Friday, April 27, 2007

loathsome "feature"


Today I'm not going to talk about anything related to something happening in my life. I'm going to talk about the use of a simple feature in every operating system. You all might be thinking that it is another geeky thing that you don't even have a remote idea of. Wrong! Its so simple and so frequently used that you might miss it even though its sitting right on your desktop. It is the "trash can" (the picture is just to take your attention away from the mistakes in my post - isn't the trash can beautiful?).

Why did I bring this up? For a number of reasons, but first I'm going to write down (no matter how routine and simple it may sound) the reason why its there. It provides a safe place for the files you've deleted which you might require again.

That being established, I can now state two reasons why I'm discussing it. First reason is that when you delete something you should never be asked if you want to delete or no. I mean what the heck! For those who'd like to defend this approach by saying "what if you delete something ... " I'd tell them to read the reason for the creation for trash can. Seriously, how many times do you delete something by mistake? And if you do...you're a lousy person.

Second reason, the trash can should never be short of size. what does that mean? Trash can should be able to hold countless number of files/folders and of any size. For the people who know how file systems work, it is just a change of parent folder. It is as simple as that. Then why oh why "Winblows" (read: windows) repeatedly asks to permanently delete the files larger than the size of trash can?

I'm just too disappointed and have been let down by all the current operating systems.

2 comments:

Nabeel Ahsan said...

quote I'm just too disappointed and have been let down by all the current operating systems. unquote

this is where your wrong my friend! you can turn of the annoying "Are you sure" statement every time you delete a file in Linux.

With great powers come great responsibilities .. so i reckon you think twice before wishing for it, You just might end up deleting precious data.

Imagine doing rm * in some live running system, I know someone who did this ... not me ... think again ... i think this is enough of a clue for you!

Unknown said...

I'm talking about GUI my console-obsessed-thick-spectacle-wearing friend. now who'd want to "rm *" on a system and that too, live except a lousy person or someone who is totally and completely and utterly nuts! ... or a newbie.