I’ve just disabled third-party cookies in Firefox. The whole notion of user tracking creeps me out.
In Firefox 3, Edit → Preferences, then select Privacy, and ensure that “Accept third-party cookies” is not checked.
November 2008
Uncategorized25 Nov 2008 07:36 am
Let your kids play video games
Let your kids spend countless hours playing video games and using computers. If you don’t, they will become antisocial luddites!  … wait, what…?
Uncategorized08 Nov 2008 08:42 am
Electricity leech: cable set-top box
We have a cable set-top box used to receive digital TV.
When it’s “off” it consumes 17 Watts. We waited for hours to see if the wattage would eventually come down, but it did not.
I’m curious to find out if newer models are better. Ours is a first generation box: no HDTV, no hard-drive.
When it’s on, it consumes 18 Watts.
Uncategorized06 Nov 2008 03:58 pm
I bought a Kill-a-Watt power monitor and measured the energy consumption of a few of our electronic devices.
Computers logged-in, but not running any application:
- laptop: 23 Watts
- Quad-core CPU, dual hard-drive desktop: 109 Watts (73 for the computer itself, 36 for the LCD monitor)
I’m disappointed that a complete desktop computer system consumes more than 4 times as much as a laptop. It’s especially disappointing that my 22-inch monitor consumes more that the laptop (which has an LCD monitor)
Plasma TV:
- 0 Watts when off (Yay!)
- 310-355 Watts when ON (Yikes!)
Lessons:
- Unless you truly need an extremely powerful computer, buy a laptop
- Plasma TVs need electricity, lots and lots of it
Uncategorized05 Nov 2008 06:03 am
Men too, but not as much…
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn15104-the-feminine-touch-carries-more-germs.html
They didn’t explain why men’s hands have less bacteria? Does burping, farting and picking one’s nose kill bacteria? Are things like hand lotions used more by women make hands more conducive to bacterial growth?