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I have seen neither disposable lighters nor e-cigarettes go off in normal storage. So if we are going on what I have seen then both appear to be safe. However, doing a quick search only reveals one fatality and 195 'incidents' leading to 133 injuries between 2009-2016 for e-cigarettes.

For cigarettes the picture looks much, much worse. The average ANNUAL rate of house fires caused by smoking is 18,100 each year in the US which causes on average 590 deaths each year and 1,130 injuries. So the annual rate of injuries is about 60 times the rate of injuries from e-cigarettes and the death rate is about a thousand times higher (with a significant margin of error due to there only being one recorded incidence of death from an e-cigarette. Worse the domestic fires likely killed and injured people who were not smoking. At least with e-cigarettes the risk seems to be mainly confined to the person choosing to use the device.

If governments are passing laws then they need to look at hard, objective evidence when deciding to ban things not anecdotal stories. When it comes to banning things we have to use solid, objective arguments and not go on what we "feel" because I don't want things I enjoy doing to get banned simply because someone else "feels" that they are bad. The objective evidence is that e-cigarettes are far, far safer than regular smoking from an accidental death standpoint (the toxicology picture is not yet clear it seems) so banning them while allowing regular cigarettes is completely unwarranted.

"I suppose you'd argue against evacuating the entire building when there's a fire, too. "

Turns out, in multi-story buildings this is exactly what happens. "In a typical scenario, the occupants of the fire floor and the floors immediately above and below it should immediately use the exit stairs" https://www.nfpa.org/Public-Ed...

Because clearly YouTube is a statistically relevant sample that should be used to draw conclusions of any kind.

Nobody posts every car fire from ICE powered vehicles, because they are amazingly common. In 2015 alone, there were 174,000 highway vehicle fires.

Reuters reports a single Tesla car fire in 2015.

You are a god damn idiot.

Out of all the Teslas (any model!) you can find that are on fire, how many of them were involved in some horrific crash?

Nearly all of them. Getting a Tesla (or any EV) to catch fire generally requires some effort.

Meanwhile, there is a car fire roughly every 3 minutes in the US alone (based on data from NFPA: 174,000 reported incidents in 2015). 72% of these fires are caused by a malfunction of some kind. I guess having a flammable liquids in close proximity to boiling hot metal and gasses can be a hazardous situation!
=Smidge=

Out of all the Teslas (any model!) you can find that are on fire, how many of them were involved in some horrific crash?

Nearly all of them. Getting a Tesla (or any EV) to catch fire generally requires some effort.

Meanwhile, there is a car fire roughly every 3 minutes in the US alone (based on data from NFPA: 174,000 reported incidents in 2015). 72% of these fires are caused by a malfunction of some kind. I guess having a flammable liquids in close proximity to boiling hot metal and gasses can be a hazardous situation!
=Smidge=

Are these reporters pointing out that 17 gasoline cars burst into flames every hour in the USA? That non-Tesla cars are responsible for 6% of all fire-related deaths?

Nope? That's what I imagined.

https://www.nfpa.org/Public-Ed...

The US has "Professional Engineer" as a separate thing. It's kind of a joke to qualify for, but the point of it is you lose it if you sign of on something stupid, so it does serve a useful function. BTW, "electrician" and "electrical engineer" are unrelated fields in the US. Electricians memorize the hundreds of pages of the national electric code, while EEs design circuit boards. Any idiot with a degree can be an EE, but a master electrician is a professional. Sounds like the rest of the world has it backwards.

Yes, lightning is a huge factor.

I have hiked many miles in many forests, and I almost always see one lightning struck tree.

It has been this way for all my life, and I got a few decades behind me.

Now most of them in my area do not trigger a wildfire because we get quite a
bit of rain as this is not a desert.

As I said in my other related post the areas that get lightning but little rain
it can get ugly.

"During 2007-2011, U.S. local fire departments responded to an estimated average of 22,600 fires per year that were started by lightning. "

http://www.nfpa.org/News-and-R...

