Activity Backward Compatibility (was re: Re: joyride 2128 smoketest)

[Tomeu Vizoso]

On Mon, Jul 14, 2008 at 4:24 PM, Eben Eliason <eben.eliason at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2008/7/14 Kim Quirk <kim at laptop.org>:
>> 3 - Encourage schools to completely reflash (cleaninstall) their laptops
>> each year. At the end of the school year, you save away kids data (hopefully
>> that is done automatically) and you do a cleaninstall of the next year's
>> image; retest all the latest versions of Activities that you want to use;
>> and provide 'clean' laptops to the kids at the start of the next school
>> year.
>
> I think this would be a real shame, honestly. It completely tosses out
> the benefits of the Journal as a structure for ones interactions and
> created objects.  It means I can't incorporate photos that I took over
> the summer, or last year, into a story I wrote (for instance, even a
> "what I did this summer" essay that we've all written at least once).
> It means I can't go back and look at some math homework I did to
> refresh myself on how a particular algorithm works.  It means I can't
> create a new etoys project from an experiment I made last year but
> didn't have time to continue.  It means that I lose references to all
> the friends/groups I've made.  It means that my computer is reset to
> factory state and I have to change my personal preferences all over
> again.

What if the web interface to the backups in the school server is as
good or better than the local journal? Does it change any bit this
issue?

Regards,

Tomeu