pay license fees). Or failing that, develop a standard where you only need to pay license frees if you are producing the physical hardware (i.e. the memory card or socket) and where the software is totally open. Motorola for example were caught between a rock and a hard place a while back because they had released a phone with a driver for the included SD slot built into the linux kernel instead of being a module and were stuck between "GPL violation" and "violating the SD association NDAs" (at the time they had to choose "GPL violation". It was all cleared up when the SD card people were convinced to release the "simplified specs" and Motorola could release the code in question)
this is supposed to be a universal disk, one should not have to install drivers for a universal disk. just like a memory key, these things need to be plugged in and work. also, if you change the file access system, they will not work in existing products. brand new formats tend to fail if they dont have backwards compatibility
More pictures of the product: http://images.google.com/images?q=The+One+Ring
--Edward Dassmesser
I read the description and saw "New card format to replace them all" and thought, "Oh noes! Not another design that will lead to hard to find replacement cards in a few years!" I remember going through that once with some electronic devices already and it wasn't pleasant.
But then I saw the link pic. USB contacts and SD (MMC) profile adapter. Yey! The designers should be given a +1 for their consideration of backwards and cross compatability. Then add another +1 bonus, since there's less worrying about not losing proprietary USB cables for devices if you can just pop the card out instead.
So you didn't bother to look at the image the parent posted? Apparently all of these cards can be plugged into USB ports, unlike special SD cards that need to have an internal USB plug.
... the parent was talking about the difference between an MMC (that's "MultiMediaCard") and SD ("Secure Digital") cards and slots.
No
Many people think that they are the same, but they are slightly different. MMC came first, and was a pretty neat format, but Sony and the other big music companies decided they hated it, because it didn't have built in features that made it DRM-friendly. So they "upgraded" the format and made SD, which includes an extra pin on the connector, an area of the card's memory that's not user-accessible (for storing the media keys, according to some never-widely-implemented DRM scheme they were cooking up), and a lock/unlock switch. They somehow got the manufacturers to kill MMC, by not producing many large-capacity cards for it, and replace it with SD.
From a consumer's standpoint, we got a lock/unlock switch, higher prices for a while, and lost some capacity to the key-escrow area. (The latter is hardly noticed now, but it really sucked back on 32MB cards). MMC seems to have come back from the grave lately, though, mostly because of the reduced-size card implementations. (Maybe it's easier to implement in hardware and software than SD? I'm not clear on that.)
These new memory cards are compatible to both USB and MMC, not SD. However, most SD card slots are backwards-compatible (IMO, that's a misnomer; SD was hardly a step "forwards" for anyone except the content monopolies) to MMC, so to the consumer it's "same difference."
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
personally, i think you gobble bone. i mean, eat knob. no, hold on, i mean suck dick. shit, i suck at subtle humor.
You can work around a great deal of limitations in a filesystem at the application level, whether by partitioning drives due to max FS size or files due to max file size, or nesting directories with too many entries to access quickly. That doesn't mean it isn't annoying or that a better solution is not required in the long run.
Sure, I can make my video camera split files, but now I have to take care to move the bunch of them together, or reassemble them when downloading onto my computer. Also, if I have a large movie file I want to transfer between computers that don't have filesize limits, I am screwed again. If I want to hold a disk image for virtualization, I have to hope my virtualization software supports splitting that.
We could squeeze a few more years out of FAT32 by making a standard for splitting large files by with a decorated filename (bigfile.mov;1, bigfile.mov;2, and bigfile.mov;3) in a way that could be automatically handled by the FS layer on your OS, but that seems like kind of a wasted effort in light of the performance issues and the maximum volume size.
And please let's not confuse that with the media itself. These cards should just be block devices in Unix-speak.
Sadly, this issue is completely under Microsoft's control. If Windows doesn't support it, it doesn't exist.
I wonder if Joliet or other intended-to-be-read-only file systems would work?
So, partition the flash device into two partitions.
Make one of them FAT32, and the other EXT3.
Make the FAT32 partition contain an autorun which installs, without prompting, Windows IFS drivers for the EXT3 partition.
It would probably require a reboot, I'd guess, but that's typical of anything Windows.
As many file systems as there are, I'd be surprised if such a thing didn't already exist.
The problem isn't just the FAT32 device size limit, it is also that FAT32 has a maximum file size of four gigs. Given this format will be used for videos, that is a cripling limitation.
According to Wikipedia, Microsoft's solution is exFAT.
Every universal disk to date must have some kind of driver. Just because Windows shipped with some of them does not change the fact that they did in fact have drivers. Also, they are not designed to work with existing products, as existing products do not go past 4 gig. The idea is that future products can use the old disks. This is fine because you could format the old media with the new file system when you went to use it in a new device.
With super tiny cards, there simply isn't physical room for lots of chips for larger capacities.
You are _forced_ to use exotic/expensive chip stacking packaging technology to fit into XD, miCard, or what have you.
With CF, there is physical room to do whatever you need; adding wireless, GPS chips, etc. without jumping through hoops.
FAT32 supports up to 8TB volumes in 2k and xp under certain conditions
The current limit is 2TB because of a 32 bit "disk size in sectors" field in the bootsector.
If that were a 64bit sector count (or a 32 bit cluster count) you could have volumes of 2^28 clusters, each 32K which takes you to 8TB. With 64K clusters you could get to 16TB.
And by using the reserved 4 bits in the FAT entry to get 2^32 64K clusters you could have 256TB.
