Fragmentation & similar is sometimes a storage problem in I/O generated, vs. the gross space consumed. This distinction didn't leap out at me.

Performance degradation and storage expansion are closely related, but only for certain kinds of queries. Full table scans are penalized by sparsely used storage. Individual row retrievals …

The open question is "What is the cost of fragmentation?"

The cost has some absolute components and some relative components. Since fragmentation is difficult to avoid except through grotesque over-allocation of space, the issue is to control fragmentation through normalization. A more important pair of questions, then, are these:

1. What …

"How do we prevent storage fragmentation and the associated slow-down ?"

Why prevent ?

This is hard to respond to. The ounce-of-prevent-pound-of-cure didn't resonate with the reviewer. What would resonate? An in-depth discussion of the "prevention is an investment with an indefinite period of return and correction is an ongoing cost" doesn't …

Perhaps this is heresy. Perhaps it merely shows that the orthodox may be focused on short-term delivery, not long-term value.

The object-oriented unit testing framework began as Smalltalk's Beck Test framework http://www.xprogramming.com/testfram.htm. It evolved to the JUnit http://www.junit.org/index.htm>`_ ` <http://www.junit.org/index.htm%22%20target=%22NewWindow framework for Java. Beck defined four repeated patterns of unit testing software …

The object-oriented unit testing framework began as Smalltalk's Beck Test framework http://www.xprogramming.com/testfram.htm%22%20target=%22NewWindow. It evolved to the JUnit http://www.junit.org/index.htm%22%20target=%22NewWindow framework for Java. Beck defined four repeated patterns of unit testing software, covered in a previous …

MS AntiSpyware "free" beta http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx. Also, it appears http://blogs.chron.com/techblog/archives/2005/11/microsoft_antis_1.html to be called Windows Defender.

eWeek's slavish lack of clue http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1872253,00.asp; Paul Thurott's lack …

Kontrawize says http://kontrawize.blogs.com/kontrawize/2005/11/java_is_the_new.html that Java is the new assembler.

/dev/null http://www.haloscan.com/comments/slott/E20051101105604/#27166 says "While we are willing to expose and discuss the problems in Java, we do it because we want to improve it, not …

I like Python for exploring unknown data [One More Cool Thing About Python ].

Anthony B. Coates [Homepage ] notes "I tried Python for a while for similar reasons. However, in my case I was a bit put off by the need to learn a another library API, which is not an …