I’m currently moving about a whole bunch of smaller files in Windows 7 (about 400,000 files). I was getting frustrated with the abysmal rate at which Windows is able to move files around. Even moving just one folder into another one causes Explorer to start “discovering” the entire source dir, which is utterly pointless in the first place as there’s just one node to consider and to relink in the MFT. One wonders why it always does that. It didn’t do so before Vista.

Anyway – adding injury to insult, these files need to be imported in and processed by an application which is rather poorly written, making it run out of memory when it is fed much more than 4,000 files at a time. So, I have to move batches of about 4,000 files into separate folders before importing them, and to do this I have to use Explorer. The move operations, as mentioned, are incredibly slow, maxing out at 25 items per second, sometimes dropping to 5 items/sec, generally hovering at about 15 items/sec. I was wondering if the problem was the files lists in the source and target Explorer windows being continually refreshed as items were moved in and out of them, and so tried to navigate away from them, even closing the windows entire, without effect.

Then, by accident, I discovered that if I selected a batch of files from the bottom of the list in the source window, the move operation was massively faster, running at 350-500 items/sec! That’s a performance factor of ~ 14 to 100, in other performing, compared to the previous runs, at between 1,400% and 10,000% effectiveness. Go figure!

Not having access to the Windows source code, one can only guess at what kind of code disaster lies behind this behavior. But regardless, remembering this trick can prove very helpful when you don’t feel like spending an entire day looking a green bars very slowly moving east.

These issues, and the effect of this trick, seem to happen according to Windows’ current mood, though. Sometimes you get to drag-and-drop a folder with 200,000 files into another folder instantly, at other times it’ll spend 30 seconds examing a 100-file folder. Similarly, sometimes (about 1 in 4 so far) the forementioned trick has no effect, and you’re looking at green bars again. Your mileage may vary

So, the Electronic Frontier Foundation wants me to buy the “Humble Bundle” – a pay-what-you-think-is-fair financed bundle of computer games. Not only that, but you get a choice of who to pay, too.

I went to the site and started reading – primary concern being, of course, “will it run on Linux?” I scrolled down and a pie chart caught my eye. The statistics for the previous Humble Bundle installment. An event that apparently resulted in the raising of $500,000 to EFF:

Now, while Windows as a platform is the largest contributor, per user paying it’s also the smallest one, as you can see by the average purchase price by platform to the left. Actually, on average, a Linux user has coughed up about three times the amount a Windows user has. And about twice as much as the average Mac user.

Now, why is that? Well, I’d like to think that we’re just better people, but that would be stretching it a bit Either way, with more than 132,000 purchases it’s damn hard to dismiss as statistical error. Given that any PC these days is hard to get without Windows pre-installed, it’s not like we have the extra money left to spend that we didn’t use on the OS. What do you think?

Sitting here reading feeds. Two consecutive posts from TechCrunch:

http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/14/local-is-focal-street-fight-gives-the-local-industry-a-source-for-news-and-analysis/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29

http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/14/ioxus-21-million-energystorage/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29

One is about real value, real innovation where investments will generate real return, where the other is pop piggy-backing on services piggy-backing on trends with a monolithic trend beacon still not generating revenue. Yet the pig is snubbing out $6 billion?

Are we already knee-deep in the next IT bubble waiting to burst as a horrid aftershock to the economic crisis a few years back? There’s so much money being funneled into non-revenue generating business these days… These months… These years…

Just me?

Heh. This seriously speaks to the kid in me. Just set up a new RVM installation on a desktop box, and got a laugh from Wayne’s greeting,

Be sure to get head often as rvm development happens fast,
you can do this by running 'rvm get head' followed by 'rvm reload'
or opening a new shell
 
  w⦿‿⦿t
 
    ~ Wayne

‘rvm get head’ followed by ‘rvm reload’? Really? Hmmm… So is there an implicit ‘rvm release’ going on in-between there? w00t indeed!

Yeah, sorry, I know – very corny. But it is Friday!

So I was wondering if I just lost my internet connection.

Opened up a new tab in Chrome and bashed the keyboard, resulting in the search results for “rherg”.

Kinda surprised there’s a Brazilian consulting firm called RHER-G. Huh.

But if that wasn’t enough, there’s a guy or girl on Facebook called Wsrgerg Rherg?

Double-huh

You know, I just discovered that my “catchall@danielsmedegaardbuus.dk” address wasn’t really being picked up by my GMail account, so I’m currently wading through hordes of crappy spam e-mails from one.com.

So I got this one just now from wanita,

Hello, am a young single girl never marrid seeking true love for a long term relationship with marriage potentials,i am happy to contact you after going through your profile in ( www . jallers . dyndns . org ) us to be good friends or a lot more,you can contact me through mail so that i will send you my photos,till i hear  from you,bye and kisses!

Oh, wanita. So friendly for no apparent reason. So knowing me without actually knowing my email address. So… I don’t know, so everything! I accidentally wrote every-thong, but hell if that’s a mistake! So what if all my body’s blood is in my penis. She’ll wear TEN thongs for me if I tell her to.

Healthy kids have no fun, so everybody, light up them smokes, pour yourself a glass of absinth, and cook up that meth. My virtual gun is loaded, let’s play!

I’m inclined to throw in the mix that the Chinese pay less in taxes than Americans do. Does that make me any more eligible for playing Postal 3? I mean, …what would Heston say?

Just had to share this comment on this bit of news. It’s pure poetry.