Hot Box
So, I'm compressing my home directory with bzip2 (like zip, but smaller files) to copy it to another machine. I'll explain why later if things work out. I don't want to jinx anything. Now, remember, this is nothing out of the ordinary. This is something perfectly every-day. I do it ten times a day at work. My machine starts over heating and gives me a bunch of scary messages up the screen.

Message from syslogd@dellbox at Sun Mar 11 17:15:35 2007 ... dellbox kernel: CPU1: Running in modulated clock mode Message from syslogd@dellbox at Sun Mar 11 17:15:35 2007 ... dellbox kernel: CPU0: Running in modulated clock mode Message from syslogd@dellbox at Sun Mar 11 17:15:41 2007 ... dellbox kernel: CPU0: Temperature above threshold Message from syslogd@dellbox at Sun Mar 11 17:15:41 2007 ... dellbox kernel: CPU1: Temperature above threshold Message from syslogd@dellbox at Sun Mar 11 17:15:41 2007 ... dellbox kernel: CPU1: Running in modulated clock mode Message from syslogd@dellbox at Sun Mar 11 17:15:41 2007 ... dellbox kernel: CPU0: Running in modulated clock mode Message from syslogd@dellbox at Sun Mar 11 17:15:49 2007 ... dellbox kernel: CPU1: Temperature above threshold Message from syslogd@dellbox at Sun Mar 11 17:15:49 2007 ... dellbox kernel: CPU0: Temperature above threshold Message from syslogd@dellbox at Sun Mar 11 17:15:49 2007 ... dellbox kernel: CPU0: Running in modulated clock mode Message from syslogd@dellbox at Sun Mar 11 17:15:49 2007 ... dellbox kernel: CPU1: Running in modulated clock mode

That means my crappy Intel processor is kicking in to a slower gear to prevent a melt-down. This really pisses me off. I will never own another computer that has a kick-down gear when the going gets above 50% usage. What the hell were they thinking?
My computer is something like a 2.3 GHz machine. That is, it is 2.3 GHz until you need it then it turns into a 1.4 GHz or something.