Earlier in the week, Shawn Boles wrote a post that included some nostalgic feelings for old-fashioned computers. As I read it, I was thinking of my own experiences with the grandfathers of our desktop computers. I vividly remember getting the floppy disks out of the big dusty box, sliding them into the drive, and listening as the drive began its slow, crunching march towards the data I needed. That’s when it hit me. I can’t hear my computer! Sure, there’s a cooling fan in it, and if I stick my head under my desk I can hear not only the fan, but my coworkers quietly asking each other why my head is under my desk in the middle of the day. Other than that, there’s nothing! No drive heads moving, no crunching, no system beeping, no modem noises, and certainly no death rattles.

That’s right, death rattles. Those of you unfamiliar with the dinosaurs we used to call computers don’t know about the death rattles. The large floppy drives were the worst offenders. Every faulty sector on those disks caused a loud grinding sound that you could FEEL, indicating that the pencil-sized drive head was none too happy with encountering the data equivalent of a marching band at a funeral. Now that we’ve moved away from media that comes in physical contact with the drive head, we’ve moved away from the death rattles. However, hard drives can occasionally produce them, even to this day. When a hard drive goes bad, it emits this high-pitched chirping sound, akin to what you would expect a robotic sparrow to make.

When I was in high school, my best friend’s dad was a programmer. One day we were working on a bad hard drive for a friend and had a brilliant idea. We took a microphone and recorded the sounds the hard drive was making. With some Mp3 editing tools, we added roughly 10 minutes of silence in front of that sound. Then, we made the sound into his dad’s windows startup sound. So upon turning on his computer, he would work for 10 minutes and then hear the DEATH RATTLE. Watching his pasty frame lunge for the power button was hilarious for a good 24 hours after it happened.

Browsing computer message boards (yes, I’m a nerd, that’s why I work here as a developer) I occasionally come across people who are still cursed by dial-up modems, and they invariably ask how they can disable the noises their modem makes when it connects. I want to scream to them “DON’T! You’ll destroy your last audible connection to your machine!” The noises a modem makes are iconic, and a sufficiently trained guru can tell the connection speed simply by listening to the connection noises. From the industrial clanking of the 2400 baud to the sci-fi whooshing of the 56k, each remaining hardware noise is precious.

Precious to humans anyway. When I was younger I saved all my money for weeks to buy a 56k modem. I painstakingly researched (at 24,000 baud) all the different kinds of modems I could purchase, and finally decided on a US Robotics 56k modem. I arrived home from my triumphant shopping trip and promptly tore the cover off the family computer to install my new toy. Once installed, I powered up the computer, installed the drivers, and attempted to connect. Sweet, sweet screeching poured out of the modem, to my delight! However, my dog was also in the room. He had, until this point, tolerated the noises the computer had been making in “his” room. However, how there was a new noise. A new, screechier noise. And it was coming from an OPEN COMPUTER CASE. That’s right, in my excitement, I had left the case cover off just in case I had to tinker some more. My dog got up, walked across the room, and promptly ripped the modem right out of the case with one mighty chomp. He threw it on the ground, chomped it once more and then, satisfied that it would no longer disturb his rest, flopped back down onto his bed in the corner. I still cannot hear a connection sequence without bringing up that memory.

Of course, we don’t have to worry about these things at SoftLayer (dogs OR noises). We developers work on silent machines with no rattles or screeches, while the servers in the data center are attended to by dozens of employees, aware of any slight problem. The noise in the data center is substantial. Each employee wears hearing protection, and even with that the noise of thousands of cooling fans will get to you. Each time the developers have to spend a morning in the data center installing new servers, we spend the rest of the day shouting “WHAT?!” to each other. But computers will continue to get quieter, and our connection to them will continue to be less and less physical. Our customers know this already: none of them have even seen their servers, they rely on our skilled datacenter staff to monitor their hardware for them, day and night. But there are no death rattles, no screeches, just cooling fans.

The last of our noisy connection to our computers is starting to fade. Already we’ve stopped using magnetic media like floppy disks, and the noisy CD and DVD drives of yesteryear are being replaced with silent models. Even the hard drives that caused my friend and I so much joy are being replaced with mechanically simple solid state drives, which run much faster and have no noise at all. Come to think of it, I think I can learn to live in the new silent computing future.

