'Apple drops "Computer" from name'

First close-to-correct usage of 'drops' from Engadget in an article title in months :)

"stripped your web site of all references to your sponsors?"

That's what http://adblock.mozdev.org/ is for :)

Ok, this story was written by Paul Miller. Next time I see a headline using "drop" to mean "release", and not "no longer produces", I'll watch to see who the author is. If it's the same guy, hopefully enough people will complain and he'll start to get the message.

Someone has gone to the trouble of revamping the website, and introducing a (albeit basic) moderation system. Don't continue to annoy people with such terrible english please.

They dropped them? Were they carrying too many at once perhaps? Too heavy?

PLEASE, stop using "drop" to mean "releases". Most of your readers in the English speaking world take drop in this context to mean "no longer produces".

This is an informative, interesting and enjoyable techology news site. Stop trying to be so cool, it's really turning me (and lots of others, judging by past comments on the same subject) off your site.

The problem isn't the p2p concept - there's no shortage of seismic data out there that would benefit from having all that processing power to analyse it with.

The first problem is using vibration detectors in PC hard disks, as opposed to actual, purpose built, wide-frequency-response seismometers, is like trying to study cosmology using a pair of reading glasses. With enough results, at _very_ best you might, possibly, be able to provide a very rough estimate of the location of an earthquake, by trying to look for vibrations spreading out from some central point. But a rough estimate is useless in the context of tsunami warning systems. You couldn't be sure if the event is even offshore, which defeats the purpose somewhat.

But dedicated seismic networks can already do this (and have been doing so for decades) in very short periods of time, through a combination of incredibly sensitive seismometers, and trained obeservers.

P2P networks might provide some use in helping improve models of earthquake ruptures and tsumani propogation, but only when proper data from seismometer networks has been pre-processed and then distributed.

The basic concept of hard drive vibration sensors as seismometers-lite, is unfortunately very unlikely to be of any use whatsover.

Tsunamis are caused by large quantities of mass moving and displacing water. This is most likely to be due to earthquakes, but also includes landslides or volcanic activity.

Purpose built seismometers can detect minute vibrations caused by the passage of seismic waves from an earthquake on the other side of the planet. The stations where they are based are specially constructed to isolate the seismometers from any sort of local environmental noise.

What will actually help with real-time tsunami warnings is faster and more accurate analysis of the triggering earthquake. Knowing the displacement that occurs along a fault means you can make a more accurate estimate of water displacement, and hence tsunami potential. From that point, you can model the propogation and size of a resulting tsunami, to allow better warnings to be distributed to shorelines.

Trying to analyse hard drive vibrations and is somewhat optimistic. For a start, seismometers have a very wide frequency-response range to vibrations, and are purpose-designed for this - the same can not be said for hard-drives.

While there are clearly many, many times more hard drives out there than dedicated seismic stations, the supposed benefit of having so much data would most likely be cancelled by the massively increased time required to extract any sort of useful signal, especially from such a narrow frequency response, that cannot distinguish noise from signal (eg; a truck driving past your house, and actual seismic signals). And this is without even getting to the fact that tsunamis are vibrations in a liquid - when vibrations from tsunami reach your location, that's because the tsunami is already there.

This seems like a case of someone with technical knowledge/ability not grasping the physical science basics behind the actual problem. Someone's noticed that PC's have (very limited) vibration sensors in them, and jumped on the shared p2p bandwagon to solve the problem.

Improved tsunami warnings will come from improvments in dedicated seismic monitoring for early warnings of a potential tsunami in the local region near the earthquake. Followed by fast, accurate modelling of tsunami propogation, to allow reliable warnings to be sent to coastlines at greater distance. One of the problems with early warning systems for natural hazards, is that if they aren't accurate, then their effectiveness in the future is reduced.

Sending data from actual seismic monitoring stations to a p2p network might help with improved earthquake models. But the time-critical nature of the problem means that such analyses are probably better left to dedicated supercomputers or clusters.

Actually, I think I'm going to resurrect my old slashdot account and post this there as well :)

PS: Engadget is a great news site - but stop using 'Drop' to mean relases - it means the opposite!

Agreed. 'Throws down','drops'? Just say 'releases' please. Apart from the fact that

[Company x] drops [random electronic product]

means it's no longer producing it, these are just getting annoying. At the very least save the slang for the body text, not the title. Apart from that, keep up the good work :)

Drops? Did they trip while carrying them?

Stop using 'drops' to mean 'releases'. Drops, in this context, should mean 'is no longer producing'. Engagdet is a nice, not-too-serious news site, but it's approaching annoying now with the forced use of slang...