lutzee

Neither are, hence why as a linux user I use cmus for my music player
Of course its super basic, Banshee is the alternative to iTunes, including the fact that it can sync music to iPods. 

Open source and freeware, but is only available on windows. Therefore VLC is still the preferred option for linux and mac.

Use the where clause, the trick with SQL is to write things in a predictable manner such that the query plan generated is sensible. The issue with putting filters on joins is the server handles those statements during a join within the query plan, whereas the where filters can apply as a distinct step within the query plan often triggering before a join even happens resulting in less data being read.

Like Haraikomono said, don't feel that you are expected to know everything, you're never going to know exactly where every feature is implemented within a code base.
Don't be afraid to ask questions to your colleagues, the best developers spend a lot of time asking questions to understand requirements Following on, there's no dumb questions really, we all have moment where we feel we should know the answer to something innocuous but the answer just isn't there, just be wary of repeating the same questions over and over, make notes, while very analogue a good notebook and hand written notes is a very powerful tool and shouldn't be overlooked.  Its OK to be wrong, in fact its pretty normal to not be correct on things, don't take it personally if you do get corrected, try to understand why you might have been wrong and learn from it, and this leads into my next point Ask for feedback, you should be getting feedback anyway in the form of code reviews (at least I hope you're peer reviewing each others code), but even outside of code reviews you should be asking for feedback, if you're working on a feature ask for some feedback when you've got it in a somewhat workable state, if things aren't right you have the ability to easily change direction, often these first prototypes can help a feature requester understand exactly how they want a feature to work. Try not to work in specifics if you're not sure/confident, "I think this needs to be changed, I believe this is the code causing the issue, I feel this is what needs to be done to make this work", only with more experience will you pick up the confidence of working in specifics, and even then you will make the odd mistake, I certainly do.  If you don't do so already, ask your manager for weekly 1 to 1 meetings and identify a list of skills to work on and provide help and learning opportunities to achieve them Some further thoughts 
Its possible that you're getting tickets with not enough information, if its a bug the best tickets have a full set of steps to reproduce the issue, if they don't then ask the reporter to provide this information.  "I've been told that i don't give enough information about what i actually want" - You need to spend a bit of time analyzing new features, identify what it is you've been asked to make and make suggestions on how this could be achieved, as you're an apprentice then this should really be done with another developer for the first few times. If you're still struggling with a feature request its possible it doesn't have enough information. In these cases you need to work with the requester to understand the problem, normally fitting into the format of "As a <person/role> I would like to be able to do <thing> so that I can <find out/view/understand/perform task>" As for finding things in the code, this is just going to be down to experience with that particular code base. Sometimes some things can help, if you know that the code is outputting a given piece of text for a given system, you could search for that text in the code, if you know that a particular api endpoint has issues you should be able to track down where that endpoint is defined. But often a lot of issues boils down to how good of an IDE you're using is, my personal experience writing in C# using Visual studio with Resharper its easier and faster to dig through an unfamiliar code base because I know the tools I use are really good at searching code. Trying to program using more simple tools like Notepad++ for example would be much harder, and even though Notepad++ is a fantastic text editor it is not an IDE.  This became a very long response, but I hope its helpful, you're very early in your career, but you'll always be learning new things

