20 Mar
2007
20 Mar
'07
9:45 a.m.
Ethan Dicks wrote:
Like the time (10 years ago ;-) that a user tried to
vi a 30MB file on
an old Sun box... he was astonished that he couldn't do it. The
problem was that vi wanted to buffer the edits in /var/tmp which had
about 10MB free. Things did not go well.
He couldn't understand why that failed when editing 1MB-2MB files
worked just fine. He just didn't see the difference. A file was a
file.
I think it is a lot more fundamental than that; nothing that goes on
"in the box" is real to most people.
At some level they understand that it can _become_ real, but disk
space, bandwidth, power drain, and basic maintenance are completely
automagical to the average user.
That also, I think, applies directly to online communication - saying
something online isn't *really* saying it. I can't see a kid like Hex
Star acting like that in a face-to-face group of adult men. Actually, I
think a lot of us tend to be much more vociferous in online discussions.
It's a natural tendency.
Doc