22,000 per year....yeah I knew it was high, didn't know it was THAT high.

Don't have time this morning, but anything you can read on NFPA 70E will be a good start. You can read the entirety of the 70E standard online at nfpa.org for free.

Good example of a Energized Electrical Safe Work Practices program here, although its somewhat dated, it is a good representation:

https://www.csuci.edu/publicsa...

PC baloney

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

While electrons are easier to transport over distances, molecules are much easier to stockpile and transfer without loss.

Merely even refining transportation fuels is a much less efficient process than charging li-ions.

Carrying your own oxidizer with you is stupid when the air is 20% oxygen, not to mention that riding on a ton of fuel and oxidizer packed in close proximity is silly

Li-ions don't work by oxidation processes, they work by intercalation processes. On one side you have graphite and/or silicon, and on the other you have nickel/cobalt/aluminum oxides. One or both of them are infiltrated with lithium ions in the interstitial space; the charge state is defined by which side the lithium is on.

You seem to be under the mistaken concept that energy density corresponds to safety. Tell me, which is more of a hazard, 100kg of aluminum or 100kg of nitroglycerine? Now tell me, which is more energy dense?

Here's the reality of fire safety in Tesla battery packs. They're so non-flammable that you can generally burn the rest of the car to the ground without burning the pack. Try that with a gasoline car. Gasoline fires in cars are extremely common. 152k gasoline cars catch fire in the US alone every year. Tesla rates of fires are far less than those in gasoline cars.

What boggles the mind *to me* is that gasoline vehicles are allowed to store such huge quantities of a highly flammable fuel in just a big tank. No compartmentalization / isolation system, just pour it in, and there you go!

And lastly: IC engines have consumables yes, but they are field-serviceable and don't require complete remanufacturing to maintain their efficiency.

Simply not true. ICE efficiencies decline over time, and the level of cost required to keep them running at as-of-manufactured efficiency makes it impractical to do for most consumers. Older ICE vehicles are generally much less efficient than new ones. Which also, BTW, reduces range. Proper li-ion packs, like Tesla's, do lose range with time, but only slowly. Click on "charts". Typical degradation is about 4% in the first year, but much slower thereafter. A typical 5-year old car has only about 6-7% total degradation. It's hard to know at this point whether you can continue extrapolating such a slow decline slope over time, but it's at the very least extremely promising. Typical results from Tesla taxis with hundreds of thousands of miles on them are less than 10% degradation.

We're talking "Now, not in a hundred years."

BTW, it also sounds like you're under the impression that EVs remain unusually heavy. Check out the curb weights of the Model 3 variants. SR is 3549lbs (1609kg) and LR is 3814 lbs (1730kg). Its ICE class competitors (BMW 3-series, Audi A4, Mercedes C300, etc) come in a wide variety of configurations:

BMW 3-Series: 1475-1770kg
Audi A4: 1410-1695kg
Mercedes C300: 1630-1715+kg

There's nothing unusual about the Model 3's weight versus its ICE competitors. The LR is a bit on the heavy side, but the SR slots right in the middle.

There are an estimated 150,000 car fires in the US every year. I don't think either of us has the data available to make an apples to apples comparison but I very much doubt that battery powered cars will prove to be meaningfully more hazardous that gasoline powered ones.

Gasoline does not have to be in a combustion chamber to ignite. A hot manifold with a leaking fuel line is more than enough to set a car on fire.

My point: Fuel cell batteries where; One could refill a tank of reactant and having the reactor part in a distinct area, would not need having the chemical reaction so close to the stored energy (thin layers in lithium batteries). About burning cars: If ppls with electric cars were skipping maintenance and having so much mishandling than those burning IC engine cars endured. I think consequences would be way more dramatic. Be sure as soon as Electric Cars becomes affordable to the mass, there will be enough fools to cross the boundaries of safety.

What makes a battery more hazardous than fuel, is having the reaction occurs at the same location as the stored energy.

