Those little keychain flash drives. Aren’t they cute? If there was ever a device that finally killed off the floppy, this was it. Unfortunately, they are so popular the marketing folks are trying and mess it up.
Standards effort could improve USB flash drives
This article came out recently from CES. Now let’s think about this for a moment. They are USB… they already are a standard. If it wasn’t a standard interface, it wouldn’t work on every machine in the world. What exactly are they proposing?
If all they want to do is launch a program when you plug the thing in, can’t you just put an ‘autorun.inf’ in the root dir and it’ll start up just like any CD? They don’t need a launching mechanism… it already exists!!
Well, the only reason to announce this is that so marketing types can latch on to this and fill up the drive with junk when you buy it. Now, you’ll have to get in the habit of formatting your drive before using it the first time. Just like the good ol’ days before pre-formatted floppies. 
Keep an eye out in your mailbox for AOL keychain drives. I bet they are coming soon!