Author Topic: File not found - Please tell me this is a joke...  (Read 8543 times)

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Offline james_s

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Re: File not found - Please tell me this is a joke...
« Reply #50 on: October 02, 2021, 07:38:23 pm »
You mean like the kibibyte, mebibyte, gibibyte, etc? Yeah, those caught on like wildfire! ;)

I refuse to use those silly fake units, they were invented by the storage industry in response to lawsuits over the practice of defining megabytes as 1000 bytes to make the drives appear larger than they really are. Kilobyte is not a metric unit, yes it borrows the "kilo" word as a prefix but in the context of base 2 systems it has always meant 1024. Microsoft (so ~90% of all PCs in the world) and JEDEC still define a kilobyte as 1024 bytes and I had never even heard of a kibibyte until about a year ago and always assumed that KiB was just a European abbreviation for kilobyte. I don't know how anyone can even say kibibyte with a straight face, it sounds like a cat or dog treat. I've seen it claimed to reduce ambiguity but in reality it created ambiguity where there was none before. A kilobyte used to be universally understood to be 1024 bytes but now a small portion of people insist it to be 1000 bytes because they think it's a metric unit. So now we have metric kilobytes used mostly by pedants in Europe and standard kilobytes used by the rest of the world, with most people being totally unaware that they are not the same thing. Great, much less confusing.  :palm:
 
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Offline vk6zgo

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Re: File not found - Please tell me this is a joke...
« Reply #51 on: October 03, 2021, 12:51:44 am »
(I even heard that some of them claims that a kilobyte is 1000 bytes  :-DD )

It is when you ask the hard drive manufacturers.

I know. They did it (way back) to get larger numbers, once all did it, no benefit. Its just plain stupid (most words needs a context, MASTER and SLAVE as well as KILO means something different depending on the context)

It all goes back to "computer people" ignoring the very long standing convention that "kilo' means 1000 times whatever the base quantity is, without any need of a "context".

Perhaps they should have invented a different word for "1024 bytes"----- sloppy word usage comes back to "bite us on the bum",  even if it is many years later.
You mean like the kibibyte, mebibyte, gibibyte, etc? Yeah, those caught on like wildfire! ;)

No, that was trying to fix a stuff up after the event----I meant right at the beginning.

Of course, probably, back in the day, most people in the field knew each other, & were happy using weird terminology.
When it went "mainstream" (>10,000 people), it was too late to change! ;D
 

Offline Brumby

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Re: File not found - Please tell me this is a joke...
« Reply #52 on: October 03, 2021, 01:50:34 am »
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.

If you use POP3 yes, but I've used IMAP since ~2002 which leaves a copy on the server and downloads a local copy. Storage for emails has never been an issue in as long as I've been using email, back in the day they were simple text, hundreds of emails would fit on a floppy disk. You *can* have your email client delete them from the server, but that isn't typically how it works anymore and I see few reasons for doing so.
What YOU use is not a good basis upon which to make broad statements that imply other options are never used (which is what your original comment quite clearly expressed).

I have several email accounts for which I am responsible and I have set up POP3 for some and IMAP for others.  Each has their reasons for the choice.

When we are discussing matters such as we are seeing in this thread, please keep personal use or preferences clearly identified as such.  Don't make sweeping statements ... they are almost certain to be wrong - and more often that one might care to admit.
 

Offline Brumby

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Re: File not found - Please tell me this is a joke...
« Reply #53 on: October 03, 2021, 02:34:30 am »
I have no problem with people who grew up in the past millennium and never caught up.
Indeed .... they seemed to have survived pretty well AND provided the environment that allowed the "Information Age" to thrive.

Quote
But kids that live glued up to their spyphones and never stop to consider where the data go, that's a different matter.
I could not disagree more.

When I first started getting into computers, physical location of data was part of the planning process.  In my first job, I worked on an IBM mainframe and you specified the location of the tracks to be used for each file.  The same file would always be located in exactly the same place.

When I moved to a company that had implemented the next evolution, specifying the file location was simply given with pack name and size.  You no longer had to know where the data was on that volume - you had to trust that the computer would keep track of that.  This was very unnerving at first, but I got used to it.