There are an estimated 150,000 car fires in the US every year. I don't think either of us has the data available to make an apples to apples comparison but I very much doubt that battery powered cars will prove to be meaningfully more hazardous that gasoline powered ones.

With fuel, combustion chambers are very distinct and distant from storage tanks.

Gasoline does not have to be in a combustion chamber to ignite. A hot manifold with a leaking fuel line is more than enough to set a car on fire.

like there are NO ice car fires WHATSOEVER... right

Great 285,000 potential bombs around the US courtesy of Samsung.

Yeah, nothing could be nearly as bad as the fire risk posed by these phones in the wild: http://www.nfpa.org/public-edu...

Right. Put a space heater in a closet stuffed full of flammable cloth. The light bulb serves two purposes in one easily-maintained unit. 1. Lighting. 2. Heat.

And the bulb is never near a costume.

Have a look at this

Sure, the NEC: http://catalog.nfpa.org/NFPA-7...

If you don't want to buy it, you can probably go to your local electrical supply company, who should have at least one desk copy. They probably won't mind if you sit there and read it and take notes.

Note that it will only tell you what you can do, not what you should do. There are also no guarantees that your local regulatory agency doesn't have slightly modified or more restrictive rules about what can be done, or who can do it.

Or don't put it in your kitchen. 99% of the homes do not have a fire alarm in the kitchen. the proper place it to put them on the ceiling in the bedroom above the door if you have bedroom doors closed at night, otherwise they belong outside the sleeping area near the bedroom doors.

http://www.nfpa.org/safety-inf...

There are about 13,900 vehicle fires per year without structural involvement and 366,000 home structure fires of which only 8,9000 started in a garage or vehicle storage area, according to the NFPA. Cars don't even make the 1% cut-off for inclusion in their table of sources of ignition. Your washer and drier are a far bigger risk (15,200 house fires).

By far the most common causes of house fires are cooking accidents (43%), heating equipment (16%), arson (8%), faulty wiring or other electrical (6%), and smoking accidents (5%).

U.S. fire departments responded to an estimated average of 152,300 automobile fires per year in 2006-2010. These fires caused an average of 209 civilian deaths, 764 civilian injuries, and $536 million in direct property damage. [...] On average, 17 automobile fires were reported per hour. These fires killed an average of four people every week.

http://www.nfpa.org/safety-information/for-consumers/vehicles

U.S. Vehicle Fire Trends and Patterns (pdf)

U.S. fire departments responded to an estimated average of 152,300 automobile fires per year in 2006-2010. These fires caused an average of 209 civilian deaths, 764 civilian injuries, and $536 million in direct property damage. [...] On average, 17 automobile fires were reported per hour. These fires killed an average of four people every week.

http://www.nfpa.org/safety-information/for-consumers/vehicles

U.S. Vehicle Fire Trends and Patterns (pdf)

You UK drivers are amateurs when it comes to fire. We merkins have 152,000 a year.

The "all car fires" stat includes dropped cigarettes that smolder, cars intentionally set on fire, etc.

Exactly.

How many regular cars light on fire on the highway after running over a debris such as a hitch?

NFPA report. Same source as the other stats cited in the article, not mentionning the causes was a simple oversight, right ? I didn't check the full PDF reports yet.

So, three fires for Tesla vehicles, one of them caused by "collision or overturn", and the two other by... malfunction ?
There is also bias as "older vehicles were more likely to have a fire caused by mechanical or electrical failures.".
I'm surprised arson counts for "only" 8 percent of reported fires.

Anyway, Musk and the writer's stats are meaningless, especially the "no one's been killed" when we have 3 cases and the rate for gasoline vehicles is 0,1%.

http://www.earth-policy.org/plan_b_updates/2010/update87

250 million cars

if only one in 10 thousand catches fire then their would be 25 thousand car fires.

http://www.nfpa.org/research/fire-statistics/the-us-fire-problem/highway-vehicle-fires

187 thousand fires on the highway alone.

or nearly 1 in 2000 petrol cars catch fire each year.

