Month: December 2007
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…