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Slashback: Ghana, Graphics, Tumors
The few, the proud, the advententurous, the dorky. Elvis Maximus writes: "Geekcorps has been mentioned here before and met with some interest. Their first batch of volunteers are winding up their tours in Ghana, and the Industry Standard has run a nice piece on their experiences. This is an interesting effort that deserves some attention."
Congratulations (and admiration) to those who participated in this. GeekCorps is good stuff.
Remember, saliva causes stomach cancer ... ByteHog points to this AP story about the alleged connection between cell phone use and cancer, writing: "Kinda interesting, but I'm still going to be wearing tinfoil around my head whenever I make a call ..."
This issue has been raised for years, with no clear winner. The upshot from this study is a data point for the null hypothesis, but inevitably this will drag on, and the next study to become famous will probably be one that contradicts this. Don your tin-foil, kneepads and breathing masks, until fatality is cured.
Resistance is futile, for now. Fervent writes: "Gamecenter has an interesting article on why 3DFX collapsed. Among the reason cited: the proprietary API Glide, not allowing OEM's to sell Voodoo hardware, and NVidia's agressive product cycle." This makes an intersting followup to the recent announcement of the absorption of 3dfx by NVidia.
Play, play, play, and be gone with ye! Greyfox writes: "According to USA Today Etoys is putting itself up for sale. It's the standard dot com failure story. It'd be delicious irony if the folks running the Etoy domain they sued a while back bought their domain name." DarkKnight points to this link at CNETas well.
Vassily's quote is fine and dandy. Disclaimer have to be done in a way that they can be read, and so that a "resonable man" can understand their purpose. "Literally frying your brain" is a phrase that sounds great as a warning that something BAD could happen--and it's more easily read, and thus more likely to be read, than boring all-caps EULA legalese.
There are not many free electrons floating around in your brain.
No? There are certainly ions involved in signal propagation down axons. Where do all the electrons go?
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
The study of 891 people did find a slightly increased risk for a rare type of brain cancer, but the researchers said it was not statistically significant.
:-). Science journalists should be required to take stats courses in journalism school.
Why the hell does the media report "effects" that aren't statistically significant? A study also has a 50% chance of finding a non-significant correlation between cell phone use and below-average penis size (assuming penis size and cell phone use are unrelated--if they are related, YMMV). This is just alarmism (kinda like my use of bolding above
"Since most solid tumors take 10 to 15 years to develop, it is probably too soon to see an effect"
If you did a study of the effect of smoking on people who have only been smoking for three years, it would be almost impossible for scientists to prove that smoking is harmful [snip] The same could apply to cell phones.
I am not an oncologist, but what you are saying sounds quite reasonable. Given that it takes 10 - 15 years for cancer to develop, any studies that do find a correlation between cell phone usage must be crap, since cell phones haven't been around that long. Now, since there's no evidence that cell phones are carcinogenic (how could there be if cancer takes longer to develop than cell phones have been around), why are we worrying?
Cell phones emit non-ionizing radiation at lower power levels. Compare this to the natural radioactivity and cosmic radiation which you're constantly exposed to (which is certainly ionizing). Now, without any reliable evidence to suggest a significant risk, why should we be concerned about cell phones? I think this whole scare has stemmed out of BYRS (Bourgeois Yuppie Resentment Syndrome), and not science.
Ghana is a country with an average wage of only $160 per year. Out of a total population of 20 million, some 20 thousand are online. Why are we creating charities to get such nations online? Isn't that like forming a charity to send them Beluga Caviar? We should surely be concentrating on building their infrastructure in the proper way, and try to bring them through the industrial revolution first.
Your post reminds me of the posts in response to stories about 100" monitors that ask "what Quake player has the money?" when the product isn't even intended for retail.
This project isn't about turning the average Ghanaian into a happy websurfer. It's about giving the average Ghanaian a chance at a decent job, or his business a chance at success.
Don't discount third-world countries just because they haven't developed, say, an automobile industry: the time for that is past. That strategy was tried by the World Bank in 2nd tier countries like Brazil and India in the 1960s with disastrous results. Unregulated manufacturers polluted, the products were inferior to other markets, and the only people who made money were the bankers.