But at the moment, the version of FAT32 which most OSs supports is limited to 2TB, because the disk size in sectors is a 32 bit field.
Some Microsoft documentation mentions an 8TB limit, but the released version does not support it. Personally, I think at one point a "disk size in clusters" field was in the FSInfo sector, which explains the 8TB limit, but this was removed at some point.
Microsoft nerfed their format tool to ensure that people used ntfs instead.
Yes, but you can use this one instead
http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/fat32format.htm
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Finally, a standard to make transferring my pictures and multi-media (that's pronounced mul-tie-media, btw) so much easier! ATM I find it so difficult reaching across the desk, plugging my usb-stick in to the front of the PC, and putting files on it. Plus I have to carry all that extra weight around with me. How will this one work then? Mind-reading device that actually stores the stuff in your head?
// cinn
So as far as I understand, the only difference is :
- Sandisk SDplus cards (which iI currently use in most of my PDAs, DigiCam, etc...) are :
SD Card + USB + DRM restrictions (thanks SD !)
(and possibility to go above 2Go once Sandisk switches to SDHD sub-variant)
- Whereas miCards are :
MMC + USB (and thus NO DRM - thanks MMC) who happen to fit in the exact same slot (thank to SD / MMC electromechanical compatibility) and are compatible up to 2TB.
Also, I've read on wikipedia article on SD is that it not possible to come up with a open and free implementation of SD while it is possible to make such a MMC reader (and use SD cards in MMC legacy mode). So such a MMC/USB hybrid, in addition to being DRMless, could also be a good target for open-source project that can't afford to pay for all restrictions (licenses etc.) on SD.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I still can't get the smell out.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
Another memory card format. Just what we need.
...and the best part is that I won't have to explain to my parents why miniSD is not the same as microSD, and neither of them are the same as SD -- but can usually be adapted -- and no, their old SmartMedia card doesn't fit into this mix anywhere.
I'm already using a mix of CF, PCMCIA-adapted CF, SD, and USB Flash. I'm a technophile, and even I've lost track of how many different formats are out there.
Why don't we get everyone together and see if we can agree on two or three formats. Leave DRM out of it, and do all of that in software. Memory cards should be really good at reading, writing, and retaining data. Leave the rest to the device to handle. That way, we can all buy the same few formats for most everything -- and benefit from economy of scale (more cheaper memory, in other words.)
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
Sad, but true.
I remember how shocked I was when I discovered that OSX didn't handle ext2 at all.
*sigh* back to work...
Planned obsolescence, sure... the manufacturers like the idea that, at some point, you'll run out an buy a new camera, and new cards for that camera. But the notion that "it didn't make sense to design a standard for 4G+ cards in the days of 8M and 16M cards" is just silly. Particularly when you consider the history of things like SmartMedia, a card format that ran out of steam at 128MB, and alienated those buyers not prescient enough to know this was a stupid format.
And particularly, consider MMC and SD media... these are LOGICALLY addressed, for christsakes. One or four bits of data, to a logical model that have been anything they wanted. It would have been trivial to include address space for these from the get-go, and it wouldn't have cost anything more. This isn't reasonable shortsightedness, it's planned.
And take a look at the oldest memory card format on the market: Compact Flash. Sure, it has had a tiny bit of evolution (direct address vs. packet addressing, at least an issue on PCMCIA, from which CF derives), and there's an upper limit in there somewhere (132GB?), but it was a perfectly reasonable one for the day.
-Dave Haynie
Now you gota be kidding...
Not at all. It very likely that it will destroy the filesystem. Just remember that all important information is stored toghether at the begining of the disk, and any bad write there will corrupt everything. And even don't start talking about empty space maintence, FAT disks have a tendency to shrink with time.
Compare that with ext (the original), that is also simple, and much more secure. The important data is spread through the disk, and losing part of it will just destroy only part of your files. It also manages empty space better and has less problems with fragmentation.
The reason FAT is used is because all OSes can read it.
I remember it a bit different. From my memory, filesystem problems was one of the major problems leading to a format - reinstall. Of course, the OS didn't tell you it had filesystem problems, it just BSODed (can't find *****.sys or fatal operation while accessing virtual memory). Even Windows XP gets unstable if used over FAT. And don't forget about all those lost fragments, they don't just appear from nowhere.
Rethinking email
Standard 3.5" form factor: 26x101x147 mm
Standard MicroSD: 11x15x1mm
Place vertically, 8 rows across the width, each row of 128 cards. Leaves room for a 101x147x11 of driver electronics, 12mm on sides for attachment (6mm each side), plus 20mm for the IDE/SATA sockets and bigger electronics elements. Gives 1024 slots. Fill each with a 4GB microSD for a total of 4 terabytes. Speed is not a big issue, because the load can be ballanced between cards (RAID 2?) The price WOULD be an issue, with the cards at $150/pc, but if you went with 1GB cards instead, at $10/pc, say, $1200 ($1024 in cards, the rest for the device) for a solid state 1 terabyte? Not bad...
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Tebibytes? Sounds like what happens if you anger one of those furry figures with aerials on their heads and television sets in their bellies.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Don't forget the swarm of UAC warnings that this will trigger... While people argue that UAC triggers anytime you sneeze, installing a device driver from autorun is a legitimate cause for UAC firing up all its alarms and scaring the shit out of grandma.
After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
- The Tao of Programming
Autorun install drivers from a strange device on Windows? Surely you jest.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
> 2048 Gigabytes *should* be enough for anyone...
That's the dumbest fucking in-joke I've heard since I've been at slashdot!