The way you phrase your analysis brought to mind another point of view about Facebook.
It is a cult.
Self-serving, self-aggrandizing, megalomaniacal autocrats promulgate a set of obscene antisocial philosophies that somehow hook in a group of followers solely on the basis of lies, subterfuge, or a perverse charisma (or money). They get their followers to "drink the Kool Aid" of thinking that there is something righteous in the plan or promotion. It all sounds so innocent or inspiring at first, but when it reaches its peak, or when the promoters slip up and "light the match", the dark side is revealed. It can happen on the small scale of the Manson Family, or on the massive scale of Hitler's Germany. Couched in the guise of a corporate entity giving its servile followers a free incentive (a website to post pictures of poochie), it all seemed so innocent, but Facebook is starting to look more and more like a genuine cult run by perverse leaders. (No disrespect is intended to anyone, reading this or otherwise, who is on Facebook.)
I have never been on Facebook - never understood the fascination, never understood how a medium that is inherently anti-social can be spun up as "social media", never understood the Kool Aid (Jonestown) that made others sign up, and never for a moment trusted that platform. Like a lot of young tech startups, it is sorely in need of of an adult or at least someone with a conscience somewhere in upper echelons.
How just it would be if Zuckerberg failed to show up for his Congressional hearing, and they found him dead, suicide, clutchinig a copy of Mein Kampf.
Every time this subject comes up, somebody says the same foolish things. Looking at studies like this does not make one a Luddite. On the contrary, it seems that there are those with a rabid zealous passion to defend the technology whatever the cost, science be damned.
First common mistake - "blah blah blah, it's not ionizing". True. High frequency, high energy bands, UV and gamma, cause ionization and they damage DNA and cause cancer. Radar, radio, mm - they are not ionizing, but they do have other effects on cells. Mechanisms at the cytosolic, nucleosomic, and cytoskeletal levels are not well characterized, but the gross effects are well known, even used therapeutically and as research tools on cell cultures. There are many causes of malignant transformation in cells, including non-biological vectors such as chemicals and even direct physical energy transfer (trauma - momentum & kinetic energy). Low frequency EM might not be unequivocally proven to cause cancer, but it does unequivocally stimulate cell proliferation and migration, necessary prodromes of malignant transformation.
Two - do the math. Remember, the inverse square law. Watts by themselves do not mean much. Field or flux must be known. So, using your examples, and knowing that surface of a sphere is 4 x pi x r-squared, and doing some rough rounded off calculations:
Cell phone, 0.6 watts at your ear, 4 inches or 10 cm from center of your brain - that is a flux of about 0.6 w / 1200 cm-sq = 0.0005 or half a milliwatt per cm-sq. Radio tower, 50K watts 500 feet away from your house (in which is the center of your brain) - that is a flux of about 50K w / 2.7B cm-sq = 0.00002 milliwatt per cm-sq. You cell phone thus has about 25 times more exposure per given time than that radio tower. If you spent one hour talking on your cell phone, it would impart the same energy exposure to your pituitary or pons as living 500 feet away from the tower for a whole day.
"Long term epidemiological studies have shown that non-ionizing radiation has no observable health hazard . .." You might be correct about that, and that ultimately is what matters for public health, but that does not negate that there are biological effects of radio frequency. Hot water burns and can kill, but that does not mean we shoudn't have hot water heaters and take baths or cook food. It just means that hot water at home must be used responsibly and safely. That is what research like this ultimately gets at. Do not derogate something as "quack science" until you actually know the full "spectrum" of the science.
You have a point, that people who are acting as speaker-sender thereby obligate the listener-receiver to tune in to whatever medium the message is being sent on. But that does not mean that FB or anyone else has a stranglehold on anything. It only appears that way because people capitulate to using that service. It was only a few years ago that FB did not exist and people had no problem communicating. Don't drink the Kool Aid.
Here's a simple suggestion: call or write or email to your teacher and the comedy clubs or agents. Explain that they need to use an alternative means of communication, by a list coupled to email or efax or DropBox or similar site or an old fashioned BBS or whatever. Explain that FB is no longer tenable due to data breaches, privacy hacks, and general bad citizenship. Get your friends and peers to send the same message. Make your voice known in a polite matter-of-fact way. If "they" are literate enough to be teachers and club operators, then they know about the current status of things. They might just accommodate you with no fuss whatsoever. Slashdot is fine place to discuss this, but the same message made to your associates might get you a fix.
Ionizing radiation can damage DNA and lead to cancers or other mutations - true.
