technorabble

Software Engineering, Control, Measurement and Trust

ryan.technorabble@gmail.com — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 16:12:00 +0000

There is much clamor over this article, “Software Engineering, an idea whose time has come and gone?”, by Tom Demarco. I love it. At work, I know a manager who has the tag line “You can’t control what you can’t measure” posted on his office door. It’s always given me the heebie-jeebies. Tom hits one of the main points right on the head, that it implies “that control is an important aspect, maybe the most important, of any software project”, But as Tom admits, “it isn’t.”

The other half is the how it plays together with the the "What isn't easily measurable, doesn't exist" rule. Tom sees this too, and describes it like this:

“Now apply “You can’t control what you can’t measure” to the teenager. Most things that really matter—honor, dignity, discipline, personality, grace under pressure, values, ethics, resourcefulness, loyalty, humor, kindness—aren’t measurable. You must steer your child as best you can without much metric feedback.”

I don’t fully agree with his prescription, to require the product team to be ready to ship in any given week of development. Like the original guidance, there is a kernel of truth here, but an overreaching of application. There are many good reasons to pursue a “ready to ship” strategy, but you need to be flexible. You need to accept that there are some tasks that will break that goal. You cannot replace important subsystems without causing at least a bump, and sometimes you need to do that.

If you have the goal in place, but are flexible, then you can create a branch, do most of the work there, and once it reaches a certain level of maturity (no longer experimental), integrate. Integration will cause some pain, on both sides, and you have to balance between disruption to the mainline team, and your ready to ship goal, and the probability that if you insist on zero mainline pain that the branch may never merge.

But anyhow, though it sounds like a prescription, Tom says it’s an example, and as an example it’s perfectly valid.

Like raising a teenager, when you have important things, that aren’t easy to measure, what you need is trust. You need to be able to trust that your team understands your motivations, your goals. They need to be able to trust that you will treat them fairly if they help achieve those goals. A ready to ship strategy is just an example of “don’t do anything too crazy”. It can help build trust because management can visibly see progress, and because hopefully when management sees that they say “thank you”.

S+S Synchronization

ryan.technorabble@gmail.com — Mon, 04 May 2009 02:22:00 +0000

Software and Services (S+S) solutions have a number of attractions, but one common attraction is the ability to work offline. Some S+S solutions have clients that require persistent internet connections, or are read-only in offline mode. However, most developers that choose S+S as their architectural blueprint do so, at least in part, with a desire to provide users strong offline capabilities.

The difficulty with offline editing is the possibility of conflicts and the need to provide conflict resolution. Some applications ignore this difficulty because they are single user, and are willing to leave that user responsible for any data loss that results from accessing services directly, or from multiple clients without synchronizing work done offline on others. Other applications are entirely read-only, eliminating the difficulty in a different way.

Many applications don’t fit inside those constraints, and when they do inevitably synchronization is brought out as a topic. Discussions of synchronization often start out with a bit of wishful thinking. That is, someone, or many participants believe there is a synchronization black box they can throw data at and all will be automatically resolved. To my knowledge, that doesn’t exist. In fact, I’ll go as far as to say, that I believe it cannot exist. Unless you design your data to fit a strict structure that communicates your business rules, and those rules never require escalation to human judgment, such a system cannot correctly resolve all conflicts.

I’ve come to the conclusion that synchronization cannot be a black box. Synchronization requires more than read/write to be exposed to the developer. For S+S solutions, the synchronization architectures I prefer are those that expose more data to the client. There are a number of ways to implement that, but I’ll explain one of the simplest.

First, begin with a centralized master, your service, that is the authoritative source for data. This service needs to support two things for every synchronizable item. First, it needs an identifier that is guaranteed to be unique and unchanging over the lifetime of the item. Second it needs a versioning identifier. It could be a sequentially incremented number or timestamp, but I prefer another unique id.

Next, in your service, implement (or re-use) a read-only caching system. If this sounds pretty vanilla so far, that’s because it is. These first two steps can be achieved through the use of HTTP, URI’s and ETags.

Where many implementations go wrong is the next step, where they attempt to convert their cache into a read-write store. The most obvious problem with that choice is it breaks everything you’ve built so far, since a cache is one way. The other problem is you’ve implemented a store that has two sources of data, and have no mechanism to rationalize which one wins. You could create a mechanism, but there isn’t any perfect mechanism.

Instead of forcing the cache to transform into something more complex, leave it alone and create a separate store for modifications. The client is then responsible for attempting to keep that modified store as empty as possible by submitting the modifications to your services. Every submission is tagged with the versioning identifier of the item that was present in the cache when modification began. If this sounds like the HTTP “If-Match”, then you have the idea. Services should not accept modifications that are unaware of the content of the latest version they have accepted.

Now, if a submission is rejected, you’ve detected a conflict. Your options are many at this point. No option is perfect, and the choice is going to depend on many things, not the least of which are your user’s requirements. But no option has been eliminated yet. Without any additional implementation you have a first-in-wins strategy, which happens to be the safest bet without more complex insight into the data’s structure, or user intervention.

If you want a last-in-wins strategy, re-cache, update the versioning identifier and resubmit. Since this would potentially destroy a previous set of updates, it would be bad practice to do so without some kind of user prompt or notification.. but you and you’re users are in control, not the API.

If merging is necessary, the essential complexity of the merge itself remains, but not much else. You have a copy of the original version, you can retrieve a copy of the current version, and you have a copy of the modifications. Two-way merge, Three-way merge, automated merge, manual merge.. whatever is necessary is possible and not any more difficult than absolutely necessary.

How to load test: Step 1 – Create a realistic load

ryan.technorabble@gmail.com — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 03:39:00 +0000

Load testing isn’t the easiest job invented. Depending on your business model, load testing can vary from important to absolutely critical. So despite the pains, every project at least makes a token gesture toward load testing. Unfortunately, either knowingly, or unknowingly, it’s often not much more than that, a token gesture.

The primary failure in the average load test is not creating a realistic load. There are plenty of excuses for this. There aren’t any servers comparable to the production servers. It’s too hard to produce test data that simulates true data. Or worse, you don’t even know what production load will look like. Those aren’t minor obstacles, calling them excuses isn’t meant to trivialize them, it’s more a reflection of the true importance of load testing, and knowing that when you do it, you do it right.

