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...
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...