By Greg Mills
A Texas man claims his Android phone exploded in his ear. The guy claims he was just talking on the phone — and boom! Some smart phone models are duds, and some brands bomb out in the market place, but this is a first.
Incredibly, the phone still works, which leads to the question what part blew up? Normally, when an electronic device explodes, it is a battery that overheats due to a dead short and the gasses expand the metal case of the battery until it explodes or just oozes lithium paste out. The explosion of an electronic device is not the sort of giant fire bomb where a car is thrown up into the air with a flash of billowing flame and smoke, like you see on TV, but you don’t want to have it happen in your ear. Aron Embry of Cedar Hill, Texas. says there was a loud pop on his Android phone, and he discovered later his ear was bleeding. He went to the ER and got patched up. Motorola is investigating, but hadn’t paid his medical bills yet.
Iran has moral problems in its Nuclear Science Department Since the killing of an Iranian nuclear scientist a year ago, little had been done to protect the remaining nuclear staff members. Just a week ago, two more top scientists were attacked with stick-on-a-window type bombs manufactured in Iran and shipped to Iraq for use by Al Qaeda against the US and Iraqi officials. Apparently, the bombs had been shipped back to Iraq and were used in heavy traffic by assassins on motorcycles who drove up and slapped the bombs on the driver’s window. One computer code expert who was leading the quest to get rid of the Windows Stuxnet worm was killed instantly, and another expert was badly wounded as were both of the wives of the two men.
Iranian officials were alarmed and angered by a lot of their nuclear research staffers who wanted to quit and find other work. It is downright dangerous to work for the Iranian government. Spies want to kill you. Even if you are loyal, mere groundless suspicion could lead to interrogation with blowtorches, skillfully used as an inducement to talk. A number of former workers have been killed already by the Iranian intelligence agency. All of this leads to some reluctance to get into nuclear physics in Iran.
Russians learned this the hard way when the Windows Stuxnet worm was first discovered. Russian contract workers building the nuclear reactor were seen running to the airport like rats abandoning a sinking ship. Gosh, Windows Stuxnet rocks! I wonder if Microsoft actually wrote Stuxnet under a secret DOD contract?
Howard Stern may provide verbal porn on iTunes?. Say it isn’t so, Steve. Rumors are that an ungodly sum of money has been offered to Howard Stern to do content for iTunes. I hope ear wash will be added to the Apple store inventory.
Is LightPeak data transfer being added to upcoming MagSafe connector?. An issued Apple patent has been discovered that features a fiber optic data transfer port to the MagSafe connector we all know. The notion is that it would reduce the number of ports needed on Apple devices. You know how minimalistic Apple devices are. Apple kill ports we know we are really needing and only figure it out later that we can live without them. Now LightPeak, the next big thing that will replace even USB in time, is looking likely to show up sooner, rather than later. When a patent is actually issued it may show up any time as the pendency for US patents it 2-3 years. Intel has been working with Apple on the new data connector, and that is going to be big news when it comes out.
The Manhattan Declaration Flap: a controversy has arisen regarding an app that affirms what a lot of American consider bedrock principals. Morals based upon a democratic sampling are situational ethics and fail to muster the documentation of the Bible, which most Christians regard as the Word of God. Finding support for gay marriage and abortion in the Bible is impossible as it condemns both. While Apple originally gave the App a 4+ that there was no objectionable material in the app. Then gay rights activists launched a campaign to brand the app as “hateful and divisive.” Keep in mind that it stated positive positions on Biblical prospectives rather than making derogatory statements about those who disagree.
This is just sort of banning the Bible as hate literature since it pulls no punches as to what God considers sin. Check it our for yourself at http://manhattandeclaration.org . Remember: under the constitution we have the right to express our beliefs about God rather than having the right to silence people who disagree with us.
Flash cookies that can’t be deleted!. Another reason to hate Flash has come up and it regards cookies,little files that are placed in a file used by your browser that help web sites identify you when you come back. Sometimes, it is cool that you don’t have to retype all the information to order again from an on line vendor. But, as with all tech, it can be misused by those who want to cheat or take advantage. On-line advertising is in the news right now due to the possible movement of the FCC to offer an opt-out for web brewer tracking. It seems the normal place where cookies are stored is not cleaned out when you use your brewer preferences to clean out the cookie jar. Adobe flash stores cookies in another file and, thus, those cookies are harder to get rid of if you want to dump them. It is astonishing how many cookies you pick up browsing the web. I recommend cleaning them out occasionally.
Microsoft has sold at least 90,000 Windows Vista 7 phones. When you consider they gave away 89,000 phones to employees, the numbers seem believable. It is not known how may of those 89,000 phones were actually activated. If the employee got a Kin phone a couple of months ago, also a freebie, did they have to give the Kin back to get a new phone? Microsoft hasn’t released any sales numbers officially, but the lines outside one cell phone store in New York was actually shorter than the free circumcision surgery line at the synagogue down the street. I guess that is bad news for Microsoft and good news for God.
That’s Greg’s bite for today.
(Greg Mills, is a Faux Artist in Kansas City. Formerly a new product R&D man for the paint sundry market, he holds 11 US patents. He’s working on a solar energy startup, www.CottageIndustrySolar.com using a patent pending process of turning waste dual pane glass into thermal solar panels used to heat water. Greg writes for intellectual web sites and Mac related issues. See Greg’s art web site at www.gregmills.info ; his email is gregmills@mac.com )