Yeah but if you compile GCC with those optimisations;-)
Plus hasn't the old yacc based c++ compiler been ripped out and replaced with a hand coded version? Didn't that make things a fair chunk faster? There are plenty of other optimisations that have gone into gcc as much as into code it produces, I'd be interested to see any benchmarks of compilation speed against earlier versions.
Re:More than scientific learning
on
LHC Success!
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· Score: 1
"Or someone with dyslexia"
That's now how you spell 'lazy'! Seriously, this is the internet, it takes few key presses to google a word to check its spelling. Sure, mistakes happen, but to actually know you don't know how to spell a word, and say "or however you spell it" rather than just copy/paste to/from google and have a chance to learn it (what I do is instead of clicking on the 'did you mean?', I retype it, and use muscle memory to remember how to type it where I have trouble learning how to spell it)
Dyslexia's a real issue for people to deal with, and shouldn't be used as an excuse for times where you just can't be bothered to check something. If ya wanna be lazy, just admit it, don't be all like "it's an illness", that's just dishonest and disrespectful.
"and if you're telling me you were about to remove the bottom case of a MacBook Pro, I'm calling you out"
What did I say that implied that in the slightest? I said I wasn't going to as it wasn't mine and she didn't want anything like attempted as it was under warrenty and she didn't know if that would affect it.
Also this isn't a PC/Mac debate, I was talking about a specific model of apple laptop and problems I encountered with that.
"The thing is, there are legitimate reasons why Flash, or any other web app, may access the clipboard"
Yep, which is why I actually have the browser ask me if an attempt is made whether to allow it. But, flash adverts shouldn't mess with your clipboard, which is why I believe the banner companies should do the screening/filtering, not that flash should have the functionality removed.
"the reality distortion field, colliding with the common sense field, caused a tachyon burst that, coupled with remodulation, opened up a micro wormhole that resulted in the explosion"
Err, no, it does all of that during normal operation, never causes explosions though.
Oh except the common sense field bit, there's obviously no such thing as that, if there was, common sense would increase when you put more people together... or is there just one field, and people put a drain on it, so that explains why the more people you put together, the less there is to go round?
"Your spring could leap out of the keyboard and hit someone else"
Like I said, I'm on laptop, no springs in keyboard, just squashy bits of rubber, which couldn't do that as they just won't hold enough force to even lift themselves up.
"The newspaper you're reading could be caught by a sudden gust of wind"
On an plane?
"Out of 45 million iPod-years there have been 14 fires"
There's 45 million in Japan? Cuz it has happened elsewhere as well, so is def more than 14. Anyway, surely the maths should be more along the lines of - what's the chance that one of the people with a defective battery will board a plane with it? Across all the flights for all the planes, it happening once is enough to cause problems.
"That doesn't say how many of those will cause the plane to crash, of course"
You could request that batteries are disconnected if you wanna be uber safe, otherwise, I'd think the battery's not gonna be getting hot if the device is left turned off.
"Personally, I'll happily take the one-out-of-5.5-million chance of an iPod fire"
Yep, me too. If I was the planes captain I might prefer not though, already enough things to be thinking about and controlling without the small worry of batteries igniting or the slightly larger worry of someone kickin up a fuss because the person next to them has "one of those things they read about that can explode". Perhaps planes can provide a low voltage usb port, and request people power ipods using that and disconnect their batteries? Or ask that people remove the battery cover and keep check that the battery isn't starting to get warm and remove it if it does? I'm not saying there aren't other solutions, but for what it's worth, that I can understand people wanting to keep things simple and just not allow them to be used during flight.
"It's up to us to determine what risks everyone takes"
And if you and I are okay with taking the risk, but someone on the plane isn't, should they be able to veto it? Perhaps a democracy where you take a vote? Where does the line lie? Is it okay for x number of people to have them on board, but x+1 is too risky?
"But my point is, absolutely everything is a risk"
Yes (or close enough to 'yes') but some are theoretical risks, and others are things things that do or have actually happened.
"So now we'll find that there's both faulty and terrorist-created memory stick which burst into flames"
Not if it only provides low power, enough to read the memory. If terrorists were to make a stick that'd burst into flames and all it needed was to be plugged into a low power usb socket, they could power it with a small cell battery instead, so there's no change to the risk level there.
"or which launch a virus which somehow makes its way into the navigation system"
Not if it's just a standalone mp3 player, I don't think you'd be giving people access to usb ports that connect to the planes computers!
