fpxfer export to a file - permissions/ownership

[Fairlight]

On Sun, Sep 17, 2017 at 10:29:45PM -0400, Richard Kreiss thus spoke:
> 
> I have been using filePro long enough to know that the *nix systems have had
> an ongoing problem with permissions.  

There only 'problem' *nix systems have with permissions is people not
understanding how they work.  The tragedy is that they're really not that
complicated that they should be considered some mystical black box.

Speaking to the point of, "Do we look for the root cause, or just get it
going again?" that really depends on whether you have the 'luxury' of doing
things correctly.  Do you expediently destroy the evidence which will
likely lead to a long-term fix (something I could buy 1-3 times)?  Or do
you actually take the time to address the problem properly and ensure that
it doesn't recur time and time and time again for decades?  How many times
can the tolerate 'emergencies'?

Hey, it's their dime, and a good revenue stream, right?  There's a reason
I'm not rich; I believe in fixing something properly at the earliest
opportunity.

> I would like to put it another way, running dxmaint at night is like doing
> preventive maintenance on a car or a computer.  

Richard, that's like 'preventing' whooping cough by prescribing a teaspoon
of cough syrup once a night.  It doesn't prevent anything, and at best
masks the symptoms.

> problems before they become a bigger problem.  This does not mean one should
> not look for where the problem is coming from.  However sometimes it is
> outside one's ability to correct the issue and therefore must work around
> the problem.  

The problem is that the readily availability of these crutches tends to
reinforce the tendency for people to take the easy way out, address the
immediate problem, and let the situation ride because it's out of sight,
out of mind.

> This is not just a filePro issue but one of most programs have otherwise no
> company would release maintenance releases.  Think about the number of
> updates to the various apps that people have on their smartphones.

You really picked a comparison which puts fP-Tech in a bad light.  Many
mobile apps are -horribly- written, ill-designed, and get update after
update to fix things which should never make it past alpha, much less beta,
gamma, and to release.  This assumes they don't become abandonware upon
release.

By contrast, the OS itself (Android or iOS, pick either) gets (if you're
-lucky- perhaps a release per quarter from the downstream telecom to which
you subscribe if you're on Android, or Apple if you have an iPhone.  Apple
has impressed less in the last two years, with a flurry of patches which
fix patches, at least in the iOS world.

I'm convinced QA is practically a thing of the past, the way a lot of
vendors do business.  I don't understand it, either.  If something isn't
right, and you -know- it isn't right, it should never go out the door with
'known issues' unaddressed, in my book.  Release date?  Who cares?  I'd
rather push the date and get it done correctly, than put something out
there which proves I don't care about quality.  I'd rather any vendor
did the same.  I'm actually dealing with a sample library vendor which
discovered that Native Instruments' Kontakt (upon which they base their own
product) has a bug which screws with the note alignment in their guitar
strumming routines for all their plugins.  They're going to take several
months to address the problem properly, without needing NI to address
the underlying bug (previous bug report having been lost by NI when they
switched bug tracking software, of course).  I can at least respect the
fact that Orange Tree will be releasing something I can trust, even if it
takes longer.  Plus, they're not shafting us with any upgrade charges.
They're simply making it right, and doing it the right way.  A lot of
companies could learn a lot of things about doing business from a vendor
like that.

Don't even start me on the gaming industry shipping with 'known issues'.
We'd be here for a month, and I'd barely be getting started.  Ironically,
it's actually Nintendo which does the best job, here.  They're not
bug-free, but they are arguably the most polished, earliest in the cycle.

> One issue I do have with filePro is not knowing what functions are or will
> be effected by the increased speed of systems.  I did run into this problem
> a few years ago and had to modify some programming to avoid the issue.  It
> was a simple matter of adding a drop to a browse lookup.  

Why would you need drop if the system was faster?  I would anticipate
needing drop if a system was -slower-.

mark->
-- 
Audio panton, cogito singularis.