The less and less realistic the load you generate, the more your test becomes performance analysis. Performance analysis is great, but load testing and performance analysis are different animals. You are doing yourself a disservice if you use a fishing rod to catch a great white, or a harpoon for goldfish. If half your team is trying to do performance analysis and half is trying to load test then you will waste time you wouldn’t with a clear mission.

There are other things that distinguish performance analysis from load testing, but the number one is the type of load you generate. A performance analysis load may sometimes resemble a true load, but it usually should not. A performance analysis load should be structured to make it easy to pinpoint performance issues. A true load makes this more difficult by being too complex or too chaotic. So unless you’re tuning something that only performs badly in complex or chaotic scenarios simplify and isolate for performance analysis.

Load testing, by definition, needs a true load, or as close to it as you can approximate. Load testing is a validation. Load testing is developing reasons to be confident that under expected conditions, your system won’t fall over. Load testing is about giving assurances that it’s not a bad idea to depend upon the reliability of your system.

So all that said, how do you create a realistic load? If your software is like most, there is one, or probably many points where in the real world, a user takes some action. Since in the real world you have lots of users, you’d ideally want to automate all of those steps. Sometimes that’s not that difficult, and if it’s not, that’s the path to take. There are tools that can simulate clicking “submit” on a web form. Many of those same tools can simulate filling it with some data, or even using an AJAX control. But all of this has limits. If you’re within those limits, take the easy path. If you’re not, you’re either going to have to take the next step, or settle for a sub-par load test.

Moving work from the server to the client is sometimes an effective strategy to improve scalability, among other possible benefits, but it’s definitely going to complicate your ability to automate your steps with cookie cutter solutions. There are two paths you can take in that situation. One choice is to start from scratch and use your knowledge of your software to generate data from a template, substituting in values coming from preceding steps, and maybe some randomness. The second is to reuse code from your application and wire those pieces together.

Which choice you make is going to depend on your code. Using your application code has many things going for it, but you have to surmount several common challenges. First, if you have thousands of users (or millions), you’ll need your application code to simulate more than one. No matter how minimal your application, it’s very unlikely you can run hundreds or thousands of copies of it on a single box at a time.

Depending on how well you meet the first challenge, you may also need to make sure your application code can run in parallel on the same hardware. Usually this means multiple processes. Why wouldn’t you need multiple processes? If you can make one instance of your application code simulate a large number of users, and thus consume the overall load generating capacity of the hardware, then the second challenge can be skipped.

Either way, with a large number of users, you may find that a single machine isn’t going to have the ability to generate sufficient load. If one, two or three machines are necessary you may feel happy with manually starting instances. At the least do yourself the favor of using a tool like PsExec to let you do that from a batch file or something.

Summary

Whatever path you’ve taken, you are now generating a load. The challenges aren’t over though. Now need to validate you’ve met your load and that it hasn’t caused anything to topple over. That means monitoring and analyzing stats and logs. And if you do find a problem, you’ll need to switch hats back into performance analysis to hone in on the exact cause and find a solution. Since those aren’t topics to be taken lightly, I’m reserve them for a future date.

How higher gas taxes benefit you

ryan.technorabble@gmail.com — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 19:33:00 +0000

The United States ought to raise the gas tax, and we ought to do it soon. There are so many good reasons its going to be hard to explain them all. To start with, we have 1 or 2 years until, crude oil prices start to climb again. We ought to be prepared for that when it happens and the best way to do that now is to pretend as if those prices are here today, when we can collect the money and send it to the Federal Treasury, rather than pay the price later to a Saudi sheik.

The second reason is both current and future prices. The more effectively we control demand, by making choices that won’t cost us in the future, the better we protect ourselves from high prices in the future too. In other words, we can delay the rebound in crude oil prices by an extra year or two, maybe even more, by dampening demand through a tax. Every Prius substituted for a SUV today lowers the pre-tax price of gasoline by some fraction in 2010, 2011, 2012, etc. It’s also non-linear. If demand stays below today’s production, prices will stay at today’s prices, or lower. If demand exceeds production, then all hell breaks lose again.

Those two reasons are symbiotic. I’ll illustrate with some hypotheticals. In the status quo scenario, no additional tax, gas might stay around $2.00/gallon for the next 2 years. But in the meantime, the economy may (hopefully) recover, and about a year from now with a good economy and low gas prices, I wouldn’t be surprised to see SUVs flying off the shelves all over again. Keep that up for a year, and demand could grow back from 19.5 mbd to 22mbd. If that happens, then certainly crude will skyrocket again, and we’ll see $4.00+ gas in later 2011.

On the other hand, if an additional 50-75 cent gas tax was added, I think we would hear a different message, and demand might even decline a little further, say 18.5 mbd. Here is an example of what the implications might be in terms of the amount of dollars sent tot he middle east, and the taxes collected. In the short term there would be some consumer costs, but many of these costs might be offset by tax reductions in other areas.

In the long term, consumer costs actually end up lower because a) they were prepared to use less gas, and b) demand was lower resulting in lower gas prices.

Most importantly, a 10% difference in demand can translate into a 50% difference in the amount of money sent to the middle east, of which we know a certain percent falls into the hands of terrorists. With any luck, the people of Saudi Arabia, Iran, or at least those with the checkbooks, will see terrorism as the first “discretionary” spending item and strangle those funds much more than 50%.

New Version of deSleeper, and manual.

ryan.technorabble@gmail.com — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 03:02:00 +0000

I’ve posted a new version of deSleeper, v2.0, to codeplex. This version adds some functions to help network administrators setup a couple hundred machines to work with deSleeper with fairly minimal effort. And to help the non-admin user (and probably the admin too…), I’ve finally put together a deSleeper manual. You’ll always be able to find it on codeplex, but here’s a little RSS copy too.

If you're setting up deSleeper in a network, you may want to read the deSleeper Setup & Architecture Guide as well. This guide will cover the features of deSleeper from simplest to most complex.

Wake Up!

If you're using deSleeper, the first screen you'll see is the Wake Up Page. If you're not setting up servers this might be the only tab you ever use.

To start off you need to supply information about the computer you're trying to wake up (the "target"), and how to get your request from your PC to the target.

Initially you have no targets configured, so click on the New Target button. You can type whatever you like in the Description field, it's for you alone. If you're using deSleeper, it's probably because you want to use the proxy functions. What's a proxy? It's a service that helps get a message from one place to another. If you setup the proxy, then I hope you know the host name, and if you didn't hopefully your friendly network guy can fill in the blanks. Either way, type the name into the proxy field.