2) CO sensor on the ceiling. Not where CO collects

The experts (National Fire Protection Agency and a whole lot of experimental research says you're wrong about that. http://www.nfpa.org/~/media/Files/Research/carbon_monoxidedetectorspacing.pdf

Key part or you here "Based upon the filling phenomenon due to buoyancy seen in experiments and reflected in the filling calculations, the location of a detector low in the same space as the combustion source can lead to delays in detection relative to detectors placed high in the space. This effect is especially pronounced for large CO sources."

Got that? CO sensor on the ceiling actually provides faster detection of a CO leak. Those plug-in CO detectors you've seen for sale are intended to be placed close to an expected CO source like your gas appliances, but not intended to be relied upon for detection of CO produced by unanticipated sources.

Here is some interesting information on car fires from the US Fire Administration (USFA->FEMA->DHS) and the National Fire Protection Association.

From 2008-2010 "Approximately one in seven fires responded to by fire departments across the nation is a highway vehicle fire. This does not include the tens of thousands of fire department responses to highway vehicle accident sites.". The leading factors in ignition where "mechanical failure" (44.1%) and "electrical failure" (22.3%). 1

The actual number of highway car fires in that period was approximately 582,000, or an average of over 500 car fires every day on American highways.2

In this accident which involved an electric car a large piece of sparking metal debris was run over by the car and thrown up with enough force to slice through the cars stored energy compartment, in this case one of the batteries. The driver was alerted via the display to a problem and instructed to pull over immediately due to the fact that one of the batteries was now leaking and smoldering. A short time later the burning ember reached critical temperature and was able to ignite the softer materials in the adjoining 'frunk', the carpeted front side trunk located where most cars have an engine. The other 15 battery compartments, having not been skewered by a giant metal spike, remained unharmed due to the firewalls and other protection, as did the passenger compartment.

If the owner had been driving a gas powered car and that metal spike had instead been driven up into the gas tank, ripping it open and showering the fuel with sparks as it was dragged along the highway, would the driver have had any warning other than a loud bump and then the passenger compartment being consumed by flames?

This is not the first Tesla fire, there was another involving the Roadster resulting in a recall of 439 vehicles. The source of the fire in that instance was not the advanced battery at all, it was one of the old style 12V lines (Tesla vehicles still include a regular 12V battery for lights/instruments and 'ignition') being in a bad position near a headlight and susceptible to damage that could spark a fire. Going back to the statistics above we have over 100 car fires each day (22.3% of 500) caused by those 12V wires and components being damaged and shorting out. For example Honda recalled over 140,000 (non-hybrid) Fits in the US this year because the wiring in a 12V door switch could get wet, short out and start a fire. GM had the same problem last year and had to recall almost half a million vehicles.

A perfect opportunity wasted because nobody brought old coat hangers and marshmallows. I think ever Tesla and Prius owner should have a bag in the glove compartment just in case.

Never ever been a gasoline vehicle fire, eh?

Anyhow, this link is interesting. Apparently they have Electriuc SUV's. At 1:21 the batteries erupt, making a big fireball. Silly firefighters thought it was gasoline that did that. Sarcasm off/

But seriously, what the hell? People who drive at combined speeds of around 160 miles per hour while carrying a tank of liquid that is almost expolisve (Gasoline deflagrates) People die almost every day in car fires

Here's some info from the NFPA: http://www.nfpa.org/safety-information/for-consumers/vehicles

U.S. fire departments responded to an estimated average of 152,300 automobile fires per year in 2006-2010.

On average, 17 automobile fires were reported per hour. These fires killed an average of four people every week.

Only 2% of automobile fires began in fuel tanks or fuel lines, but these incidents caused 15% of the automobile fire deaths.

But let one electric car catch fire, and the haters are doing thei grave dance amid the OHHHH NOOS! and the "I told you so's!"

Almost as clever as the people who are so aghast and upset and environmentally concious about those deadly CFL bulbs, while their rec rooms and garages are lit by florescent bulbs with a lot more mercury in them. Much better to just say "I hate Change!" and leave it at that.