India has gotten smart. They never caught up industrially with the West. Jumping from agrarian to industrial proved expensive and futile. Instead, they've concentrated on the Second Industrial Revolution, building technical schools that turn out skilled programmers by the metric ton. These knowledge workers find work in outsourcing firms, or travel to the West for high-paying jobs. The resource that India is wisely exploiting here is its people.
It worries me to see that companies such as Shell and BT are contributing funds to send IT technicians there, when what we should be doing is sending agricultural experts and trying to attract magnates of industry
Another poorly considered policy of the latter half of Century Twenty was building Third World countries into agricultural exporters. Many of those countries could not feed their own people, and did not have the infrastructure or resources to support an exporting food industry. Once again, the bankers made money. The people often ended up poorer and hungrier. The grain available from traditional heartlands like the US and Russia was of higher quality and easily shipped. (Actually this fiasco largely predated the industrialization fiasco.)
Don't underestimate the ingenuity and inventiveness found in "third world" countries. Some of them are building out their telecommunications by skipping the 19th (copper) and 20th (fiber) century and jumping straight to the 21st (wireless). They don't have any installed base to protect. Innovations like "texting" (SMS messaging) and wacky computer virii have sprung from the Phillippines.
Dooming third world countries to another century of building up their economies "the hard way" is typical exclusivist Western thinking.
As the west moves towards an increasingly service based economy, there are opportunities for countries such as Ghana to grab onto our coattails and provide our manufacturing capabilty, before moving up to join us.
Perhaps. But they'd have to compete with already-cheap industrial powers like Mexico and China. Meanwhile, they have few resources, no industrial infrastructure, and it's enormously expensive to build.
Why, again, do they HAVE to have an industrial 20th century economy before they can move into the 21st? What does that gain them? What does it gain us? So in whose interest is it for them to build an old-style manufacturing base? Yep.
You'd make a great IMF banker a generation ago.
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lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
The last time I moved, it took the phone company over a week to tell me why they failed to install my phone line. Apparently they had to dig a trench. Somewhere. Not sure where but it would definately take at least a month (this was from the person in charge of scheduling the area's work crews). I told 'em to get bent, traded in my old analog phone for digital, and haven't missed PacBell for a second. That was 1.5 years ago.
I'm not the only one doing this. My grandfather uses his cell phone exclusively when calling me because what's local on his cell phone is long distance on the land line. My dad's considering making the change as well. Several friends have decided it'll be part of their next move just for the simplicity if nothing else. When I got my phone, I was in and out in half an hour. When's the last time you had a "traditional" phone up and running that fast? :)
About the only reasons to keep a phone line these days are for internet access (assuming you can't/won't get a cablemodem) and fax machines.
Our Univ. class has an unwritten rule. If your cell phone interrupts the prof, at the end of the class you have to stand on your desk and do the chicken dance. So far, it has only been enacted(sp?) three or four times. They are going to try to apply this rule to the entire department.
It may look like I'm doing nothing, but I'm actively waiting for my problems to go away.
--Scott Adams
I actually interviewed there once (didnt get the job which seems a good thing now). Their waiting room was like a toy store. Big giant chairs, train sets and toys lying around.
The people that started etoys were the same people that used to run linux.com years ago.
Note that I'm not saying that evidence for cell-phone cancer is there, or not there, only that you cannot logically dismiss the possibility out-of-hand on the basis you're claiming.
Hmm, makes me glad to sleep on a simple futon.Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Is that the study was conducted between 1996 and 1998 (IIRC - I saw discussion about this on the news today) and the average person in the study used their cell phone 2.5 hours per MONTH.
I'd say that more research needs to be done about this, as cell phones are much much more common today than they were even 2 years ago. Not only that, but it is not uncommon for some people to use cell phones over 2 hours every day.
so...cell phone users are gonna get cancer eh.
this is fabulous news for smokers - we got over that whole "oh shit, i could get cancer" thing a looooong time ago.
of course, this probably means that "cellers" are going to have to go to designated "celling" sections...and they'll have to associate with other "cellers" as non-cellers think it's a disgusting habit (you can SMELL all the gadgets they have. and their houses are littered with computers and other electronics!! peew!)
