I personally find it interesting that even though file system compression has been around for a long time, not many people actually use it.

ZFS is one of the first, if not the first, file systems that I've noticed enable it by default. It's interesting that MS doesn't enable it by default.

You are correct, that was part of my reasoning. Though I generally view compression support in a file system as an unfavorable feature for various reasons.

One of which is for performance for a workstation scenario. If I have all cores running at high utilization, I'd rather they be working on whatever processes I've requested instead of trying to compress data for writing as well. Space is cheap at that scale.

Admittedly, that is for my own, personal usage. In a data center with a lot of rarely touched, and ever rapidly increasing amounts of data I would strongly consider compression.

My other distaste for file system compression is that it adds another layer of complexity to overall storage. If something goes wrong, compression does not make things easier in terms of recovery. At times it completely kills it.

From my observations, it appears that ZFS tests the benefit of compression before actually writing the data. Each block written for a file may or may not be compressed. The compression type is stored in each block pointer.

I agree with your choice to turn compression off for an MP3 collection. It saves the effort of attempting to compress every block before writing it.

Compression enabled by default can't help (available in btrfs).

Checksum for all blocks probably doesn't help, but definitely helps detect corrupt data/corruption (available in btrfs).

Forcing any file that requires more than a single block to use a tree of block pointers probably doesn't help. The dnode only has one block pointer and the block pointer can only point to a single block (no extents). On the plus side, the block size can vary between 512 bytes and 64 KiB per object, so slack space is kept low. If more than a single block is necessary it creates a tree of block pointers. Each block pointer is 128 bytes in size, so the tree can get deep fairly quick.

Three copies of almost all file system structures (such as inodes, but called dnodes in ZFS) by default can't help (which are compressed of course).

If only there were some unique invention they could license that was capable of such a process as rotating a piece of paper or an electronic image... Excuse me, I feel an urgent need to contact a patent attorney.

I couldn't agree more. Any mention of the word "mule" and I start hearing that music. It's a shame that it isn't in this version.

Excuse me: 4 KiB sector size.

There are certain models of the Western Digital Caviar Green drives that are already shipping with a 4K sector size, such as this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136490

I use a local instance of wordpress and a wiki to keep track of things. I use the blog to keep track of what I'm doing through the day with times and personal notes. I put the project/research notes, functional specs, and design specs into the wiki.

I agree with this too. Get some earplugs. Even the cheap foam/rubber kind will tone down the chatter from the area and send a clear message to the people around you that you work better in a quiet environment. I do the same thing as Gribflex: music when I'm doing things that don't require intense concentration; and I turn it off but leave the headphones on when I really need to focus. I have found that instrumentals work reasonably well too.

Just a guess, but does your manager have an office instead of being in the cube and doesn't understand how distracting the ambient noise is?

I would also suggest, as part of a diplomatic discussion about the disagreement (and without ultimatums), that you recommend he read Joel On Software and pay particular attention to the productivity of developers in private offices. Naturally there is no way that you'll end up with a private office out of it, but the use of headphones is at least a small step in that direction. It affords the developer at least some semblance of privacy.