You've got two choices for how to identify your target, MAC Address, and host name. If you've never heard of a MAC Address, don't fret, you only need one, and host will do fine. For more advanced users, MAC Address is a little more surefire (though a lot harder to memorize!).

Once that is sorted out, click on Wake Up Now, and you'll either see a nice little success message, or an ugly yellow error. Let's hope for the first.

Network Card Configuration

The second most likely place for a casual user to wander is the Network Card Configuration Page. There's not a lot here, but it consolidates three important items you'd have to hunt all over your PC for otherwise.

The first is you can find out your MAC Address here. Of course, it's the MAC Address of the PC you've just run deSleeper on, not the one you're trying to wake up, but there isn't anything preventing you from installing deSleeper to the PC you want to wake up. Actually everything on this page is best down on the PC you’re trying to wake up.

The second item here is the ability to enable you’re network card to listen for the “magic packets”. Such a nice name. Magic packets are the magic that takes a computer sipping 1 watt and turns it back on as if you walked over and pushed the power button.

Once deSleeper has given you a reliable way to wake up your PC remotely, you’ll want to configure the PC to use its built-in power saving features. You can configure these in more detail through your computer’s power options control panel, but for convenience the main setting, the sleep timeout can be updated here.

Service Installation

If no network admin has setup a proxy for you, and “Wake up a machine on your local network” isn’t working, it’s not hard to setup your own. All you need is a PC which will remain on. Most offices, unfortunately, have hundreds of these, so take advantage of one. You install a service through the Service Installation Page

The easiest thing to do is to install deSleeper on the machine you want to use as a proxy, come to this page and click Install. There is no need to change any of the default settings if you don’t understand them.

It will however be helpful to type the names of the machines you want to wake up into the Precache Hosts field, before clicking Install. This option makes your first wake up easier and reliable. It’s optional, but highly recommended.

The other option is to do a remote install. This function is really for more advanced users as it requires access rights the average network user won’t have, and some of the error messages that come back if you’re missing one of those rights are, somewhat of necessity, not all that user friendly.

One common gotcha of remote installs is that .NET 3.5 SP1 needs to be installed before you hit the Install button. To try and prevent confusion, by default, deSleeper checks to see if .NET (and the right version) is installed. But to do so requires a service, the Remote Registry Service, be enabled, which many users disable for security reasons. To skirt this issue, click suppress check for .NET. If one of the installs fails you may have to manually check if .NET is installed.

There is yet one more function available from this page. The Prepare Hosts button will take each PC in the Precache Hosts field and attempt to remotely enable the Wake-On-Lan setting on that PCs network card. Like remove service installs, this requires administrator, or close to it, access rights. For the techies, I’ll mention that this feature, and the remote install feature, is made possible by RCtrlX, a utility from Leon Sodhi. Thank you Leon!

Summary

So that’s about it, if you get an error message when doing anything, you’ve got a couple options. The first is to head over to the deSleeper discussion list. The client writes log entries to a file deSleeperClient.log, which is in the same folder as the executable, C:\Program Files\deSleeper (at least for now.. by all standards it should be in AppData but for now it’s in the much easier location).

The service writes most errors to the Application or System Event Logs, which you can get to through Event Viewer. As with all networking related tools, it helps to know a little about what your network is composed of, but in the interest of not overcomplicating this little guide, I’ll leave those as topics for another day.

deSleeper Version 1.11

ryan.technorabble@gmail.com — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 14:41:00 +0000

I’ve released a new version of deSleeper. This update provides an alternative way to “precache” hostnames in a kind of offline ARP table. Also fixes some errors that occurred when additional types of network cards (such as those VMWare installs) were present.

deSleeper Architecture

ryan.technorabble@gmail.com — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 20:30:00 +0000

I run an open-source project, deSleeper, on Codeplex. The purpose of this utility is quite simple. Allow users to remotely wake up their machines from low-power states. If users use these features they’ll find it more practical to have their PC’s off or in sleep mode more often, thus saving energy.

Every network card has the basics to make this work, but there are plenty of obstacles that can get in the way. The purpose of deSleeper is to give ways around those obstacles, and hopefully simplify the process as well. I think I’ve succeeded in the first goal, though the second is still a work in progress. It’s simpler than without deSleeper, but it isn’t average user simple.

While I work on that, anyone who uses deSleeper may find it helps to understand the architecture when you're unsure how to setup your system. I’ve endeavored to help you do this by writing an architecture and setup guide.

First, you should understand the components that are used for the entire interaction.

The three main components are the client, the proxy and the target.

Target - The machine that goes to sleep automatically or manually and needs to be reactivated remotely.
Client - The machine you're using when you want to wake up the client.
Proxy - The machine which listens for requests from clients and uses it's superior network access to get a magic packet to the network card of the target.

Understanding these components helps understand the steps necessary to set them up.

These steps are:

Configure the target's network interface. It is not always necessary, but many network cards do not have wake-on-LAN enabled by default. You don't need deSleeper to do this, but help you avoid hunting around in Device Manager deSleeper provides the "Network Card Configuration" tab. If you know how to do this without deSleeper's help you don't need to install deSleeper on the target.
Install Proxy Service - Clients usually have obstacles between them and the target. The proxy service needs to be installed on a machine physically located on a network that avoids these obstacles. The safest spot is connected to the same network switch, but depending on your network setup farther away may work as well. There are plenty of variables here so when in doubt closer is better. The "Service Installation" tab is only available if you install the full version. This tab helps configure the proxy service which will run in the background and boot with proxy machine.
Install Client - The easiest step, install your client. You can use the full version or the client only version.

Once everything is setup, all that is left to do is send a wake up request.

The requests use web-services calls to contact the proxy with the target information. Where this request is sent is the "destination". deSleeper also supports a "local" destination that does not use a proxy, but requires the client and target not to have obstacles in between each other.
Either the proxy, or if "local" the client, then constructs a "magic packet". Essentially a magic packet is a set of bytes in a simple pattern that the network card of the sleeping target can recognize it without the assistance of the CPU. When the network card recognizes a magic packet stamped with it's unique name (known as the MAC address), it sends messages to other components of the machine that turn on the CPU, memory, hard disk, etc, or take them out of super-low power states into operational states.
What can go wrong?