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
I'd have said it was an appreciation of Irony myself. Etoys was a big butthole about the whole Etoy thing (And Etoy was there first and all...) If the Etoy guys can afford to buy the Etoys domain name and that domain name is for sale, that's a lot different than Etoys suing Etoy out of theirs.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Now I'm confused, they did 17% more business this year than last year but missed estimates of 119% growth. My gawd, what a bunch of fools.
Isn't 17% growth decent anymore? Unrealistic growth is going to be traced to the real cause of the recession. If you grow at 17% a year isn't that enough. What growth is needed to make a viable business?
``Since most solid tumors take 10 to 15 years to develop, it is probably too soon to see an effect,'' Lai said.
I know very little about cancer (except for a bit about Gliomlastoma Multiforme), but experience suggests that there are some quite deadly forms of cancer (brain and otherwise) that take significantly less than a decade to develop.
Some life-threatening tumors can form in less than a month or so, and others in less than six months.
I guess what bothers me, is that I am less concerned about the impact of the 10-15 year growth tumors. That suggests to me that they are very non-aggressive and could be discovered early and effectively treated.
What frightens me are the highly aggressive forms of cancer that that appear out of nowhere, and can cripple or kill someone within six months.
I'm not sure what my point is, really, and I have no reason to doubt Dr. Lai's credentials, but I feel like his closing statement in the article subtly suggests that the risk of cancer is pretty low and if it does strike, it is a slow process.
In some cases, it's not.
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D. Fischer
ShoutingMan.com
Whoa, that Deathwatch site is some scary stuff. I mean, I expected to see Etoys (death date Apr 1, 2001) and Priceline (death date Mar 18, 2001)...but PSINet (Feb 27, 2001)? MP3.com (May 6, 2001)? Salon (Jan 14, 2001)? Worldgate (Nov 27, 2001)?
You have hundreds of companies listed there. If your predictions are accurate, there really is a recession heading this way, at least in the information/internet sector.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
I wonder if they'll be selling off any of that sweet equipment, cheap. I could use a "new" box...
--
Communication is only possible between equals
oh yeah!
cpeterso
Just a note, when the whole etoy/etoys chaos was going on a friend of mine was trying to get a job and one of the places he looked at was etoys. Apparently when he was talking to the person doing the hiring she said that the lawsuit was their major source of publicity. I am glad they went under, on some level they wanted publicity from it all, maybe that was the the only reason they did it at all.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
...is about 12-16 programmers, depending on body weight.
Rodent studies are essentially useless. The human skull is much thicker than that of a rat, and so the amount of radiation transmitted is different. Also, rats don't live nearly as long as humans. Brain tumours that take 10 - 15 years to develop in humans are obviously going to behave differently (if they happen at all) in rodents. You could try to correct for all this, but then you're really getting onto thin ice...
Besides, what causes cancer in rats doesn't necessarily cause cancer in humans. I remember hearing about a study of 226 known rodent carcinogens. Each substance was tested on both rats and mice. Something like 96 were carcinogenic in mice but not in rats, and 50-odd were carcinogenic in rats but not mice. Kinda makes you wonder if rodent studies have any relevancy to humans.
You could also strap phones to monkey heads, but you'd probably run into a lot of trouble there, and it would still take 10 - 15 years. You can't increase power levels to "speed up" the tests or "amplify" the effect because, at some threshold, you start running into significant heating effects that simply aren't an issue at lower levels.
Yes. Golly, I think we can indeed call them portable phones, even cellular phones if you like.
:-)
I thought it was obvious I was being sarcastic. I guess not. My point was that nobody used them nearly as much as people use cell phones now, and the technology is significantly different, so data from them isn't very relevant. Modern cell phones haven't been around as long.
The whole point is that lower power may not indicate less damaging when considering long-term cumulative effects. No question but that some cosmic ray muon zapping through you has more power than a photon from your cellphone, but you get a lot more of those photons and they interact with your tissues very differently. Long-period low-frequency EM exposure and periodic exposure to single high-energy particles are incommensurable quantities. We cannot make any conclusions about the former based on our knowledge of the latter.
