this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2023
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I call bullshit on this post. Since Windows 10 you can just double click a zip file and it opens up like any other directory (even if it isn't) and shows you the files.
If this zoomer wanted to open it they'd obviously double click.
So calm down boomers, this is fiction.
If it's an executeable with dependencies in the archive it might not run without being unpacked.
The greentext says "he asks for some files", that doesn't sound like an executable, which usually gets blocked by the mail system anyway (even in a zip, if there's no password on it).
But yeah, that is one way to have it broken, besides Windows refusing to run a random .exe
Can't email executables.
Outlook blocks it by default so if you allow exe's to be emailed.. you're pretty stupid.
Good for you??
Ladies and gentlemen, the Ego at work
Or maybe you're not stupid and don't require a program to automatically block files for you since you know what you're doing.
You can't email exes, but once you zip it there is no exe, it's a zip. If outlook automatically unpacks and scans the zip (which i doubt) you can always password lock the archive
Edit: And my email them i mean attach them in outlook
They may have emailed it to the zoomer, and the zoomer attempted to open it on their iphone or something that doesn't have native zip compatibility.
iOS supports zip by default.
Slightly inconsistently I see!
Maybe it was actually a .7z
Maybe they downloaded the zip and then immediately tried to open it in a specific program through the open dialog giving them an error. I see similar mistakes with my parents - they have no concept of where files are, it's just "on the computer" because they rely so heavily on "smart" file picker dialogs that show you everything recent or by a file type no matter where it's actually located.
Not super tech literare... Is there even a reason to unzip the files if you just want to grab one of them? I kust assumed windows is unzipping it into some weird temporary memory anyway to show me them, so a file is a file?
I mean the file is zipped, as in compressed. So it might just look like a file, but if you open it inside the zip (with file explorer) Windows does have to decompress the file in the background to show it to you.
Which is obviously slightly slower than if you unzip the file and put it somewhere and then open it, but you won't really notice the difference except we're talking about massive files.
And of course if you make changes to the file you can't save it (except to a new file) as it gets opened up as read only.
If you just want to store the file and view it every now and then I don't see a reason to unzip it. And you can always do that later anyway.
It makes the file smaller, making it easier to send over networks.
Just the other day I had to tell someone to unzip first before they could patch the rom (they were going to play some romhack on an emulator); I don't know how old they were but clearly there can be scenarios where someone has a zip file and don't know what to do with it or use it.
I don't even know what the rom was or which emulator they were using, because I just told them if they google
Rom Patcher JSthat's going to work for whatever file type it is, because according to them the problem was that the patcher they had didn't work...But as it turns out they were trying to use the .zip archive as the patch file, so I then had to explain to them that they need to extract it first.
And afterwards the patcher they had did work so I don't think they even used
Rom Patcher JSin the end.That's also more of a Windows issue than a user issue. I absolutely hate that file types are hidden by default in file explorer, makes the whole thing feel unusable. First option I change whenever I touch a Windows PC.
So besides the icon you can't see at first glance as a casual user that it's a zip file. And a ROM most likely had an icon the user wasn't used to, so they didn't notice something was wrong :-/
Right, I forget about that every time until I'm reminded of it. It's the first thing I change along with showing hidden files when helping someone. (Even if what they need help with is unrelated)
Administrators can disable this, so I think the larger point is: if a tech literate person receives a zip file, they understand that it is in fact a compressed archive that can contain one or more files and directories, and that you need an archive tool to extract the contents, whereas a tech illiterate person doesn't understand this and expects it to just be handled magically when they double click on it and are stumped when that doesn't work.
Double clicking works for 99% of file types. So if I send you a pair of Excel files in a zip and you double click it under Windows 10 or 11, it will just show you the Excel files and you can even open them. Not sure what your point is here.
You're completely missing the point.
The point is that when the double click magic doesn't work for one reason or another, for example because the administrator disabled this feature with a group policy or because the file associations got messed up, the tech illiterate person does not know what to do because they don't grasp the underlying concept.