Hi,
sajolida wrote (05 Jul 2015 16:58:30 GMT) :
> intrigeri:
> While reading that thread again I realize that I actually misunderstood
> our conclusion [1] which was not to say "memory" but "media" :)
OK. Now it makes more sense to me :)
> I understand that you're main concerns about our last choice (saying
> "flash memory") are:
I don't really understand why we should debate "flash memory" if the
previous conclusion was something else, but you probably have a good
reason, so here we go.
> 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.
Right.
> 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.
Thanks for the details :)
> Probably because the
> terminology is introduced with an explanation -- "flash memory (USB
> stick or SD card)".
Indeed, once defined it does feel more understandable to me.
> So let's keep in mind that we might see a bigger
> problem that there actually is.
Fair enough. Let's also keep in mind that a sample of 4 people is
a pretty small one to draw conclusions from.
+ C. It's basically a neologism, when used as a enumerable / countable
(?) noun (as opposed to an adjective that specifies the following
noun), and I see little point in introducing neologisms for
a concept that already has dozens of synonyms listed
on Wikipedia.
>> 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.
Got it.
> 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.
Full ACK.
>> 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).
We've fixed what we could on our side, but we can't fix crappy
hardware :)
> Do you have practical examples of such problems?
In my (limited) experience, a computer firmware that isn't able to
boot off a SD card is part of the majority, and not an exception.
It makes sense to me to list exceptions, but I never bothered listing
specific hardware that behaves like the majority.
> Why aren't they mentioned as known issues?
I dunno. Probably because I, and anyone else who has seen this problem
in practice, was too lazy to report and/or document it :(
Also note that this is not specific to Tails, and there's nothing we
can do about it, which isn't very motivating.
>> * 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.
(From this point it will look like I'm repeating myself, since what
follows is based on "info" I've provided above. I don't mean to
insist, just to reply specific points with this additional info
in mind.)
Using something (SD card) that only works on a rather limited range of
hardware, and that is a bit less wide-spread, seems harder to use than
something (USB flash drive) that works on basically all hardware, and
that people are already using.
> 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.
It may be the case, indeed.
> That
> could actually be our job to make them realize this and here finding a
> generic term might help.
Not sure about that, for the reasons (more: gut feeling from my
limited experience) stated above.
> Our Windows USB synopsis can also be used as a good place to see this
> terminology issues in action and try out different solutions.
Thanks for the pointer!
Cheers,
--
intrigeri