THIS is the start of travelling down the path that we find ourselves in today.  Physical location of data became less important, as the capabilities of system software to keep track of it improved to the point where the biggest question is "Do I have enough space on my 4TB drive?"  Then we step into the realm of internet connected storage - remote servers, off site backups, repositories and that nebulous concept of "the cloud".

Software has evolved to blur the edges, so that we can refer to a file on our own hard drive or somewhere in the cloud with pretty much the same ease.  For those who are not tech savvy, this makes using computing devices so much easier - as long as they follow the corporate guidelines and trust those who set them up.  They no longer NEED to understand any detail in order to use those resources - so why would they even try?  When the magic saviour of data - aka "syncing" - that makes the loss of a physical device inconsequential (other than the purchase cost of a replacement) is added into the mix, many will just give control of their data over to the corporate beast without considering the implications - not just because it's easier, but because they don't have the skills to understand anything more than the marketing spiel.  The "trust" issue is dismissed in the direction of "If they screw up, they'll get sued".

The evolution of the motor vehicle is a perfect parallel.  When they first appeared, you would not only need to know how to drive it, you would need to know how to fault find and fix it.  These days, that is no longer the case ... and, in fact, manufacturers are now adding systems that make it more and more difficult, if not impossible, to fix vehicles.

Why would kids "never stop to consider where the data go"...?  It's very simple.  They don't need to.
« Last Edit: October 03, 2021, 02:42:29 am by Brumby »
 
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Offline CJay

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Re: File not found - Please tell me this is a joke...
« Reply #54 on: October 03, 2021, 09:26:11 am »
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.

If you use POP3 yes
Which the vast majority of older users will have been doing at some point because POP3 was what was recommended to the vast majority of internet users.

It's still in widespread use to this day.

, but I've used IMAP since ~2002 which leaves a copy on the server and downloads a local copy. Storage for emails has never been an issue in as long as I've been using email, back in the day they were simple text, hundreds of emails would fit on a floppy disk. You *can* have your email client delete them from the server, but that isn't typically how it works anymore and I see few reasons for doing so.
Just because *you* do something a certain way doesn't mean everyone else does it the same way, it doesn't mean it's the right way, it's just the way *you* do it.

And again, as you say, IMAP can delete mail from a server, so 'can you transfer my emails' is a valid question.

Pretty much nobody will have uploaded all their downloaded old emails back onto a mail server so, again, if you have old email archives, it's a valid question.

FYI, been 'doing email' since Netware 3.12 in the early 90s, have been around the block more than a few times with this
 

Offline tooki

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Re: File not found - Please tell me this is a joke...
« Reply #55 on: October 03, 2021, 10:10:25 am »
You mean like the kibibyte, mebibyte, gibibyte, etc? Yeah, those caught on like wildfire! ;)

I refuse to use those silly fake units, they were invented by the storage industry in response to lawsuits over the practice of defining megabytes as 1000 bytes to make the drives appear larger than they really are.
Yeah I know the history. My comment was making fun of how literally nobody uses the new units.

[snip rant] …I've seen it claimed to reduce ambiguity but in reality it created ambiguity where there was none before. A kilobyte used to be universally understood to be 1024 bytes but now a small portion of people insist it to be 1000 bytes because they think it's a metric unit. So now we have metric kilobytes used mostly by pedants in Europe and standard kilobytes used by the rest of the world, with most people being totally unaware that they are not the same thing. Great, much less confusing.  :palm:
Have you ever seen anyone argue this, outside of storage vendors?
 

Offline m98

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Re: File not found - Please tell me this is a joke...
« Reply #56 on: October 03, 2021, 11:16:21 am »
I refuse to use those silly fake units, they were invented by the storage industry in response to lawsuits over the practice of defining megabytes as 1000 bytes to make the drives appear larger than they really are. Kilobyte is not a metric unit, yes it borrows the "kilo" word as a prefix but in the context of base 2 systems it has always meant 1024. Microsoft (so ~90% of all PCs in the world) and JEDEC still define a kilobyte as 1024 bytes
Who cares about Microsoft or JEDEC? "Kilo" is a SI prefix that strictly refers to powers of 10. If you want powers of 2, use the IEC/ISO standard. There is no need to upkeep this artificial ambiguity.
 