Argh, where to start... You missed my point, and you made a few errors. I was trying to compare risks not the actual radiation. Given that background radiation is long-term, is always present, and is ionizing, whereas cell phone radiation is only occasional, it seems likely to be much less dangerous. Also, you confuse energy and power. Power is the rate of energy. Cell phone radiation probably has more power than background radiation, but the individual photons have much less energy, so much less, in fact, that they are not capable of ionizing anything. This means that they can probably only do damage through thermal effects, but half a watt isn't much heat...
Note [snip] that you cannot logically dismiss the possibility out-of-hand on the basis you're claiming.
I admit it is a possibilty, I'm just pointing out that it is so unlikely, and the risk so small, that it shouldn't concern anyone.
Hmm, makes me glad to sleep on a simple futon.
Just wait until you have to move with the damn thing. It will get you then
I bet'cha all 226 of those were carcinogenic to humans - ranging from mild to severe. Remember, we're all mammals.
Rats are closely related to mice, yet the study found significant differences in their reactions to suspected carcinogens. Now are humans more closely related to rats than mice are? I don't think so. There are millions of years of evolution seperating us from Rodenta.
You can simulate YEARS of exposure over a course of a couple weeks.
This is so fucking stupid I can't believe it, especially since I explained why this was wrong in my last post. Here's another, simpler explanation for you.
Do you get it now? Many, many things are bad above a certain threshold, but harmless or even beneficial at lower levels (think vitamins). That's why claiming that low, normal levels of X are carcinogenic in humans based on rodent studies with super-high levels is Bad Science.
Examine their methodology.
They're using rodents. We want to know about humans. At best, their results should suggest an area for further research. They don't tell you how humans react to X.
Just because the experiment doesn't cover all cases doesn't mean the results are flawed. In fact, a "patchwork" of studies that covers all cases with a little overlap is more to be trusted than a single monolithic "definitive" answer-type study.
In any case, how on earth could they get the statistical sample for usage of significantly over 3 years?
As for your third flaw--it isn't even a valid point! Unless it is your claim that people who are "potentially developing" tumor or have undiagnosed tumors are somehow over-represented in the mobile-phone-using group? On the contrary, I would expect that the group that owns the mobile phones is also the same groups that can afford the quality doctors who would find serious health problems early on. In other words, I would expect mobile phone usage to have a mild correlation to people who FIND OUT they have brain cancer--the people who can't afford the phones also can't afford the doctors.
--
MailOne
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
Funny, my first programming job was at a company that did consulting in the cell phone industry. That was 10 years ago. Yeah, every self-important yuppie scumbag didn't yet have one attached to his or her ear, but they were around.
Yes, which is why you shouldn't compare the two. It's like trying to compare the immediate and obvious effects of being shot in the head with a bullet with the subtle cummulative effects of repeated head contact in sports - the former is obviously a Bad Thing, the latter can be harmless but there's definitely a danger level. Figuring out what that danger level is can be tricky. Risk analysis involves not only the odds of an incident, but the loss per incident. The odds of cell-phone related cancers may seem, based on available data, to be low, but a brain tumor loses real big.Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
In short, we're not hypocrites, as much fun as it may be to paint us that way, as long as you understand our positions.
I cannot smoke at work so I do not want you jepordizing my health with your damn cell phone, we need a few more laws.
Got Code?
Funny, my first programming job was at a company that did consulting in the cell phone industry. That was 10 years ago.
Can you really call those bricks portable phones? Nobody used them anywhere near as much as people do now, and frequencies and power levels used have changed since then. I should have said modern cell phones, so sue me...
Yes, which is why you shouldn't compare the two.
Um, why not (your analogy sucks, BTW)? If the backround radiation is more damaging/higher power than what cell phones produce, than we can probably ignore the cell phones. There isn't any solid evidence for cell phones causing cancer, nor is there a reasonable mechanism by which low-level non-ionizing radiation could cause cancer. Until somebody comes up with a well-done study showing a strong correlation, I won't worry.
Risk analysis involves not only the odds of an incident, but the loss per incident. The odds of cell-phone related cancers may seem, based on available data, to be low, but a brain tumor loses real big.
A hundred or so people die every year by having their beds collapse on them or through some other mechanical failure while sleeping. Nobody stresses about that, but death is about the biggest loss you can take (and what a way to go). Once the odds of dying (over your lifetime) from a particular cause drop below 1 in 10,000, it's probably not going to worry you, especially since there are better things to stress about. Keep risks in perspective.