Like Haraikomono said, don't feel that you are expected to know everything, you're never going to know exactly where every feature is implemented within a code base.
Don't be afraid to ask questions to your colleagues, the best developers spend a lot of time asking questions to understand requirements Following on, there's no dumb questions really, we all have moment where we feel we should know the answer to something innocuous but the answer just isn't there, just be wary of repeating the same questions over and over, make notes, while very analogue a good notebook and hand written notes is a very powerful tool and shouldn't be overlooked.  Its OK to be wrong, in fact its pretty normal to not be correct on things, don't take it personally if you do get corrected, try to understand why you might have been wrong and learn from it, and this leads into my next point Ask for feedback, you should be getting feedback anyway in the form of code reviews (at least I hope you're peer reviewing each others code), but even outside of code reviews you should be asking for feedback, if you're working on a feature ask for some feedback when you've got it in a somewhat workable state, if things aren't right you have the ability to easily change direction, often these first prototypes can help a feature requester understand exactly how they want a feature to work. Try not to work in specifics if you're not sure/confident, "I think this needs to be changed, I believe this is the code causing the issue, I feel this is what needs to be done to make this work", only with more experience will you pick up the confidence of working in specifics, and even then you will make the odd mistake, I certainly do.  If you don't do so already, ask your manager for weekly 1 to 1 meetings and identify a list of skills to work on and provide help and learning opportunities to achieve them Some further thoughts 
Its possible that you're getting tickets with not enough information, if its a bug the best tickets have a full set of steps to reproduce the issue, if they don't then ask the reporter to provide this information.  "I've been told that i don't give enough information about what i actually want" - You need to spend a bit of time analyzing new features, identify what it is you've been asked to make and make suggestions on how this could be achieved, as you're an apprentice then this should really be done with another developer for the first few times. If you're still struggling with a feature request its possible it doesn't have enough information. In these cases you need to work with the requester to understand the problem, normally fitting into the format of "As a <person/role> I would like to be able to do <thing> so that I can <find out/view/understand/perform task>" As for finding things in the code, this is just going to be down to experience with that particular code base. Sometimes some things can help, if you know that the code is outputting a given piece of text for a given system, you could search for that text in the code, if you know that a particular api endpoint has issues you should be able to track down where that endpoint is defined. But often a lot of issues boils down to how good of an IDE you're using is, my personal experience writing in C# using Visual studio with Resharper its easier and faster to dig through an unfamiliar code base because I know the tools I use are really good at searching code. Trying to program using more simple tools like Notepad++ for example would be much harder, and even though Notepad++ is a fantastic text editor it is not an IDE.  This became a very long response, but I hope its helpful, you're very early in your career, but you'll always be learning new things

For MySQL I can't tell if it's that critical as I use it rarely as I need much faster and robust database. But for example on MSSQL a where clause can be read prior of executing anything which allow MSSQL to use prediction to find records much faster. When the condition is embed in the join it need to filter per Row on the RowStore making it filtering many many times. When dealing with low record count it is a non issue but when joining billions of records with another billions of records there is a huge performance impact.
 
BUT filter in the join can apply the filter right away and leave more space in the RAM while applying the filter on the where clause force larger chunk to be loaded at a time which cause more RAM to be used. Filter is still applied on the result set row by row but you do have a complete set of fields that may contain nulls which are way heavier in memory than for example a simple bit that was filtered. If you have bad table designs you can more than double the RAM of what the query result actually contains when using where clause.
 
So if you are RAM limited try to put as much conditions within the join itself. You will have a smaller RAM footprint hence allowing more user queries to pass but they are slower.
If RAM is not an issue, use the WHERE clause to filter which will make the query faster but take bigger RAM footprint.
 
Now this is just a general guideline which doesn't mean it's a cure for all solution. Each query, each server, each database software are different. At the end of the day you should test your query against an evaluator like a query plan or query statistic and try real life scenario and adapt the query for REAL use case. For example on MSSQL if you test you query back to back it will get everything loaded into RAM tables and suddently a 20 second query will go down to 2 seconds as it doesn't use the table on disk but the one running in the RAM which is much faster. That 2 seconds wouldn't be a good value to assume if you query is ran once every hour but it is if it's ran once every 5 seconds.

The odal rune was used on by nazi germany, much like many other old proto-germanic runes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odal_(rune)
 

The odal rune was used on by nazi germany, much like many other old proto-germanic runes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odal_(rune)
 

@Echo off python PeopleReallyNeedToStopUsingBatchFilesAlready.py %* pause   ;)

@Echo off python PeopleReallyNeedToStopUsingBatchFilesAlready.py %* pause   ;)

@Echo off python PeopleReallyNeedToStopUsingBatchFilesAlready.py %* pause   ;)

I might as well introduce myself
I'm a First year undergraduate studying Computer Science student studying at Coventry University - England :)
My first experience with programming was in Java when messing around with minecraft mods, but it wasn't really proper programming, more just implementing API to add stuff into the game.
Then I start university and was introduced to C++, the basic syntax from java helped a lot.
C++ is a lot nicer to learn from I feel, you get to see a lot more of the stuff behind how things actually work.
As for IDEs coming from java i very much like Eclipse, and not just for java, the plugins available for it are pretty cool too. I use eclipse for writing up any documents using LaTeX as it has some really nice plugins. I also installed the Go plugin which also worked a dream. For now for my current uni work they want us to use Code::Blocks (It really isn't great..) But i've added everything an use Visual Studio Ultimate on my desktop and laptop which is where I do all my work from. The uni PCs are fast but the user documents are completely networked and its hard to get the stuff to compile over a slow network..
As for OSs my Desktop has Win7 professional for gaming, then I normally have it booted into kubuntu, there is also mint w/ cinnamon installed on it as well.