"the only way you know which risks you should care about is by calculating them"
Which leads back to theoretical risks vs things that have happened (as you can calculate those based on times it has vs times it hasn't happened).
"Also, considering that there have been no major injuries or damage... How much of a risk is this, even if it did go off?"
Perhaps risk of significant loss of life isn't that high... but if one of them did go off during flight? There'd be outrage! The people on the flight demanding to know why airliners knew this was a risk and did nothing, damage to confidence in flying, people kicking up a fuss on planes about not wanting to sit next to someone who has one, esp people who already are scared of flying and wanna be back safely on the ground asap anyway.
A load of people squeezed into a small flying can, many with their nerves on edge enough as is. It needs to be a safe and controlled environment.
"By the way: You can't say "acceptable loss is 0""
Losses aren't acceptable, I assume you mean risk, in which case yes, getting onto an plane introduces a risk, so yes, zero risk is impossible.
"If those odds scare you, you probably shouldn't be flying in the first place"
And likewise, if the concept of flying without an ipod nano scares you, you probably shouldn't be flying either!
Such as a list of high risk models to be excluded, you could request battery disconnection and provide a usb port that can power it instead for example.
"I feel that all li-ion batteries have a small risk of bursting into flames"
Yeah, but where there is known to be a higher chance of defects in certain batches, it seems silly to ignore that knowledge. I'm sure solutions could be found to leave people on both side of the argument happy with a little bit of thought.
I'm on a laptop, no springs, just lil bits of rubber... but that is, of course, besides the point, your examples are of people causing harm to themselves, and yes of course it should be up to any responsible adult to decide what risks they expose themselves to, but during flights, their responsibility is to everyone, no just to the person who decides what risks to take for themself, and if that means excluding a product range with a battery that has been known to be able to spontaneously combust, then I don't think that's as simple to write off as "oh what are the odds?".
There are ways of listening to music that don't require a lithium-ion battery if it's that important for the flight time. There have been cases of lithium-ion battery powered devices catching fire on planes, it might be low odds, but it's still "it happens".
Or "your issue's at least as serious if you're getting that worked up over someone mixing up their you're/your's". Anyone would think that a mixed up your/you're was responsible for the death of your parents or something. Chill out dude, corrective pointers usually work better when not accompanied by rude personal attacks out of nowhere.
"and let it sit for several days waiting for any and all latent electricity to discharge"
On most systems you can speed this process up to a few seconds. Disconnect anything that could be giving the system charge (power, batteries, cables to powered devices - yes small current from a powered monitor can effect this, speaking from personal experience). Then, with everything unplugged, try turning the system on a few times. Hold the power button in. The system will usually try to switch itself on, drawing any remaining power from its circuits, and then fail. Plug back in and switch on.
However this doesn't sound too much like what might be effecting you. I don't know macs too well, but on other platforms there is often a 'force detection of...' setting along with the video parameters that can make it seem like there's a monitor plugged in when there isn't andd vice versa. Something like this is probably worth looking for, it sounds like it's probably a software issue. Other ways to check could be to boot it up off the osx installation disc and see if you get the same output if you plug in then. If you can reinstall the OS, try that. Could be a lot of hassle if it doesn't fix it, so might be worth testing a reinstall to a blank partition (look on google for partition resizing/splitting, I can point you to some resources if you have no luck) or even an external drive. Other options include live linux cdroms you can download/burn/boot to, or even windows if it's an intel proc.
I have to say I was pretty shocked looking at my friends macbook pro as it was getting incredibly hot, with only a tiny amount of ventilation at the back and a single solid piece of metal covering the bottom. Her system fan was getting very noisy with no easy way to clean it. I could've taken off the whole of the bottom casing, and would've if it was my laptop (leaving aside that if it was mine, it wouldn't be a mac), but it was still under warrenty and she was concerned that doing so could complicate that - better just to take it to an apple shop and let them deal with it. Incidentally this added to the whole pc-vs-mac debate, as whenever a pc of hers has had any kind of trouble, she has been able to sort it herself, but I won't get too much into that as I know many people on here are quite passionate about the whole macs-vs-pcs. So leaving all that aside, all I'm saying is it could at least have some vents on the underside:-p
You are most correct; I recognised the 240V bit but no idea about the amps so my brain just skipped that bit:-p but the fuse in the plug is rated much lower than that so of course the comp's not drawing anything like that amount or the fuse would just blow:-)
"handled 16,464 flights in March; 0.001% would be an engine fire every six months, just for Narita"
No, it should be 0.001% of their planes not flights, unless you also multiply the ipods by the amount of times (or amount of time) they're used in the same way that you're multplying the number of planes by the amount of times (or amount of time) they take off and land. Remember, you have to do the same on both sides of the equasion.
