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Asteroid 2007 WD5 still on target

The NASA scientists are trying really hard to not get excited.

The impact probability for a collision of asteroid 2007 WD5 with Mars on January 30 has increased from 1.3% to 3.9%.

Pre-discovery observations of asteroid 2007 WD5, taken on November 8, 2007 have allowed its orbit to be refined and the uncertainties for the late January Mars encounter have been improved. The impact probability resulting from the recent orbit refinement has increased to a surprising 3.9% (about 1 in 25 odds). The uncertainty region during the Mars encounter now extends over 400,000 km along a very narrow ellipsoid that is only 600 km wide. Since the uncertainty region intersects Mars itself, a Mars impact is still possible. However, the most likely scenario is that additional observations of the asteroid will allow the uncertainty region to shrink so that a Mars impact is ruled out. In the unlikely event of an impact, the time would be 2008 January 30 at 10:56 UT (2:56 a.m. PST) with an uncertainty of a few minutes.

Update 2007 WD5

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Power Factor

Ha! Learning is fun. For Christmas, I received a P3 Kill-a-Watt. The device gives a reading on many statistics such as Volts, Amperes, Watts, Volt-Amperes, Hertz, Power factor, Kilowatt-hours, and total time connected. After using it for a short while, I wasn’t familiar with the terms volt-amperes and power factor. The Wikipedia article on power factor explained it best.

The significance of power factor lies in the fact that utility companies supply customers with volt-amperes, but bill them for watts. Power factors below 1.0 require a utility to generate more than the minimum volt-amperes necessary to supply the real power (watts).

Example: While I write this blog entry, my laptop draws from the wall 40 volt-amperes but only uses 19 Watts. The laptop has power factor of 50% because half of the current is returned back to the power plant without being used

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Christmas Loot

Santa Claus again left me with a very nice Christmas. Despite the obligatory gifts of clothes, candy, and gift cards. I also received a few stand out gifts below.

  • Garrity keychain flashlight: This flashlight is pretty cool it uses two LED bulbs and a lithium watch battery. Except for the small switch on the side it has no moving parts. The big on/off switch uses the electrical conductivity of your finger to turn on and off.
  • Second Gen iPod Shuffle: Need I say more? :)
  • P3 Kill-A-Watt: Plug the Kill-a-Watt into the wall then plug the appliance into the Kill-a-watt. The Kill-a-watt will then give you a reading on the quality of power coming from the wall and the power draw from the appliance. I’m gonna mainly use the kill-a-watt with my laptop to see the direct effect of powertop and the power savings because of it.
  • Kevin Mitnick’s The Art of Intrusion: Kevin Mitnick’s second book after the Art of Deception, which i have also read. Watch for a book review later.
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Asteroid 2007 WD5 Mars Impact

The war between Earth and Mars continues unabated.

A recently discovered asteroid which passed close to the Earth in November, is now headed towards a very close passage by Mars in late January, and there is a small chance that it could hit that planet. The probability of a collision is only 1 chance in 75, but scientists are excited about the possibility. If it happens, the impact would occur on January 30, 2008 at around 10:55 UT (2:55 a.m. PST).

Asteroid 2007 WD5

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Sweet! Samba Wins Unfettered Access to Docs

Groklaw – Samba Team Receives Microsoft Protocol Documentation

No. This isn’t a bit like the Novell-Microsoft agreements. This is for access to Microsoft’s protocols, as ordered by the EU Commission and agreed to by Microsoft. It’s a good thing, in my opinion, and the Samba guys worked really hard to make this as good as it gets. Note that it’s a copyright agreement, with no per-copy royalties, not a patent licensing, but there’s a list of patents. Samba has not agreed to license them. Rather it will avoid them, and with a list of them provided by Microsoft, they can and so can you. There is no acknowledgment of them by Samba, no money paid for them, nothing. This is what Novell and others could have done, and thanks to Samba, everyone is a bit freer today.

Microsoft now gun shy of government regulators

Then a remarkable thing happened. Responding to an article on Groklaw where the agreement was being discussed, the trustee Neil Barrett posted a suggestion that I get in touch with him. Neil directed me to Craig Shank, who heads up Microsoft’s protocol licensing team. Neil thought that Craig would be the right person to talk to to try and fix some of the problematic parts of the agreement.

