I recently needed to share my USB hard drive on the network, and had a lot of problems making it consistently available as a share. After trolling around on the internet, I found the answer -- since this took a while to find and debug, I'm documenting it here.
In regedit, find the key in HKLM (HKey Local Machine):
\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters
Set the parameter IRPStackSize to a value 3 higher than it currently is, and reboot. You may have to do this more than once. If this key doesn't exist, create a DWORD key and set the value.
On the two systems I did this to, I ended up with values of 17 and 18.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
The Parable of Everybody, Somebody & Nobody
I need to attribute this, but this story popped into my head last night. I believe I heard it in church about 30 years ago (man, it's embarrassing to say that)...
All the people wanted to get back to Heaven, and there were many tasks to perform to get there. Everybody was sure that Somebody would do the work. Anybody could have done it, but was waiting for SomebodyElse to do it. Somebody got angry because it was Everybody’s job. Everybody got angry because he thought that Anybody or SomebodyElse should do it. Somebody said that she thought it was already done, but didn't bother to check.
Finally the day of reckoning came. Everybody fought to be first in line for the rewards. Somebody was crying because SomebodyElse was pushing and giving cuts. Nobody was patiently waiting for her turn.
Nobody was the only one who made it into Heaven. She was the only one that did the tasks that Everybody, Somebody, and SomebodyElse should have done.
The Moral: Don't Procrastinate. Don't let Nobody be rewarded for things YOU can do.
All the people wanted to get back to Heaven, and there were many tasks to perform to get there. Everybody was sure that Somebody would do the work. Anybody could have done it, but was waiting for SomebodyElse to do it. Somebody got angry because it was Everybody’s job. Everybody got angry because he thought that Anybody or SomebodyElse should do it. Somebody said that she thought it was already done, but didn't bother to check.
Finally the day of reckoning came. Everybody fought to be first in line for the rewards. Somebody was crying because SomebodyElse was pushing and giving cuts. Nobody was patiently waiting for her turn.
Nobody was the only one who made it into Heaven. She was the only one that did the tasks that Everybody, Somebody, and SomebodyElse should have done.
The Moral: Don't Procrastinate. Don't let Nobody be rewarded for things YOU can do.
Small Teams
My wife and I went to the "Engineering Open House" at NC State with my son Richard last Saturday. They had many cool things on display, and there were a lot of people there. Richard is very interested in doing something technical, but isn't sure what yet.
The most interesting thing that I did there was spending about a half hour talking with Grayson Randall who designed the Lone Wolf autonomous vehicle that NC State entered into the DARPA Urban Challenge contest. Grayson is a really interesting guy and has a lot of cool stories to tell. I was asking him about the development process and team they used to produce the control and management software for the 9 dual core computers they have embedded in the trunk of their Lotus plus the 4 single board computers they have in the front of the car. He said that there were 6-9 people who spent a couple of years developing this software, with various teams implementing hardware at the same time.
Having been involved in systems design, I can know how hard it is to develop both hardware and software at the same time, so getting it all running is amazing all by itself. The point that sticks out to me most of all though is that a small motivated team can accomplish more than a large one in nearly all cases.
As teams grow beyond single digits two things happen:
The most interesting thing that I did there was spending about a half hour talking with Grayson Randall who designed the Lone Wolf autonomous vehicle that NC State entered into the DARPA Urban Challenge contest. Grayson is a really interesting guy and has a lot of cool stories to tell. I was asking him about the development process and team they used to produce the control and management software for the 9 dual core computers they have embedded in the trunk of their Lotus plus the 4 single board computers they have in the front of the car. He said that there were 6-9 people who spent a couple of years developing this software, with various teams implementing hardware at the same time.
Having been involved in systems design, I can know how hard it is to develop both hardware and software at the same time, so getting it all running is amazing all by itself. The point that sticks out to me most of all though is that a small motivated team can accomplish more than a large one in nearly all cases.
As teams grow beyond single digits two things happen:
- Inertia kills agility. Too many people are too hard to switch quickly. With small teams a quick meeting can convey the essence of the change. Large teams take exponentially larger amounts of time and effort to simply communicate.
- Inertia kills motivation. This is obviously not true in all cases, but in the teams I've seen, there is a direct relationship between the motivation of the team and the size of the team. I've seen too many cases on large teams where "everybody thought somebody would fix it".
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
Hosted Services
First Amazon created EC3, now there's Google App Engine. I think companies providing 3rd party hosting environments are in for a tough time in the future. It's going to be tough to compete on volume / size / price. They're going to have to provide niche features that Amazon / Google don't have.
For developers and startups, I think this is a Very Good Thing.
For developers and startups, I think this is a Very Good Thing.
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