I might as well introduce myself
I'm a First year undergraduate studying Computer Science student studying at Coventry University - England :)
My first experience with programming was in Java when messing around with minecraft mods, but it wasn't really proper programming, more just implementing API to add stuff into the game.
Then I start university and was introduced to C++, the basic syntax from java helped a lot.
C++ is a lot nicer to learn from I feel, you get to see a lot more of the stuff behind how things actually work.
As for IDEs coming from java i very much like Eclipse, and not just for java, the plugins available for it are pretty cool too. I use eclipse for writing up any documents using LaTeX as it has some really nice plugins. I also installed the Go plugin which also worked a dream. For now for my current uni work they want us to use Code::Blocks (It really isn't great..) But i've added everything an use Visual Studio Ultimate on my desktop and laptop which is where I do all my work from. The uni PCs are fast but the user documents are completely networked and its hard to get the stuff to compile over a slow network..
As for OSs my Desktop has Win7 professional for gaming, then I normally have it booted into kubuntu, there is also mint w/ cinnamon installed on it as well.

@Echo off python PeopleReallyNeedToStopUsingBatchFilesAlready.py %* pause   ;)

*Looks at specs* *sees amd graphics card*
 
Question, do you have dual screens?
My guess is yes, and the dots appear when the mouse swaps screens, I've reproduced this on my PC (when in windows) across multiple installs of windows, and on friends PCs also running AMD graphics cards,
I looked into it briefly and found no solutions, and i just put up with it.
 
Not much I can say but live with it (seems to be less common when moving the mouse across windows slower)

I think the issue here though is understanding how these things work.  
Any app running in the background does a few things, I can register 'wake locks', which will keep the phone awake while it processes whatever its doing.
Apps that are using lots of wakelocks and aren't actually giving you any benefit should be removed.
Killing processes that are using lots of wakelocks is good, but what if the process doing the killing is keeping the phone awake while looking for these apps? Not good..
There are apps available that will track wakelock usage. Some big offenders are any messaging apps (looking at you facebook), they like to constantly check for new messages and hence like to keep the phone awake
 
As for RAM, like I said, unused RAM is WASTED RAM, when the phone needs more RAM for an active app, it will dispose of memory for background app in favour of the active app.
 
Now of course we get into more depth, a lot of apps and app developers never really think of their memory footprint, some apps will use and keep in memory lots of information in poor formats that it needent too.
 
If you feel your phone isn't performing at its optimal speed, find out whats causing the problem and sort it, don't just mask it by anther process that claims to help but could be causing more issues.
 
Viruses? Never seen a phone infected with a virus, where as its possible, its no where near as common as the windows ecosystem.
 
As for crapfiles, that does seem pretty useful though.
 
Finally if you really want to keep your phone fresh and don't mind some hassle, then rooting and using greenify, ApOps, custom ROMs/Kernels because you will get a lot better performance and the ability to have much finer control over your phone.

This too, android security is very strong, and with lollipop bringing even more with SELinux things couldn't get much more secure.

I'm taking a look through the permissions right now
 
I've starred suspect permissions
 
Version 3.0.5 can access:

Device & app history
retrieve running apps read sensitive log data **  read your Web bookmarks and history Identity
find accounts on the device add or remove accounts ** Contacts
read your contacts ** modify your contacts ** Location
approximate location (network-based) precise location (GPS and network-based) SMS
edit your text messages (SMS or MMS) ** receive text messages (SMS) ** read your text messages (SMS or MMS) ** send SMS messages ** Phone
reroute outgoing calls ** write call log directly call phone numbers ** read call log Photos/Media/Files
test access to protected storage  modify or delete the contents of your USB storage Camera
take pictures and videos ** WHY? Wi-Fi connection information
view Wi-Fi connections Device ID & call information
read phone status and identity Other
close other apps receive data from Internet set an alarm delete all app cache data run at startup write web bookmarks and history measure app storage space prevent device from sleeping ** If you want performance boost NOT having this is better, this will waste battery view network connections install shortcuts use accounts on the device close other apps read Google service configuration toggle sync on and off expand/collapse status bar draw over other apps full network access pair with Bluetooth devices modify system settings connect and disconnect from Wi-Fi read sync settings control vibration access Bluetooth settings change network connectivity

