O/T: Nibbling on an Apple

On Wed, 07 Aug 2013 16:28:20 -0400, nospam
wrote:

In article , Tony Cooper
wrote:

suppose you go to france and take a photo of your wife in front of the
eiffel tower with a nice sunset. that is three categories right there.
photos in france, photos of your wife and sunset photos. your way would
be to make 3 folders with a copy of the photo in each. if a photo has
multiple people or fits multiple categories, then it's even more
copies. that's insanity.

What's that got to do with me?

It's a generic scenario that is meant to illustrate a common need for
people that have a desire to organize their photos.
Just because it doesn't specifically mention your wife by name or the
last city you visited doesn't mean it can't be applied to your
horrendous workflow above.

But is isn't my scenario. Why bring it up to convince me of
something?

this isn't about *you*.

Even so, it is not any kind of generic or common scenario. To be a
generic scenario, it has to be relating to a whole group or class.
That's what "generic" is. You think there's some whole group or class
out there that creates three files as described above?

actually it is an extremely common scenario. just about everyone
listens to music at some point or another. many people listen to music
daily.

I suspect there are only three generic scenarios: the group that
doesn't have any interest in calling up files by specific aspect and
just stores their files in the way the computer uploads them, the
group that uses a file & folder or date sequence to store the one
file, and the group that does want to do this and use a system like
Lightroom to do it.

Taking in all accumulators of digital images, I suspect the first
group is the largest group.

what if photos aren't someone's scenario, as music is not yours?

this isn't about music or photos in particular. it's about file
systems. those are just two examples of how file systems are very
limited and how there are much better solutions available.

since you don't understand the topic, you go off on various tangents
and attacks.
--

Regards,

Eric Stevens

On 2013-08-07 14:55:57 -0700, Eric Stevens said:

On Wed, 7 Aug 2013 08:43:29 -0700, Savageduck
wrote:

Yup! It's just a tool for you to use as you needed. Somewhat like a
Swiss army knife which you only use for the corkscrew.


All my wine comes with screw tops.

Aah! NZ plonk.


--
Regards,

Savageduck

On 2013-08-07 15:06:07 -0700, Eric Stevens said:


Does the iPad have a flying carpet app? Does it have radar?

Well you can get close to having radar on your desktop or your iPad.
http://www.flightradar24.com
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/flig...382069612?mt=8


--
Regards,

Savageduck

On Wed, 07 Aug 2013 16:28:16 -0400, nospam
wrote:

In article , Tony Cooper
wrote:

suppose you go to france and take a photo of your wife in front of the
eiffel tower with a nice sunset. that is three categories right there.
photos in france, photos of your wife and sunset photos. your way would
be to make 3 folders with a copy of the photo in each. if a photo has
multiple people or fits multiple categories, then it's even more
copies. that's insanity.

What's that got to do with me? What you do is apply your own system
to other people's system with a total lack of understanding of how
they use their system. Consequently, your comments make little sense
and are usually totally off-base.

quite the opposite. you are assuming *your* method is how everyone
should work.

He's never advocated this anywhere as far as I know. You are the one
advocating the use of 'apps' etc rather than using the basic file
ystems.

your method is also rather convoluted and inefficient and
i doubt very many people would want to have that kind of workflow.
worse, you are insistent on never looking at any alternatives.

I can understand that. He's got a probably enormous number of images
to move over to the new system. I know I would have that problem.

--- snip ---
--

Regards,

Eric Stevens

On Wed, 07 Aug 2013 11:30:26 +0200, Sandman wrote:

In article ,
Eric Stevens wrote:

internally there is a file system but it's not exposed to the user nor
does it need to be.

Then what does the user think the 'apps' are doing for them?

The user has to visualise the files (photographs) organised in some
fashion or another. The nuts and bolts of how it is done is
immateriel. The files are organised in a file system which the user
has to manipulate through whatever interface software has been
inflicted on them.

No, the user never ever manipulate the file system in an iPad. When you
arrange your photos in albums the photo files remain stationary in their
original folder but a database entry is created or altered to reflect
your manipulation.

I should have been more specific. I was referring to the file system
the user has in mind when organising the photographs. The iPad gives
the user the tools to organise photographs in 'Albums' without the
user having to know anything about the systems of files, pointers and
links required to make it all work. I wasn't specifically referring to
the OS file system.

Think of it as "sets" on flickr.com, where you, the user, obviously
doesn't have access to manipulate the bits on the hard drive pertaining
to the actual photos. But you can use their web interface to manipulate
the database that holds information about your photos. That's why one
photo can be in many sets, and if you edit the photo, it's updated in
all the sets. That's not because the file has been copied to folders
with the name of your sets and some background process is re-copying the
file when you've edited it. No, it's because you haven't changed
anything as far as the file system goes - only the information in the
database.

I don't use Flickr, but I know what you mean.

The iPad Photo app works exactly the same way. Or the Music app.
--

Regards,

Eric Stevens

On Wed, 07 Aug 2013 06:24:27 -0400, nospam
wrote:

In article , Eric Stevens
wrote:

file systems are old school. they're eventually going away for nearly
all users. system administrators or developers might need to get at
individual files, but typical users do not.

Crap.

You couldn't find your way round my wife's iPad collection of of
photographs unless there was a file system you could follow.
Otherwise, god knows how many thousands of photographs all in one big
heap.