It's worth pointing out that, while sometimes the company outlives its cash, the stockholders almost never do. There are a number of ways a cash-short company can stave off bankruptcy, but from a stockholder perspective, they all suck. More on this at Downside if you're interested.
Etoys stock is at 1/4 today, down from a high of 40. If you had invested $1000 in Etoys stock at the high, you would now have $6.25.
...Really. <g> But at least they'll leave behind a nice building. I drive by it every day on my way to/from work, and I watched as they built it over the last year. If you're near the Westside (West Los Angeles/Santa Monica), and you like the high-tech postmodern architecture look, I'd highly recommend swinging by. It's located on the south side of Olympic Boulevard between Bundy and Centinela. I haven't been inside, so I can't attest for the interior layout, but the exterior is great. If anyone has any information about the building (who designed it, whether it follows sustainability guidelines, etc.), I'd appreciate the info.
"I came here to kick ass and chew bubblegum. I'm all out of bubblegum." MSE USC APX AIA CSI CASp
but wasn't Glide open source?
Yes, it was once released as free software. There was even a project to port it to DJGPP (a DOS version of GCC).
wasn't it quite easy to use (better than what was available when it was launched)?
Glide beat even DirectEcch 5 in just about every way.
Tetris on drugs, NES music, and GNOME vs. KDE Bingo.
Will I retire or break 10K?
i question the entire notion of the west being a role model for third world countries. that third world contries need to take the exact same route to success that we took is indeed pretty stupid.
the facts are that we know these countries have very bad problems that we don't have over here. but we should admit, at least as a starting point, that we have no freakin' clue whatsoever how they should solve their problems. we don't.
i think grass-roots things like Geekcorps are in fact the only way we can help. they don't pretend to have an all-encompassing solution to all problems OR a five year plan on how to change everything. instead, they help where they can and they certainly don't do any damage. which can absolutely not be said for attempts at industrialization - those often did more harm than good.
humility, please. learn from the mistakes of the past.
-- kwashiorkor --
Leaps in Logic
should not be confused with
-- kwashiorkor --
Leaps in Logic
should not be confused with
Jumping to Conclusions.
I was born and grew up in Zambia...
After college I plan to go back and teach computer science. And here's why.
People in American businesses don't use computers because it's fun or because they like the pretty graphics. People use computers because at a very fundamental level they allow you to do business more efficiently. Cheaper, faster, better...
In Africa we don't just need food and medicine for the needs of today. We need to plan ahead. To create a sustainable business infrastructure so we can compete on a global market place.
The things you mentioned are a part of this. Computers are another part.
Think about this for a second. In 1995 you couldn't assume by default that people had email addresses. But email has become necesary for business today.
Today there are still people who can't type faster than they can write by hand. Tomorrow we will assume by default that any educated person can type faster than they can write and at least do some basic programming.
Computers aren't caviar, they're water... You just can't do business with out them.
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
The average number of years of cellphone use among participants is only 3 years.
The study covers analog phones, not the newer digital models, which may produce different effects.
It looks only at people who are already diagnosed with brain tumors, and not those who may be potentially developing them or whose tumors go undiagnosed.
The news is good for those of us who are using cellphones regardless of their possible consequences, but it's disappointing that better studies aren't being conducted. We need a study that looks at longer-term use (say 6 years) and which keeps up to date with the latest devices the same way the general population is doing. Unfortunately, such proper studies are years off.
Read the rest of this comment...
And it would be even funnier than that to see eBay put itself up for sale on itself.
It worries me to see that companies such as Shell and BT are contributing funds to send IT technicians there, when what we should be doing is sending agricultural experts and trying to attract magnates of industry.
As the west moves towards an increasingly service based economy, there are opportunities for countries such as Ghana to grab onto our coattails and provide our manufacturing capabilty, before moving up to join us.
Lets not do things back to front here.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
There is no
I must first state that I am not a native Zambian. I was born there and have lived there for most of my life and in many ways consider it my home. But I have an American passport.
As an American in Zambia I was raised never to state any political views whether negative or positive about Zambian affairs. I still feel this is a wise rule to live by.
