Re: Disk Partitioning

[Dan Strychalski <dski@cameonet.cameo.com.tw>]

"Geoffrey" (geof@abraxis.com) quoted Erick Andrews (eandrews@star.net) as
saying --

>> It was not my intention to bore people on the list by
>> turning it into a technical forum, but I hope it's mostly
>> useful for everyone as several new points are to me.

I'm sure most of us have adjusted the heights of the shelves in a
refrigerator. The door gets in the way, you have to take out some or all
of the food, the grooves are never in quite the right places, you forget
to take the thickness of the shelves into account.... It takes thought, it
can be a hassle, but it's hardly technical. Partitioning a disk is
similar, except that you can't see what's going on -- indeed, you might
not even know at the outset what "partitions" are for (I speak from
experience). You therefore have to rely on the program's instructions and
reports -- and what little FDISK provides in the way of guidance and
feedback *is* couched in the most convoluted and arcane terms possible. Of
course! MS wants you in Windows, not in MS-DOS; they want you good and
scared of all "technical" details; and they want you to buy a new
refrigerator every couple of years....

The basic idea is *not* technical, and I hope nobody shrinks back from it
or considers a discussion of it boring. Just about everything in computers
has an analogue in things we can see and touch. We *must* develop a "feel"
for the inner workings of these machines, or we are sitting ducks for
people such as those running Microsoft.

Geoffrey wrote --

> I would think that we are bringing to light, those problems that people
> have to deal with when considering other solutions.  I believe these are
> not accidents on the part of MS [...]

No bout adout it. Hey, they want their products to be protected just like
literature, right? Well, then, let those products be subject to the same
kind of scrutiny. My lit prof told us that when we explicate a piece of
writing, any meaning we can read into it and make a cogent case for -- any
meaning at all -- must be assumed to have been put there intentionally....

Dan Strychalski                                 dski@cameonet.cameo.com.tw