While NTFS hit the scenes with the promise -- or rather the common misunderstanding -- that file fragmentation was a thing of the past, the reality we live with is copious fragmentation, significantly slowing many operations (NTFS is certainly better than FAT, but in no way does it eliminate fragmentation). Hard drives have gotten much bigger, and throughputs have increased significantly, but the time it takes to go from one file fragment to another has barely improved at all in over two decades.
While I sporadically use various defragmenting tools (including having PageDefrag in my startup), the optimal solution would be a bootable CD, allowing me to 100% error check and defragment entire volumes in one pass, as quickly as possible -- no contention over the device, and no files blocked from defragmentation (both of which cause online defragments to be incomplete, and terribly slow).
A Google search has turned up nothing of the sort (presumably the defragment/check utility would have to be Linux or *BSD based to have the operating system infrastructure available, while complying with license conditions. Such a utility could easily be included with a Knoppix or other bootable CD distribution), so I thought I'd throw this one out:
Anyone know of such a utility/bootable CD? Preferrably one that is trustworthy, and even commercial if that's the case. It'd be optimal if defragmentation could space-pack, preferrably with some sort of logic, such as putting bootup files in sequence and in the highest-throughput area of the drive, etc.
Like most professionals in the technology field, I jump to Google and other search engines fairly frequently, in pursuit of hints and documentation to help with various technology dilemmas. A quick search on the web and the archives of newsgroups usually saves a tremendous amount of documentation diving and experimentation.
In return for the huge benefit that other people's documented successes, failures, and experiences bring, it has long motivated me to "pay it forward" by posting technology information online myself, hoping to help some future information seekers (on a similar vein, whenever I get a worthwhile answer on the newsgroups, I usually make it a habit of hanging around and answering several questions myself, returning the favour to the community). If the search logs are to be believed, over the years quite a few people have found pertinent information here regarding their software development problems or questions.
Lately I've been noticing a decreasing utility-versus-search time ratio, however, with quality declining largely as a result of a growing number of high-pagerank sites feeding cloaked/phantom pages to the Google search engine. Google sees a question/response that correlates closely with what the information seeker is asking, yet a visit by a real user (rather than a search engine spider) quickly finds only the question, with the answer suppressed until the user a) goes through an irritating, arduous process to sign up as a member on yet another infrequently visited edge site that'll likely sell their email address and bombard them with endless ads, b) signs up for some sort of pay membership. Given that many of these sites are simply siphoning their content from the Usenet or other forums, I'm never going to bother with either option, instead hitting back and following the next link, often to find the same sort of nonsense.
Somehow a small number of these phantom page sites, most of them seemingly linked to by no one legitimate, have taken over the top rankings on Google for a huge range of technical searches. Somehow they haven't been banned by Google yet, despite the fact that cloaked pages are expressly forbidden (if the search engine sees the answer, then any random visitor should immediately see the answer by following the search link, as the search engine hint implies that the immediate page contains the result).
If they feel justified in forcing registration to read often coopted content, or the right to charge a membership, I have absolutely no problem with that -- in fact I think the net would be a better place if there were more commercial opportunities encouraging even more intellectual investments. However they shouldn't fraudulently mislead search engines, and search users, and instead should rely upon normal advertising and word-of-excellence for their great utility. Otherwise they should fold, joining the heap of useless websites that could only fool users into visiting.
Don't waste our bloody time! Google shouldn't be acting by implicit complicity in these irritating schemes.
Speaking of the problem of apparent phantom pages, today I happened to be looking for CodeSmith, a free (albeit crippleware for as long as I can remember, and not freeware as the author continually claims) code generation tool that I had fond memories of several years back. Naturally I begin the search with codesmith freeware.
Great, so the page in question apparently talks about the freeware version of CodeSmith. Only it doesn't, and the text in question doesn't appear anywhere on the linked page. Go ahead -- look at that page and search the source for freeware.