Yes cars catch on fire, what your stat doesn't shed any light on is how many of those fires are caused by the fuel system. There are countless other ways to get a car to catch fire.

https://www.nfpa.org/safety-information/for-consumers/vehicles

U.S. fire departments responded to an estimated average of 152,300 automobile fires per year in 2006-2010. ...
Only 2% of automobile fires began in fuel tanks or fuel lines, but these incidents caused 15% of the automobile fire deaths.

So about 3,000 car fires annually start in the fuel tanks or fuel lines.

Cooking fire related deaths: http://www.nfpa.org/assets/files/pdf/os.homes.pdf

Pre-vaccine related chicken pox deaths: http://www.cdc.gov/chickenpox/surveillance.html

A person is 4 times more likely to die from a home cooked meal than from chicken pox without vaccination.

You can view the National Electric Code for free by going to http://www.nfpa.org/aboutthecodes/AboutTheCodes.asp?DocNum=70# and then going down to"view the document online" and clicking the link, then sign in. If you don't have a username/passwd then you can register for free.

You don't need one or two documents, a small business needs several hundred. Each standard references several others in part or whole.

Same thing applies to your residence. Municipal governments purchase the IBC code (2012 Full Set $556.00), the NFPA code (2008 edition $82.00), the NEC code (2008 edition plus CD $182.25), et cetera, ad nauseum. There is *one* copy of each codebook available in a library somewhere, and no, you may not check it out - it has to stay available for anyone to look at in order to maintain the "ignorance is no excuse" cop-out. So please, go purchase all the relevant code documents associated with residential construction in your area and tell me when it starts to get financially significant.

You don't need one or two documents, a small business needs several hundred. Each standard references several others in part or whole.

Same thing applies to your residence. Municipal governments purchase the IBC code (2012 Full Set $556.00), the NFPA code (2008 edition $82.00), the NEC code (2008 edition plus CD $182.25), et cetera, ad nauseum. There is *one* copy of each codebook available in a library somewhere, and no, you may not check it out - it has to stay available for anyone to look at in order to maintain the "ignorance is no excuse" cop-out. So please, go purchase all the relevant code documents associated with residential construction in your area and tell me when it starts to get financially significant.

On average, there is another car fire in the United States every 109 seconds. (PDF warning)

Not all of them are the result of accidents. Food for thought.
=Smidge=

You have a good point about the IBEW, electrical codes and standards. The code and standards publishing bodies guard their products jealously. And they do chase down people who violate their copyrights aggressively. Sometimes too aggressively, if one assumes 'fair use' and quotes too extensively from their publications.

The NFPA, the publisher of various electrical, safety and fire codes also provides training and (at one time, maybe not anymore) offered a code interpretation service (which may have come dangerously close to providing engineering services without a license). As such, they are in direct competition with other training and engineering service providers. Armed with SOPA, they could pretty much shut down any competing services. Or at least drive them off the 'Net. The IEEE holds a similar position in that many ordinances simply cite their standards in statutes or regulations and expect anyone having to comply with said regulations to cough up $$$ to obtain a copy.

Obligatory bad car analogy: Think of a world where traffic laws just referred to some AAA driving handbook, available only to paying members.

I'm sure that there are many analogous examples in different professions where one quasi-official publisher could effectively control their industry given sufficient ammunition.

Try reading the National Electrical Code online. First, start at the NFPA site. Then, spend a few fun minutes trying to find the link to the NEC. Then register. Then, if you're lucky, you can use "RealRead" to view the Code. As the NFPA puts it, This document is designed to be viewed online: there are no "print", "save", "cut and paste", or "search" options.

Try reading the National Electrical Code online. First, start at the NFPA site. Then, spend a few fun minutes trying to find the link to the NEC. Then register. Then, if you're lucky, you can use "RealRead" to view the Code. As the NFPA puts it, This document is designed to be viewed online: there are no "print", "save", "cut and paste", or "search" options.