I was talking with a friend about memory on computers. He said he wanted a computer with tons of memory for Photoshop. I said something to the effect that I’ve never seen a desktop that can handle more than 16 GB, and that most operating systems now don’t want to handle more than that… that Windows will only give a process 4 GB max, 2 GB for the application and 2 GB shared with the operating system. He then said “I can’t imagine having to use more than 16 GB!” This immediately reminded me of Bill Gates’ famous quote, that “640K ought to be more than enough for everybody.” Striving for accuracy, I went to the Internet to find when and where he said this.

Interesting fact came up: HE NEVER SAID IT. He vehemently denies having ever uttered this phrase. Every quote I’ve seen is always un-sourced, so let’s give him the benefit of the doubt. So what makes this quote clog the tubes so easily?

First, the irony that a person renowned for his computer visions of the future would say something so backward causes people to smile. Secondly, there is a nugget of truth. In a 1989 speech, Bill Gates said:

“I have to say that in 1981, making those decisions, I felt like I was providing enough freedom for 10 years. That is, a move from 64k to 640k felt like something that would last a great deal of time. Well, it didn’t - it took about only 6 years before people started to see that as a real problem.”

Bill never said “640K is enough for everybody.” He said “640K should keep everyone happy for the next 10 years.” Turns out he was wrong. Within less than 6 years we started hitting the “640K limit”… which wasn’t a hard limit at all, it was just a limit proposed by the operating system at the time. Mr. Gates thought that 640K was generous, and in the beginning it was. But as the industry marched forward, it started cramping. Pretty soon, we had DOS memory managers, extended and expanded memory, virtual memory… we would do ANYTHING to escape the 640K limit.

So what’s the moral of this story? First, you can’t believe just anything you read on the Internet. Sometimes something gets into the tubes because it’s funny, not because it’s accurate. Secondly, predicting the computer industry is hard. To be a successful computer development company (like the portion of SoftLayer I work in), you have to be able to look to the horizon and attempt to spy the most likely location the software industry is moving in. We developers work on projects 3, 6, 9, 12 months before they’re used by our users; we have to make predictions at least double that size in advance to give growth room whilst the next tool is developed. And, I dare say, we’ve done a good job of that around here!

In conclusion, Bill Gates never said “640K should be enough for everybody.” That quote is a myth. It’s a funny joke, but a joke nonetheless. However, Bill Gates did actually say this at a Macintosh conference:

“To create a new standard, it takes something that’s not just a little bit different; it takes something that’s really new and really captures people’s imagination — and the Macintosh, of all the machines I’ve ever seen, is the only one that meets that standard.”

And this time there’s video evidence. And there’s the not-quite-quote where Bill Gates implies that Vista isn’t really the best thing since 8086 Segmented Physical Memory Models. Aren’t real quotes more humorous fake ones? I think so.

When I was growing up, computers were these wonderful things that sat at the back of the classroom (usually one, or maybe two if the class was lucky). If the school was lucky, there was a “computer lab” where you could have access to the latest and greatest in government approved hardware.

My favorite of the time was the Apple IIe. Our school district had so many of them, they handed ‘em out to classrooms (The school district now uses them as very effective door stops). In fact, I got my start with computers by tinkering with a IIe. My first computer experience was hooking up a printer to a IIe, and the wonder of this experience (plug something in, type a command, and print came out!) completely captured me (I was in first grade), and from that moment on I was completely wrapped up in the wonder of computers.

Anyway, I graduated to PC compatibles and DOS. Trying to get a grasp on this computer thing, I got a copy of DOS for Dummies. Near the beginning of the book, they had a paragraph that had some important words of wisdom. While I don’t have the book any more, the message is still with me: “This book will teach you the basics of the computer, what you can do, what you can’t do, and what you really shouldn’t ever do. However, for anything you don’t know, contact your local computer guru.”

Computer Guru? What is this “Computer Guru”?

According to Wikipedia, Guru means “Teacher, in a religious or spiritual sense.” And as luck would have it, I was able to get into contact with Computer Gurus throughout my life. These were the computer equivalents of the small town mechanic: you pull up for some gas and Harvey the mechanic walks around the corner. “Howdy! I heard you pull up. You’ve got a bit of a timing issue, and I think one of your spark plugs are bad. I can change ‘em out in a few minutes, if you like.” It’s almost like Harvey has a supernatural connection to vehicles. He can hear issues, he can smell problems… he’s one with the Motor Vehicle Force.