However, if there is one thing that I wish America would do to help Zambia it would be to forgive all the debt that Zambia accumulated in the 1980's. They already have forgiven around 2 billion but there is still 6.5 billion that Zambia owes. About half to the IMF. 6.5 billion dollars is not a lot of money for the United States but for a country of 9 million people where the average person makes $300 a year it is an impossible amount.
The average zambian should not be held responsible for this because they only recieved a tiny fraction of this money.
One thing I'm gratefull for is that when Zambia had a terrible drought in the mid 1990's America sent a lot of food to us. Otherwise many people would have starved.
half baked gogglebox doogooders telling everybody it's bad for you. .
pernicious nonsense.
a guy could take a hundred chest xrays a year.
ought ta have em too. .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
As I was driving home from work today, there was a piece on NPR about the (lack of any ) link between cell phones and cancer. The MD interviewed stated there was no link between cell phones, the amount of time one used one (mins/day), an increase in temporal lobe cancer (thats the part of the brain where the cell phone goes, or even a correlation between the side of the head a user held the phone to and an increased risk. Research is out in this months JAMA, with the results of a different study (same result, no correlation) due out in the New England JM on January 11th. However, he did say that no long term (over ten years) are as yet available.
They needed that 119% growth to break even. Like most other .com's, they are running out of the money they raised in their IPO, but they still need to pay the bills.
Because their profit margins are razor thin, the only way to get enough money to stop the cash-burn is to sell lots of stuff.
That's how they do their estimates of growth: How much growth do we need to break even? 115%? Okay, well if we grow 119%, then we will even make a profit - lets say we are going to do that. Obviously, it has as much resemblance to reality as their initial stock price.
Let's assume for a second that nVidia doesn't completly kill off 3dfx. nVidia doesn't make boards, just the chips. They sell the chips elsewhere and go through all that licencing and other stuff that goes along with it. 3dfx did the same back in its heyday. 3dfx bought up STB, makers of arguably the best RIVA128 and RIVATNT boards, so it could quit the licencing and chipselling gig. I'm sure the idea sounded appealing. Take out a competetor's major bedfellow and gain some factories to boot. They would have STB as an in-house fab gig. They could also take stabs at some of the companies that made deals with both companies - Canopus, Hercules/Guilemot, etc.
Now in a bizarre twist of fate, nVidia sweeps in and cuts 3dfx's head off. nVidia stuck to the chip-selling and licencing guns, and out shot a self-wounded chip designer, aquiring the technologies, patents, STB (what's left of it, which isn't much), and of course, the trademarked brandname "3dfx" which may very well be the heart of this deal.
So like I said, let's assume nVidia cauterizes 3dfx's wounds. First of all, I doubt that nVidia won't be changing its plans just yet. It will still be in the chip-selling/licencing thing. But with another company that can make boards for them, on top of all their bedfellows (ASUS, Hercules, et al.), they'll be much stiffer competition for the contendors that do both chip design and board manufacturing. ATI has been wanting to step up in the 3D market, but still has a foothold all over the mobile video and OEM markets, and there's always been Matrox who has its niches (and some decent 3D hardware to boot, although they don't have much to compete with the GeForce2). Even though ATI and Matrox don't have anything that really matches up with a GeForce2Ultra, they're much bigger, and diverse that nVidia or 3dfx ever are/were. This is why 3dfx died - it wanted to go head to head with the larger beasts but didn't have much to strike with.
I would go as far as to say maybe we should expect to see 3dfx boards with NV chips at their core. After all, the 3dfx is a trusted name in the industry. I doubt we'll see it die out completly, but it definitly won't be what it once was.
I'd been using my old Canopus Voodoo2 for days. The on-board Fan (cutting edge at the time!) made horrible sounds, and driver stability sucked - the reference drivers sucked because Canopus tweaked with the Ref. design, and Canopus sucked for refuseing to release updated drivers after they ditched the 3D Market (they still make Video Editing hardware, but I've heard rumors they'll be pursuing the 3D market again with nVidia). Still, it played Q3A (for half-an hour at best, but hey it was better than my Canopus TNT board). My parents bought me a GeForce2MX board, and I haven't looked back. That MX chip is something else, lemme tell ya. For the price, it sure packs one badass rendered punch. I'll tell ya, I was almost tempted to grab a Voodoo5 5000, but I wanted to do more homework on it. Found something on SharkeyExtreme that showed every GF2MX chip outperformed the V5 hands down, and every board costed at least $50 less than a V5.