In reality the obsolete and deprecated freeware/crippleware version exists on a totally different page (one which doesn't seem to be referenced anywhere else on the CodeSmith page). So why is my time being wasted with the first, desperate-to-turn-a-sale page? Why is Google entirely misleading me about the contents of said page? This sort of bait-and-switch has to stop.
Completely offtopic, but forcing people to register and anxiously wait for a download key to download a crippled, time-limited version is enormously irritating. It really pushes my patience when I just want to validate a product, almost certain of it turning to a multi-license sale, and finding that I'm forced to go through some B.S. that will inevitably yield annoying sales emails and followups.
Just let me download the demo, and if it's good I'll buy. If it isn't, you don't deserve the right to harrass me with promotions and petitions.
I've been playing with Team Foundation Server, Whidbey (Visual Studio 2005), and Yukon (SQL Server 2005) since early in the beta cycles. All three of them are remarkable products, with enormous advances over their predecessors (in the case of TFS, I'm spuriously considering Visual SourceSafe the predecessor, although TFS is a elephant compared to the mouse of VSS), and all of them should be critical components for anyone developing in the Microsoft camp.
All three of them also happen to be a little unpolished, with odd little quirks and errata, hilariously incomplete documentation, and a tendency towards resource hoggishness.
One thing I've found remarkable, however, given that the three of them have been in final form for anywhere from two months to over half a year, is how little real information and first-hand accounts are available online. I'm continually hitting roadblocks where there are marginal functions or incomplete documentation, and it's surprizing to find zero references to the same problems or questions on any of the normal forums (e.g. Google Groups, online searches, etc). Among the development community, outside of the desperate-to-get-anointed-free-support-MVP crowd, they just don't have the aura of excitement they probably deserve.
Given that there are literally millions of developers and technology hobbyists out there, it's usually the case that any problems one faces are well trodden, and a quick search on the newsgroup usually yields exactly the answer one needs, so this dearth of time-travel support really is disconcerting.
The only conclusion I can draw is that there simply aren't that many developers seriously using these technologies. Visual Studio 2005 is of course seeing some use, but there are still huge armies of developers sticking with 2003 (given the break between .NET 1.1 and 2.0). A lot of SQL shops are still taking a wait-and-see approach with 2005. Team Foundation Server, primarily because of the cost of the Team editions, and the cost of a TFS Server license if you grow past a 5-user team, seems to be fairly rare.
We had the Cogeco Digital Home Phone service installed last week, and I thought it worthwhile to document for searchers who might be looking for information on this service.
As we already subscribed to Cogeco's high speed internet, the installer basically came in and disconnected the Bell copper pair from the internal twisted-pair network at the demarcation, replaced the cable modem in my office with a new, bulky, VoIP-equipped modem (bulky because it includes a small UPS battery at keeps it running for 8 hours of power outage. Of course I could extend duration longer via an external UPS, which I was considering for the office anyways), and then ran a phone line from it to a nearby phone jack, thereby providing phone service in the traditional way on the other jacks in the home.
Installation was absolutely painless and quick, and the internet part of the equation is better than ever (download rates come in at just under 900KB/second. I was super happy when it was 150KB/s, then 300KB/s, then 600KB/s, then 750KB/s, and now this).
The phone service is absolutely superb: There is "local" calling throughout the continental North America, around the clock, at no addtional charge, which is a huge feature, and the service includes caller display, voice mail, 3-way calling, and so on. Operations are almost identical to Bell (e.g. the voicemail system has largely the same controls), and voice quality is indistinguishable from a normal old phone line -- the quality is perfect, and there is no apparent latency (I was expecting a cell-phone like latency -- which leads to people not accustomed to cell phones talking over each other -- and was surprized that it doesn't seem to have it).
The technical information that I've seen is that Cogeco has dedicated channels specifically for voice, using QoS technologies to ensure that voice always gets priority, and there are no outages or hiccups because you're downloading the new bundle of Windows service packs.
