Computers-Plus

Newsflash, Blizzard: A lot of people (who probably wouldn’t be attending BlizzCon anyway) in the California area are very aware of May 21, as it’s the day that Armageddon officially begins. And I’m not talking about a level-mod or Diablo 2 marathon gaming session- literally, the End of Days. Not this I digress.    Anyway, in case the Earth isn’t consumed by heavenly fire tomorrow morning (On that note, does Armageddon have a time zone? Do Read more…

HP well anticipated small-screen Smartphone running the new HP webOS 2.1 is expected to be launched at an HP Press Event on May 2. The slogan that HP has for that smartphone is “small is the new big” as it comes with a 2.6-inch capacitive touchscreen display with a 320×400 pixel resolution which is quite minimal when compared to the major smartphones on the market at the moment. With Android activating more than 350,000 Smartphone daily, we are wondering the the HP Veer will do as good as the Palm Pre or the Palm Pre 2. Well Read more…

Lithium-ion batteries have been known to explode or ignite while in use in a laptop. But the Federal Aviation Administration is now warning airlines that these same batteries may ignite when not in use, but stored in a hot cargo hold.

The warning comes after a United Parcel Service 747-400 crashed last month travelling over Dubai. The cargo was a large shipment of lithium batteries, and both pilots were killed.

The problem stems from the fact cargo holds are not usually temperature controlled. So if a plane is in a situation where the hold can get hot any batteries have the potential to ignite by moving out of their normal safe temperature range.

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I have a deep and rather personal interest in earthquake and volcano prediction. This comes from spending most of my youth within a few kilometers of an active fault line and less than 100km from a volcano that has, in the past, left a layer of ash over most of the surface of the Earth. In fact, events in just the last year (nevermind the last decade) have convinced me that accurate earthquake and volcano prediction would probably be a bigger lifesaver than any other single scientific development.

So it was with interest that I read a recent Nature paper reporting that scientists might have been misinterpreting some aftershocks as earthquakes, leading them to overestimate the risk on some faults and underestimate the risk on others.

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