Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 28th Apr 2008 21:38 UTC, submitted by kiddo
The trash can metaphor in computing is as old as the desktop metaphor itself. It was first introduced with the Apple Lisa user interface, and found its way to the Macintosh. Apple patented the whole idea, and sued anyone who tried to use the same name, resulting in other user interfaces implementing the exact same principle but just named differently. Despite its old age, and the fact it barely changed over the decades, many people have issues with the traditional concept.
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Member since:
2005-10-01
The idea of the trash needs to evolve.
For starters nothing should truly be deleted until the hard drive runs low on space. Hard drives are large and cheap enough now that there is little reason beyond security to erase files
Yes Stuff should be deleted from user space when they click delete. But instead of simply moving the file to a trash folder it just renames it and marks its attributes as "deleted" then removes it from user space so the user cant see it.
If the user needs to restore a file or erase something for security reasons then a system utility would be used
When the hard drive starts running low on space then older "deleted" files get automatically erased by the OS