That is by no means the only cause of cancer. Many chemicals are carcinogenic. Repetitive (even single) trauma can be carcinogenic. Sustained inflammation can be carcinogenic. Genetic variations cause cancer.
The mechanisms vary among all of them, but these are just the basic everyday stressors that lead to cancer. Among all of them, ionizing radiation is perhaps the least prevalent unless talking about skin cancers in certain locales.
Radiofrequency might or might not cause cancer. That is the question, maybe yes, maybe no. But, radio does have demonstrable effects on cell proliferation, cell migration, and genomic expression. Radio is not ionizing, but then again, nucleic acid ionization is not the only mechanism of tumorigenesis.
"Only ionizing radiation can effect the cells and cause mutations (and possibly cancer)" - that is simply incorrect.
The responses to this post tend to refute the conclusions or point out fallacies or biases or weak statistics or correlation factors. Much of that critique is valid - a whole lot of people here jumped onto the problems with the study. But, there are also a few points worth noting.
Biological effects - Beginning in the latter 19th century, chemistry became the basis for understanding biology, and physical influences on biological systems were, and still are, relegated to lesser rank, not so robust methods, and lesser appreciation, sometimes even disdain among public an scientists alike. However, there is ample evidence of the effects of energy on biological systems, sometimes for the better and useful as therapy, sometimes of neutral influence, and sometimes provoking injury or pathological transformations. Common experience tells you this is so - get hit by a car and transfer kinetic energy, or get burned and transfer thermal energy, and that's bad. However, let a therapist apply ultrasound, diathermy, or e-stim, and significant benefits can accrue. Microwaves wiggle water molecules. Light waves interact with photoreceptor cells and molecules in the eye. Vibrational energies are transduced by the ear with discrimination of frequencies. The effects of EM radiation on cells and biological systems have been demonstrated in many ways. Note that I am referring to long wavelength low energy bands - radio, microwave, etc., not the high energy ionizing effects of x-ray and gamma. How it is that the effects of low frequency non-ionizing EM are transduced by cells or biochemical is another story, but not understanding how does not invalidate multitudes of observations that the effects are there.
Much of the attention in these studies focuses on certain organs and tissues and tumors because that is where prior studies, valid or invalid, have identified risk. Focus on the brain is based on studies suggesting incidence of brain tumors, and the obvious fact that you hold cellphones to your head. Regardless if there is a real effect or not, the types of tumors or tissues looked at have a commonality - they make lots of phospholipids, so that is an obvious nominal association that makes you wonder if there is an interaction. Phospholipids make cell membranes. For instance, schwannomas are mentioned. Schwann cells make the "insulation" around fast axons (a nerve cell's output "wire"). These cells are like a roll of tape of wound phospholipids - lots of "the stuff" filling the local space. Phospholipids are long alkyl chains, much like various other liquid crystals, about 2 nm long. Phase state transformations in these molecules have been observed in EM fields, so somehow they can transduce that energy.
Mechanisms I have heard postulates that these long molecules can act like antennas for EM. If the molecule is 2 nm, and the EM is gigahertz range millimeter waves, that is 6 orders of magnitude difference in size, so maybe not a classic antenna, but remember that microwaves (and others) wiggle water, so other effects can happen as biochemicals absorb those energies. Many comments to this post point out lack of dose response, but that is not a necessary criterion. Many perturbations of biological systems exhibit other response curves, including hysteresis, bimodal, band pass, band stop, high or low pass, self-competition or saturational inhibition, and others. Who knows, the effects might not even be on membranes or cytosolic chemistry. Perhaps the very genes that make such chemicals, open and unwound in the nucleus as part of that cell's phenotypic expression, has a certain set of base pairs that makes the molecule loose or springy or rigid in key areas such that it is subject to extreme vibrational torques or bending which in turn initiates passive or active responses elsewhere in the nucleus leading to the malignant transformation. There is a vast ocean of possibilities out there that can be explored before finding a clear understanding of mechanisms.
