[ale] recovering an ext3 drive

[Joe]

Geoffrey <esoteric at 3times25.net> writes:

> Well I still disagree.  If you choose a program called 'remove' or
> 'delete' or any thing in the vernacular, then by damn understand what
> you're about to do.
> 
> We all have accidents, but you can't stop everything.  You've got to
> use some common sense.

Is there *anything* about computers that's common-sensical? Anyway,
common sense is overrated.

> If the expectation is that you must protect the fool from himself
> all the time, systems will get so bogged down with dealing with the
> loose screw behind the keyboard, they won't do anything useful.
> Think about it.

People habitually understand exactly what other people mean, even in
the presence of ambiguity, even through all kinds of environmental and
semantic noise. We implement a robust "do what I mean" interface. Yet
we still have lots of processing power available for other things. Why
shouldn't computers be the same? They're rapidly approaching the
computational abilities of the human brain, after all.

If a computer is to be a truly useful tool, it should be as easy to
use as a screwdriver. The interface should disappear, and the
*utility* should be all that the user sees.

Granted, we are very far from that ideal at the moment. Computers and
human "common sense" don't mix very well - and the same can be said
for practically all modern technology. Either we have to evolve, or
the technology does.

Computers should not make regular people feel stupid. They should
make it possible for *average* people to make *superior* decisions,
produce *better* products, formulate *more effective* solutions
than they could on their own. I'm not sure any existing system
actually accomplishes that goal, but it would be silly to deny
the importance of user interface to reaching it. And that's
what this whole file-recovery discussion is really all about:
user interface. There's nothing technically difficult here.

>  The ideal solution is, you remove a file.  What
> REALLY happens is, it's copied to a safe place that' not touched.
> Just in case the machine might crash, it's also copied to a tape.
> Incrementally to the tape, one file at a time as they are deleted.
> What's wrong with this picture???

That would be overkill, I agree. I think 99% of the "undelete"
scenarios probably fall into the "oh shit!" category - giving the
user the ability to recover the last deleted thing(s) is probably
sufficient in almost every case.

> Do people get behind the wheel of a car without learning to drive? No.

Driving is orders of magnitude simpler than configuring and using a
Linux system properly - or a Windows one. For one thing, driving is
almost entirely a sensorimotor activity - you internalize the rules,
and then your body just does it.  Computer use, OTOH, engages
higher-order abstract thinking that doesn't come naturally to most
people.

> Why aren't all cars encased in big soft bubbles, so that there's no
> such thing as an accident?

Two reasons:

(1) Drivers are using sensory and motor mechanisms in essentially
the same way that their prehuman ancestors did. Thus, they have
a very good chance (although not a perfect chance) of doing the
Right Thing (tm) in any given situation. (Darwin wins. I imagine
auto accidents exert one of the strongest selective
pressures in today's society.)

(2) People *don't want* that.

Personally, I think that for computing technology to *truly* become
useful, it will have to become an extension of human consciousness.  I
shouldn't have to open up a search engine and look up the average
price of shirt buttons in Peking; my onboard neural interface should
just notice that I'm interested in that data, and do what it takes to
supply it; it should arrive in my memory as if it had always been
there. Computing should be integrated into our stream of thought; it
should become a part of our inner world.

Yeah, we have a long way to go.

Cheers,

-- Joe
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