If the network card isn't watching for the magic packet it won't wake up the machine.
Magic packets are broadcast. Because the machine is off, it's not really possible to direct the request at the target. Networks limit the scope of broadcasts for many reasons. If the machine that broadcasts the magic packet is in a different scope from the target, the broadcast will never reach it.
When using the "Host Name" wake up method, it needs to be possible to resolve the Host Name into a MAC address, because the MAC address is a critical part of the magic packet. On most networks it's not possible to do this while a machine is off. For this reason, the proxies maintain a "cache" of host name and MAC address pairs. But to initialize this cache it's necessary to send a wake up request once while the machine is on. Somewhat counter-intuitive to send a wake up request while online, which is why I'm looking into some other solutions, but it works well after the single request. Cache's on a proxy survive shutdowns and restarts, but they may not survive a reinstall of the deSleeper service.

Idempotent Sequences, Sets and Interactions

ryan.technorabble@gmail.com — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 03:29:00 +0000

Idempotency is a funny sounding word with a simple meaning, but a complex reality. Perhaps it’s even unfair to say it has a simple meaning because I’ve seen many attempts to define it that turn out rather convoluted. In the simple terms, I would define idempotency as the property of being able to perform the same action twice or more times in sequence, and end up with the same result as if it was performed once.

Those terms leave a fair bit of wiggle room when you really get down to the details. For example, those terms say nothing about additional actions occurring in between the first and last occurrence of the idempotent action. If there is one and only one action that can modify a resource than it’s not necessary to consider those details, but quite often that is not the case. Even operations like an HTTP PUT are only idempotent when the input is the same. Every different input for PUT is non-idempotent, with respect to every other input, unless of course If-Match is used and then some inputs are idempotent to other inputs but not to all.

As I’ve found in relation asynchronicity, a simple word, used without context, can cause more confusion than clarity. The transmission of a message and the receipt of it’s response may be asynchronous from a user’s perspective, but still remain synchronous from a HTTP protocol perspective. That is, from the user’s perspective clicking a link in the browser is asynchronous, because while the requests are sent, received, processed and rendered, only any modern computer the user can click on another tab, open another program, etc. But from the HTTP protocol perspective, even if the HTTP library provides a method like BeginGet, EndGet, some infrastructure is required to construct the request, transmit that request, and do nothing else until the response arrives (Even this is blurring the truth a bit since there is the timeout…).

So, back to idempotency, I rarely see the context of idempotency discussed or defined in a more clarified structure. I’ve occasionally seen references to idempotent sequences, but very rarely, not even enough to feel confident that my definition is the same as everyone else’s. The HTTP RFC gives this description:

A sequence is idempotent if a single execution of the entire sequence always yields a result that is not changed by a reexecution of all, or part, of that sequence.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find people who would believe an idempotent sequence was a sequence, that if performed twice or more in a row was idempotent, but the description above goes farther than that. In that description, the order of first execution of each action must remain constant, but reexecution can occur anytime after this first condition is met.

I can think of another, stricter set of actions, where the set of actions produces the same result regardless of order entirely, the only requirement to achieve the same result is that every action in a set is executed at least once. For the lack of knowing anything better to call such a set of action, I’d call them an idempotent set.

I think it’s not uncommon for architects and developers to overreach at times and assume something that is a collection of independently idempotent actions, is an idempotent set. You need an idempotent set in order to accommodate fully out of order execution, with a deterministic result. An idempotent sequence works only if you’re willing to accept a slightly non-deterministic result.

Another common circumstance that arises, is a set of actions, that will result in the same outcome as long as the first execution of a “final” action follows the initial execution of all other actions. This circumstance, which I’m struggling to find a good term for, is quite common.

I would love to hear from others on what definitions, or other common interaction patterns you’ve had experience with that relate to idempotency.

Red Light Cameras

ryan.technorabble@gmail.com — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 21:46:00 +0000

Chicago has been installing red light cameras. I thought one caught me a few weeks ago, but never got a ticket, so the flash must have been for a car going the opposite direction. The experience got me wondering about certain aspects of the systems.

If you search, you’ll find opinions that they are effective at reducing accidents, and others that they are not. The only definitive RLC study I found, conducted by FHWA, has interesting conclusions. Bottom line is red light cameras reduce both injuries and costs. The FHWA study is much better than others, but it’s important to note it’s limitations.

The FHWA study discusses spillover effect, that is, the effect where RLCs alter the behavior of drivers at intersections without RLCs. When a city places RLC’s at a few intersections, some drivers pay attention to whether a intersection has a camera, but others become more careful at all intersections.

What the study can’t measure, because there is no data for it, is what the effect would be if all drivers acted like the second group, that is, they drove more carefully at all intersections. This condition would occur if all intersections had cameras or a high enough percentage as that drivers assumed they were present without looking for them.

This limitation is important because all the benefits of this homogenous state, compared to the current mixed state, favor RLCs. First, in the mixed state, drivers intentions and expectations vary more than in the homogenous state. If a driver who knows a RLC is not present at an intersection is following one assumes all intersections are equipped, the following driver may assume the leading driver is less likely to stop than he is, increasing the risk of a rear-end collision. If all drivers have similar goals, the risk is reduced.

Second, if drivers look for RLCs as they approach an intersection, this is a distraction, and increases the risk of any type of accident, especially rear-end collisions. If they assume the camera is present, plan to stop, and focus their attention on traffic and signals, the risks are lower.

The point is the proven, but modest benefits the FHWA study finds are underestimating the full value, and while we may each dislike the chance we’ll receive a ticket, ultimately they do save lives, injuries and costs.

Google, Brand and Beta

ryan.technorabble@gmail.com — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 20:55:00 +0000

Reading Dare Obasanjo’s thoughts on how layoffs and project trimming at Google affect its culture led me to thinking about why the fatality rate for side projects at Google has risen so high. It’s not just the economy, it’s more than that. I think despite being the major innovator in web based advertising, Google may have failed to understand the meaning of brand internally.

What Google has been loathe to admit to itself is that a not insignificant part of its success in many areas is something other than the quality of their products. Not that they don’t have quality, or that quality wasn’t important, but many of their products have succeeded by leveraging the brand built from the success and popularity Google web search and the following press obsession with the periods of rocketing stock prices. This brand was critical for products like Gmail which asked users to change the way they work. Gmail asked users to give up something in exchange for something else. Products like that are a much harder sell then products that provide incremental improvements, and the ability to convince users to temporarily ignore their losses until they understand their gains is critical.