I feel foolish that we've taken this long to sign up for this service. While I worked for Bell Canada for a while, and hugely respect many of the people who work there, I have no love lost for them as a customer. Personally I find their billing practices reprehensible (such as the continually change "First Rate" plan, the rewriting of prime-time, or the fact that they charge you as much as possible, but if you consider switching providers suddenly new discounted rates will appear. I have great distaste for that sort of "as much as the customer will bear" type of billing). We've been very satisfied Cogeco customers for almost five years now, and now they've grown from our internet, television (including digital and movie networks), to also being our phone provider.
Amazing how much service is being shipped down that coaxial cable. I remember the arguments years back, debating ADSL versus cable, when the naysayers were convinced that soon enough every cable modem user would suffer under tremendous overuse on the "shared" medium. I'm still a very happy customer.
[Given that people usually only bother posting negative reviews and impressions, I'll add the following statement: I received no consideration by Cogeco for posting this positive entry, and I'm not biased towards them in any way -- I don't own Cogeco stock, and I'm not friends or family with any of their employees or agents]
On the topic of food, my wife and I have a dirty little secret: Every now and then we give our young children a couple of Fruit Loops (the cereal) as a treat. Normally we limit this to home -- with the curtains drawn and the family committed to a vow of silence -- but recently my wife made the social faux-pas of actually packing some for an outing.
It wasn't surprizing to me when the "I am the expert of parenting everyone else's kids" looks started coming our way: The weak of this planet prop up their existence by spending their waking hours judging everyone else, and there are few things that can be openly critiqued with muttered comments and conveyed expressions as children (I especially enjoy going to loud, boistrous family restaurants, where glasses are clinking and conversations are loud, and having angry-at-life individuals casting glares if my children dare to open their mouths, as if they're having a fine dinner at an exclusive restaurant, and their foie gras, though strangely they cower under my return gesture. I have well-behaved, polite children, yet I've seen this sort of look far too many times to tolerate it anymore).
The reason that I'm open to occasional Fruit Loops, and I refuse to buy into the notion that they're some sort of brain-addling toxin, is because I base my perception of reality upon facts rather than conventional beliefs. In the case of Fruit Loops, an entire cup of the stuff, dry, contains only around 12g of sugar. Sounds daunting, until you realize that a cup of fruit juice contains from 20 - 45g of sugar (not to mention having negligible nutritional content apart from the Vitamic C that they stuff into every "fruit" product). A little 100ml container of yogurt (the kind that people actually eat) has about 7g of sugar.
This is only the start of the sugars that are in virtually every product, which is why we started quantifying products by "how many bowls of fruit loops" (e.g. "Wow! One bar of this is 4 bowls of fruit loops!").
So a couple of fruit loops really isn't that evil in the grand scheme of things. Or at least that's what I'm telling myself.
Some educational shows for development shops and development managers can be found, surprizingly, on the Food Network (US, Canada, not to mention that many are played on, and often originate from, various other "lifestyle" type channels).
Some of these shows are homegrown, such as Restaurant Makeover and Opening Soon, while others are imports, like the excellent Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, Jamie Oliver's School Dinners, and Jamie's Great Escape.
You've probably gained the impression that I'm an epicurean, interested in the operations of the restaurants, and probably dreaming of the day when I can open my own ("We'll make the best French onion soup ever!"). While I do like well-prepared menu delights, the food is the least interesting part of these shows, in my opinion. And I have zero interest in opening a restaurant (the dream-crushed rate among restaruranteurs has to rank among the worst for passion pursuits), and like small-talk as much as I like getting a tax bill.
Instead the real message of these shows boil down to -
Situations analogous to the software development process endlessly play out between chefs and his staff (team managers/leads and their team members), the chef and the front-room staff (team managers/leads and business partners), and the restaurant and customers (the organization and end users). Many times the solutions parallel how the similar situation would be solved in the software development field.
If you relax to television on occasion, and mourn the summertime (speaking to the Northern hemisphere in that statement) dearth of original programming, check out some of these shows for an informative eye-opener.
We're the chefs and menu planners and sous chefs and pastry chefs of the digital world.
For close to two months now, I've been rather negligent of this blog. The reasons are numerous, however the following is a list of the primary causes.
Thanks for reading along, and have a fantastic day and week ahead!
Dennis