Running Ubuntu on my "new" Dell C640 2GHz P4M sessile-laptop with 21 inch 1600x1200 LCD. It was a bitch upgrading Xorg to Breezy's, 'cause Ubuntu split the fonts and input drivers out of the X server package without providing a transition package. (Hey, it's beta; waddayawant?) Too, it was loading the vesafb module at startup (which isn't beta), making the switch to an external monitor a flaky process. Now it's booting a native 2.6.12.5 kernel without initrd, with X using Free nv and kernel using Free nvidiafb, for Xv support, and all is fine. (What would I do with DRI? Please.)

I've learned a lot about CPU throttling, because this beast runs hot -- never less than 50 C, and the fan runs half the time. It turns out it really has only two speeds: 2 and 1.2GHz. The ACPI "throttling" modes run at one of those speeds, but just turn it off during enough time slices make it crawl. They don't seem to make it run any cooler, though. When running 2GHz, the temperature won't go below 63 C.

It's quite a surprise to find that there might not actually be any fusion going on in stars, that all that heat and light (and EM turmoil) you can see might just possibly be the whole deal.

I've mostly given up on VoIP. The audio quality is just too flaky. Since cell traffic is really VoIP underneath, we can blame the bulk carriers for sabotaging VoIP for the benefit of their cell businesses.

zeenix: Sure, the Pakistan gov't is bad, but they got nukes. As Mark O'Donnell wrote in 1979, "If money talks, an atomic bomb sings opera." Remember, in Frank Herbert's Dune, the Atreides "family atomics"? The U.S. has this figured out too: who needs an actual nation -- you know, civil society, legitimacy -- when you got nukes? Citizens, feh.