Geekularity

While we’re on the subject of electrical power and things that suck, check out today’s article in the NY Times. Apprently Magentic Resonance Imagery (MRI) machines have become so commonplace, and the magnets within have become so strong, that there’s a growing problem with metal objects flying into them! People are getting hurt and property is getting damaged. Not to mention that comedy troops around the world are beginning to swarm around this topic for its slapstick qualities! Now that’s a lot of electricity and it certainly does suck!

I have several servers which run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and I’ve always been curious just how much it costs me to keep them fed! Unfortunately I’ve only been able to estimate their appetite based on each system’s wattage rating, and my PG&E bill.

Computers have power management systems and sleep modes which make their consumption rates vary from hour to hour. So, it’a difficult to estimate the true power usage. In order to measure the consumption over time I would have to spend some serious cashola to either add a dedicated electrical meter or to buy some sophisticated lab equipment. I wasn’t that curious! It wasn’t until a month ago, I stumbled across this little beauty:

It’s the Kill-A-Watt consumer appliance meter and it is brilliant! Essentially the creators combined a digital multi-meter with a stop watch and wrapped it into a $30.00 package. I have now monitored my cluster of servers for a month and I can safely say that my power bill, just for this equipment averages about $48.00 not including air conditioning. I do plan to change out the fans both for noise and for power consumption and see if I can knock a few dollars off of this monthly line item.

Stay tuned, I’m going to start measuring some of my other electronics and I’ll post the results!

Server Stats:

• 1 PIII 1GHz with 2 disk drives, & 3 fans
• 1 PIII 700MHz with 1 disk drive & 3 fans
• 1 P4 3.6GHz HT with 2 disk drives, tape backup, & 4 fans.
• 1 P4 3.4GHz HT with 2 disk drives & 4 fans.
• Monitor is usually turned off

Other electronics:

• 1 DSL Router
• 1 Fast Ethernet switch
• 1 VoIP termination unit
• 1 KVM switch
• 2 UPS battery units which trickle charge the batteries when on AC power.

Average Energy Consumption: .42 KW/H

I would not have expected this to be possible as the range for bluetooth, especially when encased inside a metal framed automobile, would extend far enough. According to this blog post from trifinite.org however, they claim that a person can take control of the hands-free phone systems built into many recent model automobiles using just a cheap directional antennae and a laptop. This exploit could lead to the following:

• Eavesdropping on a conversation inside the affected vehicle.
• Broadcasting external sounds into the affected vehicle through the sound system.
• View, copy, or edit the phonebook stored in the affected vehicle.

Although this exploit will likely be used for pranks, the notion of eavesdropping and identity theft is certainly cause for concern. The article does not clearly state which vehicles are affected, but that it is specific to Bluetooth enabled hands-free systems where the pass-key used to connect to the unit is set to a generic value. This is likely to include most automobile manufacturers. In other words, If you have a car with a Bluetooth speakerphone and you haven’t changed the password that was assigned by the manufacturer, you may be at risk. Here are some possible actions to prevent this exploit:

• Disable the Bluetooth hands-free system in your vehicle if you do not intend to use it
• If you do use your system, make sure your cell phone is turned on and that it is associated with the hands-free system. Once associated, the hands-free system should only allow exclusive access to your cell phone and therefore be unaffected by a third party.
• If you can, change the pass-key used by the hands-free system and your cell phone to a new, unique value. Make sure this new value is known only by you.