somewhere near the temporal coordinates of 4/8/02 6:34 PM, the entity known
as Peter Cameron transmitted the following from pdwc_at_sympatico.ca:
>
> on 4/8/02 3:15 PM, Ed Kummel at tech_ed_at_yahoo.com wrote:
>
>> The bad news is I believe that the x-ray machine on
>> Kauai damaged my Newton.
>
> Damn airport security! If it kills Newts, imagine what it's doing to
> cameras, both digital and film, and laptop hard drives.
>
> Peter
>
I suppose it's possible. However, just to pre-empt all the old myths...
The x-rays themselves are not energetic enough to damage electronics. Any
damage is caused by EM fields arising from the conveyor motors. Virtually
all machines nowadays have the motors located at the floor, far from your
equipment. The chief danger in most cases is that your computer equipment
must go through w/o case and sometimes takes quite an impact after it slides
off the conveyor.
Now, I've never been to Kauai, so I don't know how old their equipment is.
If it's an old machine, the stop/start/reverse because I'm not sure what I
just saw/start again that usually happens nowadays, just might get you,
especially if you didn't center it on the conveyor. (Whatever is driving
the conveyor would be driving it from the edges, so I'm guessing that the
effect would be worst there.)
So, while it is *possible* that the x-ray machine caused this, it could
easily just be coincidental failure. For that matter, we *are* still near
the peak of the solar cycle and you were on a rather long flight at high
altitude, right?
- Eric.
--Eric Strobel (fyzycyst_at_NOSPAM^mailaps.org)
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