"consumer electronics are not supposed to be able to catch fire by their own failure"
The electronics bits yeah, but we're talking a high energy chemical storage device, which makes things slightly different... okay, only slightly, it's still not meant to burst into flames, but it has been happening a lot over past few years in laptop, mobile phones, basically anythings that use lithium-ion batteries can be at risk if there are battery defects.
(excuse me answering my own question - I read some more of the article hehe)
"I am curious as to the mechanism by which they spontaneously combust"
Article says "Their batteries were short-circuiting and bursting into flame when microscopic metal particles came into contact with other parts"... so there we have it.
You don't have to be frightened to agree. If it's batteries from the first gen nanos sold between sept 05 and dec 06, then any nanos using the same batteries also have a chance of going up as they've come from the same place, many/most likely to have been made using same materials in same quantities, same equipment, and gone through the same QA. Maybe yours hasn't yet due to different usage patterns, maybe they were just a lot unluckier. Seems silly to push ya luck just to listen to some tunes for a few hours during a flight, esp when there are other options to be able to do that (small very cheap mp3 players which run on normal batteries for instance).
Besides, low % per ipod * number of ipods on a plane * number of flights taken, the % chance of one happening does increase.
"dropping it would probably put it out"... "How many planes caught fire and crashed when smoking was still legal"
I dunno, it's from the batteries getting very hot, so it's not caused by something being ignited, it's a hot high energy chemical fire, so it's not like dropping a lit cigarette which you can stamp out, is more like dropping a bunch of sparklers that would just burn through the rubber on the bottom of your shoes. And it could be in ya pocket, so option for just letting go and dropping it mightn't be there anyway.
Also, while the chances do appear low, the chances of laptops going up must also be pretty low, but (occording to the article) that has happened on planes. No mention of planes crashin etc due to it though. But considering how easy a risk it is to mitigate, it does seem silly not to. Even the space shuttle, which only had one ipod on board (that we saw) used an alternative battery for it.
"From the article, that translates to 0.001 percent of all first generation Nanos"
Not quite... to be completely accurate, it's 14 out of all the first generation Nanos in Japan. Article says "There have been similar incidents in the United States" and I'd guess other countries if it's happening.
What % of people who fly on planes intent on hijacking them to fly them into buildings? Can't be that high, but airports/etc still try stopping would be hijackers from being able to board planes tho. If something's not essential, even if the chances are low of things going wrong, the risk (potential mass loss of life) usually dictates that the chance is just not worth taking. However, I did figure this was only a risk while the device was charging, in which case they'd be safe on planes, but that's just a guess. If not, I am curious as to the mechanism by which they spontaneously combust (perhaps discharging too quickly?) if anyone has any answers.
Now what airplanes could do with is lil USB ports to plug memory sticks in with lil headphone jacks so you can copy a bunch of mp3s to listen to during the flight if there really is demand for it.
Well it is good to have hope! And I do like getting distracted... tho I can't say I've ever noticed any signs of 'groupthink' on here... haha okay that last one was a joke. That AC poster below seems real unimpressed, (whispers) but judging by the strength of his response, I'd say he's probably already having a bad day! Or of course just heard someone say "burnung coal" recently and has been waiting for any chance to pull that one out on someone! Is polite enough to say 'please' and 'thanks' so doesn't have the courage of conviction required to just deliver the message; has to try and look polite and clever ("look, I can use sarcasm!"). Either way, I don't think you have to worry, am sure we can all chalk this one up to a lesson:-p
The batteries are controlled by circuitry that starts it charging, and stops it when the battery reports that it's full. If this circuitry is defective, charging can happen past its safe charge level causing overheating and eventual spontaneous combustion.
My guess would be (if there is correlation) that as nanos are targetting more towards the lower end of the market; people who are looking for cheap, there's more scope for reducing costs by skimping on the battery, which increases chance of there being defective circuitry controlling battery charging. OR of course it could just be coincidence:-p
Slashdot Mirror
"In these kind of deals, they start off the other way around!"
Nope, the deal was done in Soviet Russia to cancel out that effect.
Over and over?! This is a multi-threaded forum on parallel computing dude! You get a thousand instances of the same joke running all at once!