Personally I think H2 is too difficult to handle. I think after a few cars blowup, the consumers will flee. -or- If the manufacturers do manage to make safe, impervious hydrogen cars, the pricetag will be so high (~$100,000) that nobody will be able to afford it. The same flaw that plagues pure EVs.

Because conventional gas tanks never explode, gas engines never catch fire, and we're paying a fair price for perfectly safe gasoline storage and transport?

Never mind the studies showing that hydrogen is safer than gasoline in real-world situations. It's not the safety mechanisms that make the present technology cost $100,000 per car, it's the fuel cells themselves, and the cost will only come down over time because of mass-production and technology advances.

Actually, I can't think of a single seal of approval, or certification, that means anything.

I'll expand your mind then. Try the UL and the NFPA seals and listings.

Of course if something is not up to spec (lets say a manufacturer certified with one material and used another in production), then most people have a right to sue the manufacturers for not following the standards they were certified under as well as it being known that the problem wasn't the certification but the production afterward.

It IS? Because I could swear that this says the PDF is $82.50 for non-members, the same price as the print edition. My public library didn't have ANY edition of the NEC available and there were no current editions in the entire 5 county area (ok I just re-checked the entire Cleveland Public Library system and there are now a few 2008 editions available but all are marked reference and so non-transferable between branches).

Sorry - I replied to the wrong post. The National Fire Prevention Association (NFPA) is behind the National Electrical Code (NEC), not the federal government. That's right, the electrical safety rules are written by people whose job is to prevent fires, which makes some sense for once. Most states adopt the NEC as their official electrical code, sometimes with slight (and sometimes not-so-slight) changes.

The National Fire Prevention Association (NFPA) is behind the National Electrical Code (NEC), not the federal government. That's right, the electrical safety rules are written by people whose job is to prevent fires, which makes some sense for once. Most states adopt the NEC as their official electrical code, sometimes with slight (and sometimes not-so-slight) changes.

The National Fire Prevention Association (NFPA) is behind the National Electrical Code (NEC), not the federal government. That's right, the electrical safety rules are written by people whose job is to prevent fires, which makes some sense for once. Most states adopt the NEC as their official electrical code, sometimes with slight (and sometimes not-so-slight) changes.

It's the National Fire Protection Association who writes things like the national electrical code. It's all about avoiding things that have caused fires.

It's the National Fire Protection Association who writes things like the national electrical code. It's all about avoiding things that have caused fires.

Its possible that these incidents are statistically insignificant given the number of products sold that don't explode. Or there would be new rules proposed in the codes to address these problems. These folks just live for writing new rules. In fact, there are some pretty strict rules covering electrical installations in hazardous locations like gas stations. Its just that no construction code can keep someone from running an extension cord and plugging in a PC around gas fumes.

The specified cranking cycle for a diesel generator is 15 seconds on, 15 seconds off. For mission-critical applications, you need at least two independent starting systems, each capable of three cranking cycles (per NFPA 110 requirements--sorry, no free link). If they didn't have a UPS that could keep the power on until all the starting opportunities were exhausted, lawyers and insurance companies will eat them alive. Thirteen seconds won't cut it!

posted anonymously for job security

According to this document, 5.8 firefighters die per 100,000 fires. The fatality rate for an astronaut onboard the shuttle corresponds to the rate of shuttle accidents: 2 in 117 launches. Now, most people in the astronaut program will never even get to go up on the shuttle. However, just one shuttle ride is the risk of several lifetimes worth of fighting fires.

And it's not that the shuttle is bad by worldwide standards. Despite all the criticism, it's failed about as often as manned Soyuz launches, and less often than Soyuz launches as a whole (luckily, the unmanned Soyuz launches have had the brunt of the failures). Launch failures are a part of rocketry.

Which brings me to this article about how the "space tourism" industry is flirting with financial ruin.

No, Sony has always had a one year warranty on their Playstations, and they most definitely honor them.

