Tin Whiskers

The European “Reduction of Hazardous Substances” regulations (aka RoHS) might have claimed another victim. A few years ago a billion dollar Swatch watch recall was apparently related to tin whiskers, a known failure mode of RoHS-compliant electronics.¹ Now, according to an industry news report, Toyota might have fallen victim to the same thing.²

We’re sure that some anti-industry environmentalists will be pleased, as this could make RoHS the most expensive piece of electronic industry regulation ever written.

What makes tin whiskers interesting, is that there is really no way to prevent them in lead free electronics, as all industry efforts focus on “mitigating” the effects, not preventing the formation of tin whiskers.³

We find it amazing that legislation that was in part intended to reduce waste is now apparently causing massive amounts of new waste due to accelerated failures, not to mention the indirect costs to the economy.

What strikes us is how similar the inclusion of lead in the RoHS legislation has been to the inclusion of carbon dioxide in the various attempted “Global Warming” laws. We recommend that our readers review the various references to this article and make their own conclusions as to the mindset and motivations of those who rammed through RoHS without regard to its implications. Unfortunately for the electronics industry and us (the consumers), there was no easy way to show that the benefits of lead-free electronics are possibly just as illusory as the benefits of a “carbon neutral” economy.⁴

© 2010, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

Global Warming, Green Economy, Lead Free, RoHS, Tin Whiskers, Toyota Hide

Islam Is... no query suggestions shown

Christianity Is... many query suggestions shown

One has to wonder who still buys the tagline from Google to not be evil?

It’s not too long ago that Google participated in censorship of the Internet for the Chinese government¹, so that the Communist leadership would accept Google. It seems that the Chinese keep Google on a relatively short leash, reminding them sometimes who’s the boss.²

Now it seems that an entire religion has hijacked Google, or Google is kowtowing to one. If one were to type “Christianity is“, “Scientology is“, “Judaism is” and many other terms followed by “is” into the Google search field, many query suggestions will be shown before the user hits the enter key, some offensive³, but reflective of common queries and search results.

However, if the typed term happens to be “islam is“, there will be absolutely no query suggestions presented. This is not normal behavior, as Google specifically states that the query suggestions are a typical feature unless disabled.⁴

This inconsistency was first publicized on Fox News’ website.⁵ According to the article Google explained the unusual behavior to be a very unique bug, but the same article continues to state that no clarification was provided by the company.

Everyone can draw their own conclusions, as not much more needs to be said.

Don’t be evil? Yeah, right.

© 2010, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

Censorship, Ethics, Google, Integrity, Islamic Extremism Hide