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File not found - Please tell me this is a joke...

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james_s:

--- Quote from: tooki on October 01, 2021, 11:39:29 am ---The chances of a young person these days having interacted with a filing cabinet are, frankly, vastly smaller than the chances of them having interacted with a computer directory structure!!

--- End quote ---

Surely they've interacted with a cardboard box before though, or a plastic storage bin, or a closet, or a chest of drawers, or a backpack. They've used a desk at some point and probably had some pens and pencils or other tools. Heck even my modern iPhone has albums that photos are sorted into, they aren't all just in a big disorganized pile. The concept of nested containers is pretty hard to avoid unless a person is just completely lacking any sort of organizational skills, in which case they're going to struggle in any sort of engineering job.

rsjsouza:

--- Quote from: ajb on October 01, 2021, 07:36:11 pm ---
--- Quote from: rsjsouza on October 01, 2021, 02:48:46 am ---Despite being a user for about ten years now, she still has no concept of the physical location of files and directories on a disk but learned how to move her e-mails (together with the attachments) to different folders in Thunderbird.
--- End quote ---

This right here reflects a fundamental problem with the basic assumptions of this thread.  Files/folders/directories are NOT reflective of the "physical" location of data on disk.  A file "in" a given directory may be located anywhere on disk, even broken up into multiple bits spread across the whole thing.   
--- End quote ---
The location of the file and its fragmentation is not part of the problem. A file is still the lowest abstraction level of a coherent dataset that a user can interface on the context that I presented (and you suppressed) of a single user machine. Of course, "physical" is a simplification on my part since a file can be mapped to a physical drive, someone else's computer (the cloud or a mapped network), a stream, etc. but it works very well to illustrate to a beginner the function/necessity of such abstraction to exist.

MrMobodies:

--- Quote from: GlennSprigg on October 01, 2021, 11:30:41 am ---YES!!!... That's exactly how I feel !!   Computers are/were supposed to make it easy & friendly for even non-technical people, so they tried to use
friendly words like 'My', as in 'My Computer', and 'My Documents etc etc... Aargh!!  I HATE trying to explain to some people why/where there files actually went,
to places like... "C:\ProgramFiles\User\Fred-Bloggs\Local\Documents\MyPhotos\blaablaa", or "My Computer\My Documents\My Music" or what ever!!   :P
I KNOW why they TRY to do this, especially for multiple Users signing on to a PC.  But very few 'laymen' really understand!. :
--- End quote ---

Then there was the "libraries" and the "breadcrumb" thing (and also now "Quick Access" in Windows 10) that interferes or gets in the way that I absolutely despise starting from Vista that most of the time tells me bugger all so I just remove it altogether and Classic shell takes care of the breadcrumb problem that causes me confusion with the arrows and the sizing for something suppose to be so simply displayed couldn't be more clearer.

I remember some customers in the past who believed they lost all their stuff when it was actually libraries feature (back over 10 years) that sometimes broke and didn't show anything in their "libraries" folder. My solution, remove/disable libraries from the registry so it don't show up again, show them what folders their stuff maybe stored in, show hidden and operating system files to see everything, untick "hide extensions for file types", disable breadcrumbs so they can see exactly where the folder is easily (that would have given them a clue where their stuff was if it shown in the address bar instead "->libraries->"),  and set defaults to detail view and arrange the field to something like, name type, size, created, modified and in search replace "folder" to "path".

Quite a few of them only after they had a problem like that seem to take things more seriously, they brought backup drives and what they believe was so difficult before only took a couple of seconds when I showed them manually how to copy stuff over and working a simple backup script.

Very simple stuff but maybe they could see what they were doing for the first time when setting the preferences to the above.

I am thinking over simplified and dumbed down can lead to this problem

CJay:

--- Quote from: james_s on October 01, 2021, 07:50:47 pm ---
--- Quote from: CJay on October 01, 2021, 06:26:28 am ---Except you can use a local mail client with GMail and download messages so for someone who grew up using an email client with local storage it's really not a stupid question.

--- End quote ---

And I do, but the emails are still on the server, the email client just makes a local copy of them. It's like taking a photo of some landmarks and bringing the photos home with you. The landmarks are still there, you can buy a new camera and still go out and take photos of the same landmarks and look at them later.

--- End quote ---
No, they weren't usually left on the server, they were deleted when downloaded, storage used to be expensive. You can still have your email client delete them.

TERRA Operative:

--- Quote from: xrunner on October 01, 2021, 01:49:15 am ---
--- Quote from: Red Squirrel on October 01, 2021, 01:38:25 am ---Reminds me of my dad, he has no clue about directory structures and no matter how much I try to explain it to him he just can't figure it out.  The whole concept of "where did the file go" is a mystery to him. 

--- End quote ---

Yep my neighbor is the same. I help him as much as I can with PC issues but there are concepts he hasn't grasped for years as I've kept explaining it over and over. Like when he got a new PC, he wanted to know how we'd get his gmail over to the new PC. He was really worried about it. I said we don't have to move the messages because they are .. well ... look just trust me on this OK? I wasn't about to try to explain it because it would have been to no avail.

He grew up in a different time and just can't grasp many things about computers and files. Some of the questions he asks me make me shudder, because I am here to answer them but I think about all the other people who don't have a trusted person to help them. This is how scammers succeed I guess.

--- End quote ---

Maybe try explaining to him that his emails are stored securely on the internet kind of like a PO box.
Even though he changes address (ie. gets a new computer) the computer can still access the PO box from the new address just like from the old address.

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