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Computer Files Are Going Extinct

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Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#241

Post by Animats »

jedimastert wrote: post #92
unqueued wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a very similar anecdote. I had a long conversation with a friend who is a high school science teacher. She told me that computer literacy has plummeted in the last ten years. She has her students go into the field and collect data in the form of photos, spreadsheets, and typed reports. She wants students to bundle these files in zip files, and email them to her. Students have no idea how to do this. Some of th…

I might imply that your highschool teacher friend is instead falling out of computer literacy, and that highshool students are moving away from her form of a computer-based workflow. I very rarely send emails at all outside of work. Maybe one or two support emails. I also fairly rarely create zip files either. Of course, I know how to do these things, but I don't really do it anymore. I haven't needed to, for the sam…

The problem is that all the new ways of doing things involve being a slave of some ecosystem that doesn't play well with other ecosystems. If Instagram, Snapchat, Dropbox, Slack, and Google Drive all interoperated properly, this wouldn't be a big deal.

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#242

Post by pnutjam »

unqueued wrote: post #109
jedimastert wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might imply that your highschool teacher friend is instead falling out of computer literacy, and that highshool students are moving away from her form of a computer-based workflow. I very rarely send emails at all outside of work. Maybe one or two support emails. I also fairly rarely create zip files either. Of course, I know how to do these things, but I don't really do it anymore. I haven't needed to, for the sam…

> I might imply that your highschool teacher friend is instead falling out of computer literacy, and that highshool students are moving away from her form of a computer-based workflow. I suppose, in the same way that people using crayons are moving away from the printed word. > Perhaps instead of email, you teacher friend could find out how her students send things to each other and meet them half way? Make up a goog…

Email is actually pretty crappy for files. She should setup an https drop and get a way better experience.

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#243

Post by edflsafoiewq »

antaviana wrote: post #226
cproctor wrote: post #74

To a computer science teacher, this feels like trying to walk up a down escalator. First-year CS students (middle school or high school) with experience using Apple products don't have a concept of a filesystem. The shift to auto-saving documents also corrodes the intuition that files get stored on disk in some non-magical way. In the same way that it's now easier to teach networking and graph theory because youth ex…

My hairdresser, who knew I was into computers, once asked me “when I delete a picture on my mobile phone, where does it go?”. I first thought he was asking if there was some kind of Recycle Bin on Android, but then he said: “when we die, our body is burier or burned, that is it becomes bones or ashes, but what happens with the picture on the mobile phone, what does it become?”

Waste heat, maybe? (cf. Landauer's principle)

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#244

Post by incompatible »

cosmodisk wrote: post #227
cproctor wrote: post #74

To a computer science teacher, this feels like trying to walk up a down escalator. First-year CS students (middle school or high school) with experience using Apple products don't have a concept of a filesystem. The shift to auto-saving documents also corrodes the intuition that files get stored on disk in some non-magical way. In the same way that it's now easier to teach networking and graph theory because youth ex…

I work in an office environment with relatively young people and it is absolutely shocking how little people know about computers or some underlying technologies,despite using them all day,every day.Very few if any, go beyond of the basics of how to open up a website or create a word document. The willingness to learn something new is close to zero and always downplayed with "I'm not good with computers". I've got a…

Isn't this the way it has always been? Then they expect help from the rare few who do understand how computers work, while at the same time somehow looking down at them for not being "normal".

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#245

Post by ACS_Solver »

htfu wrote: post #124
ACS_Solver wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, sure, I didn't expect it to be running a SSH server right away, but I was hoping to have a SSH option somewhere in the settings or, in the worst case, a downloadable app. It's a power user feature of course, but knowing that it's a Unix-based device, I absolutely expected easy SSH access. Then again, this is something that happened a lot with my brief use of iOS - I would repeatedly find that Apple clearly didn…

Back in the early jailbreak days I used to run a daemon so I could log in and poke around, but unless you’re developing, well what was your exact use-case? I never found one, it’s not a server. These days I use SSH a ton on my iOS devices through various apps and for many purposes (direct shell access, firing off scripts, port forwarding...) but that’s all logging into machines.

