

How One New Service Is Tackling The Death Of The File System - erikcaso
http://www.fastcolabs.com/3007889/how-one-new-service-tackling-death-file-system

======
eps
They are making the same old mistake of over-abstracting.

The fundamental difference between local and remote is the access latency.
Until they can get remote content from there to here as fast as they can get
it from a local drive, all this "file system is dead" will remain a non-
technical marketing bullshit that is out of touch with the real-world
application issues. Why the hell you would want to hide the fact that file.mov
is 10 hops away behind a saturated link? You don't.

"Death of the file system." Jesus.

------
dvanduzer
When I read this, especially the word "patented," the question that springs to
mind is: why isn't Tahoe[0] succeeding?

(The same reason Linux on the desktop isn't? Other?)

[0] <https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs>

~~~
andreasvc
Tahoe looks interesting, I hadn't come across it before. What exactly is not
succeeding about it? It sounds like BT sync minus the closed source /
protocol.

~~~
dvanduzer
Well, I chose "not succeeding" over "failing" on purpose. The project has been
around in one form or another for about 8 years, but it still hasn't hit the
mainstream.

Make no mistake, I'm a fan, but I'd rather see all these commercial players
making proprietary front-end improvements to Tahoe instead of reinventing the
core wheel.

------
rsync
I would rewrite the title to be "the death of being aware of the filesystem".

The filesystem is still there. They are creating an abstraction layer such
that you don't care about it anymore.

~~~
mikeabraham
This is indeed the goal, marketing terminology notwithstanding. We're trying
to create a system to tie a file to a user (regardless of device), rather than
to any device itself. And to do it in such a way that the user doesn't need to
know (unless they want to) on which physical device (or devices or services)
the file resides.

------
b1daly
I see what they are getting at, I was recently traveling with an android
phone, iPad, and macbook. I generally like to keep my photos organized in
aperture but between android, drop box, iPhoto trying to import my pictures,
galleries I had exported from aperture to Facebook, and being unfamiliar with
how to manage photos on my phone there wound up being versions all over the
place. I lost track of the canonical versions, and have sets with some
reduncies. So if o want to get them all, I think I'm going to import all the
photo sets into aperture and sort it out

An app that could help with this would be great. What's even more annoying is
the confusion that comes with managed libraries I'm the Apple apps. Unless
you're paying a lot of attention, those files are pretty much taken out of the
file system already (the photos that is).

What Younity is attempting here sounds very interstating, but what a
challenge! How can you do effective backups if you don't know where all of
your files? Is the idea to have some kind of super cloud sucker thing that
backs up all of your chaotic files and structure/state?

Good luck with this, I think you might have a great product

------
touristtam
I don't believe this is news ... <https://github.com/KnpLabs/Gaufrette> (lib
for php). only if they manage to buy their way in to the consumer will they
have something of value.

------
derstang
Love the in-depth analysis in this article and seeing if people really don't
want the file system. I love organizing in folders, but at the same time true
file ubiquity could be a dream come true!

------
roc
> _"It is forecast that the typical American will have 5.8 devices by 2015"_

<http://xkcd.com/605/>

~~~
wslh
So Bill Gates was wrong about a computer on every home ;-)

~~~
roc
Boolean projections are fundamentally different than numeric ones.

Consider the distinction between cell phone penetration rates and device sales
projections.

------
flipcoder
so basically a distributed semantic filesystem?