I'm taking a look through the permissions right now
 
I've starred suspect permissions
 
Version 3.0.5 can access:

Device & app history
retrieve running apps read sensitive log data **  read your Web bookmarks and history Identity
find accounts on the device add or remove accounts ** Contacts
read your contacts ** modify your contacts ** Location
approximate location (network-based) precise location (GPS and network-based) SMS
edit your text messages (SMS or MMS) ** receive text messages (SMS) ** read your text messages (SMS or MMS) ** send SMS messages ** Phone
reroute outgoing calls ** write call log directly call phone numbers ** read call log Photos/Media/Files
test access to protected storage  modify or delete the contents of your USB storage Camera
take pictures and videos ** WHY? Wi-Fi connection information
view Wi-Fi connections Device ID & call information
read phone status and identity Other
close other apps receive data from Internet set an alarm delete all app cache data run at startup write web bookmarks and history measure app storage space prevent device from sleeping ** If you want performance boost NOT having this is better, this will waste battery view network connections install shortcuts use accounts on the device close other apps read Google service configuration toggle sync on and off expand/collapse status bar draw over other apps full network access pair with Bluetooth devices modify system settings connect and disconnect from Wi-Fi read sync settings control vibration access Bluetooth settings change network connectivity

I've sent this post to them asking for explanations for why they might need some of these things.
 
Appreciate the community stepping up to help here
 
In general as long as it doesn't do anything harmful, I have it installed right now and I can definitely see the value of having some of these "handy dandy" things that it does all in one place versus being scattered across sub-menus on the device or multiple apps... ESPECIALLY for less experienced users who don't want to research how to do all this stuff.

I think the issue here though is understanding how these things work.  
Any app running in the background does a few things, I can register 'wake locks', which will keep the phone awake while it processes whatever its doing.
Apps that are using lots of wakelocks and aren't actually giving you any benefit should be removed.
Killing processes that are using lots of wakelocks is good, but what if the process doing the killing is keeping the phone awake while looking for these apps? Not good..
There are apps available that will track wakelock usage. Some big offenders are any messaging apps (looking at you facebook), they like to constantly check for new messages and hence like to keep the phone awake
 
As for RAM, like I said, unused RAM is WASTED RAM, when the phone needs more RAM for an active app, it will dispose of memory for background app in favour of the active app.
 
Now of course we get into more depth, a lot of apps and app developers never really think of their memory footprint, some apps will use and keep in memory lots of information in poor formats that it needent too.
 
If you feel your phone isn't performing at its optimal speed, find out whats causing the problem and sort it, don't just mask it by anther process that claims to help but could be causing more issues.
 
Viruses? Never seen a phone infected with a virus, where as its possible, its no where near as common as the windows ecosystem.
 
As for crapfiles, that does seem pretty useful though.
 
Finally if you really want to keep your phone fresh and don't mind some hassle, then rooting and using greenify, ApOps, custom ROMs/Kernels because you will get a lot better performance and the ability to have much finer control over your phone.

This too, android security is very strong, and with lollipop bringing even more with SELinux things couldn't get much more secure.

I think the issue here though is understanding how these things work.  
Any app running in the background does a few things, I can register 'wake locks', which will keep the phone awake while it processes whatever its doing.
Apps that are using lots of wakelocks and aren't actually giving you any benefit should be removed.
Killing processes that are using lots of wakelocks is good, but what if the process doing the killing is keeping the phone awake while looking for these apps? Not good..
There are apps available that will track wakelock usage. Some big offenders are any messaging apps (looking at you facebook), they like to constantly check for new messages and hence like to keep the phone awake
 
As for RAM, like I said, unused RAM is WASTED RAM, when the phone needs more RAM for an active app, it will dispose of memory for background app in favour of the active app.
 
Now of course we get into more depth, a lot of apps and app developers never really think of their memory footprint, some apps will use and keep in memory lots of information in poor formats that it needent too.
 
If you feel your phone isn't performing at its optimal speed, find out whats causing the problem and sort it, don't just mask it by anther process that claims to help but could be causing more issues.
 
Viruses? Never seen a phone infected with a virus, where as its possible, its no where near as common as the windows ecosystem.
 
As for crapfiles, that does seem pretty useful though.
 
Finally if you really want to keep your phone fresh and don't mind some hassle, then rooting and using greenify, ApOps, custom ROMs/Kernels because you will get a lot better performance and the ability to have much finer control over your phone.

