Re: [Usability] time stamps and privacy

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Wed, 2008-03-26 at 17:06 +0000, Ross Burton wrote:
> On Wed, 2008-03-26 at 17:22 +0100, Reinout van Schouwen wrote:
> > Back on topic, I recently read another thread about purging the
> > thumbnails cache after a certain period. 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.
> 
> Man, that would really annoy people who have pictures on removable
> media.  Say, a collection of DVDs with photos on.
> 
> /me looks at the stack of DVDs with years of photos on.  Don't make me
> re-thumbnail them everytime I insert a disc.

Not only that, but it probably wouldn't even satisfy
people who don't want those thumbnails stored.

1) The only way to be sure is to run shred, not rm.
2) shred is far from instant.
3) We're not going to make the unmount block on such
   a lengthy process.
4) Privacy-conscious people want to know that the files
   are gone when they walk away from the computer.  It's
   not enough that they'll be cleaned up at some point.

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

Epic fail.

--
Shaun