The 2002 “Cruft Force” scale in Aug02: The New Adventures of Verity Stob
Posted by jpluimers on 2024/08/05
All computers acquire cruft over time, though with the ever increased data storage space capacities, nowadays it usually takes much longer to notice the effects of the Second Law of Thermodynamics on your computer until it is way too late.
I got reminded of the “Cruft Force” scale in the 2002 DDJ column [Wayback/Archive] “Aug02: The New Adventures of Verity Stob” by [Wayback/Archive] bert hubert 🇺🇦🇪🇺: ‘…”cruft force 9″…’ – Fosstodon
Spent the best part of a day attempting to recover a friend’s Windows 11 machine that had shat itself. Was reminded of the most EXCELLENT description of Windows putrefaction by Verity Stob www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~susan/475/cruft.html “cruft force 9” – in this case, Adobe had deposited a new Adobe Reader install one directory lower apparently every time it had been used (!). There were also 34 numbered Teamviewer binaries getting progressively bigger.
Having known Verity Stob from DDJ (often named “Dr Dobbs”, but officially named “Dr. Dobb’s Journal”) and El Reg (officially named “The Register”). Until recently totally unaware .EXE Magazine had existed, I didn’t know that before DDJ she wrote columns for it nor that DDJ took over after it got renamed to “EXE Magazine”.
Learning new things every day: I love it!
--jeroen
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 
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