GLSCube - the semantic filesystem

[John Richard Moser]

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Saad Shakhshir wrote:
> so do u think the Internet would be more manageable if it were organized
> like u said - heirarchically?  When was the last time you used Google
> Web Directory ( http://directory.google.com/
> <http://directory.google.com/>) or something similar that tries to
> organise websites into categories in order to find some information? 
> Sure... it works, but it's a heck of a lot slower than doing a
> straightforward Google search.

search your hard drive >  find / -name \*tetris\*\.ogg

Or better (faster)

find /home/joe/media/music/\*tetris\*\.ogg

Note the internet IS organized by domain names and resource locators,
not fuzzy meta-data.  Searching is bolted on, not an inherent storage
mechanism; it will always be better bolted on.

Everyone wants to move away from hierarchical storage entirely, some
schools of thought want to remove the pathspec and turn the file system
into a meta-data driven RDBMS.  Other schools of thought are slightly
less radical, instead wanting to store the meta-data as part of the file
system and push that crap down to the kernel.  This is total crap and
people need to understand the difference between a useful tool like
Beagle and a pathological obsession.

>  Plus such organizational structures put
> the onus on the user to sit and organize all their files.  If it's not
> the user and it's some automated script, then what is the point.  Just
> make the script/program more intelligent and interactive so that the
> user does not need to worry at all about the underlying file structure.
> 
> To the user, it does not matter how the files are stored under the
> hood.  What is important is that an abstracted interface is provided
> that enables them to retrieve the information they desire in a quick and
> intuitive manner.  So if I want all my dance music by DJ Tiesto, I
> shouldn't have to go to /home/user/music/dance/tiesto... first because
> it is more of a hassle than just opening up a prompt and typing "dance
> music tiesto" and second because not all my tiesto songs might be in
> that folder.  He has done lots of songs with other DJ's and these might
> be stored under other folders, like oakenfold or van buuren.  Tags are
> great because they allow you to have multiple attributes per file - the
> user isn't constrained to put the file in a single specific category.
> 

Tell you what.  Go to every directory in your home dir that's not a
dot-directory, find all the files in it, and dump them straight in your
home directory. (126147 files for me).

> I believe that automatically updating virtual folders based on search
> strings and metadata are an invaluable addition to any OS and
> particularly Ubuntu.  GLScube looks to be a step in that direction...
> 
> -SS-
> 
> On 7/11/06, *John Richard Moser* <nigelenki at comcast.net
> <mailto:nigelenki at comcast.net>> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> Saad Shakhshir wrote:
> [...]
>> more.  It is a solution that distances you from thinking about
> Where you
>> store your data to What your data is."
> [...]
> 
> So instead of:
> 
> /home/joe/music/mp3/artist/album/foo.mp3
> 
> I have:
> 
> joe's files ->
>   Music ->
>   MP3 ->
>   Artist ->
>   Album ->
>   Foo
> 
> OR:
> 
> Music ->
> (80 billion files, one of which is the song I want)
> 
> Come on, guys, it's just more hierarchical indexing, just with more
> meta-data.  Taking away the real file system would only serve to make
> people access thing by keys, which would be difficult to control, then
> create more work, etc.
> 
> You know what worked back in the day?  Media libraries.  You would have
> all these music files and videos stored in /home/joe/media/{music,video}
> and subdirectories for artist or album and the media library would go
> and find them all, index them automatically.  E-mail programs would also
> index all your e-mails, even though they're stored in a mail directory.
> 
> I don't understand why people want to actually eliminate file
> hierarchical storage.  I tried to get the gtk guys to get rid of that
> stupid file picker; they said that you should have the few folders you
> use bookmarked.  I asked about when you have like
> /home/joe/audio/cd_collection/artist/album/ and just want to bookmark
> audio/ and go from there; they told me that's stupid, save the files
> straight in /home/joe/ and use something like beagle to find them.  Is
> this what we're trying to do?  Get a single directory of everything?
> 
> 
> --
> All content of all messages exchanged herein are left in the
> Public Domain, unless otherwise explicitly stated.
> 
>     Creative brains are a valuable, limited resource. They shouldn't be
>     wasted on re-inventing the wheel when there are so many fascinating
>     new problems waiting out there.
>                                                  -- Eric Steven Raymond
> 
>     We will enslave their women, eat their children and rape their
>     cattle!
>                   -- Bosc, Evil alien overlord from the fifth dimension

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- --
All content of all messages exchanged herein are left in the
Public Domain, unless otherwise explicitly stated.

    Creative brains are a valuable, limited resource. They shouldn't be
    wasted on re-inventing the wheel when there are so many fascinating
    new problems waiting out there.
                                                 -- Eric Steven Raymond

    We will enslave their women, eat their children and rape their
    cattle!
                  -- Bosc, Evil alien overlord from the fifth dimension
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