Yeah but if you compile GCC with those optimisations ;-)
Plus hasn't the old yacc based c++ compiler been ripped out and replaced with a hand coded version? Didn't that make things a fair chunk faster? There are plenty of other optimisations that have gone into gcc as much as into code it produces, I'd be interested to see any benchmarks of compilation speed against earlier versions.
"Or someone with dyslexia"
That's now how you spell 'lazy'! Seriously, this is the internet, it takes few key presses to google a word to check its spelling. Sure, mistakes happen, but to actually know you don't know how to spell a word, and say "or however you spell it" rather than just copy/paste to/from google and have a chance to learn it (what I do is instead of clicking on the 'did you mean?', I retype it, and use muscle memory to remember how to type it where I have trouble learning how to spell it)
Dyslexia's a real issue for people to deal with, and shouldn't be used as an excuse for times where you just can't be bothered to check something. If ya wanna be lazy, just admit it, don't be all like "it's an illness", that's just dishonest and disrespectful.
"and if you're telling me you were about to remove the bottom case of a MacBook Pro, I'm calling you out"
What did I say that implied that in the slightest? I said I wasn't going to as it wasn't mine and she didn't want anything like attempted as it was under warrenty and she didn't know if that would affect it.
Also this isn't a PC/Mac debate, I was talking about a specific model of apple laptop and problems I encountered with that.
I also wouldn't buy toshiba.
"The thing is, there are legitimate reasons why Flash, or any other web app, may access the clipboard"
Yep, which is why I actually have the browser ask me if an attempt is made whether to allow it. But, flash adverts shouldn't mess with your clipboard, which is why I believe the banner companies should do the screening/filtering, not that flash should have the functionality removed.
"the reality distortion field, colliding with the common sense field, caused a tachyon burst that, coupled with remodulation, opened up a micro wormhole that resulted in the explosion"
Err, no, it does all of that during normal operation, never causes explosions though.
Oh except the common sense field bit, there's obviously no such thing as that, if there was, common sense would increase when you put more people together... or is there just one field, and people put a drain on it, so that explains why the more people you put together, the less there is to go round?
And I certainly didn't get away with it huh, cuz that sure told me :-/
"Your spring could leap out of the keyboard and hit someone else"
Like I said, I'm on laptop, no springs in keyboard, just squashy bits of rubber, which couldn't do that as they just won't hold enough force to even lift themselves up.
"The newspaper you're reading could be caught by a sudden gust of wind"
On an plane?
"Out of 45 million iPod-years there have been 14 fires"
There's 45 million in Japan? Cuz it has happened elsewhere as well, so is def more than 14. Anyway, surely the maths should be more along the lines of - what's the chance that one of the people with a defective battery will board a plane with it? Across all the flights for all the planes, it happening once is enough to cause problems.
"That doesn't say how many of those will cause the plane to crash, of course"
As I pointed out here it doesn't need to.
"Is it okay to check iPod Minis in luggage?"
You could request that batteries are disconnected if you wanna be uber safe, otherwise, I'd think the battery's not gonna be getting hot if the device is left turned off.
"Personally, I'll happily take the one-out-of-5.5-million chance of an iPod fire"
Yep, me too. If I was the planes captain I might prefer not though, already enough things to be thinking about and controlling without the small worry of batteries igniting or the slightly larger worry of someone kickin up a fuss because the person next to them has "one of those things they read about that can explode". Perhaps planes can provide a low voltage usb port, and request people power ipods using that and disconnect their batteries? Or ask that people remove the battery cover and keep check that the battery isn't starting to get warm and remove it if it does? I'm not saying there aren't other solutions, but for what it's worth, that I can understand people wanting to keep things simple and just not allow them to be used during flight.
"It's up to us to determine what risks everyone takes"
And if you and I are okay with taking the risk, but someone on the plane isn't, should they be able to veto it? Perhaps a democracy where you take a vote? Where does the line lie? Is it okay for x number of people to have them on board, but x+1 is too risky?
It's sometimes just easier to keep things simple.
"But my point is, absolutely everything is a risk"
Yes (or close enough to 'yes') but some are theoretical risks, and others are things things that do or have actually happened.
"So now we'll find that there's both faulty and terrorist-created memory stick which burst into flames"
Not if it only provides low power, enough to read the memory. If terrorists were to make a stick that'd burst into flames and all it needed was to be plugged into a low power usb socket, they could power it with a small cell battery instead, so there's no change to the risk level there.