When I read the article, the first thing I thought of was a singular event that defined for me the transition between hands-on and brains-in enthusiasm for new technology versus passive disinterest or boredom with new technology. Byte magazine. For those who never had the opportunity to read it, it was hard core nerd stuff, printed from 1975 to 1998. In those burgeoning early days of IC's and PC's, it was a great way to learn about digital and computer technologies. It was not a technical journal. It was a general interest magazine, but Byte stories got in-depth on processor architectures, fab methods, system building, application programming, peripheral interfacing, and so on. It was a great way to stay informed about what was then a genuinely innovative and exhilarating set of new technologies. Remember, this was the era of Space Invaders, Pac Man, Tron, Tandy, Commodore, Lotus, VisiCalc, and early PC-Mac. Then, in the early 1990's, the internet started to gain traction. General public enthusiasm bloomed with the dot-com era of the later decade, but in the early decade, the days of Netscape and Mosaic, Byte saw the future and decided to shift the magazine's focus. It went all in on the internet, changing name to byte.com.
I remember reading the first new edition, where the publisher explained the shift in focus. However, instead of adhering to their admired focus on technology reporting, they reported on where the internet could take you. Imagine a world class automobile magazine that was exalted for its in-depth articles on engine design, torque and hp, engine machining, carburetor specs and tuning, tire manufacture, highway engineering, and traffic control systems. Then suddenly in the 1960's, suburban shopping malls start popping up, so Auto Magazine then switches its entire format to describing what you can buy in the stores at the mall, which of course the car will take you to. It reports solely on where and how to go to the mall to buy shoes and clothes for a Sunday jaunt, or tires or a battery at Sears Auto, or fuses at Radio Shack. You could even buy other stuff at the Mall. Wow! That is what Byte became, a guide to online places and experiences. Bye bye Byte.
It is easy to get beguiled by something solely because it is new. Back then, the internet was new, and it was exciting. But the underlying technology per se was perhaps too arcane or unseen for most people to care. The applied internet was what caught attention, those things that ordinary people could do with it, but not the physical infrastructure underneath. Even for the hobbyist or hacker, you couldn't just tap into an internet trunk on your own, so the technology itself became less tangible.
It depends on how you define technology. Wireless is a great new technology that has radically altered how we do things. But, "wireless" is just radio, telephone, and pc all comingled, and each of those are old technologies. Are iterative improvements or logical machine hookups the same as fundamental new technologies? It does seem that a lot of the new technologies of the past 30 years are iterative extensions or market driven mashups of prior genuinely novel advancements.
Growing up in the Philly area, we had Kiddie City, which was much like Toys R Us, and it was okay to go there sometimes, but not really great. By the time Toys R Us showed up, I was old enough not to care so much, and I agree with the comment here that it "was like a KMart from 20 years ago, poor, uncovered fluorescent lighting, drab interior, know nothing staff". For me, there were two toy shopping experiences that trumped everything.
One, looking through the Sears catalog. Sears was the wizard of merchandising, they knew what people liked or wanted, and what to stock and how to show it off in their catalog. Even if I didn't buy anything from it (well, cajoled my parents to buying something for me), it let me know what I wanted to buy if I walked into Kiddie City. It was the reverse of book browsing in modern day Walden Books then buying on line at Amazon. There was something beguiling about "shopping" at home that way. It would be nice if Amazon and other modern online retailers created more of a catalog or browsing experience like those old mail order catalogs used to be. It would be a nice mix of old and new paradigms, taking the best of what worked from each.
Two, the corner drug store. When mom and dad needed a weekend alone, we got to stay with the grandparents, who were ever over-indulgent. One of the biggest treats was walking a block up to the corner drug store (independent, pharmacist owned, quaint, and packed solid with merchandise along narrow isles in a small space) to get goodies. One of those narrow racks had the kid stuff. There might not have been much by the standards of a Toys R Us, but I never failed to find a toy plane to fly or a plastic model to build or some cheap board game that was a good excuse to have fun with my grandparents or cousins. I'll take that experience over Kiddie City and Toys R Us any day of the year.
Above, Anonymous Coward wrote "Just for the record, 335 acres is about 1/2 square mile. Not quite as big as it sounds. I'm not saying that makes it no big deal...just clarifying context."
So, as someone who lives in Arizona, allow me to clarify context.
This is a hot and dry State, and 15 years of drought has created a lot of dry brush, aka "fuel" in our forests and chaparral and grasslands and deserts. This is also an outdoor activities State, and people camping and hiking can do dangerous things with campfires and other tools and toys. Also, as suburban settlement pushes farther into rural areas, not only does ignition risk go up, but risks of injury, death, and lost property also increase. You might have seen last year's movie "Only the Brave" about the Yarnell Hill fire in 2013. That was a relatively small fire, only 8500 acres, in which 19 firefighters were killed.
