Cured?

[alexpgp]

Well, I got to thinking about what I might do to put the Cyrix through its paces, pushing electrons through places that don't see much traffic when Windows is just sitting there, so I decided to reinstall my SETI@Home client. (I'd uninstalled it a while back because the machine could not run the software for more than several hours, typically, without a hang, crash, or a spontaneous reboot.)

The software puts a considerable, steady load on the CPU as it crunches a quarter-meg or so of data collected by a radiotelescope in, if memory serves, Arecibo, Puerto Rico. The analysis is designed to identify telltales in the data stream that might indicate something other than the normal "background" signal that a radiotelescope receives from space.

(What do I mean by a considerable load? Well, without putting too fine a point on it, when I first tried to process a unit of data on my old 486SX, it took over 100 real-time hours to get through less than one percent of the work required to do the whole unit. By comparison, the Cyrix has progressed just over 8 percent of the way through the unit in just under 8 hours.)

In fact, the SETI@Home software has been running for 7 hours and 49 minutes as I write this, and the box has logged just over 36 hours overall (assuming a start time of 2 am yesterday), and - knock wood - no reboot or other objectionable behavior. As an aside, I noticed that all record of the units I'd processed before uninstalling the client have disappeared, and I'm back at the starting point. (No biggie. It's not as if was a bragging point for me to begin with; if it were, I suppose I'd be upset.)

On the television news front, I paused in front of the local news a few moments ago and have again had the edge taken off of what has started out as a pretty good day. The steady stream of reports about every major bad thing that's happened to people overnight (e.g., traffic accidents, gang-related shootings, suicides, fires, plane crashes) certainly isn't inspirational, and I'm sure it doesn't serve to make me a particularly better-informed citizen.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not asking for a steady stream of candy-coated, feel-good news stories, but it sure would be nice to hear about things that go right in this world, at least once in a while.

Cheers...

Comments

Local News

[papoose.livejournal.com]

That's why I have all but given up on local newscasts. The sole purpose is to gain an audience, which means it focuses on sesationalizing events which preferabley for them involve sex or violence (just like prime time television). I think life can be bad enough - the last thing I want to see in my living room is how somebody left their newborn baby in a garbage can. I choose to get my "news" from other sources.