els of information. But this heavy load of often-irrelevant data affects their efficiency and clogs the corporate machine." Stilted, but true.
However, help has arrived. We recently tested a program called "Stochastic Cleaner." Stochastic Cleaner claims to "clean your hard disk of all the clutter that you prob
ably don't need," and that's exactly what it does (more about the word "probably" in a minute).
Stochastic Cleaner was developed by WormWare Productions, of Cupertino, California. Three months ago, on a lark, we bought a copy for $4.95 at CompUSA and installed it on our Mac's 10-GB drive. We had no real plans to use it; we purchase and install anything we find in CompUSA for $4.95, on principled whim. Eight weeks later, in one of those coincidences that make you wonder, a review copy of Stochastic Cleaner arrived in the mail. Having forgotten about the earlier copy, we installed and actually ran the new one. Were we impressed: Stochastic Cleaner removed every piece of $4.95 software on that disk -- more than 9 GB's worth.
The only $4.95 software programs it did not remove were the other programs manufactured by WormWare Productions (about 600 MB's worth, altogether), including the earlier copy of Stochastic Cleaner.
One terrific thing about this program is that every time you run it, it leav
es an extra copy of itself on your disk. That's mighty handy in case you ever need to know how many times you've run it, and it also makes you feel like you've gotten a terrific bargain. In effect, the $4.95 buys you a lot more than just the traditional "single-copy license." We run Stochastic Cleaner every morning. It's a great way to start the day -- you feel that you've just gotten a great piece of software for almost free.
Now about that key word "probably." Stochastic Cleaner has no way to really, absolutely, guaranteed-for-sure know what files you will never need, but it makes reasonable guesses. In all the time that we've been using Stochastic Cleaner, we can honestly say that we haven't found a single file that it lost.
We can recommend this product without hesitation. It's one of those rare ones that does just what its manufacturer claims. Stochastic Cleaner wipes your cares away.
Nano-Quality Notes
As promised, we have begun publishing our new journal,
"Nano-Quality." It's off to a rousing start. CEOs from more than 1200 corporations have written in, asking how they can go about starting Nano-Quality programs within their own companies. To them we can only say this: If you feel the need to ask, then you most likely already have a Nano-Quality program at your company.
Mouse Paper Chase
Following the release of our Mouse Report, the commodities markets have run wild. Our five-year study demonstrated that the best item to use as a computer mouse pad is actually a pad of paper, not the plastic or rubber slabs that are traditionally used. As a result of the report, several major paper companies have in the last two months raised the prices for mouse-quality paper. We will continue to report the details of this exciting story.
Marc Abrahams is the editor of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can contact him by sending e-mail to
marca@improb.com
.
Advances and Retreats in Computing
