Quote of the Day

From today's AWAD:

The older I grow, the more I listen to people who don't talk much.

—Germain G. Glien

Mouse Message

Nice! My mouse froze again a few minutes ago on my Edgy Eft - Gnome - Beryl desktop. I thought it was a driver problem or some instability from the above. However, after killing the X session and restarting it, someone (Xorg?) or more likely the mouse driver, told me that my mouse power was getting low and it needed to be “recharged.”

Of course! My Logitech wireless mouse neede new batteries!

A trip to the supply cabinet with help from Jim K solved the problem.

Linux Disk I/O

Here's a very nice description that drills all the way down into the kernel I/O code for a Linux read() call.

Actually the whole document by Andries Brouwer is worth reading.

Where's the Text??

Okay, I want to learn something new. I want to find out about something. More and more lately, I find web sites with links to information about a topic that are videos, flash animations and such. Okay, those are fine but Where is the Text?? Usually I want to READ about a topic. It's faster and I can skip around. I usually don't want to watch a video!!! Lately, I keep coming upon cases where I can't find any text but only video.

The most recent example was this morning at Sun's web site. All videos. Argh!

Maybe the text is there somewhere but it sure is getting harder to find. At least it is in some cases, which are way too many for me.

Real Estate Plot Roller-Coaster

Okay, here's a new idea for plotting data. Taken from the Freakonomics Blog, this is real estate data from 1890 to about the present, plotted as a roller-coaster ride. This is just cool! (It's a 3m41s video).

How Do You Pronounce CentOS?

Since we plan to use CentOS4 on the compute nodes of the new cluster, the various pronunciations I hear in our phone conferences keep bugging me.

I found this discussion which doesn't shed any true light but only confirms that multiple pronunciations are in popular use, and there isn't an official version.

I pronounce it like SIN-toss and continue to prefer that version.

Supercomputing Comes to the Rust Belt

An interesting article on rust belt companies converting to a new business.

Three years ago, when Michael Garvey began looking for ways to revive his family's 85-year-old manufacturing business in down-on-its-luck Youngstown, Ohio, he settled on a surprising solution: supercomputing. For much of a century, the tiny company—originally Trumbull Bronze Co. but renamed M-Seven Technologies—specialized in casting bronze parts for steel mills. But now, it has started making money by collecting and analyzing vast storehouses of data to help larger manufacturers improve their operations.

203 Milllion Linux Phones by 2012

This article in Information Week by Eric Zeman reports on a prediction by ABI Research of 203 million Linux phones by 2012!

Linux Mint

Hmmm. Another distro. This is Linux Mint, based on Ubuntu which is based on Debian, .... So why another distribution?

Here's a summary of what I read.

• Slightly different look and feel. Green/blue instead of orange/brown.
• Multimedia already installed including support for MP3s, video, flash, DVDs, etc.
• Ready Wi-Fi support (they say).

Here's the Linux Mint Home page and this is a brief review.