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How a Leather Cover Crashes the Kindle
An anonymous reader writes "Amazon has started offering refunds to Kindle owners who own the unlit leather case who claim that it causes their Kindles to reboot, but are playing dumb on the cause: "our engineering team is looking into this." People have been wondering how a leather cover could possibly crash an electronic device, and why is Amazon offering money back if they don't think there's a problem? It seems that some of the folks over at Connectify have figured it out, and it's a doozy!"
Someone had to do it.
Maybe they can substitute the metal now connecting the hooks with extremely fine steel wool. Then everyone will remember it's the Kindle.
a malfunction in a high tech device that actually can be fixed with duct tape
First, his meter's reading 2 Megaohms, not 2 Ohms. I guess he's not much of an "Electronics Person". Second, it would appear that he's measuring conductivity though his body to achieve that number. Both of his fingers are touching the probe tips.
The linked article at Connectify says they measured a resistance of 2 Ohm, but on the picture I read 2 MOhm!
Check yourself with the large version of the picture.
If you RTFA, you'll see the hooks are totally different. You're in the right vein, though. The unlit case looks like it uses a single strip of cut metal for the attachment hooks, a pretty simple design, and much cheaper than making hooks that aren't shorts.
My guess is the only reason they're painted black is because they were aware of this problem and thought that would fix it good and cheap. Or the paint is simple corrosion prevention and they didn't know...
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
Reminds me of an incident I encountered back in the late '70s in Pensacola, Fl. We had an IBM 4341 mainframe in our data-center that would just shut down regularly every Friday night, around the same time. We had IBM SEs come in and pour over the logs, week after week, but they could find nothing wrong and no indication of why it was shutting down. They installed monitors to check for power surges - nothing. They replaced parts - still nothing. We were in discussions with IBM to have the entire machine removed and replaced with a new machine - something IBM said they had never had to do before. After months of pulling our hair out, we discovered (not sure who made the connection - but it seemed to be a long shot at the time) the shutdown coincided with the approach of the USS Lexington (aircraft carrier) coming into port (some 10 miles or so away) from it's regular training missions. Apparently the radar from the ship was strong enough to play havoc with the circuitry causing it to trigger a shutdown. The SE installed RF shields within the box and the problem occurred no more.
So much for magic.
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
You suppose wrong.
We used AA batteries in prison to light cigarettes when they took away access to the wall sockets.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I have a similar experience when we were installing some computers in a hydro power station control center. The old control system used electromechanical relays, so it was quite robust, but the digital computers kept crashing. There were some 500 kV lines right going over the control center, so it was assumed they were causing enough interference to crash the computers.
After months of studies, it was decided that shielding the control center was the only solution. However there was a problem, the large glass window to the observation hall. Someone mentioned that there existed a transparent conductive paint, so they called a paint supplier:
-"Hello, I'm looking for some invisible paint, to paint glass"
They hung up without an answer at the other side...
How exactly do you fry an ebook?
A demonstration for you:
1) Purchase Kindle
2) Purchase and download 1000 ebooks to Kindle
3) Throw kindle into incinerator
4) Purchase new Kindle and click "Sync"
5) 1000 ebooks "magically" appear on new kindle and more remarkable show no signs of fire damage.
His fingers appear to be touching both metal probes of the meter so 2 meg-ohms seems about right for his internal resistance.
And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make