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

[Eben Eliason]

On Mon, Jul 14, 2008 at 10:35 AM, Tomeu Vizoso <tomeu at tomeuvizoso.net> wrote:
> 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?

Sure.  I'd love to see a really good backup solution that works
seamlessly with the new Journal.  In a sense, my point is that this is
supposed to happen over time, just as memories fade over time.
Perhaps we'll want to "distort time" a bit at the end of a school year
and shove, say, enough of the Journal into backup to free up 1/2 the
space on the laptop, but requiring manual restore (and access to the
school server) every time a kid wants anything from the previous year
sounds a bit frustrating to me, however good the UI is.

More importantly, though, this backup solution doesn't solve other
issues such as, for instance, my groups, my friends, my settings, and
my installed activities.  Regardless of what activities the school
clean updates/installs, if a kid downloaded This or That, I think that
should remain on the machine.  We need to make sure, of course, that
we a) provide an easy to use update system with notification, in case
it's been updated to work with the newer OS b) gracefully handle
failure of activities (the current timeout is poor).

If the backup has some extra magic that can be used to automatically
restore installed activities, friends, groups, setttings, etc., then
we're just mixing terminology.  That's not a clean install, but an
upgrade install which is designed to keep user settings and files
intact across the upgrade.

- Eben