intrigeri:
> u wrote (03 Jul 2015 14:59:11 GMT) :
>> And also, as pointed out to me by somebody else, "a flash memory" or
>> "another flash memory" seems wrong, as one cannot count one, two or more
>> memories ;)
>
> Actually, it works in some cases, but IMO not when speaking about
> storage devices that happen to contain _some amount of_ flash memory.
>
>> So, I am suggesting either to use:
>
>> * flash (memory) device
>> * removable (flash) device
>> * flash (memory) drive
>> * removable (flash) media
Thanks for bringing up this discussion again. Other people already
mentioned that they didn't like "flash memory" so I'm putting BitingBird
and tchou in copy to make sure they don't miss this discussion again.
I'm personally not against spending some more time on this discussion as
long as we end up with something better. Unfortunately I think there's
no perfect solution to this problem.
While reading that thread again I realize that I actually misunderstood
our conclusion [1] which was not to say "memory" but "media" :)
[1]:
https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-ux/2015-May/000397.html
I understand that you're main concerns about our last choice (saying
"flash memory") are:
A. "Flash memory" correctness in English. This seems to align with what
SpencerOne said on [2]. As you pointed out "flash drive" or "flash
media" would be more correct.
[2]:
https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-ux/2015-April/000376.html
B. It might be hard to understand for most of our users. Actually, we
had our new full synopsis for Windows USB installation [3] reviewed by
four external people (some native English speakers and some others not)
and none of them pointed this out as an issue. Probably because the
terminology is introduced with an explanation -- "flash memory (USB
stick or SD card)". So let's keep in mind that we might see a bigger
problem that there actually is.
[3]:
https://tails.boum.org/blueprint/bootstrapping/assistant/windows
> I've re-read most of this thread (all of the part I had kept locally,
> possibly I missed bits that I had deleted already), took a step back,
> took the context into account (we're having a Tails Installer sprint
> currently), and now I'm tempted to suggest treating SD cards as
> a corner case
I would be fine with that but that's a deeper choice than a pure debate
on terminology so I wasn't feeling empowered with doing that as a writer.
In that case, I would make it clear in the installation instructions
only that people can use SD cards instead of USB sticks. I would refrain
myself from mentioning it in many more place as otherwise it become
cumbersome (as we do currently) or otherwise might create confusion on
whether SD cards can always replace USB sticks or only the times we
mention it explicitly as an alternative. This problem doesn't occur if
we find a generic name for both USB sticks and SD cards as proposed
until now.
> first, because the generalization to both cover SD
> cards and USB sticks is what makes the problem at hand hard to
> solve -- we're trying to find terminology that both lets 99.xx% of our
> users think of a USB flash drive, *and* that lets 0.xx% of our users
> understand that other kinds of removable flash storage media may work
> too; second, because booting Tails off a SD card rarely works, and
> thus:
>
> * letting users believe that it works just as well on SD cards as on
> USB flash drives is misleading (and can result in discouraging
> failures);
I thought we fixed SDIO a while ago and I see no known issues about SD
card on our website (neither have I experienced any myself). Do you have
practical examples of such problems? Why aren't they mentioned as known
issues?
> * AFAIK is only/mostly used by power-users who'll know that their
> computer can boot off a SD card, and then these people are likely
> used to convert "USB flash drive" to "SD card" on-the-fly.
This is something I don't know. I tried to do some stats on WhisperBack
reports to know whether they were coming from USB sticks or SD card but
failed.
>From a merely technical point of view, I fail to see why SD cards would
be more "technical" or more for more "power users" that USB sticks. You
use same in the exact same way, most modern computers have SD card
slots, they are smaller in size, you can have more deterministic or
better read/write speeds, etc.
Maybe we see less people around us using SD cards because they are more
used to USB sticks to carry their files around but they didn't realize
that there are advantages to SD cards in the context of Tails. That
could actually be our job to make them realize this and here finding a
generic term might help.
> So, perhaps just going for "USB stick" or "USB flash drive" would work
> for everyone, and make things simpler to understand for 99.xx% of
> our users.
>
> The canonical page [1] about USB sticks on Wikipedia is "USB flash
> drive"... and the list of redirects to it [2] is impressive, but
> I would personally stick to "USB flash drive".
>
> [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_flash_drive
> [2] http://dispenser.homenet.org/~dispenser/cgi-bin/rdcheck.py?page=USB_flash_drive
>
>> This question is strongly related to
>> https://labs.riseup.net/code/issues/8866
>
> ... and is therefore currently blocking a great deal of our work on
> Tails Installer.
So does it on our doc rewriting for the Installation Assistant.
Our Windows USB synopsis can also be used as a good place to see this
terminology issues in action and try out different solutions.
--
sajolida