That ability is called trust. Google however has damaged their earned trust in somewhat unexpected ways. Maintaining trust isn’t as simple as not breaking your promises, because people aren’t fully rational about trust. Causing confusion is as reliable a mechanism to lose trust as lying, and Google has done a good job of confusing users with their extremely long list of beta products. Sure, they are called beta’s and the implicit statement there is that it’s not complete, but since some of their beta products have had quality far above others, the meaning of beta changed.

What Google would benefit from here is to do a much better job of internally vetting the state of quality of their products and projects and communicating that to their users and potential users. Currently I have a feeling that Google’s main metric of quality is the number of daily users. That is a poor metric that is self-defeating in the brand arena. Those products that have succeeded, and are already successful don’t need a stamp of approval, but those that do are left among the rather large and growing bucket of products that either haven’t yet made it, or never will.

Photo fun

ryan.technorabble@gmail.com — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 06:53:00 +0000

One of my many projects over the last few months has been cataloging and uploading my Grandfather’s very large digital photo collection. It took a bit of time to decide on the right tools for this job, and in all honestly I’ll probably switch again sometime in the future but so far I found the combination of Windows Live Photo Gallery and Flickr to be the best combination.

Windows Live Photo Gallery beat out it’s competitors for me because of did a better job of managing tags than all the others. It supports two types of tags, People tags and descriptive tags. People tags are cool because you can highlight individuals in a photo, but I haven’t yet figured out how this is stored. Descriptive tags are you’re basic tag but are stored in a form Vista recognizes directly making them very portable and useful for searching even without Windows Live Photo Gallery. Inside Windows Live Photo Gallery the interface for using the tags is very good too. I won’t say anymore on that topic other than suggest you try it.

You might be tempted to think the use of Windows Live Photo Gallery would make it easier to upload to the Windows Live Photos service, but there is an excellent uploader for Flickr built in. It’s way better than anything Flickr offers on their own, and in some ways better than the built in upload to Windows Live Photos as well. Once again, a key factor for me was the support for tags. The uploader in Windows Live Photo Gallery automatically transferred all of the descriptive tags. The standalone flickr uploader tool requires you type all of this in again.. ugh.. no thanks.

Flickr got my support for a couple reasons. For one, I had a lot of photos, 50GB or so, that I wanted to upload, and for a number of competitors that would have cost quite a bit. Actually, until AT&T discontinued their Yahoo services it was free for me. Now it’s $24.95/year. Picasa, is kind of expensive past the initial 1GB. Windows Live Photos was kind of attractive with 25GB of free space, but the online experience isn’t anywhere near the depth of Flickr. For example, while tags are transferred, they aren’t all that useful due to lack of good search/exploration interfaces. I think my feelings on that would change a lot of there was a online/offline sync between Gallery and Spaces like Picasa uses, but today it’s just a standard upload/download like Flickr.

So… now that I have all these photos and a inherent sentimentality toward them I’ll probably be posting links to some of the best in the ol’ blog from time to time. Hope you enjoy them.

Remote Desktop 7 on Windows Vista and XP

ryan.technorabble@gmail.com — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 03:57:00 +0000

While Vista/Windows 2008 Server were in beta there was a trick to use RDP 6 on Windows XP. Now that Windows 7 is coming, and has a new set of RDP enhancements, including true multi-monitor support. So, I decided to try the same trick with the new files from Windows 7. To recap:

Create a folder for you RDP 7.0 (version number will be 6.1.7000) files (don’t place them in System32)
Copy the files mstsc.exe and mstscax.dll from a Windows 7 installs System32 folder to the new folder.
Create a subfolder, en-US.
Copy the files mstsc.exe.mui and mstscax.dll.mui from the Windows 7 installs System32\en-US folder to the subfolder.

Now, my testing has had some success under Vista, but not so much under XP. I did a bit of an odd thing for Vista because I have a 64bit install of Vista and had a 32bit install of Windows 7. So.. when I copied the files they didn’t initially work until I ran them inside a 32bit version of dependency walker… but I’m pretty sure it will work without that hoop when I copy over the 64bit files, or vice versa if you have two 32bit installs.

The XP problem is a bit trickier. Under XP (32bit files/32bit install) I receive the error “The prerelease version of remote desktop connection has expired…”, which happens to be the same message many users saw during early XP SP3 testing. For this reason I have a hunch that the files will work on XP SP2, but not SP3, but don’t quote me on that till I get a chance to try. Other than that I haven’t thought up anyway to make the files work on XP other than to wait for Microsoft to release an official patch.

Windows 7, Remote Desktop and Dual\Multi Monitors

ryan.technorabble@gmail.com — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 19:23:00 +0000

A long time ago I wrote about a partial solution to using multiple monitors with Windows XP and Vista. There were a few limitations at the time, but now Microsoft is promising to solve even those. With Windows 7 (and lets cross our fingers and hope the Windows 7 Remote Desktop client becomes available for Windows Vista and XP), you can now use two or more monitors, even with different sizes with remote desktop.

Some early details, about multi-monitor remote desktop on Windows 7, are available from the Intel networking blog. One thing I should point out is that this is much different than /span. With /span you didn’t get distinct monitors, so maximize wouldn’t work as expected and you all your monitors had to have a common rectangle. That is, if all your monitors had a consistent height, and were horizontally stacked, then you could use them. With the Windows 7 change they are actually treated as distinct monitors allowing for distinct sizes, which is rather handy if you have a laptop with an external monitor and the sizes don’t match.

This is all nifty and cool, but it’s possible it won’t matter much if the entire remote desktop concept trends more toward the remote application concept. More on that soon.

Kindle Case (Solution?)

ryan.technorabble@gmail.com — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 18:15:00 +0000

I’ve had my Kindle for about a year now, and continue to run into more and more people with one. The one gripe I hear consistently is the case. Oddly it’s never bothered me, I’ve found the case, while unconventional, to have worked extremely well at it’s job.

Maybe I’ve been lucky to get a case that was just better fitted, but I haven’t had the “drop out” issue many complain about. Yes, the little tab and the back of the Kindle seem to barely hold on, but they always do hold on, except if the battery cover on the back of the Kindle starts to loosen up. Maybe that’s the trick, or as I said, maybe my case is more perfectly fit than the others.

