My bet is, something shorted the leads. In the grand scheme of things, it's bound to happen that something metallic gets into the shipment, like a screw or coin. The shipment bounces around and eventually shorts the leads. Or the battery itself just shorts. Or two batteries short on each other. Either way you have an uncontrolled discharge.
I learned this the hardway once, when I put a 9 volt battery, like the type in smoke detectors, into my pocket that also had a some loose change. THe battery leads rested on a coin and I relaized something was up when the battery almost burned my leg.
I think Lithium polymer is even more dangerous than Litium ion from what I've read. I've seen video of a LIPO overheating and it looked like an incindiary going off.
I'm ITDOOD, and I was a SETIholic. I had every server and workstation at my disposal cranking out "Work Units" a.k.a. WUs. I couldn't control myself, trying to beat my rivals like SETIking and CPUman. I would throttle my exchange and SQL servers and give real-time thread priority to the SETI process. email slowed to a halt in my vain attempt to keep up with CPUman, who obviously was running the SETI image via login scripts on some college campus network.
I got help, thankfully before I was fired.
Seriously though, the whole competitive thing dives some I think. It wasn't in the interest of finding aliens, though that's what originally inspired my curiosity. It was all about competing with other *obvious* sys admins. I recall seeing some folks hit 200-300 WUs per day maybe more (this was when it took a singel I86 du jour 6-8 hours per WU). I haven't even looked at it in years so I don't know present #s.
Lithium Ion batteries are known to explode in a run-way charging cycle. The organic (therefore flammable) electrolyte will begin to boil at ~180F and develop voids. If this goes on long enough the battery case will rupture and vent the now gassed organic electrolyte which will probably ignite. It's basically an explosion.
There's a lot of protective circuitry built into Li-Ion batteries and laptops to prevent this. It's very rare that all those fail at once, but it's possible.
Charging any sort of battery (Li-Ion, MiMH, NiCad) is usually done with peak detection. A controlled current is applied to the battery. As it charges the measured volts in the charge circuit continues to rise. When the batteries reach full the voltage will actually go down a bit. Chargers are designed to detect this "peak" and shut off charging current or go into a trickle charge mode to prevent the batteries from being overcharged. When this doesn't work right and other safety features fail you can get a run-away charge cycle and explode the battery.
That article points out a much bigger threat to the public's privacy than what the NSA is doing. Yet there's no outcry about it.
The NSA, OTOH, is mining data and looking for patterns with the ultiumate goal of using that information to prevent violence. It's only a matter of time before someone or some terrorist org gets a hold of a suitcase nuke, if they don't already have it.
I think what the NSA is doing is a positive step. If they ever used the data in the wrong way it would cause huge problems, and I'm confident it would be addressed.
When 9/11 occured, everyone wanted to know how the government could possibly miss the obvious and not prevent it. Now they are trying to tune in for the sake of safety. I think it's a positive step. I'm sure they know everyone is watching closely and the first mis-step in using that data will cause huge problems.
I work for a 7 billion $ org, 44,000 employees. We have.5 FTE running our website (me, I'm the IT manager). I outsource most of the coding and design work and I do most of the easy updates.
It's a fairly complex web site, with intranet components (requiring security, SSL), SQL back-end, some MS- access backends, full service employment section, in addition to the display-ad stuff. All coded in PHP. My anual development budget is 50k, the operational budget is only 30k. I've never had a problem, partly because I have a qualtiy company doing my development/design work. I've worked with this rather small company for many years so the process is very efficient.
But I have outsourced application development work to consultant (bearing point to be exact), that didn't go very well. If you outsource, you need very granular policies and procesudres for them to follow and a detailed statement of work. WIthout those they may not even follow industry model practices for design, that's when it gets ugly.
I've always struggled with getting more staff too. As someone mentioned earlier, using brute force to do so will get you no where and even harm your reputation.
Exactly!!! well said. If you get a chance, you should read the actual patnets NTP holds. They patened something that was already public domain, then did nothing to develop the idea, they sat, waited, and stalked a company to hit big with the concept. NTP=parasites, and we'll all end up paying for this out of our pockets.
The patents could also apply to any cell phone carier that sends a text message or email to a cell phone. Why NTP singled out RIM? Probably the easiest case to win and there are some deep pockets there.
The US patent office is broken when it come electronic media. They have no clue what they're doing.
