Things programmers know that maybe you don't

[GA Russell]

I'm on the Quora mailing list, and found this in today's email.

Things programmers know that maybe you don't:

• Digital content can never be moved, only copied.
• You can never watch or listen to anything on the internet without having it copied to your computer first.
• You cannot password protect a computer from someone who has physical access to it, only encryption works.
• When you empty the trashcan, the files are not deleted.
• When you format your hard drive, the files are not deleted.
• Murphy was right.
• Your desktop computer can run advanced programs for free that used to be available only to big companies for $100,000. Like Unix, virtual machines and SQL servers.
• The Cloud simply means someone else's computer.
• That Office documents are actually ZIP files.

[Chuck Nessa]

this is old news.

Edited March 19, 2014 by Chuck Nessa

[bichos]

i´m not a programmer but i know that for years!!!

Keep boppin´

marcel

[xybert]

I'm on the Quora mailing list, and found this in today's email.

Things programmers know that maybe you don't:

• When you empty the trashcan, the files are not deleted.

I've never been that much of a computer guy but this one always puzzled me. I mean, when it says the files are not deleted, does it mean there's still a record of them or does it mean that they are literally not deleted and can be retreived in their entirety? If so, i guess deleting files would be the ultimate storage/compression solution. In other words, if i want to clear 20 gig worth of space off my hard drive and i delete 20 gig worth of music, can i actually restore that 20 gig worth of music at some point?

[JSngry]

http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Hardware_Software/Erasing_Deleted_Files.asp

[sidewinder]

• Murphy was right.

Back in about 1984 in my programming days I used to have a DEC PDP-11 printout with this one and about 100 other laws of programming on it.

[xybert]

http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Hardware_Software/Erasing_Deleted_Files.asp

Thanks, now it makes sense!

[Jerry_L]

Microsoft Office files, starting with Office 2007 applications, are in Open XML File Formats. Although they do not have a .zip extension, these files actually are Zip files which have been given custom file extensions. Information about the use of XML introduced in Office 2007 is covered in this Microsoft article.

I am a programmer, but I was not aware of this.