I'm an electronic packrat.  One of the things I've collected is every povray SDL
I've ever done, and I think it's incredibly cool that I still have their
original creation dates associated with the file.

One day, for some reason,  some linux application was resetting the created date
to the current date when I copied the files from one directory or media to
another. I was ticked.  I immediately went to complain and ask how to opt-out
of this behavior in the IRC channel for that app.  The one person there, to the
best of my knowledge, fully understood what I was complaining about and implied
I was silly for not wanting it to be that way.  He or she defended the idea
that every time you copied a file, the only date that ever mattered would be
the date-of-copy-to-new-folder.  Asinine!  And a radical change from how
computing has always worked.  (FWIW, my linux system was only engaging in that
behavior for a short time: it's not typical of how linux has worked for me.)

It does raise the question of whether some design questions are just silly.

Now on the other side of the spectrum, I know that in free software,
non-RTFM'ming newbies can be rude.  It's like some beneficient old man puts out
a giant sub sandwich for free at the pool, and nasty kids go up to complain that
he didn't make separate mustard and non-mustard-containing sections.

On the other end, I think that sometimes there's a paradoxical view in free
software of "We're ready for enterprise use," "We're the coolest,"  versus "Who
cares if some a lazy newbie doesn't get it?", "Who cares if this locks out a
work practice used by 25% of our users-- my work practice is better!"

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gregjohn wrote:
> I'm an electronic packrat.  One of the things I've collected is every povray SDL
> I've ever done, and I think it's incredibly cool that I still have their
> original creation dates associated with the file.
> 
> One day, for some reason,  some linux application was resetting the created date
> to the current date when I copied the files from one directory or media to
> another. I was ticked.  I immediately went to complain and ask how to opt-out
> of this behavior in the IRC channel for that app.  The one person there, to the
> best of my knowledge, fully understood what I was complaining about and implied
> I was silly for not wanting it to be that way.  He or she defended the idea
> that every time you copied a file, the only date that ever mattered would be
> the date-of-copy-to-new-folder.  Asinine!  And a radical change from how
> computing has always worked.  (FWIW, my linux system was only engaging in that
> behavior for a short time: it's not typical of how linux has worked for me.)

There's a reason why files (in Windows, at least) have the 'created 
date' and 'modified date' properties.  Unfortunately, some applications 
(including explorer, depending on how you do things) treat 
copying/moving as creating a new file and slap the current date on the 
thing; annoying when you want to see for laughs what your oldest files 
are.  The samba-driven network drive enclosure I once tried reset all 
the filedates on a large set of multimedia, before I had indexed when 
I'd originally got them, thereby mucking up my data in the here-and-now 
when I *have* finished indexing things and have a 'episodes/movies 
acquired in a particular month' bit on my spreadsheet.  Grr.

-- 
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.digitalartsuk.com

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.12
GFA dpu- s: a?-- C++(++++) U P? L E--- W++(+++)>$
N++ o? K- w(+) O? M-(--) V? PS+(+++) PE(--) Y(--)
PGP-(--) t* 5++>+++++ X+ R* tv+ b++(+++) DI
D++(---) G(++) e*>++ h+ !r--- !y--
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