When the battery cover is properly tight the curved edge will be totally flush with the curved edge of the kindle. It’s possible that it might feel like it’s tight before it is, but it will be more obvious if it’s tight. My apologies if this is all obvious and already tried, but considering my good luck so far, and the off chance that it might work, I thought it worth a try.

Low Power PC Tips

ryan.technorabble@gmail.com — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 02:20:00 +0000

In most cases, PC’s help save power. Less shipping due to email is one good example. Still, they do plug into the wall and if not properly configured can use a fair bit more electricity than necessary. What’s unfortunate is that most PC’s aren’t configured properly because they don’t come from the manufacturer that way.

I’m going to give you some simple tips to save power. I’ll start with those tips that won’t produce any noticeable change in the way your computer operates (unless you happen to watch your electricity meter), and then some that save more but have minor inconveniences.

Minimal Power Management

The first tip is to let your computer take advantage of the power saving features of your CPU. Modern CPUs can use dramatically less power when idling or under light load, by turning off some cores and slowing down others. Since they only do this when they don’t have work to do, the effect is unnoticeable. Unfortunately, most Windows XP computers come configured with these features turned off. In Windows XP you can enable these features through the power options dialog accessible through your control panel.

Windows XP

It’s not too obvious here, but choosing minimal power management does more than just change the values of the “Turn off monitor”, “Turn off hard disks” and “System standby”. It also changes many subtle unseen values. So the tip here is, set your power scheme in Windows XP to “Minimal Power Management” if it’s currently set to “Home/Office Desk” or “Always On” or “Normal”. The “Portable/Laptop” and “Max Battery” schemes are roughly the basically the same as “Minimal Power Management”, except with different defaults for the visible settings.

VISTA

In Vista, processor power management is something that is on by default. Also you can see the actual settings, though it’s a bit more involved. Vista has power plans instead of schemes and they vary a little bit. In general you’re okay if you don’t choose “High Performance”. I know it sounds like something you want, who doesn’t want performance, but really the difference is negligible in terms of performance and high in terms of power usage.

If you want simple, choose recommended to get the equivalent of minimal power management.

On the other hand, if you want to really know what your PC is doing, further down I’ll explain Advanced Power Settings.

Turn off monitor

Modern LCD monitors and laptop screens use much less power than the older CRT monitors did. Still, they are one of the primary power draws from using a PC. Also, unlike CRTs, an LCD turns on and displays an optimal image in less than a second. So setup your computer to automatically turn the monitor off in case you get up and walk away.

Don’t worry about your monitor turning off while watching a video. Media Player and most other video software keeps the monitor on automatically regardless of this setting.

Choose whatever timeout feels comfortable, but lower is better. I set mine to 10 minutes at home and 5 at work (for security mostly).

Another tip, don’t use a screen saver. For one, they’re no longer necessary given the design of monitors today. Second, screen savers have an odd nack for preventing your monitor from being turned off, although they are not supposed to do so.

Windows XP

Select your time after selecting the appropriate power scheme. If you set the scheme second the turn off monitor setting will change again.

Vista

Click on Change plan settings after selecting a plan. Instead of “Turn off Monitor” use “Turn off the display”.

Turn off hard disks

Hard disks turn on and off very quickly too, and depending upon how you use them, they can last quite a bit longer if they get some down time. It’s generally not good to turn a hard drive on and off rapidly, kind of like a lightbulb, but a few times a day will do more good than harm.

I’d recommend setting the hard drive off to 10 minutes.

Windows XP

Once again, select the appropriate time after selecting a scheme.

Vista

In Vista, turn off hard disks is more complex. Click on “Change advanced power settings” once into the Change Plan settings.

This is good and bad. On the bad, this dialog is much more complex. But on the upside it does allow you do to a lot more than XP did. Expand the Hard disk node, then “Turn off hard disk after”, and finally select the appropriate timeout if not already set. You might notice something inside this screen. A bit further down is “Processor power management”.

This is the equivalent to “Minimal Power Management”. 5% and 100% are very good values and should be the default values in your Recommended plan.

Sleep/Hibernate

The last step in saving power is to enable sleep and/or hibernate. These features turn your whole computer off, not just little pieces, and allow you to bring it back to life quickly. Sleep is almost always the faster of the two and the difference in power consumption between sleep and hibernate isn’t huge. I generally prefer to use hibernate explicitly (as a replacement for explicitly shutting the machine down) and sleep as a “walked away” kind of thing. If you’re faint of heart, start with standby unless you have a laptop.

I’d suggest setting this to at least one notch above your monitor off value. It’s nice to have a warning before the PC goes to sleep. If your reading something and you’re monitor flicks off, move the mouse and in less than a second your back to normal. If however it goes to sleep it could be a a little wait because you’ll not only have to wait for the PC to come out of sleep, which is pretty speedy, but you have to wait for it to finish going to sleep too, which usually is slower than coming out.

Windows XP

Once again, sleep is readily available from your power options dialog.

Vista

Your sleep setting is in Edit Plan Settings with the “Turn off the Display” setting.

Asynchronous WPF

ryan.technorabble@gmail.com — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 05:59:00 +0000

WPF like WinForms has a UI thread and enforces that UI properties cannot be modified by threads other than the UI thread. There are many reasons for this design choice, but the reality is that if you want a responsive user interface you will need to make sure that any significant work is performed upon a background thread. What this post is about, is some of the ways you can use built in WPF patterns to develop an properly asynchronous UI, and some areas that need extension.

Data-binding is one area that WPF provides built in asynchronous patterns. Your first friend for data-binding is ObjectDataProvider. This nifty class sometimes confuses developers who wonder why it is necessary if WPF can bind to any data object because some examples show it wrapping an object. But where ObjectDataProvider shines is in providing an asynchronously loaded object to WPF binding's. For example, if your UI needed to bind to properties of the system's NetworkInterface objects, you could do something similar to:

<Page ...
  xmlns:NetworkInformation="clr-namespace:System.Net.NetworkInformation;assembly=System" ...>

...

  <Page.Resources>
    <ObjectDataProvider 
      x:Key="_interfaces"
      IsAsynchronous="True" 
      ObjectType="NetworkInformation:NetworkInterface"
      MethodName="GetAllNetworkInterfaces"/>
  </Page.Resources>

This succinct little bit will call GetAllNetworkInterfaces asynchronously. In addition, any parts of your UI that create bindings to _interfaces (through {Binding Source={StaticResource _interfaces} ...}) will initially appear empty (actually it will display the binding's FallbackValue) but update after the asynchronous operation completes.

