I'm pretty sure the builder, at least these days

Those commands build the disk in exactly the same way as the "Test Builder Image (2001/10/22)", that I just downloaded, does.

It seems that the builder file on www.empeg.com should be updated to use the better scheme. It uses an earlier version of mke2fs anyway -- possibly explaining the difference (maybe the defaults have changed).

I've updated my page to emphasise the preferred command.