From owner-freebsd-hackers Thu Nov 1 4:10:20 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from flood.ping.uio.no (flood.ping.uio.no [129.240.78.31]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D345637B406; Thu, 1 Nov 2001 04:10:14 -0800 (PST) Received: by flood.ping.uio.no (Postfix, from userid 2602) id 5CAD914C2E; Thu, 1 Nov 2001 13:10:13 +0100 (CET) X-URL: http://www.ofug.org/~des/ X-Disclaimer: The views expressed in this message do not necessarily coincide with those of any organisation or company with which I am or have been affiliated. To: "Nicpon, John" Cc: Subject: Re: Unix Philosophers Please! References: <2AACFCDB6086274CA42D44085EF1BAA2293FF3@msm-001.msg.stcorp.com> From: Dag-Erling Smorgrav Date: 01 Nov 2001 13:10:12 +0100 In-Reply-To: <2AACFCDB6086274CA42D44085EF1BAA2293FF3@msm-001.msg.stcorp.com> Message-ID: Lines: 23 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0808 (Gnus v5.8.8) Emacs/20.7 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG "Nicpon, John" writes: > Please specifically define where data goes that is sent to /dev/null It goes into a special data sink in the CPU where it is converted to heat which is vented through the heatsink / fan assembly. This is why CPU cooling is increasingly important; as people get used to faster processors, they become careless with their data and more and more of it ends up in /dev/null, overheating their CPUs. If you delete /dev/null (which effectively disables the CPU data sink) your CPU may run cooler but your system will quickly become constipated with all that excess data and start to behave erratically. If you have a fast network connection you can cool down your CPU by reading data out of /dev/random and sending it off somewhere; however you run the risk of overheating your network connection and / or angering your ISP, as most of the data will end up getting converted to heat by their equipment, but they generally have good cooling, so if you don't overdo it you should be OK. I hope this answers your question. DES -- Dag-Erling Smorgrav - des@ofug.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message