WPF also provides a property to every binding called IsAsync. Hopefully you will have less use for this property than ObjectDataProvider because property access should not be slow. I also prefer that data load all at once, or at least in chunks.

Surprisingly, after providing good patterns for Binding, WPF seems to neglect the more common need of asynchronous commands. To be fair, they are less simple because it's fairly common for them to be dependent on the current setting of UI properties. When commands are not dependent upon UI properties they can be very simple. In many ways, this is the optimal usage for commands in general because the whole CommandParameter system is a bit clunky.

WPF does support BackgroundWorker, which can be used to create a basic AsyncCommand.

    public abstract class AsyncCommand : ICommand
    {
        public event EventHandler CanExecuteChanged;
        public event EventHandler RunWorkerStarting;
        public event RunWorkerCompletedEventHandler RunWorkerCompleted;

        public abstract string Text { get; }
        private bool _isExecuting;
        public bool IsExecuting
        {
            get { return _isExecuting; }
            private set
            {
                _isExecuting = value;
                if (CanExecuteChanged != null)
                    CanExecuteChanged(this, EventArgs.Empty);
            }
        }

        protected abstract void OnExecute(object parameter);

        public void Execute(object parameter)
        {    
            try
            {    
                onRunWorkerStarting();

                var worker = new BackgroundWorker();
                worker.DoWork += ((sender, e) => OnExecute(e.Argument));
                worker.RunWorkerCompleted += ((sender, e) => onRunWorkerCompleted(e));
                worker.RunWorkerAsync(parameter);
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                onRunWorkerCompleted(new RunWorkerCompletedEventArgs(null, ex, true));
            }
        }

        private void onRunWorkerStarting()
        {
            IsExecuting = true;
            if (RunWorkerStarting != null)
                RunWorkerStarting(this, EventArgs.Empty);
        }

        private void onRunWorkerCompleted(RunWorkerCompletedEventArgs e)
        {
            IsExecuting = false;
            if (RunWorkerCompleted != null)
                RunWorkerCompleted(this, e);
        }

        public virtual bool CanExecute(object parameter)
        {
            return !IsExecuting;
        }
    }

From this point, you can override CanExecute and OnExectute to provide the actual body of your command. While an asynchronous operation is executing the button/checkbox (any inheritor of ButtonBase) will be disabled.

If you need to pass a parameter in you can do so with CommandParameter, but one caution is in order. There is some advice that for passing multiple to CommandParameter you should pass a complex object in an instance field, or resource that parts of your form bind to. While this works fine for synchronous invocation it could be problematic for asynchronous because the bindings can alter the object while your asynchronous code is executing.

What I do when I need to pass in multiple values is to use a IMultiValueConverter and MultiBinding.

<Button.CommandParameter>
  <MultiBinding Converter="{StaticResource InstallServiceParameterConverter}">
    <MultiBinding.Bindings>
      <Binding ElementName="_this" Path="IsInstalled"/>
      <Binding ElementName="localURI" Path="Text"/>
      <Binding ElementName="meshURI" Path="Text"/>
      <Binding ElementName="registerWithMesh" Path="IsChecked"/>
    </MultiBinding.Bindings>
  </MultiBinding>
</Button.CommandParameter>

It is a bit clunky, especially with the converter, but it's also safe since your Command will be passed a newly created object. I'm still looking for better solutions, but so far this seems the closest to ideal.

Two Forms of Confidence

ryan.technorabble@gmail.com — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 19:32:00 +0000

What's the difference between confidence and meglomania? I don't think it's so much a difference in the degree of confidence, but a difference in the perception of what a capable individual can accomplish. If a person is very smart, then they are confident if they believes the same thing. But to be meglomaniacal, doesn't need to believe they are inhumanly smart, they just need to believe that a very smart person is capable of fixing everything with a single thought. They need to believe that perfection really is possible.

In a sense, to be meglomaniacal, a person must be dumb to the reality of life, to the wisdom that mistakes happen, even to the best of us.

deSleeper 0.8

ryan.technorabble@gmail.com — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 00:14:00 +0000

Another version of deSleeper was posted to CodePlex last night. The important part is it fixes the networking tab so that XP users can now easily setup their network card for WakeOnLan functions without knowing needing to be a Windows expert. Also added the ability to set the sleep timer from the same place. That was a fair bit more work since I wrapped up the Power Management APIs to do so. But now I have a nice clean .NET interface for power management which hides the behind the scene changes from XP to Vista.

I'll post more about that later, but if you're considering writing a .NET app that deals with setting up power management you may want to check it out. Since deSleeper is Apache, it's free to reuse with some mild attribution.

Baking the Abstract Factory Pattern

ryan.technorabble@gmail.com — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 19:10:00 +0000

The abstract factory pattern is a common fixture of well designed code. As useful as it is, it can be an annoying pattern because the scaffolding to implementation ratio is quite high. It also breaks up code that most of the time should be together. Other patterns that reach this level of usage often benefit from being baked into the language framework, so why not this pattern.

Let's look at a fairly basic implementation:

public interface ButtonFactory
{
  Button CreateButton();
  Button CreateButton(Control parent);
}

public interface Button
{
  void Draw();
}

public class WinButtonFactory : ButtonFactory
{
  public Button CreateButton() { return new WinButton(); }
  public Button CreateButton(Control parent) { return new WinButton(parent); }
}

public class WinButton : Button
{
  internal WinButton() { ... implementation ... }
  internal WinButton()  { ... implementation ... }

  public void Draw() { ... implementation ... }
}

public class SampleUser
{
  public void UseFactory()
  {
    ButtonFactory factory = new WinButtonFactory();
    Button parent = factory.Create();
    Button child = factory.Create(parent);
  }
}

This is okay, but if we had a little syntax help:

public interface Button
{
  Button();
  Button(Control parent);
  void Draw();
}

public class WinButton : Button
{
  public WinButton() { ... implementation ... }
  public WinButton()  { ... implementation ... }

  public void Draw() { ... implementation ... }
}

public class SampleUser
{
  public void UseFactory()
  {
    Factory<Button> factory = WinButton.GetFactory<Button>();
    Button parent = factory;
    Button child = factory(parent);
  }
}

That's a fair bit more succinct, and it also allows the definition of the "Create" to reside within the interface, making it much more obvious to consumers of the API the relationship between the factory and the interface. The same is true for the implementation, where it's no longer necessary to either provide a workaround to the visibility issues that arise from having object initialization in a separate class.

