Re: time stamps and privacy

Shaun McCance wrote:
> On Wed, 2008-03-26 at 17:06 +0000, Ross Burton wrote:
>> /me looks at the stack of DVDs with years of photos
on.  Don't make me
>> re-thumbnail them everytime I insert a disc.

...


> So we'd just annoy the majority of people in order
> to fail to solve the problem of a minority of people.

well analyzed, Shaun.

with locally stored thumbs, the author of the DVDs can store
the thumbs 
on the DVD and that's no longer a problem.


Dr. Michael J. Chudobiak wrote:
 > Reinout van Schouwen wrote:
 >> The solution to the problem
 >> brought up here should IMHO be that thumbnails of
files on removable
 >> devices _can_ be created but that they should
always be purged
 >> _immediately_ after it is disconnected. More
generally speaking,
 >> thumbnails of inaccessible files on any volume
should be purged, just
 >> with a lower priority.
 >
 > Cool idea!
 >
 > There is a complication, however: the thumbnails are
stored using a
 > hashed version of the original filename. It is not
possible to tell from
 > the thumbnail itself which file it corresponds to (one
way hashing, in
 > other words).


should not be a problem with locally stored thumbs, although
another 
problem would arise: what happens when the originals are
deleted or 
their permissions are changed? now that I think of it, what
happens 
currently with such a scenario? orphaned files in
~/.thumbnails/?

I don't know of a solution for this sort of linking, but I
wish there 
was, so that XMP sidecars and other meta files could be
linked too (and 
copied when dragging and dropping the master file).

I'm surprised how little the GUI metaphor has changed since
the Xerox 
Parc times. We're still browsing volumes, folders and files

hierarchically. OK for a floppy but IMO inadequate for
today's media. 
And IMO OK from a CLI but not from a GUI. I expect a GUI to
add 
usability value.

The solution to the specific problem of thumbs is IMO
*choice*. Put a 
.thumbs file at the root of every file system. If it exists,
thumbnail 
all files on that volume automatically. If it does not,
don't.

The owner of the media (hence root and not user directory)
should decide 
if thumbs are permitted. For RW media this is easily changed
to the 
preferences of the users and for R-only media the author can
make the 
decision at authoring time.

I've not tested it, but I wonder how all of those programs
that rely on 
thumbnails react if I chmod 000 and chown root:root my
.thumbnails 
folder? surely ugly, and would not achieve the higher
usability that I 
hope we can achieve together by spinning these idea
further.

Thanks everybody for the stimulating thoughts.
Yuv
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how about an extra option at the moment of removing the
media (linked
of commands or a script) that will wipe out all of the temp
files for
that person in that moment specifically, that way security
wise ppl
will get what they want and real owners of the computer,
like the
photo DVD case, will be comfortable with normal behavior.

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