Mine are in albums on my iPad. Is that not a file system?

no. it's a higher level concept.

it's actually a database indexed by content, not a rigid file/folder
structure. one photo can be in multiple albums, something not possible
with a file system.

You can't do any of these things without a file system.

internally there is a file system but it's not exposed to the user nor
does it need to be.

Then what does the user think the 'apps' are doing for them?

accessing content. what goes on under the hood is irrelevant.

Is not the content stored in files?

Most users understand the concept of folders and files and will be
dimly aware that app of their choice is sorting these out for them.

Those who throughout their life have been entirely sheltered from the
idea of folder and file will understand that somewhere inside their
iPad there is an object which produces the image of their desire. They
will also understand that the iPad contains many such images and that
the iPad has some way of storing and sorting out the object(s) that
the user desires. Even these people will somewhere have in their mind
the concept of a file system.

The user has to visualise the files (photographs) organised in some
fashion or another. The nuts and bolts of how it is done is
immateriel.

exactly my point.

Are you saying you agree with me?


users don't care how it's organized internally or if it's even on the
device itself. it could be on a server or in the cloud.

But users must know that the data is organised in some way.

they just want to access the photos, music or whatever else they want
to do. the computer takes care of the rest.

The files are organised in a file system which the user
has to manipulate through whatever interface software has been
inflicted on them.

that interface is at a higher level than the file system itself and can
do a whole lot more.

It's still a file system.

these days, people have hundreds of thousands of photos, music, movies,
emails, etc. and trying to manually keep track of all of that is
insanity.

Probably insane to accumulate that much in the first place.
--

Regards,

Eric Stevens

On Wed, 07 Aug 2013 11:32:57 +0200, Sandman wrote:

In article ,
Eric Stevens wrote:

Mine are in albums on my iPad. Is that not a file system?

Exactly - but nospam doesn't seem to realise that.

it's not a file system. it's a database.

The database won't work without a file system.

Actually it could, but in the case of the iPad, it doesn't.

Please explain how a data base can work without using a file system
that identifies the ultimate location of the raw data.

It is true
that the database itself is a file in the filesystem, but the albums you
create and the organization you do with your photos on the iPad doesn't
affect the file system in any shape or form, contrary to what Tony
incorrectly thought. It is all done in the database that is the source
of what you see on screen.

I accept that, but the data base is using the file system to extract
and display the selected images.
--

Regards,

Eric Stevens

On Wed, 07 Aug 2013 06:24:29 -0400, nospam
wrote:

In article , Eric Stevens
wrote:

Mine are in albums on my iPad. Is that not a file system?

Exactly - but nospam doesn't seem to realise that.

it's not a file system. it's a database.

The database won't work without a file system.

sure it can, but that's not the point.

You too!

Please explain how in the absence of a filesystem the data base can
find and extract the data required to display the selected images.

the point is that the user doesn't need to interact with the file
system anymore. there are much *better* ways to do what they want to
do.

Even in the simplest case, the user never interacts _directly_ with
the file system. They interact with keyboard, mouse and touch screen
and these through their drivers etc pass on instructions to the
operating system. It is the operating system which interacts with the
file system.

Even with the iPad (etc) the file system remains inside the machine
and has to be used to store and recover files. The use of the iPad's
paradigm of 'Albums' is merely another layer of abstraction between
the user and the file system.

users want to access *content*. where that content is does not matter.
it might not even be on their device.

That has got absolutely nothing to do with whether or not the machine
has a file system.
--

Regards,

Eric Stevens

In article 2013080716252175319-savageduck1@REMOVESPAMmecom,
says...

On 2013-08-07 15:06:07 -0700, Eric Stevens said:


Does the iPad have a flying carpet app? Does it have radar?

Well you can get close to having radar on your desktop or your iPad.
http://www.flightradar24.com
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/flig...382069612?mt=8

It does have a microwave transmitter and a microwave reciever, so in
principle some sort of crude radar could be cobbled up from it. In
practice the antenna tries to be omnidirectional so I do not think it
would be good for anything but distance.

On Wed, 7 Aug 2013 06:07:39 -0700, Savageduck
wrote:

On 2013-08-07 02:18:59 -0700, Eric Stevens said:

On Tue, 06 Aug 2013 23:51:47 -0400, nospam
wrote:

In article , Eric Stevens
wrote:

Mine are in albums on my iPad. Is that not a file system?

Exactly - but nospam doesn't seem to realise that.

it's not a file system. it's a database.

The database won't work without a file system.

A database is a file system.

We are in danger of getting at cross purposes. Up to this point in the
discussion I have always regarded the 'file system' as the collection
of files etc which comprise the basic firmware which keeps track of
in which sector, track, cluster, block etc on a disk (or equivalent) a
particular folder or file may be found.

This information can be extracted, collated, sorted and presented to
the user (sort on, descending-ascending etc) by software external to
the file system and this is the lowest level that most users generally
deal with. However I have not regarded this as part of the file
system. It is possible to write additional software which organises
the file system data in a different manner again, but I have not been
referring to such software as part of the file system either.

What I have been saying right from the beginning is that such
databases cannot operate without an underlying file system to keep
track of where the parts of each file or folder may be found.
--

Regards,

Eric Stevens