Even without scripting, shell access and so on, I have regular file transfer as a major use case for SSH, through scp or rsync. Sending some files to my phone is very convenient now due to the brilliant KDE Connect project, but I'd still say scp is the next most convenient option.

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#246

Post by pnutjam »

cookie_monsta wrote: post #223
blub wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone suggesting using proprietary cloud products for something that's mandatory for participating in society hasn't thought things through: 1. The privacy policy of Google & Dropbox is a catastrophe. 2. They can ban you at any time for all sorts of silly reasons and then you can't even turn your homework in any more.

My kids have been to 4 schools so far (we move around a fair bit). In each one they are expected to have a Google account which is linked to their school in some sort of G Suite arrangement. I don't know if it's a coincidence or a department policy, but Google gets them early and if you think that's bad, teachers aren't to blame - maybe schools are or possibly the education dept. Honestly I was a little surprised tha…

My kids user office 365, but the iPad requirement is my but beef.

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#247

Post by pasabagi »

l_t wrote: post #221
stormbrew wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What, precisely, makes it inferior?

Speaking of precision. I think a big problem with modern use of English is that it has reduced precision. What reduces precision? 1. Increased reliance on idioms to communicate. Idioms use analogies, and usually reduce precision. Our increasingly shared cultural context via the Internet means that more and more idioms are entering common use and (IMO) reducing the clarity of communication. 2. Reduced general vocabula…

I frequently write to my grandma, who is fairly well-educated, and her writing is technically good. It is, however, bad writing. It's a pattern I've noticed quite a lot with older people. They write perfectly-formed garbage. I think the amount of time people spend writing today is greater than at any time in history, and I think it shows.

That's my intuition. But I'd also note, your points (1, 3 for example) contradict eachother. You complain that writing is simple (2), but unclear (1), idiomatic, but jargon-laced.

My thinking is that modern writing is a sort of colourful digression from the Elements of Style. Irony, simplicity, and idiom seem like good ingredients for playful, powerful writing.

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#248

Post by pnutjam »

u801e wrote: post #216
bitwize wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has already happened at least once in the automotive realm, as auto manufacturers replaced the dashboard gauges for important measures like oil pressure with "idiot lights". Of course the idiot light has achieved an apotheosis in the era of computerized cars, where the car's onboard computer signals a problem and illuminates the "CHECK ENGINE" light. Of course, what that means is that you need to take the car in…

> and illuminates the "CHECK ENGINE" light. Of course, what that means is that you need to take the car in to the garage and have a Certified, Licensed Professional Mechanic attach a doohickey to the engine computer to tell him what the problem is You can buy a OBD-II scanner for around $30 and get that information yourself without having to take it to a mechanic. That should for work for any car built since 1996.

Bluetooth ones are less then $10 online.

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#249

Post by JulianMorrison »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #238

Files were an abstraction that appeared as well as disappeared in my lifetime, at least on home computers - before them, you were saving direct to the medium which was mostly audio magtape. And I've honestly never really liked them. Files get lost in the clutter, get overwritten or corrupted, don't get saved when you crash, are on this computer and not that one, don't make it across when you transition to a newer box…

Also it's worth mentioning, if I still had my files from my 486 PC (I don't), could I even access them? Mostly, not, or not without an emulator and fifty floppy disks of some ancient app I binned in the 1990s. And a floppy disk drive. And an adaptor cable.

Files rot, unless they are intentionally low rot by design. Most weren't.

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#250

Post by pnutjam »

unqueued wrote: post #170
Someone wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

”She has her students go into the field and collect data in the form of photos, spreadsheets, and typed reports. She wants students to bundle these files in zip files, and email them to her.” As others said, that’s because they don’t need to do that. In my experience, they will know how to share their Google Docs (which is where their spreadsheets and typed reports in all likelihood get written) with you. They probab…

> In my experience, they will know how to share their Google Docs (which is where their spreadsheets and typed reports in all likelihood get written) with you. From what she has told me, and from what I have seen, some of them don't even get that far. Their idea of sharing information is to send screenshots in MMS messages or over snapchat. And, I think that if you graduate high school, you should have these basic sk…

From a security perspective, zips can be dangerous. Some email systems strip them off automatically.
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