Online magic

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Re: File not found - Please tell me this is a joke...
« Reply #57 on: October 03, 2021, 11:18:06 am »
Have you ever seen anyone argue this, outside of storage vendors?
Yes, there is a whole thread about it somewhere. Indeed, we have just triggered one metric fanboy :D

And not just storage vendors, certain OS that shall remain nameless also adopted those units years ago so that disks appear to have more capacity than on Windows ;)
 
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Offline tooki

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Re: File not found - Please tell me this is a joke...
« Reply #58 on: October 03, 2021, 11:33:34 am »
Have you ever seen anyone argue this, outside of storage vendors?
Yes, there is a whole thread about it somewhere. Indeed, we have just triggered one metric fanboy :D

And not just storage vendors, certain OS that shall remain nameless also adopted those units years ago so that disks appear to have more capacity than on Windows ;)
I thought it was simply to agree with the storage shown on the packaging. Silly either way. :/
 

Online Echo88

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Re: File not found - Please tell me this is a joke...
« Reply #59 on: October 03, 2021, 12:54:40 pm »
When not using a file structure, how do you then find the necessary files of interest for a certain topic/project?
Lets say you want to design a digital resistance measurement bridge then usually the respective file folder on my pc would fill with relevant papers/manuals/appnotes, simulations, CAD-schematics/layouts, text documents for notes/change logs and pictures of scope traces or pcbs during the design.
How is that managed by someone that doesnt understand/use file structures?
Do they add tags for everything to make a searchfeature actually usable?
 

Offline KarelTopic starter

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Re: File not found - Please tell me this is a joke...
« Reply #60 on: October 03, 2021, 03:04:11 pm »
When not using a file structure, how do you then find the necessary files of interest for a certain topic/project?
Lets say you want to design a digital resistance measurement bridge then usually the respective file folder on my pc would fill with relevant papers/manuals/appnotes, simulations, CAD-schematics/layouts, text documents for notes/change logs and pictures of scope traces or pcbs during the design.
How is that managed by someone that doesnt understand/use file structures?
Do they add tags for everything to make a searchfeature actually usable?

You'll have to install an "app" for that  8)
 

Online tunk

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Re: File not found - Please tell me this is a joke...
« Reply #61 on: October 03, 2021, 03:10:08 pm »
I would guess that most companies have some guidelines for
storage, and that this includes some filing/directory structure.
 

Offline Miyuki

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Re: File not found - Please tell me this is a joke...
« Reply #62 on: October 03, 2021, 04:32:18 pm »
When not using a file structure, how do you then find the necessary files of interest for a certain topic/project?
Lets say you want to design a digital resistance measurement bridge then usually the respective file folder on my pc would fill with relevant papers/manuals/appnotes, simulations, CAD-schematics/layouts, text documents for notes/change logs and pictures of scope traces or pcbs during the design.
How is that managed by someone that doesnt understand/use file structures?
Do they add tags for everything to make a searchfeature actually usable?
When you work on just one or two projects, you have it as recently used files
No need for complicated organization
 

Online Echo88

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Re: File not found - Please tell me this is a joke...
« Reply #63 on: October 03, 2021, 11:12:26 pm »
"Hey, we need a new revision for that pcb you did a year ago" "Sure thing, lets me just search a few hours for files that roughly fit the design date"
 

Offline Alex Eisenhut

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Re: File not found - Please tell me this is a joke...
« Reply #64 on: October 03, 2021, 11:26:42 pm »
Bah. Kids these days are also not familiar with the idea of "real-time recording", that is to say that back then if you wanted a 3 minute song, it took 3 minutes to record it to your tape or whatever.
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Offline Kasper

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Re: File not found - Please tell me this is a joke...
« Reply #65 on: October 04, 2021, 05:44:54 am »
They probably don't know what the "save" icon on many programs is either. Like right now I'm using Fusion 360, and to save a file you must click on an icon of a 3.5" floppy disk. A couple of years ago I asked my niece and nephew what that symbol was (on another program), they didn't know. I had brought over a real 3.5" floppy disk and showed it to them. They had no clue what it was for.

