Re: [Usability] time stamps and privacy

[Liam R E Quin <liam holoweb net>]

On Thu, 2008-03-27 at 15:45 -0400, Jason Hoover wrote:
> On Wed, 2008-03-26 at 16:23 -0400, Yuval Levy wrote:
> [...]

> the only true security is an 
> > option not to write thumbnails to disk in the first place.

Which is the approach taken by certain other operating environments...

> Then why not simply disable thumbnails in the first place?
Because you want them.

> There appears to be some discrepancy and two clear camps. 
> 
> The first position is: "I like cached thumbnails and dislike having to
> thumbnail the same things every time."
[...]

> The second, yours: "I like cached thumbnails and want them to be kept on
> the individual media."

These are not the only sensible possible approaches.

MS Windows (like a number of Unix systems and programs) puts the
thumbnails on the device, and it would certainly make sense for
a desktop filemanager such as nautilus to be able to make use of
"Thumbs.db"; the Mac (both OS X and older) similarly makes a desktop
file on each drive that we could sensibly use if present, at least as
a starting point.

If a device is not writeable, or perhaps if a configuration file is
present on the device that disallows thumbnails on the device, then
the thumbnails have to be stored in a cache elsewhere.  Said
configuration file, if it existed, could also give an expiry time for
the thumbnails, and that would be a useful feature for many people
(whether managed explicitly via a UI, or per-drive user defaults, or
whether you have to edit the file), including people who distributed
DVDs of images.

> [...]

> a user might create a .thumbnail directory in a drive with the
> permissions 700, and then prevent any other users from making thumbnails
> in your proposed design. The existing spec avoids this.
So does mine :)

> 
> Scenario number two; even under your system, the potential exists for
> there to be thumbnails of images which /have been deleted/.
That's true in all the scenarios.  Checking for it (1) when a device
is unmounted vie e.g. gnome-mount -u, and (2) when thumbnails are
accessed, and of course (3) when images are deleted, may help.  It
doesn't solve it 100% as you can use command-line operations to unmount
a drive, or just pull it out, or there can be a powr failure. 

> This really only leaves two options:
> 
> 1) Disable thumbnails.
> 2) Make the thumbnails more easily removed.
> 
> Perhaps the 'clear document history' option should be expanded to this
> function? This provides a compromise; people who don't like their
> information recorded can remove it at will, and people who don't care or
> trust their own systems can keep it while still maintaining the full
> functionality and benefits of the thumbnail system.
perhaps it's a litlte like the Clear Browser Cache option, and yes,
is sensible.

Liam

-- 
Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/
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