Some might object on the basis that the use of the factory pattern extends beyond the example above, but those uses can still be accommodated:

public class ColoredButtonFactory : Factory<Button>
{
  private Color _color;
  private Factory<Button> _factory;
  public ColoredButtonFactory(Color color, ButtonFactory factory);
  {
    _color = color;
    _factory = factory;
  }

  public Button()
  {
    Button button = _factory();
    button.Color = _color;
    return button;
  }
}

Which is equivalent to this implementation without language level factory support:

public class ColoredButtonFactory : ButtonFactory
{
  private Color _color;
  private ButtonFactory _factory;
  public ColoredButtonFactory(Color color, ButtonFactory factory);
  {
    _color = color;
    _factory = factory;
  }

  public Button CreateButton()
  {
    Button button = factory.CreateButton();
    button.Color = _color;
    return button;
  }
}

An alternative (with pluses and minuses) the language level factory support would allow for is:

public class ColoredButtonFactory<TButton> : Factory<TButton>
  where TButton : Button
{
  private Color _color;
  public ColoredButtonFactory(Color color);
  {
    _color = color;
  }

  public TButton()
  {
    TButton button = new TButton();
    button.Color = _color;
    return button;
  }
}

deSleeper Beta 0.5

ryan.technorabble@gmail.com — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 04:02:00 +0000

Another update to deSleeper finished up today. I've been trying to make it a bit more user friendly. I should have finished a bootstrapper but I got distracted by some other wants... For example a much better way to get your credentials in and a way for you to wake up a system via host name (i.e. mypc.mycompaniesinternaldomainname.com).

The catch to this second feature is that for most PCs it's only possible to resolve a host name to a MAC address while the computer is actually on. What deSleeper does is store a cache of hostname/MAC address pairs so that it can do that resolution when the computer is off, but to make that work it has to search at least once to populate the cache. So if you have your target machine on, send a wake up request with the client that will cache the hostname. Then you can use the hostname with target off. Since this is a new feature, might want to make sure you have the MAC address available just in case though.

The end of the light bulb joke

ryan.technorabble@gmail.com — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 16:18:00 +0000

Question: In 2020, how many kids will it take to change a light?

Answer: None, LED lights last 20 years so they'll be adults before one burns out.

deSleeper Beta 2 Released

ryan.technorabble@gmail.com — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 02:04:00 +0000

I posted a new build of deSleeper to CodePlex last night. I was interested in learning a bit more about WPF so I used some of that time to touch up the UI and neaten things up under the covers a bit.

Also, feature wise, I've added a tab to help you configure the "target" machine's network card driver to accept wake up requests. You can do the same things through device manager and control panel, but this is a bit more convenient. One note though, to support Wake-on-Lan requests from all power states (such as hibernate and power off) you still need to make sure the BIOS is properly configured. The network card driver usually can't do anything more than make sure you can come out of a sleep state.

I still have a more plans for deSleeper, such as a distributed mesh system (this should allow you to take by hostname or IP, rather than MAC address), but I thought I'd mention 1E WakeUp I ran across recently that while it may cost a bit does appear to tackle the same issues as deSleeper. If your a network admin with lots of computers to configure, I won't blame you for choosing 1E over deSleeper. As long as you get your office setup to allow those hard working PCs have a good nights sleep, I'll be happy.

Should the U.S. drill "everywhere"?

ryan.technorabble@gmail.com — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 01:42:00 +0000

My purist thinking side says, no, the places where the opportunity to drill remains restricted are a combination of costly to recover, dangerous to recover, and not very large anyhow. I'd rather see the money spent on building solar panels, wind farms, battery cars, hybrid cars or even cellulosic biofuel than on oil platforms, deep water drilling, and all the complicated machinery necessary to keep the environmental effects of drilling obnoxious rather than disastrous.

My political compromising side says, drilling is dumb, but it's only a little bit dumb. It's not as dumb as letting solar and wind tax credits expire, it's not as dumb as subsidizing the oil companies, it's not as dumb as driving an SUV, and it's certainly not as dumb as not investing in public transportation. I also realize that a significant number of people not only fail to realize how dumb those other acts are, but think that drilling is the most brilliant idea ever conceived. So I recognize an opportunity here, an opportunity to trade-in on the totally out of proportion enthusiasm drilling inspires in the opponents of public transportation and renewable energy. It's not perfect, but that's what politics and compromise are.

My dark, sarcastic side goes further. That part thinks, well maybe it's really important to allow the drilling, because if we do, it won't be more than 6 months later before the proponents of drilling realize how stupid they were to think it was the solution to the problem. Sure, you have politicians who support drilling who say things like "drilling will not solve all of America's energy problems - as if we all didn't know that already", but among their supporters and colleagues individuals who really believe that is the solution, and that somehow it will take effect tomorrow too. I'd like to burst their bubble just for spite. Let em try and drill there way out and see the look on their faces when they finally realize 6 months to a year later, hey, it's gonna take 10 years, cost a lot and even then be no more than a drop in the bucket.

deSleeper Beta Released

ryan.technorabble@gmail.com — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 04:14:00 +0000

A bit later than planned, but I've just uploaded the first release of deSleeper. To download go to:

http://desleeper.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=16344

This release, in my rather limited test environment, works as a proxy. There is more functionality planned to extend the reach and make it a bit more user-friendly (no MAC addresses, for example) which may or may/not be working. But basic proxy is working fine.

You'll want to install .NET 3.5 SP1 before using deSleeper.

Enjoy

Paper, Plastic or Wood?

ryan.technorabble@gmail.com — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 00:40:00 +0000

I find stories about recycled plastic based building materials encouraging. It's ironic that plastics, which can take decades or centuries to decompose, have been so heavily used in the products with transient lives, but wood which decomposes much more readily is the primary component of homes, which we at least hope will last much much longer. The plastic bag for example, which on average is probably used about 30 minutes a piece. Even computers and electronics, which at best will last ten years, usually less, before being obsolete.

There were many other factors which have lead to the current state, of plastics being part of the most disposable products, but I think a number of them are changing and I won't be at all surprised to find that some of the intrinsic characteristics of plastics, rather than the incidental characteristics of early plastics, will play a greater role in their future.