Many fires are small, but they cost time, effort, risk, and dollars to prevent growing into huge conflagrations. Fire prevention and containment is serious business here in Arizona. Counties regularly issue prohibitions about not only campfires, but even about burning wood in urban fireplaces. Human caused fires are on the increase, and latest numbers from the State are that ninety percent, 90%, of Arizona wildfires are man made, some deliberately, but mostly inadvertent, some honest accidents, and many just plain stupid acts by idiots. Penalties vary but can be costly in terms of dollars and time in jail. In other areas that are more temperate, rainy, and wetland, wildfire risk may not be so severe, but here in Arizona, playing with motorized ignitable toys in forested areas is a genuine threat, even for just "small" fires.
Insulin is made in the pancreas. After pancreatitis or pancreatectomy (such as for trauma or cancer), you no longer have the islets of Langerhans in which the insulin is made. No insulin, thus you have diabetes. Type 1 and Type 2 (and this new nomenclature) refer to endogenous disorders for which some disease, understood or otherwise, is at work. Post-pancreatic diabetes is not related to the endogenous Types. Its pathogenesis, diagnosis, and treatment are all clear cut. Your insulin making machine has been repossessed. To manage it, take food and administer insulin in a balanced ratio, and your blood sugars and metabolic needs remain on track. Sounds like your original disease also left you with a bad case of sour grapes.
It seems worthwhile to put this in perspective of general medical science and progress. In every age, doctors and scientists try to understand disease within the framework of contemporaneous knowledge. When new discoveries are made, everyone scrambles to reevaluate what they know with respect to their primary field of interest. This then propels extensive new nomenclatures of disease, new therapeutics, and new clinical treatment schemes. This is the normal flow of progress in medicine, since forever, but especially easy to trace the waves of discovery and development over the past two centuries.
As example, consider breast cancer, another disorder which, like diabetes, is of profound incidence, morbidity, death, and public health interest and funding. Before the 1850's, it was described by features on physical exam, and doctors knew and named them as "medullary", "scirrhous", and "ulcerated". After the 1850's, we best understood tissue pathology by what we saw under the microscope, and clinical histology became the mandatory standard by which diagnoses were made and treatments decided. Breast cancers were then designated as "ductal" or "lobular" depending on cell or structure of origin. In the past 30 years, discoveries from the proteomics and genomics world have identified genes and receptors which govern tumor behavior. What the cells look like under the microscope is not so prognostic as how they behave, and hormone and cytokine receptors and genes (ER, PR, HER2, BRCA) now rule the diagnosis. Whenever such new discoveries force a rethinking of diagnostic and treatment paradigms, there are usually international nomenclature conventions or committees which organize to bring some sense of logic and order and common language to the new and old systematics.
That is what this new diabetes research is about, getting more refined, more focused, more granular in understanding the pathogenesis of the disease. It makes up for profound deficiencies in the adequacy of old nomenclatures. Eons ago, there was just "diabetes", recognized by profuse urination (with a multitude of later complications). By the Middle Ages, distinction was made between diabetes in which the urine was either sweet or tasteless (yes indeed, taste test was the chem lab of its day). Sweet urine was then called diabetes mellitus (honey like), versus diabetes insipidus (tasteless) which we now know is due predominantly to ADH deficiency from the pituitary.
Diabetes was relatively uncommon before the 20th century. By mid century, increasing prevalence forced everyone to start rethinking the nature of the disease, inasmuch as various clinical subtypes and profiles were easily discerned. Anomalous forms such as "adult onset diabetes" and "non-insulin-dependent diabetes (niddm)" and then "obesity related diabetes" were obviously different than classical "true" diabetes, so a distinction had to be made with a more robust vocabulary. Thus, "Type 1" and "Type 2" diabetes, but these terms were adopted only circa 1990. But those two designations alone do not cover the spectrum of clinical presentations, for instance is niddm really the same as obese diabetes? Also, these designations do not address underlying physiological mechanisms. In a patient whose diabetes, blood sugar control, and life itself are dependent on exogenous therapeutically delivered insulin (iddm), is his disease because his pancreas not make insulin, or because it actually does make insulin, but peripheral cells do not have receptors to bind the insulin?
Recall a few basics about sugar and insulin. Cells use glucose as their primary fuel. The body has a complex multi-control system to regulate glucose levels in the blood so that cells get it when they need it, so that dietary sugars can be stored for later use, and stored carbon can be mobilized between feedings or during high demand. Insulin is central in this process, having multiple aspects of control and regulation within this complex machine. Its most immediate and profound function is, by bindi
Exactly, just what I thought. I expected an expose on the latest breach of or rogue behavior by an internet company, but instead it is about "Dropbox filing will take company public". Words and grammar make a difference. Btw, nice title.