This too, android security is very strong, and with lollipop bringing even more with SELinux things couldn't get much more secure.

Drug dealers:
Refer to their clients as “users”. “The first one’s free!” Have important South-East Asian connections (to help move the stuff). Strange jargon: “Stick”, “Rock”, “Dime bag,” “E”. Realize that there’s tons of cash in the 14- to 25-year-old market. Job is assisted by industry’s producing newer, more potent mixes. Often seen in the company of pimps and hustlers. Their product causes unhealthy addictions. Do your job well, and you can sleep with sexy movie stars who depend on you. Software developers:Refer to their clients as “users”. “Download a free trial version…”. Have important South-East Asian connections (to help debug the code). Strange jargon: “SCSI”, “ISDN”, “Java”, “RTFM”. Realize that there’s tons of cash in the 14- to 25-year-old market. Job is assisted by industry’s producing newer, faster machines. Often seen in the company of marketing people and venture capitalists. Their product causes unhealthy addictions – DOOM. Quake. SimCity. Duke Nukem 3D.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     A group of ten top software engineers is sent to a class for aspiring managers. The teacher walks in and asks this question:
“You work for a software company which develops avionics (software that controls the instruments of an airplane). One day you are taking a business trip. As you get on the plane you see a plaque that says this plane is using a beta of the software your team developed. Who would get off?”
Nine developers raised their hands. The teacher looked at the tenth and asked, “Why would you stay on?”
The tenth said, “if my team wrote the software, the plane would not get off the ground, much less crash.”
 
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
A pessimistic programmer sees the array as half empty.
An optimistic programmer sees the array as half full.
A Real Programmer sees the array as twice as big as it needs to be and calls realloc().
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
“Knock, knock.”
“Who’s there?”
very long pause….
“Java.”
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
A grade school teacher was asking his pupils what their parents did for a living. "Tim, you be first. What does your mother do all day?"
Tim stood up and proudly said, "She's a doctor."
"That's wonderful. How about you, Amy?"
Amy shyly stood up, scuffed her feet and said, "My father is a mailman."
"Thank you, Amy" said the teacher. "What does your parent do, Billy?"
Billy proudly stood up and announced, "My daddy plays piano in a ŵhorehouse."
The teacher was aghast and went to Billy's house and rang the bell. Billy's father answered the door. The teacher explained what his son had said and demanded an explanation. Billy's dad said, "I'm actually a system programmer specializing in TCP/IP communication protocol on UNIX systems. How can I explain a thing like that to a seven-year-old?"
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
Programming is like sex:
One mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
Two strings walk into a bar and sit down. The bartender says, “So what’ll it be?”
The first string says, “I think I’ll have a beer quag fulk boorg jdk^CjfdLk jk3s d#f67howe%^U r89nvy~~owmc63^Dz x.xvcu”
“Please excuse my friend,” the second string says, “He isn’t null-terminated.”
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
A programmer is walking along a beach and finds a lamp. He rubs the lamp, and a genie appears. 'I am the most powerful genie in the world. I can grant you any wish, but only one wish.' The programmer pulls out a map, points to it and says, 'I'd want peace in the Middle East.' The genie responds, 'Gee, I don't know. Those people have been fighting for millenia. I can do just about anything, but this is likely beyond my limits.'
The programmer then says, 'Well, I am a programmer, and my programs have lots of users. Please make all my users satisfied with my software and let them ask for sensible changes.' At which point the genie responds, 'Um, let me see that map again.'
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
(This is actually a comment my friend made in a lecture when the lecturer asked how to get a random number, first year btw, most people in the room had no clue, but made some of us chuckle)
Lecturer: So, how do we get a random number in C++?
Friend: return 4; !
(two minutes later i find this.. http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/random_number.png, I forgot he was an xkcd reader)
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
A byte walks into a bar. The bartender looks at it for a while and asks: "What's wrong?"
"Parity error."
"Ah, I thought you looked a bit off."
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
The computer is mightier than the pen, the sword, and usually, the programmer.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
Have you heard about the new Cray super computer? It’s so fast, it executes an infinite loop in 6 seconds.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
Okay, thats enough I think...