Slashdot Mirror
agreed here. That's been going on for years. I read the headline and thought "welcome to 2003".
I learned this the hardway once, when I put a 9 volt battery, like the type in smoke detectors, into my pocket that also had a some loose change. THe battery leads rested on a coin and I relaized something was up when the battery almost burned my leg.
I think Lithium polymer is even more dangerous than Litium ion from what I've read. I've seen video of a LIPO overheating and it looked like an incindiary going off.
I'm ITDOOD, and I was a SETIholic. I had every server and workstation at my disposal cranking out "Work Units" a.k.a. WUs. I couldn't control myself, trying to beat my rivals like SETIking and CPUman. I would throttle my exchange and SQL servers and give real-time thread priority to the SETI process. email slowed to a halt in my vain attempt to keep up with CPUman, who obviously was running the SETI image via login scripts on some college campus network. I got help, thankfully before I was fired. Seriously though, the whole competitive thing dives some I think. It wasn't in the interest of finding aliens, though that's what originally inspired my curiosity. It was all about competing with other *obvious* sys admins. I recall seeing some folks hit 200-300 WUs per day maybe more (this was when it took a singel I86 du jour 6-8 hours per WU). I haven't even looked at it in years so I don't know present #s.
There's a lot of protective circuitry built into Li-Ion batteries and laptops to prevent this. It's very rare that all those fail at once, but it's possible.
Charging any sort of battery (Li-Ion, MiMH, NiCad) is usually done with peak detection. A controlled current is applied to the battery. As it charges the measured volts in the charge circuit continues to rise. When the batteries reach full the voltage will actually go down a bit. Chargers are designed to detect this "peak" and shut off charging current or go into a trickle charge mode to prevent the batteries from being overcharged. When this doesn't work right and other safety features fail you can get a run-away charge cycle and explode the battery.
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-privac y05.html
That article points out a much bigger threat to the public's privacy than what the NSA is doing. Yet there's no outcry about it.
The NSA, OTOH, is mining data and looking for patterns with the ultiumate goal of using that information to prevent violence. It's only a matter of time before someone or some terrorist org gets a hold of a suitcase nuke, if they don't already have it.
I think what the NSA is doing is a positive step. If they ever used the data in the wrong way it would cause huge problems, and I'm confident it would be addressed.
When 9/11 occured, everyone wanted to know how the government could possibly miss the obvious and not prevent it. Now they are trying to tune in for the sake of safety. I think it's a positive step. I'm sure they know everyone is watching closely and the first mis-step in using that data will cause huge problems.
ummmm, what about Proxy and NAT? If anything, the opposite of what this article concludes is true. What a waste of my 4 minutes. I want my money back!
I work for a 7 billion $ org, 44,000 employees. We have .5 FTE running our website (me, I'm the IT manager). I outsource most of the coding and design work and I do most of the easy updates.
It's a fairly complex web site, with intranet components (requiring security, SSL), SQL back-end, some MS- access backends, full service employment section, in addition to the display-ad stuff. All coded in PHP. My anual development budget is 50k, the operational budget is only 30k. I've never had a problem, partly because I have a qualtiy company doing my development/design work. I've worked with this rather small company for many years so the process is very efficient.
But I have outsourced application development work to consultant (bearing point to be exact), that didn't go very well. If you outsource, you need very granular policies and procesudres for them to follow and a detailed statement of work. WIthout those they may not even follow industry model practices for design, that's when it gets ugly.
I've always struggled with getting more staff too. As someone mentioned earlier, using brute force to do so will get you no where and even harm your reputation.
Add me to that list, I've had to do the same thing at times.
I also grant my unsed M$ licenses to pirates. heretofor and henceforth, etc etc
Exactly!!! well said. If you get a chance, you should read the actual patnets NTP holds. They patened something that was already public domain, then did nothing to develop the idea, they sat, waited, and stalked a company to hit big with the concept. NTP=parasites, and we'll all end up paying for this out of our pockets.
The patents could also apply to any cell phone carier that sends a text message or email to a cell phone. Why NTP singled out RIM? Probably the easiest case to win and there are some deep pockets there.
The US patent office is broken when it come electronic media. They have no clue what they're doing.
Oh yea, that'll work. Keep working that idea!
This has been going on a for a few years now. Most of the shops work out of New York/Northen New Jersey.