Did they say "why did you 3D print the save icon?"?
 

Offline xrunner

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Re: File not found - Please tell me this is a joke...
« Reply #66 on: October 04, 2021, 11:10:52 am »
They probably don't know what the "save" icon on many programs is either. Like right now I'm using Fusion 360, and to save a file you must click on an icon of a 3.5" floppy disk. A couple of years ago I asked my niece and nephew what that symbol was (on another program), they didn't know. I had brought over a real 3.5" floppy disk and showed it to them. They had no clue what it was for.

Did they say "why did you 3D print the save icon?"?

LOL no. They don't care about 3D printing at all. I've had them over to show it off and it's a big meh. Across the street I just began talking to the woman's new husband last week, because we've never met due to the virus stuff. Well he had a nice Ender 5 plus in the garage so we have something in common. But I asked him if any of the three boys living there were into it. Nope - don't care. I wonder if that's the case with many kids?

As far as the actual save icon, in theory it could be anything as long as the person using the software knew it from the other icons. What's the modern equivalent of the floppy icon - a little cloud. Or it could just actually say "SAVE"  ...  :-DD
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Offline tszaboo

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Re: File not found - Please tell me this is a joke...
« Reply #67 on: October 04, 2021, 11:38:01 am »
I had Programming 101 at university. It was teaching C, embedded focus. The professor told us:
-Whoever doesn't speak English, has one week to learn it. If you don't know how to use windows, give up now, goodbye, you will never be an engineer. At least not while I still teach here.

And I agree with him. People who have no basic understanding how to operate a computer shouldn't get any kind of degree.
 

Offline Kasper

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Re: File not found - Please tell me this is a joke...
« Reply #68 on: October 04, 2021, 05:13:56 pm »
They probably don't know what the "save" icon on many programs is either. Like right now I'm using Fusion 360, and to save a file you must click on an icon of a 3.5" floppy disk. A couple of years ago I asked my niece and nephew what that symbol was (on another program), they didn't know. I had brought over a real 3.5" floppy disk and showed it to them. They had no clue what it was for.

Did they say "why did you 3D print the save icon?"?

LOL no. They don't care about 3D printing at all. I've had them over to show it off and it's a big meh. Across the street I just began talking to the woman's new husband last week, because we've never met due to the virus stuff. Well he had a nice Ender 5 plus in the garage so we have something in common. But I asked him if any of the three boys living there were into it. Nope - don't care. I wonder if that's the case with many kids?

As far as the actual save icon, in theory it could be anything as long as the person using the software knew it from the other icons. What's the modern equivalent of the floppy icon - a little cloud. Or it could just actually say "SAVE"  ...  :-DD

Pretty advanced neighborhood you're in there.  In mine we mostly talk about gardening and home renos.

I fear manual saving might also become a forgotten skill.  I was amazed in uni when people would lose a bunch of work because they didn't save.  When I taught a KiCAD tutorial I started with having them save and organize the files.
 

Offline xrunner

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Re: File not found - Please tell me this is a joke...
« Reply #69 on: October 04, 2021, 07:21:08 pm »
Pretty advanced neighborhood you're in there.  In mine we mostly talk about gardening and home renos.

Oh no, nope. The guy across the street having a 3D printing hobby is pure luck. If you met the other neighbors you would realize there is nowhere near an advanced group living in this 'hood.  :-DD
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Offline MrMobodies

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Re: File not found - Please tell me this is a joke...
« Reply #70 on: October 04, 2021, 07:44:20 pm »
I fear manual saving might also become a forgotten skill.  I was amazed in uni when people would lose a bunch of work because they didn't save.  When I taught a KiCAD tutorial I started with having them save and organize the files.


Ten years ago I knew of someone who did the right thing and they made sure they saved their work but the problem was that they saved it all on a pendrive as a primary means of storage.

It had 4 years of university work on it.
He started to notice when a few of the files were not opening.
I found only about half was recoverable no matter what I did.

It was a LG 4GB pen drive I think but after that upon testing it would intermittently pass and fail and on fail it seems that things would get overwritten.
 


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