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Our office recently updated to a new version of the Office Suite, and it still has an icon in the upper-left corner to perform the 'Save' function. Floppy drives have not been in use for years, and many children would not recognize a 3.5 inch floppy disk on sight. Programs have used this icon for years, because we have yet to find a suitable replacement. The CD/DVD can no longer represent saving, because they have come and gone. Even moving to the more abstract Piggy Bank icon would not work, because they are seldom used in the modern age. A USB Key icon may represent saving in some form, but the may not be around much longer if another medium gains favor. Does this mean that the venerable 3.5 inch Floppy will represent saving information to future generations, or should it be replaced by a different symbol?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by GungnirSniper on Tuesday December 20 2016, @10:29AM
We have plenty of outdated technical terms that still have valid understandable meaning. We "dial out" of corporate phone networks. We "film" video "footage" and record things "on tape". It's not different than "digging" into problems or "spinning" tunes. Those pesky kids on our lawns can handle legacy terms, and they can handle the concept of putting a file "on disk".
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(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday December 20 2016, @02:46PM
A punched card icon would work for Save.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Tuesday December 20 2016, @10:37PM
A punched card icon would work for Save
That was NOT my experience of punched cards. ISTR keeping copies of my card decks on 556bpi magtape.
(The tapes were still readable 30 years later, and probably still are, though I no longer have a 7-track stop-start tape drive).
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday December 20 2016, @05:01PM
I used to specify cylinder numbers in JCL on the IBM systems a long time ago. That seems missing from my "save as" pop ups.
"save" is pretty much obsolete as a concept. The concept of a database transaction needs to be "saved" (oh the pun) for weird situations, but most people are OK with occasional background database "insert" operations.
I think google docs/drive has a save button somewhere but implicitly it periodically saves and thats good enough.
Another interesting analogy is my wife never backs up her mac, I just make sure the time-capsule thingy is doing its snapshots.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday December 20 2016, @11:42PM
I believe the cylinder numbers in JCL ware to indicate the number of cylinders, bot which cylinders. Relevant in a system where data base indexing was managed by the hardware more than the software.