The same with the Computer Gurus I knew. You walked in and turned on your machine, they’d make a “Hmm” sound (in computer science, “Hmm” is similar to the Indian sacred syllable “Aum” or “Om”. It’s ritually chanted by a computer guru whilst contemplating your computer’s connection to the Universe), type some sacred symbols into the prompt, then tell you the problem and offer to fix it. Most times they would happily fix your computer in exchange for a pizza; sometimes just getting a cup of coffee from the ever present drip dispenser could net you a small fix. And if you were truly interested in computers, you could even ask to become a follower of the Guru. You’d spend your spare time in his or her office, ask meaningful questions about the nature of the Universe, contemplate ancient tomes and user manuals, and take care of the mundane tasks of life (like formatting floppies or installing software) so the Guru could spend their time connecting with his or her latest project (generally spent looking at an arcane flowchart or design document and saying “Hmm” a lot). You knew, one day, with practice and patience, you too could become a Guru, have followers to format your floppies, and say Hmm.

However, the computer industry started changing. User interfaces became simpler, USB made the promise of true plug-and-play a near reality… the command line all but disappeared. Computers stopped being a specialized device and became a commodity. Computers were EVERYWHERE. And there was this belief that computers will become so “user friendly” that there was no need for the long learning process of the Guru.

And for the most part, this has happened. Programs are very user friendly now. There’s tons of documentation, and most don’t expect you to have a PhD in Computer Science to understand them. Workflows have become “point and click link” instead of “chant this esoteric string into the command prompt”.

However, sometimes I really miss my Guru. For example, just this last week, my roommate’s computer (which I built) started randomly crashing. There wasn’t a specific program that crashed, and it didn’t crash at a set time. I knew something was wrong, so I tried to diagnose. ‘Course, Vista being user friendly, the computer would automatically reboot, without showing the Bluescreen, except for the subliminal hint of blue to let you know that the computer had crashed. See, blue screens have “Technical Information” (it says so right on the screen!)… and user friendly computers (1) don’t crash, and (2) are NOT technical. So I was stuck with a computer that wouldn’t run, and a bored Roommate who just realized he has a $1200 paperweight.

As Dr. McCoy would say, “I’m a programmer, not a hardware doctor!” Hardware issues are right outside my realm of experience. I longed for my Guru. I knew how to diagnose; I pulled hardware, changed orders of cards, swapped the memory sticks back and forth… all the standard religious rituals for modern computers. I knew that if I could but approach a Guru, tell him or her my issue, they could give me leads to check. I didn’t have the money to buy all new parts at random; I had to work with what I had. I knew I had all the data for a real diagnosis… I simply wasn’t able to pick out the error. Working the next day at SoftLayer, I mused about my lack of Guru leadership. At the end of the day, I turned to a coworker and said “Now I get to tinker for a few more hours on this stupid computer. I wish I knew a Computer Guru!”

My coworker smiled and asked what the problem was. I told him and he looked at the ceiling. “Hmm” he said. “Could be a power supply issue. Maybe the power coming out of the supply isn’t clean and it’s resetting the motherboard.” Just then, another coworker walked around the corner.

“What about a power supply?” he asked. The first coworker told him the issue. “Hmm,” he said, looking intently at the wall. “I bet it’s a RAM issue. I bet your ram is bad. Swap it out with some good RAM and see what happens.”

So I went home and crosswired some power supplies. Rebooting the machine, I finally got a bluescreen that crashed itself, locking up the computer and letting me read it. “PAGE_FAULT_IN_NON_PAGED_AREA” “Page Fault?” I thought. “Hmm.” My roommate walked in. “What are you doing, meditating? Have you fixed it yet?”

We went to Fry’s and bought some new RAM sticks. Going home, I popped ‘em in and started the machine. And it worked! It’s been running 6 days nonstop. My roommate was really happy. I was finally able to look up the bluescreen message up on the Internet. Sure enough, that specific error almost always pops up when there’s bad ram.

So, where have all the Gurus gone? Where else? They all work at SoftLayer! Whenever I’ve had a software or hardware issue, or an operating system issue, I’ve found somebody here who knows the issue. They look at the wall, say “Hmm”, sip their coffee or Monster (depending on their level of enlightenment), and give me the answer. The guys here are at one with the Network. The DC guys almost seem to be able to FEEL a power issue or a drive problem before it happens. Slales is able to think about your problems and provide a tailor made solution to help. And Development is where all the action takes place; we get to write all the behind the scenes magic.

“You must be some kind of Computer Genius!” shouts my roommate (lucky for me, he’s gotten to play some Call of Duty 4, so he’s already forgotten the previous week of frustration). “No, not yet.” I respond. “I’m working on it, but I’m not a Guru yet.”