A year huh? Always been a year? From Sony's PS2 Support page:

LIMITED WARRANTY FOR THE PLAYSTATION GAME CONSOLE

Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) warrants to the original purchaser that this product (hardware, game discs and accessories) shall be free from defects in material and workmanship for a period of ninety (90) days from the date of purchase (the "Warranty Period")

LIMITED WARRANTY FOR THE PLAYSTATION 2 COMPUTER ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM

Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) warrants to the original purchaser that this product (hardware, game discs and accessories) shall be free from defects in material and workmanship for a period of ninety (90) days from the date of purchase (the "Warranty Period").

Seeing as 90 days isn't that long, I reiterate that a product that generates a lot of heat is a concern of mine, since products that generate a lot of heat tend to die sooner rather than later (this is why people get so anal about fans on their PCs). Since Sony usually has 90 day warranties, I want to be confident my PS3 won't be ailing on day 91.

If I was that worried about a fire hazard, I wouldn't have a stove in my house. As it is, I'm not worried, and yes, I do have a stove in my house, as well as a fireplace, matches, lighters, and other things that cause fires more often than the occasional one-in-a-million fires from electronic gadgets.

None of these things cause fires if they are propery operated. Electrical fires happen even under normal operation. As a result, electrical fires account for more dollars in damages than any other kind of fire except arson, according to the National Fire Protection Agency. About 1 in 10 home fires is caused by an electrical source, also accoridng to NFPA. Far from one in a million.

Discounting everything else - it's one of the first (if not the first) products to use a Cell processor.

It's one of the first CONSUMER products to use a cell processor. Cell processors have been used in tiny gadgets and big iron for several years. It's proven to be, well, awesome.

You sure about that? The Cell Wikipedia page says:

Cell is a microprocessor architecture jointly developed by a Sony, Toshiba, and IBM alliance known as STI. The architectural design and first implementation were carried out at the STI Design Center over a four-year period beginning March 2001 on a budget reported by IBM as approaching $400 million.

Cell is a shorthand for Cell Broadband Engine Architecture, commonly abbreviated CBEA in full or Cell BE in part. Cell combines a general-purpose Power Architecture core of modest performance with streamlined coprocessing elements which greatly accelerate multimedia and vector processing applications, as well as many other forms of dedicated computation.

The major commercial application of Cell is in Sony's upcoming PlayStation 3 game console which is slated to launch in November 17, 2006 (in the US). Mercury Computer Systems has a dual Cell server, a dual Cell blade configuration, a rugged computer and a PCI Express accelerator board available in different stages of production.

It goes on to say that the only company currently using the Cell is Mercury Systems, who use it for an accelerator card and a blade system. IBM has a blade prototype, but no products. Wikipedia can of course be wrong, but it doesn't seem to be as widepread, or out as long, as you say. Can you link to some of these other devices you mention?

Check out WestLaw. The base data is public domain, i.e., court records. WestLaw and its competitors charge big bucks, though, for collecting it, cross-referencing it, plugging in who cites what it in their cases, which rulings have been overturned or or narrowed by later case law, etc.

In the case of the National Electrical Code, the situation is reversed. A private organization codifies "best practices" for its membership in a number of areas, and publishes these as copyrighted works, available to those members. It also makes those available to the general public, although at what some consider an inflated price. The NEC and other "reference publications" of the National Fire Prevention Association aren't laws or regulations themselves. And they don't start out in the public domain.

It's when every damn little town in America (that includes the U.S. and Canada) uses those publications as references within their laws that things get sticky. If they wrote their own regulations, THOSE should be in the public domain, but they usually don't. Should the private organization lose its rights because the city council of Balderdash Springs votes to "incorporate, by reference, the standards of the [insert year here] National Electical Code" into its building codes, rather than writing their own set? I don't think so. But, this may be a case in which having a (reasonably) consistant national standard for compliance would override the interests of the copyright holder...

I believe he's referring to the NFPA standard 704 rating label. I'm sure you'll recognise it once you see it.

... who are going to keep using your AC adapters, please read up on your fire safety.
I don't want there to be a new /. poll next week around how many reader's homes burned down.