Wording of that press release is a little loose, but what it implies is that this is just a demo track, which if successful, will permit [nationwide?] buildout to a larger network that will eventually handle 150M per annum.
Good point, and true. But as others have also pointed out, some things are best manufactured on orbit, such as a mile long lightweight truss that would not do so well at the surface with gravity induced bending moments.
How will a high speed Vindaloop traveling through a tight tunnel Curry favor among riders that prefer sitting on the outside of the rail cars? Let's face it, India has a big population with transportation challenges. In dense urban areas, people can practice Pakora, running obstacle course style through the crowds, but that only gets you so far. Elsewhere in the world, small buses and shared taxis known as jitneys can transport small groups, but the Indian version, Chutney's, can hardly keep pace with the large traveling public. Conventional overland rail companies like the Mumbai & Western, and the Chapati & Papadum are already overcrowded and far too slow, not to mention safety issues of a ridership that prefers rooftop seating. The Vindaloop is a beguiling technology, but will it be accepted by those who prefer having their Kofta's squeezed out the window on every ride? The proposed trains will sport beige colors, because dark colors will absorb more light, and the coefficient of expansion might swell them too large to fit the fine tolerance tunnels, and when those Tan Doors close, the people best be all on the inside. Our reporter, Sam Osa, spoke with locals who expressed their concerns. One mother, Ma Sala, told us she feared for her boys who ride the train. "Things will get too crowded inside, but with no leg room outside, then what?" Naan of that matters of course if it proves safe. One can only hope that the J.D. Powers Raitas will be high enough to attract ridership.
On smaller scale projects in earth orbit, the raw materials could be rocketed and orbited to the manufacturing site as we do now. Sooner or later though, the cost of hoisting large megastructure masses to orbit could be prohibitive. If the raw materials were to come from space, then asteroid mining is a hypothetical idea, but it seems to me to have too many practical and economical limitations in this nascent concept stage. So, what about the moon? Here is a vision for the not too distant future.
Whatever the raw materials might be, lifting them out of lunar gravity to earth capture should be relatively cheap or on par with lifting to earth orbit. So, we set up lunar bases, meant to prospect for useful mineral deposits, then start mining. Like any new colony, buildings and infrastructure need a bootstrap process and period of time to ramp up to capacity. But, put a few essential pieces of machinery up there to start with, to extract and process some pioneer metals and materials, then use printers to build more machinery. Take advantage of no atmosphere and lots of sunlight to power the mining, milling, smelting, and manufacturing operations. Furthermore, use that same energy abundance to create or power electric propulsion systems or mass drivers to pop the processed materials off the surface enough to clear the Lagrange point. Earth gravity can then bring the materials to working orbit. A fleet of space tugs or ferries, operating perpetually up there, can help pilot the delivery pods to their precise orbit and location for actual manufacture. The entire affair can be made economically feasible by also mining the moon for profitable use back on Earth, such as precious metals, rare earths, and lithium.
Aside from having air to breath, the voyages of Columbus and the habitation of the Antarctic were not so far different. If the social and political will was there, it could be done.
A few days ago here on Slashdot was an article about Google changing the way it handles image searches. Due to a dispute with a commercial entity (Getty Images if I recall correctly), Google was no longer going to serve the full image when you clicked on the thumbnail, just take you to the origin website. It would have made much more sense to just offer content owners a way to opt out of having their images displayed. The Slashdot replies are full of sensible comments and insights.
This weekend, Google made the switch. Now, you can no longer preview an image in Google, not from any source. For me, doing a lot of graphic and imagery intensive work, that was one of Google's most important features. Now suddenly, Google sucks for that purpose. I just tried doing image searches on Bing, and they still work properly, I can see the full image.
Brand loyalty has nothing to do with anything. Getting the job done is everything. So now, when I need to find images, hello Bing, get lost Google. MS should find a way to capitalize on that. Starting with a name change wouldn't be a bad idea.
As a showcase point-of-pride project, it will know doubt have a wow factor of the highest magnitude. Read the article and links within it - wood skyscrapers seem to be an idea on the ascendancy. Many of the putative benefits from a social, engineering, and ecological point of view no doubt have merit. However, there is a potential downside which was the first thing that came to my mind. Fire.
