random neuron misfires

Sunday, April 22nd, 2007 at 11:49 pm | 1,819 views | trackback url
Tags: servers

I’ve been thinking a lot about power and power-consumption over the last six months to a year or so. I have already replaced every single bulb in the house and office with CFLs. We went from 60W and 70W bulbs in the house to 11W, 13W and 23W bulbs inside and outside (our exterior spotlights were 100W+, and are now brighter, whiter, 23W bulbs).

I’ve replaced my ageing servers with AMD64 dual-core machines and their PSUs with Antec NeoHE 550W power supplies, and I’m very conscious about turning off bulbs in rooms I’m not in when I’m not there.

My last post touched on some power consumption issues, and I just found this Slashdot article, which talks about making the s3 suspend/wakeup work better on on all machines… and then I stumbled upon this email from Bill Gates (marked as Plaintiff’s Exhibit 3020 in Comes v. Microsoft). It states:

One thing I find myself wondering about is whether we shouldn’t try and make the “ACPI” extensions somehow Windows specific.

It seems unfortunate if we do this work and get our partners to do the work and the result is that Linux works great without having to do the work.

Maybe there is no way to avoid this problem but it does bother me.

Maybe we could define the APIs so that they work well with NT and not the others even though they are open.

Or maybe we could patent something related to this.

This was penned on Sunday, January 24, 1999 at 8:41am. I can’t believe the gall of Bill Gates, to even suggest such a thing, given our already-stressed power grid.

I’m going to get a Watt’s Up power meter to measure the consumption of some key devices in the house and office, or one of the Kill-a-Watt products that do the same thing.

I’m so happy I continue to run Linux, for so many reasons other than the Freedom it affords me (liberty as well as financial). Windows just can’t even come close anymore, even with Bill Gates actively trying to stifle our ability to evolve.

Last Modified: Sunday, April 22nd, 2007 @ 23:49

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