This in turn resulted in several weeks of intensive discussions, during which we found that Microsoft was indeed very willing to make modifications to the agreement to make it more suitable for use by the free software community. Microsoft was keen to ensure that it complied with the court ruling, Neil Barrett was happy to help facilitate those discussions, and of course we were more than willing to point out the parts of the agreement that were problematic for free software projects.

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ipw2200 Interrupts

Well, I finally found a post on the lkml about the same issues I’m experiencing. Even though I was wrong to say it was a CFS problem. It seems I should start poking around ACPI/CPU_IDLE bits.

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tag and release

Just finished listening to Security Now! 121, which is about privacy in the modern world or the lack of it. The consensus between them was that it was impossible to be totally “off the grid” as it were. However, the privacy conscious individuals do have a choice. Nearly, all businesses have privacy statements that set the rules on what information is collected, who sees it, how it can be used, and view/modify/delete the same information. Some companies like Google even let you view some of the information the company has on you, such as, using Google’s Web History feature. After I finished listening to SN121, I thought even though I don’t have web history activated Google is still tracking and collecting this information about me. So isn’t it better to know what Google knows rather than simply be unaware. So I activated Web History and will be checking in the coming weeks to fully realize that Google is a self-aware, omniscient entity.

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Linux

Rhythmbox wakeups

Powertop is definitely having a positive effect. Since the initial post on the Rhythmbox mailing list idle wakeups have decreased dramatically.

Rhythmbox 0.10.2

PowerTOP 1.9    (C) 2007 Intel Corporation
Collecting data for 30 seconds
Cn	          Avg residency
C0 (cpu running)        ( 0.7%)
C1		  0.0ms ( 0.0%)
C2		 39.1ms (50.1%)
C3		  0.6ms ( 0.0%)
C4		 25.3ms (49.2%)
P-states (frequencies)
1.87 Ghz     0.5%
1.60 Ghz     0.0%
1333 Mhz     0.0%
800 Mhz    99.5%
 Wakeups-from-idle per second : 32.7	interval: 30.0s
no ACPI power usage estimate available
Top causes for wakeups:
 32.3% ( 10.1)         rhythmbox : schedule_timeout (process_timeout)
32.0% ( 10.0)       <interrupt> : ipw2200, lan0
8.9% (  2.8)       <interrupt> : acpi
4.6% (  1.4)    wpa_supplicant : schedule_timeout (process_timeout)
3.4% (  1.1)           gkrellm : schedule_timeout (process_timeout)
3.4% (  1.1)                 X : do_setitimer (it_real_fn)
 3.3% (  1.0)         rhythmbox : futex_wait (hrtimer_wakeup)

Rhythmbox 0.11.2

PowerTOP 1.9    (C) 2007 Intel Corporation
Collecting data for 30 seconds
Cn	          Avg residency
C0 (cpu running)        ( 0.5%)
C1		  0.0ms ( 0.0%)
C2		 66.8ms (75.3%)
C3		  0.4ms ( 0.0%)
C4		 22.2ms (24.2%)
P-states (frequencies)
1.87 Ghz     0.0%
1.60 Ghz     0.0%
1333 Mhz     0.0%
800 Mhz   100.0%
 Wakeups-from-idle per second : 22.6	interval: 30.0s
no ACPI power usage estimate available
Top causes for wakeups:
51.0% (  9.9)       <interrupt> : ipw2200, lan0
11.6% (  2.3)       <interrupt> : acpi
7.0% (  1.4)    wpa_supplicant : schedule_timeout (process_timeout)
5.5% (  1.1)                 X : do_setitimer (it_real_fn)
5.3% (  1.0)           gkrellm : schedule_timeout (process_timeout)
2.6% (  0.5)           wpa_cli : schedule_timeout (process_timeout)
2.6% (  0.5)          events/0 : ipw_gather_stats (delayed_work_timer_fn)
2.4% (  0.5)       <interrupt> : ide0
1.5% (  0.3)          nautilus : schedule_timeout (process_timeout)
1.2% (  0.2)   gnome-settings- : schedule_timeout (process_timeout)
1.0% (  0.2)              init : schedule_timeout (process_timeout)
1.0% (  0.2)    mapping-daemon : schedule_timeout (process_timeout)
1.0% (  0.2)     <kernel> : page_writeback_init (wb_timer_fn)
1.0% (  0.2)           ifplugd : schedule_timeout (process_timeout)
    1.0% (  0.2)         rhythmbox : schedule_timeout (process_timeout)