Odd Thoughts

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I’ve been porting some code over to Linux and in the process I’ve discovered what slow really is. I tend to work on only one computer system, my PowerBook G4, so I loaded up SuSE 8.2 Linux into Virtual PC. I’m not sure I understood what slow really is until now. It’s painfully slow, compared to running Windows XP on Virtual PC. I suspect that what’s really going on is the lack of optimization for Linux and a really slow gcc compiler. Ah, well — the price one pays for carrying around a single computer.

On another note, I’ve started reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig. It’s been on my reading list for a long time, but I had never gotten around to it. I picked it up at the urging of a friend who said that the book was “me”. Well, as a motorcyclist (HD Road King), I could definitely relate to much of what Pirsig says is the beauty of motorcycling. One quote I just read really stood out to me:

The number of rational hypotheses that can explain any given phenomenon is infinite.

I’ve been rolling that around in my head for the last few hours since I first read it and it’s just a fascinating statement. I’d love to say something about it, but you know, there’s just nothing to add. Just enjoy it.

If You Manage Disk Storage, Get Ready To Find A New Career

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A colleague of mine told me recently that IT companies who sell disk management products will be out of business soon because of how cheap disk storage has become (similarly those of you who have made a career out of managing disk storage will need to find a new job soon). Case in point — I just purchased a LaCie d2 triple interface hard drive. For about $300 (including shipping), I just added 250 GB of storage to my network. Folks, that’s pushing really hard on about a $1 per GB (in this configuration $1.20 per GB). And this an external drive with USB 2.0, Firewire 400 and Firewire 800 — triple interface — in a sleek metal case.

And that’s nothing. You can also buy a 1 TB unit from these guys for about $1200 (I almost did!). If you are looking for more storage, this is the unit to get — it’s about the least expensive on the market and it appears to be well constructed and elegant.

I bought the unit because of the music and photos clogging my puny 40 GB hard disk in my P4 system. The firewire drives are snappy from a disk access perspective. It feels plenty fast for anything I’d ever use it for. My biggest complaint is that Microsoft doesn’t support formatting the drive as FAT32 for units this large, so I had to go NTFS. That’s going to limit my ability to plug the drive into my PowerBook but I don’t really anticipate doing that real soon anyway. Hell, maybe I’ll just buy a second drive if I need to have on for the Mac.

The point is that disk storage is getting so cheap that the companies involved in the disk management business are going to be out of it soon. If you can buy a terabyte for $1000, who needs to manage disk storage?

Time To Stick It To The Music Industry (follow-up)

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It pays to read k2.com. Not always, but definitely in this case. Just to refresh your memory, I posted an entry here about a class action suit against the music industry for price fixing called the CD Minimum Advertised Price Antitrust Litigation Settlement, urging you to sign up at their website. I was pessimistic, having seen efforts like this fail before, that any money was actually going to arrive as a result.

Boy, was I wrong. Just a day or two ago a check for $13.86 arrived in the mail, courtesy of the Attorney General of Virginia, Jerry Kilgore. This is what it looks like:

The note attached to the check reads in part:

Dear Virginia Music Purchaser:As Attorney General for the State of Virginia, I am pleased to enclose payment for your claim in the settlement of the Compact Disc Minimum Advertised Price Antitrust Litigation. The lawsuit was brought by the Attorneys General of 43 states and three territories and by counsel for Private Class Plaintiffs on behalf of purchasers of music CDs. In accordance with the terms of the court-approved settlement, payment is being made to music purchasers who filed a valid and timely claim.

...

It is a pleasure to bring this matter to a satisfactory conclusion and to return value to consumers who purchased CDs while the challenged pricing policies were in effect.

Jerry W. Kilgore
Attorney General of Virginia
Well, thanks Jerry!

How to never lose Pepsi’s iTunes giveaway

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I’m neither a Pepsi fan nor an iTunes fan, but this was too funny to pass up. Basically, if you tip a Pepsi bottle about 25 degrees from horizontal, you can read the cap and tell whether or not it’s a winner. Macmerc’s website has photos with circles and arrows to make sure you do it correctly.

So those of you who want a few free songs and don’t mind the taste of Pepsi, knock yourselves out :-).