Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy

Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> wrote:

D <nospam@example.net> writes:
 

On Thu, 20 Feb 2025, Salvador Mirzo wrote:
>

This is the truth. I'm a contrarian kind of guy, so when the world
goes git, I go fossil. ;) Jokes aside, I like the concept of one
binary and how it works for my own personal use case.

>
I went fossil when I had to teach a class.  I thought git was more
complicated than fossil.  But it turns out that fossil was seen as
crazily complicated by nearly all students (anyway).  I think fossil is
just fine, though I confess I prefer the file system over a database.

>
This is very interesting! What was it that the student thought was crazy
complicated compared with git?

 
Not compared to git.  They did not get to see git.  They just hated
fossil to the point of almost giving up on the whole course altogether.
Very likely they knew that other courses would give them the same
credits and they could try it afresh on the next semester.
 
I don't have much information.  The command line seemed an awful
experience to them.  I suspect that they thought that the command line
was archaic means of system interface and that perhaps it was just a
teacher idiosyncrasy.

>
For some (most? all?) they likely had only ever used a "touch/feely"
interface (i.e., phone) and so, yes, they were very ill equiped to even
comprehend a command line, much less be productive in one.
>

This experience gave me the following feeling---they ask for real-world,
pratical experience, but they're not up to an introduction to the tools
used in the real-world.

>
They likely have never been out of their smartphone protected bubble. 
>

I have taught classes with git (basics) and at the end of the day,
regardless of if you use git or fossil, it just requires a few simple
commands to get started at the basic level (we were not discussing
rebasing and huge software projects).

 
I think it boils down to a lot more because these are compouter users
that even ``environment variable'' is a never-seen concept.  I watched
them opening a c:\> prompt on their Windows system, slowlying typing up
their very long path to their project, say, and then doing it again on
the next class---paths with spaces and other complicated symbols.

>
Which is (almost) the same they would do using a GUI or their phone. 
Wherever the file manager defaults, they then meticiously "step" their
way over to where they want to be.  The concept of saving a 'bookmark'
(of sorts) to "go directly there" is likely foreign to them.  In fact,
they sound like the types who open the google search page, then type a
URL into the google search box, to go to that URL.