Should we sometimes explore "Techish"?

19 Mar 2011 14:05:08

Euan Williams

As a contribution to Martin's project, and to find some middle ground by making a new topic, there may be room for an occasional presentation or meeting on "Techish" (think "English" rather than "Geekish") ;-)

Such an event would cover one or other part of that limbo land of concepts that underly all the OS stuff we take for granted, but generally know only as acronyms.

Examples (for Drive and Stick Memory formats): "HFS+" "Journaled" "FAT" "NTFS" "ZFS".

These would be for non-geeky but enquiring users. While information about all these things is readily available online, what is often lacking is the confidence to look beyond the basic definition for a way to hook the information together.

I'm NOT suggesting that we learn to speak Geekish. A sense of the history of these developments might be one way for some of us to move to the fairly full-on technical stuff which Martin's suggestion aims at.

This ars technica article, written in lay terms, on Drive Format development shows how it might work:

ars technica on File System history.

Re: Should we sometimes explore "Techish"?

13 Apr 2011 01:33:59

Gordon Clyne

I'd gladly interpret acronyms into plain English.... Spent a lifetime doing it......

Re: Should we sometimes explore "Techish"?

13 Apr 2011 01:43:21

Gordon Clyne

And the history..... Wlel I might be able to shed some light onto why "ess aitch one tee " is the way it is in the tech industry.

Re: Should we sometimes explore "Techish"?

14 Apr 2011 10:27:55

Derek Wright

I have an MLA actually a FLA that I devised/invented and had European and Asian use in the 90s in my employer's business, but then if you work for a TLA then MLAs are going to be ones bread and butter.

Re: Should we sometimes explore "Techish"?

15 Apr 2011 09:01:20

Mark Ford

...... or B&B as those in the trade call it.