Wow, am I glad I did my homework. Half-Life at 1024x768 pumped out of a Pentium II 266. Never once thought that could happen. 800x600x32 in Q3:A, now (tho a bit glitchy at 25-40 FPS - I'll bet a Mobo/Processor upgrade'd fix that up-GF2MX likes AGP 2.0, and my crummy 440LX Mobo is too damn old). I was only doin 640x480x16 with my V2 (25FPS at Best! HA!).
Kagenin
"All warfare is based on deception."
Sun Tzu, "The Art of War"
wait...maybe if the geekcorps volunteered at etoys by selling 3dfx cards and cell phones, we could pull this .com back into the black!
.com'S!
and maybe not.
ITS RAINING
The anti-salmon
If I were a cell manufacturer, I'd include a statement with every phone: "There is an as-yet-indeterminant risk of literally frying your brain if you hold this device to your head when using it. If you want to be safer, we suggest you either use a headset, or purchase one of our expensive new Bluetooth-enabled phones with a snazzy wireless headset. If you ignore our warning and develop noggin rot, it's your own damned fault." It would have to be put in more genteel and dense legalese, but words to this effect. (Of course, when voters aren't responsible for not punching their ballots, this may or may not save them from liability ...)
"If I have seen further than other men, it is by stepping on their glasses." - Michael Swaine
"... and that mean slashdot site. They keep picking on us, and global warming! It affected out sales! Yeah, that's the ticket! And.. my dog ate all the orders! My car broke down! I had to go out of town, There was an earthquake! A terrible flood! Locusts! IT WASN'T OUR FAULT!!! *whine* *whine*"
Or, another dot.bomb with no business plan? You decide.
On some level I agree. I'm not sure how things are in Ghana, but if people are starving and dying of cureable diseases at a high rate, that should certainly have a high priority.
OTOH, holding the high end down generally *doesn't* pull the low end up. Many people made arguments similar to yours during the Apollo Moon missions. I dare say that if it weren't for the tremendous ammount of "spinoff" research associated with the space race, we might not be surfing Slashdot and having this discussion today and the economy might be a lot worse.
Also, there is no need for 3rd world development to parallel the development of the west by evolving through the industrial revolution to the technical. This has been demonstrated by the quick adoption of wireless technology in some countries--bypassing the copper stage of the communications industry.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
We (The Danish University of Agriculture) has a large number of students from developing countries, including Ghana. This is paid for mostly by foreign aid programs. I.e. we are helping to create native experts. We also have research programs in various devoloping nations, in order to finding ways to improve crop production using the locally available means, often paid through the same programs.
However, one problem is that we lose contact with out students once they graduate, so we can't use them to distribute information about new methods from the research programs to the national farming communities. An IT network would help them to stay in touch with us, and thus up to date with the research. It will also make it easier for them to use the specialized expertice of our people, and vice-versa.
I'm an international development professional currently working in Egypt on a girls' education project. At other phases of my career I have worked on microcredit and small business development, all fairly "traditional" development interventions.
So do I think bringing IT to developing countries a waste of resources? Absolutely not. In fact, in my judgement, it is the single most important unmet need in international development today. Why? Because IT poses both a significant danger and a wonderful opportunity for the economies of these countries.
The developing world does not need an industrial revolution in the sense that we experienced it in the West. The world no longer works that way. Someone mentioned the automobile industry, and this is actually a great example of what I am talking about.
Go to a local new car dealer and pick a car -- any car, of any make or model. Take it apart and organize the parts by country of origin. You will have a great many piles of parts, and I will be very surprised if you find that more than 40% of them are from any one country. Certainly you will not find that most of the parts in that car came from the car's country of "manufacture." On top of that, many of the parts will be composed of raw materials from another country entirely.
Take apart the same make and model that came off the production line six months earlier, and I expect you will find many of the parts are from different countries than they were in the first car you took apart. You will also have a really pissed-off car lot owner.
