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Subject: Re: Please stop the bickering

Author: Dave Gomboc

Date: 22:35:44 10/30/99

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On October 31, 1999 at 00:58:05, Eugene Nalimov wrote:

>On October 30, 1999 at 18:00:34, Dave Gomboc wrote:
>
>>On October 29, 1999 at 21:07:30, Amir Ban wrote:
>>
>>>On October 29, 1999 at 19:20:45, Eugene Nalimov wrote:
>>>
>>>>On October 29, 1999 at 18:33:14, Amir Ban wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>It so happens I'm quite familiar with Intel, and there's no truth in what you
>>>>>say. Intel will publish with a product anything that is needed to make you
>>>>>comfortable using it and buying it. That's quite a lot, usually, but they won't
>>>>>tell you anything beyond that.
>>>>>
>>>>>One of the things Intel currently does is a strategic effort to reinvent PC
>>>>>architectire from an open standard into something Intel-proprietary. The
>>>>>so-called "firmware hub", e.g., will replace the old BIOS, and the LPC bus
>>>>>replaces the ISA bus. The specifications are secret or restricted to Intel
>>>>>partners. If Intel succeeds in this, competitors like AMD will have a real
>>>>>problem.
>>>>>
>>>>>Microsoft is doing something similar in the past few years. They made DOS into
>>>>>the most successful OS ever by making it totally open and attracting third-party
>>>>>developers, who really made DOS successful. Microsoft now thinks that those
>>>>>third-party developers are a nuisance and they are closing many specifications.
>>>>>For example, NTFS (the NT file-system) is not documented.
>>>>
>>>>David A. Solomon
>>>>"Inside Windows NT / Second edition"
>>>>Microsoft Press, Redmond, Washington, USA 1998
>>>>ISBN 1-57231-677-2
>>>>Chapter 9 "Windows NT File System (NTFS)"
>>>>
>>>
>>>Does it give the file-system data structures ?
>>>
>>>Maybe I'm wrong about this. However, my company cooperates with Microsoft and at
>>>some point where one way to do something was to manipulate NTFS structures
>>>directly, Microsoft people told us to forget it since Microsoft won't disclose
>>>this information.
>>>
>>>Amir
>>
>>I think that you can get MS to give out enough information that you can write
>>your own IFS (installable file system), but not enough to tinker with NTFS, e.g.
>>my understanding is like Amir's, not Eugene's.
>>
>>I say this as someone who used to work at an optical storage VAR that was
>>experienced at developing drivers for Sun boxes and was specifically interested
>>in developing drivers for NT as well.
>>
>>Dave
>
>There are some 3rd party defragmenters for NTFS. Actually, I believe that prior
>to w2k *all* NTFS defragmenters were non-MS.
>
>Eugene

By tinker, I meant going deeper than the API layer that is provided.

Dave



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