"or which launch a virus which somehow makes its way into the navigation system"
Not if it's just a standalone mp3 player, I don't think you'd be giving people access to usb ports that connect to the planes computers!
"the only way you know which risks you should care about is by calculating them"
Which leads back to theoretical risks vs things that have happened (as you can calculate those based on times it has vs times it hasn't happened).
"Also, considering that there have been no major injuries or damage... How much of a risk is this, even if it did go off?"
Perhaps risk of significant loss of life isn't that high... but if one of them did go off during flight? There'd be outrage! The people on the flight demanding to know why airliners knew this was a risk and did nothing, damage to confidence in flying, people kicking up a fuss on planes about not wanting to sit next to someone who has one, esp people who already are scared of flying and wanna be back safely on the ground asap anyway.
A load of people squeezed into a small flying can, many with their nerves on edge enough as is. It needs to be a safe and controlled environment.
"By the way: You can't say "acceptable loss is 0""
Losses aren't acceptable, I assume you mean risk, in which case yes, getting onto an plane introduces a risk, so yes, zero risk is impossible.
"If those odds scare you, you probably shouldn't be flying in the first place"
And likewise, if the concept of flying without an ipod nano scares you, you probably shouldn't be flying either!
"or you use a reasonable metric"
Such as a list of high risk models to be excluded, you could request battery disconnection and provide a usb port that can power it instead for example.
"I feel that all li-ion batteries have a small risk of bursting into flames"
Yeah, but where there is known to be a higher chance of defects in certain batches, it seems silly to ignore that knowledge. I'm sure solutions could be found to leave people on both side of the argument happy with a little bit of thought.
"Did you know there are springs in keyboards?"
I'm on a laptop, no springs, just lil bits of rubber... but that is, of course, besides the point, your examples are of people causing harm to themselves, and yes of course it should be up to any responsible adult to decide what risks they expose themselves to, but during flights, their responsibility is to everyone, no just to the person who decides what risks to take for themself, and if that means excluding a product range with a battery that has been known to be able to spontaneously combust, then I don't think that's as simple to write off as "oh what are the odds?".
There are ways of listening to music that don't require a lithium-ion battery if it's that important for the flight time. There have been cases of lithium-ion battery powered devices catching fire on planes, it might be low odds, but it's still "it happens".
Or "your issue's at least as serious if you're getting that worked up over someone mixing up their you're/your's". Anyone would think that a mixed up your/you're was responsible for the death of your parents or something. Chill out dude, corrective pointers usually work better when not accompanied by rude personal attacks out of nowhere.
"and let it sit for several days waiting for any and all latent electricity to discharge"
On most systems you can speed this process up to a few seconds. Disconnect anything that could be giving the system charge (power, batteries, cables to powered devices - yes small current from a powered monitor can effect this, speaking from personal experience). Then, with everything unplugged, try turning the system on a few times. Hold the power button in. The system will usually try to switch itself on, drawing any remaining power from its circuits, and then fail. Plug back in and switch on.
However this doesn't sound too much like what might be effecting you. I don't know macs too well, but on other platforms there is often a 'force detection of...' setting along with the video parameters that can make it seem like there's a monitor plugged in when there isn't andd vice versa. Something like this is probably worth looking for, it sounds like it's probably a software issue. Other ways to check could be to boot it up off the osx installation disc and see if you get the same output if you plug in then. If you can reinstall the OS, try that. Could be a lot of hassle if it doesn't fix it, so might be worth testing a reinstall to a blank partition (look on google for partition resizing/splitting, I can point you to some resources if you have no luck) or even an external drive. Other options include live linux cdroms you can download/burn/boot to, or even windows if it's an intel proc.
I have to say I was pretty shocked looking at my friends macbook pro as it was getting incredibly hot, with only a tiny amount of ventilation at the back and a single solid piece of metal covering the bottom. Her system fan was getting very noisy with no easy way to clean it. I could've taken off the whole of the bottom casing, and would've if it was my laptop (leaving aside that if it was mine, it wouldn't be a mac), but it was still under warrenty and she was concerned that doing so could complicate that - better just to take it to an apple shop and let them deal with it. Incidentally this added to the whole pc-vs-mac debate, as whenever a pc of hers has had any kind of trouble, she has been able to sort it herself, but I won't get too much into that as I know many people on here are quite passionate about the whole macs-vs-pcs. So leaving all that aside, all I'm saying is it could at least have some vents on the underside :-p
You are most correct; I recognised the 240V bit but no idea about the amps so my brain just skipped that bit :-p but the fuse in the plug is rated much lower than that so of course the comp's not drawing anything like that amount or the fuse would just blow :-)
"handled 16,464 flights in March; 0.001% would be an engine fire every six months, just for Narita"
No, it should be 0.001% of their planes not flights, unless you also multiply the ipods by the amount of times (or amount of time) they're used in the same way that you're multplying the number of planes by the amount of times (or amount of time) they take off and land. Remember, you have to do the same on both sides of the equasion.