I just want to say, as someone who actively uses all OS types (Windows at work, Linux on my desktop, OSX and linux on my laptop), the unified vitual file system is just plain better, and heres my reasons why
Reasons why 1 large virtual file system is better than multiple drives,The good about multiple drives.Good separation of concerns, emphasizes easy sorting.Um.. (help me here.. I can't actually think of anything else)The bad about multiple drivesDrive letters are not standard, remove one drive and add another and the letter the first had the second one could then be givenDrive letters are limited, 26 Letters, some DOS systems allow up to 32 mounts through the use of some symbols, but theres normally a hard limit set of 26If a drive is mounted as example D, then something refers to a file on D:/somefile.txt, then the drive is removed, another mounted as D:/ then the first drive is then mounted again, but can't take the assignment D:/ because it is in use the thing trying to access the file on D:/ won't find that file, because it is now E:/somefile.txtThe good about a virtual file systemDrives can be mounted anywhere, standard says drives should have their own folder under /media/, one for each drive being used, a temporary mountpoint /mnt can also be used if the drive is only temporary. Example: I have my media drive(actually just a partition that can be read by both OSX and Linux) mounted as /home/lutzee/media. It makes sense for me to have my media files in my home directory, the file permissions are inherited from the parent folder (my home folder).Allows for unambiguous use of different file systems to work togetherAllows for the easy creation of RAM Disks e.g: mkdir /mnt/ramdisk && mount -t tmpfs -o size=2g tmpfs /mnt/ramdiskAllows for easy movement of any key folder of the OS to be moved to another drive without fuss e.g: So you want /Windows/System32 to actually be on a different drive? Great, copy the files, delete the original and set the new drive to mount under /Windows/System32, no big deal.Allows for the mounting of things like ISO files files as part of the file system, no need for a 3rd party virtual disk drive. Just mount them as a directory and you are good to go.The bad about a virtual file systemIts not obvious what drive something is on unless you actually check the mount pointsNeeds some more hands on management some of the time, some environments manage mounts for you

I agree, there were many times where he expected things to be windows like, when frankly, they are different OSs with different ideas. In fact I feel that windows has many more issues than OS X.
 
I use windows at work, and to be honest, its hardly windows anymore. I can reel off at least 12 different 3rd party applications I use to make it bearable. On OSX for me its just 2, Karibiner and HyperDock.
 
Admittedly window management on OSX isn't great, but I'd say its exactly comparable to windows. But then I use a tiling window manager in linux so I'm very biased on what is good window management. And I think that workspaces are better than an ultrawide, in fact I use workspaces on linux on my multimonitor desktop.
 
Not a fair review because hw was looking for a windows system in a system that is not windows.

I just want to say, as someone who actively uses all OS types (Windows at work, Linux on my desktop, OSX and linux on my laptop), the unified vitual file system is just plain better, and heres my reasons why
Reasons why 1 large virtual file system is better than multiple drives,The good about multiple drives.Good separation of concerns, emphasizes easy sorting.Um.. (help me here.. I can't actually think of anything else)The bad about multiple drivesDrive letters are not standard, remove one drive and add another and the letter the first had the second one could then be givenDrive letters are limited, 26 Letters, some DOS systems allow up to 32 mounts through the use of some symbols, but theres normally a hard limit set of 26If a drive is mounted as example D, then something refers to a file on D:/somefile.txt, then the drive is removed, another mounted as D:/ then the first drive is then mounted again, but can't take the assignment D:/ because it is in use the thing trying to access the file on D:/ won't find that file, because it is now E:/somefile.txtThe good about a virtual file systemDrives can be mounted anywhere, standard says drives should have their own folder under /media/, one for each drive being used, a temporary mountpoint /mnt can also be used if the drive is only temporary. Example: I have my media drive(actually just a partition that can be read by both OSX and Linux) mounted as /home/lutzee/media. It makes sense for me to have my media files in my home directory, the file permissions are inherited from the parent folder (my home folder).Allows for unambiguous use of different file systems to work togetherAllows for the easy creation of RAM Disks e.g: mkdir /mnt/ramdisk && mount -t tmpfs -o size=2g tmpfs /mnt/ramdiskAllows for easy movement of any key folder of the OS to be moved to another drive without fuss e.g: So you want /Windows/System32 to actually be on a different drive? Great, copy the files, delete the original and set the new drive to mount under /Windows/System32, no big deal.Allows for the mounting of things like ISO files files as part of the file system, no need for a 3rd party virtual disk drive. Just mount them as a directory and you are good to go.The bad about a virtual file systemIts not obvious what drive something is on unless you actually check the mount pointsNeeds some more hands on management some of the time, some environments manage mounts for you