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gregjohn wrote:
> I'm an electronic packrat.  One of the things I've collected is every povray SDL
> I've ever done, and I think it's incredibly cool that I still have their
> original creation dates associated with the file.
> 
> One day, for some reason,  some linux application was resetting the created date
> to the current date when I copied the files from one directory or media to
> another. I was ticked.  I immediately went to complain and ask how to opt-out
> of this behavior in the IRC channel for that app.  The one person there, to the
> best of my knowledge, fully understood what I was complaining about and implied
> I was silly for not wanting it to be that way.  He or she defended the idea
> that every time you copied a file, the only date that ever mattered would be
> the date-of-copy-to-new-folder.  Asinine!  And a radical change from how
> computing has always worked.  (FWIW, my linux system was only engaging in that
> behavior for a short time: it's not typical of how linux has worked for me.)
> 
> It does raise the question of whether some design questions are just silly.
> 
> Now on the other side of the spectrum, I know that in free software,
> non-RTFM'ming newbies can be rude.  It's like some beneficient old man puts out
> a giant sub sandwich for free at the pool, and nasty kids go up to complain that
> he didn't make separate mustard and non-mustard-containing sections.
> 
> On the other end, I think that sometimes there's a paradoxical view in free
> software of "We're ready for enterprise use," "We're the coolest,"  versus "Who
> cares if some a lazy newbie doesn't get it?", "Who cares if this locks out a
> work practice used by 25% of our users-- my work practice is better!"
> 
> 
I want to keep the originals dates also e.g. for my old pictures without 
exif section. I resorted to build a spreadsheet with all the dates of 
the pictures to be able to sort them appropriately.

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gregjohn <pte### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
> The one person there, to the
> best of my knowledge, fully understood what I was complaining about and implied
> I was silly for not wanting it to be that way.  He or she defended the idea
> that every time you copied a file, the only date that ever mattered would be
> the date-of-copy-to-new-folder.  Asinine!

  Disregard that argumentation. It's irrelevant. What he is really saying
is "this n00b is complaining about my beloved product and I'm too proud
to admit being wrong".

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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We call it Windows.

Regards,
John

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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> gregjohn <pte### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
> > The one person there, to the
> > best of my knowledge, fully understood what I was complaining about and implied
> > I was silly for not wanting it to be that way.  He or she defended the idea
> > that every time you copied a file, the only date that ever mattered would be
> > the date-of-copy-to-new-folder.  Asinine!
>
>   Disregard that argumentation. It's irrelevant. What he is really saying
> is "this n00b is complaining about my beloved product and I'm too proud
> to admit being wrong".

Indeed that's the mentality of many Gnome devs and indeed I've experienced that
problem in a Gnome environment.  No surprise Linus Torvalds was pissed off at
them...

but that's ok:  you can always use cp at the shell... :)

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gregjohn wrote:
> ...Is there such a thing as inherently asinine software design?...

Yes.

--Sherry "Not Terrifically Fond of XP compared to Win2K, Which Actually 
Worked, And Meanwhile Dot-Net Can Totally Kiss My Round Caucasian Bum" Shaw


-- 
#macro T(E,N)sphere{x,.4rotate z*E*60translate y*N pigment{wrinkles scale
.3}finish{ambient 1}}#end#local I=0;#while(I<5)T(I,1)T(1-I,-1)#local I=I+
1;#end camera{location-5*z}plane{z,37 pigment{granite color_map{[.7rgb 0]
[1rgb 1]}}finish{ambient 2}}//                                   TenMoons

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> --Sherry "Not Terrifically Fond of XP compared to Win2K, Which Actually 
> Worked, And Meanwhile Dot-Net Can Totally Kiss My Round Caucasian Bum" Shaw

May *I* kiss your round cau... er, wait, NM...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Tim Cook wrote:
> There's a reason why files (in Windows, at least) have the 'created 
> date' and 'modified date' properties.

The mainframe I first worked on had created, modified, copied, opened 
for reading, opened for writing, executed, and backed-up dates on files. 
Very useful.  (Along with a host of other useful properties and ACLs.)

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     It's not feature creep if you put it
     at the end and adjust the release date.

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nemesis wrote:
> Indeed that's the mentality of many Gnome devs and indeed I've experienced that
> problem in a Gnome environment.

I think part of the problem is the lack of APIs in Linux/UNIX that let 
you actually copy a file. Hence, preserving the date after copying a 
file is more work. Hence, it would seem at least a little sensible to 
say "I just do what Linux does by default." Not "you don't need that", mind.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     It's not feature creep if you put it
     at the end and adjust the release date.

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