This is basically just comparative advantage taken to extreme. We can take it to these extremes because we have transportation and communication technology that makes it feasible for a producer of a big ticket item like a car to get bids from all over the world for parts that meet its specifications and transport them quickly and reliably to the place of manufacture. This ability in turn creates pressure on the car manufacturer to do just that, because if it is not searching far and wide to save money on components, its competitors will.
As we've seen from the recent B2B boom on the Internet, the same resources are now becoming available and affordable to manufacturers of less complex, less expensive goods.
So does it make sense to start a Ghanaian car industry? Probably not. But it might make sense to produce particular components of cars, computers, and other goods that Ghanaian manufacturers are well-positioned to produce.
But without access to the kinds of technologies that would allow (in this example) Ghanaian producers to communicate directly with potential customers and competitors to determine specifications and market prices, and to make sales, such an industry is impossible. And Ghanaian producers could not hope to match the efficiencies of, say, Taiwanese producers, without access to IT.
On the other hand, with access to what are now relatively inexpensive information technologies, producers in developing countries have an unprecedented opportunity to compete with the big boys without having their huge capital investment. You've seen the IBM commercial where the Japanese company gets a bid from a small producer in Texas? Well, that producer could just as well be in Accra, or Cairo, or Almaty. If the technology is available in those places.
The same is true even for unprocessed agricultural commodities. These are traditionally exported through middlemen based in the developed world. But with modern communication technologies, developing-country producers can access those markets and make contacts directly, improving the prices it can get for those commodities. The flip side to this is that without those technologies, the need for middlemen either will price the commodity out of the market or will provide the producer with an even smaller return for its goods.
There are many other excellent arguments for promoting IT in developing countries, but for me this is the killer, and it is not specific to one class of countries. All countries have an interest in the forces that move export markets. Haiti exports. Burma exports. Ethiopia exports. With access to the modern tools that have transformed the Western economy over the last 5-10 years, they could have a chance at a better economic situation than ever before. Without access to those technologies, they're trapped.
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Give me liberty or give me something of equal or lesser value from your glossy 32-page catalog.
Ok, I am Mr. Technology-Skeptical Curmudgeon,
I have always sort of thought that if rich "western" countries want to help "underdeveloped" countries, they should do it in a way that is the least interfering. E.g., simply giving money to the country to let *it* figure out what it wants to do (yes, yes, that is given a somewhat democratic non-corrupt government...). This is as opposed to forcing the government to adopt certain policies, or letting western industry come in to exploit and pollute the country.
Being a native Zambian...what are your opinions on this sort of imperialistic industrialization of underdeveloped countries? I don't know much about Zambia, or other African nations, but Africa was once host to large and prosperous civilizations. Why, in the last few hundred years, has Africa appeared to devolve into a "third world" state?
I ask these questions, because as people of non-western underdeveloped states, some unfortunately on the recieving end of western "help", know, there are significant trade-offs and certainly penalties for allowing western influence and control, and embracing the global economy. Is the west wrongheadedly (or in many cases intentionally) influencing poorer countries for the worse, or for their own benefit, or to remake them in its image? Or am I just a crank, and the west is really percieved as some saintly benefactor who is just enriching and saving these countries?
(Yes, I use a lot of quotes around things that people have inherent assumptions about but probably shouldn't)
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
----RANT----
i kinda wish that long term exposure to cell phones did cause cancer. then all the fscking people could focus more on their driving than the oh so important conversation that cannot wait until they are at their destination.
i understand that sometimes it's necessary for people to get in touch with you, but it really pisses me off when i'm sitting in a class and i hear someones cellphone go off.
if i'm ever a professor, i'll state on the first day of class that the person who forgets to turn off thier cell phone (or what ever it is that people are using then) will be failed.
----/RANT----
use LaTeX? want an online reference manager that
-- john
jafac's quoting one of the greatest movies ever, "Repo Man".
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
> Like I've said before in my previous posts, is NVidia just letting Glide die off?
Yes. _NO_ game developers are doing Glide development: It's all D3D v8 (PC/Xbox), OpenGL (PC), and/or consoles propeitary API (PS2/DC/etc).
Of course Glide won't completely die, since it is Open Source. It will be up to the "amateur's" to keep it alive.