"consumer electronics are not supposed to be able to catch fire by their own failure"
The electronics bits yeah, but we're talking a high energy chemical storage device, which makes things slightly different... okay, only slightly, it's still not meant to burst into flames, but it has been happening a lot over past few years in laptop, mobile phones, basically anythings that use lithium-ion batteries can be at risk if there are battery defects.
(excuse me answering my own question - I read some more of the article hehe)
"I am curious as to the mechanism by which they spontaneously combust"
Article says "Their batteries were short-circuiting and bursting into flame when microscopic metal particles came into contact with other parts"... so there we have it.
You don't have to be frightened to agree. If it's batteries from the first gen nanos sold between sept 05 and dec 06, then any nanos using the same batteries also have a chance of going up as they've come from the same place, many/most likely to have been made using same materials in same quantities, same equipment, and gone through the same QA. Maybe yours hasn't yet due to different usage patterns, maybe they were just a lot unluckier. Seems silly to push ya luck just to listen to some tunes for a few hours during a flight, esp when there are other options to be able to do that (small very cheap mp3 players which run on normal batteries for instance).
Besides, low % per ipod * number of ipods on a plane * number of flights taken, the % chance of one happening does increase.
"dropping it would probably put it out" ... "How many planes caught fire and crashed when smoking was still legal"
I dunno, it's from the batteries getting very hot, so it's not caused by something being ignited, it's a hot high energy chemical fire, so it's not like dropping a lit cigarette which you can stamp out, is more like dropping a bunch of sparklers that would just burn through the rubber on the bottom of your shoes. And it could be in ya pocket, so option for just letting go and dropping it mightn't be there anyway.
Also, while the chances do appear low, the chances of laptops going up must also be pretty low, but (occording to the article) that has happened on planes. No mention of planes crashin etc due to it though. But considering how easy a risk it is to mitigate, it does seem silly not to. Even the space shuttle, which only had one ipod on board (that we saw) used an alternative battery for it.
You fear the DHS confiscating people that you take onto planes for no reason??? :-p
"From the article, that translates to 0.001 percent of all first generation Nanos"
Not quite... to be completely accurate, it's 14 out of all the first generation Nanos in Japan. Article says "There have been similar incidents in the United States" and I'd guess other countries if it's happening.
What % of people who fly on planes intent on hijacking them to fly them into buildings? Can't be that high, but airports/etc still try stopping would be hijackers from being able to board planes tho. If something's not essential, even if the chances are low of things going wrong, the risk (potential mass loss of life) usually dictates that the chance is just not worth taking. However, I did figure this was only a risk while the device was charging, in which case they'd be safe on planes, but that's just a guess. If not, I am curious as to the mechanism by which they spontaneously combust (perhaps discharging too quickly?) if anyone has any answers.
Now what airplanes could do with is lil USB ports to plug memory sticks in with lil headphone jacks so you can copy a bunch of mp3s to listen to during the flight if there really is demand for it.
Well it is good to have hope! And I do like getting distracted... tho I can't say I've ever noticed any signs of 'groupthink' on here... haha okay that last one was a joke. That AC poster below seems real unimpressed, (whispers) but judging by the strength of his response, I'd say he's probably already having a bad day! Or of course just heard someone say "burnung coal" recently and has been waiting for any chance to pull that one out on someone! Is polite enough to say 'please' and 'thanks' so doesn't have the courage of conviction required to just deliver the message; has to try and look polite and clever ("look, I can use sarcasm!"). Either way, I don't think you have to worry, am sure we can all chalk this one up to a lesson :-p
The batteries are controlled by circuitry that starts it charging, and stops it when the battery reports that it's full. If this circuitry is defective, charging can happen past its safe charge level causing overheating and eventual spontaneous combustion.
My guess would be (if there is correlation) that as nanos are targetting more towards the lower end of the market; people who are looking for cheap, there's more scope for reducing costs by skimping on the battery, which increases chance of there being defective circuitry controlling battery charging. OR of course it could just be coincidence :-p