Brain fart: no format option on a pen drive pop-up menu?

[Fernando Cassia]

On Sun, Aug 28, 2011 at 14:30, Tim <ignored_mailbox at yahoo.com.au> wrote:
>  *Those* people are not the ones to pay attention to
> when trying to understand the computer.  You are one of those people.

Oh yes, I'm a complete fool. And ignorant. That's why I started using
computers at age 8 (a trs-80 model III) and why I learned 6509
assembler, too. That's why I wrote about 500 articles about hardware
and software, because I don't know what formatting a removable drive
is. Gee, I thank the heavens that I ran into you to explain me what
formatting actually means...

> You should be thankful that there are nitpickers correcting the mistakes
> that people make, and think, otherwise Linux would be the complete
> shambles that Windows is.

Linux will continue to be the niche market OS if people like you have
your way. People who come from Windows will want to, gee, _format_ a
thumb drive either as fat16 or fat32, or ext4 why not, and they will
find no format command, just mkfs, which, gee, does what they want to
do. But is an 'alias' included? of course not. It's much better to
leave them guessing and asking 4000+ times on Linuxquestions "how do I
bloody format a flash drive"?

http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=en&site=&source=hp&q=format+flash+drive+linux+site:linuxquestions.org&btnK=Google+Search&pbx=1&oq=&aq=&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=&gs_upl=&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.&fp=8611df39e77e29eb&biw=1360&bih=571

Four thousand results, I kid you not. On Linuxquestions alone.

And not only that, God save them from entering this list, where some
will begin an argument about "formatting" not being actually
formatting, and that formatting does not erase the contents of the
drive.

I despise arguments like yours, I really do. And I honestly believe
people like you prevent Linux from becoming mainstream.

Hey look, IoMega and HP are language sinners too, they call formatting
something that, according to you, is not formatting!:

http://www.iomega.com/support/manuals/zip2a/use_disks.html
"You can format your Zip disks to quickly erase all of the files on
the disk, change the format type (Mac or PC), or to repair a disk that
has developed errors."

And look, HP too...

HP USB storage Format Tool
http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/Business-PCs-Deskpro-EVO/Help-with-HP-USB-Disk-Storage-Format-Tool/td-p/1126393

I guess you'll have to add the whole of the PC industry to your list
of evil doers.
Better start writing letters, quick...

FC