Looking at the concept renders in the article, try this estimate: 20 residential units per story, times 70 stories, average occupancy 3 people per unit, then add public crowds in office and retail space, and there could easily be 5000-6000 people present at a time. New York's twin towers were steel and concrete, and no one thought they could burn, yet the 2001 incident revealed unanticipated fire induced failure. In contrast, wood burns, no secret there. If there ever was a fire in such a structure, it would be a nightmare.
The article states that the company itself estimates a construction cost double a steel and concrete high rise of same size. That seems like a recipe to cut corners or overlook features, to trivialize the things that no one will overtly see. The recent June 14, 2017 Grenfell Tower high rise fire and deaths in London were a testimonial to crappy architectural design, crappy construction and oversight, and inept public administration. Nearly every high profile multi-fatality fire that makes the news can be traced to problems of that nature. The money goes into the gee whiz what-you-can-see-features (or in the case of the recent article about Apple's new glass walled headquarters, the things you can't see). Safety issues get trivialized, ignored, excluded.
Any building as proposed needs to have peremptory and big bucks attention to fire retardant design, fire recognition and suppression systems, human factors engineering, evacuation and rescue systems, first responder access. No doubt the sponsors, developers, and engineers will claim they did, but nearly every fatal building fire can be traced back to lapses in such. It will all look beautiful until the day it burns down, and then it's too late. One can only hope that they put safety up there with or even ahead of visual design and high concept.
This is the normal cycle of new gadgets. Appliances. Think of any of these technological tools as appliances. New technologies or inventions arrive to make some aspect of daily life better or easier. The device penetrates the market at some rate, greater or slower, depending on many things: sense of relevance to your daily life (perhaps heightened by ambitious advertising), the cost of the new technology which invariably subsides with greater market penetration and competition, and giving up on old paradigms of doing things as the new technology proves itself or younger generations favor it or as older generations wait until breakage or obsolescence of the old devices requires them to update.
This happened when electric lights replaced gas lighting and candles, when motorized automobiles replaced horse and carriage, when washing machines replaced slapping your clothes on a stone by the river, and for any other mechanized or electrified appliance. For all of them, market penetration increases as the populace adopts it. After that, sales are flat, varying only in relationship to population expansion, steady state turnover of devices as old ones break and must be replaced, and episodic upswells in sales as some new feature or fad or incremental improvement beguiles the populace.
By analogy, I went to find info on this by looking for information on washer-dryer penetration over the past century, an arbitrary pick, it could have been microwave ovens or stereo music systems or whatever. I came across the following article of interest that covers all technologies, "The Spread of Technology since 1900". It is a great little article that looks at penetration and saturation of a whole host of common household devices:
For the past few years, especially with respect to the appearance of tablet computers and Win 8, then Win 10, the industry got nervous, claiming "the end of the PC, the end of the desktop", and that Win PO8 had killed the PC. No, it is just that the market has matured, newer devices seem to be more hardened against changing technologies thus having a longer useful life, and various form factors that supplant the big box machines have all found their niches. Thus sales must reduce to the rate of steady state turnover. Now, in just the past few months, reports have revealed nervousness over tablet sales declining. The market is saturated, everybody who wants one has one, and turnover will be steady state replacement, unless some compelling new technology or feature drives everyone to upgrade.
The computerized handheld telephone has now hit that steady state plateau. Without compelling new features or paradigms of use to spur a global upgrade, and with an already robust set of features, more than any one person needs or uses, reasonably durable and well made, the market is now in its steady state dynamic.
Companies or investors looking for the huge profits of a new and advancing market will be disappointed. Investors looking at such technologies as commodities or utilities à la gas, sewer, and electricity, can always garner some low level income over the long haul. The fascinating question is, what will be the next lifestyle and society changing gadget which will then go through the same 10 or 100 year lifecycle?
We interrupt our regular programming to bring you this important breaking news. We have just learned that an unknown spacecraft is approaching Earth, origins and intentions unknown. Radar and satellite imaging reveal it to be massive in size. No direct contact has been possible so far. However, an emissary from the spaceship has teleported to the Missouri headquarters of Enterprise Rent-A-Car. This non-corporeal entity has occupied the body of an executive secretary who now speaks on behalf of the enigmatic stellar visitor. The entity is quoted as saying, “We seek the Musk unit. You will assist us. I have been programmed by St’man to observe functioning of the carbon-based units infesting the Enterprise. St’man travels here to find the Creator. You may not speak directly to St’man, but if the carbon based units insist on direct dialogue, you will be permitted to speak to copilot Don Panic.”
Me too. It's still there, but nowhere as busy and entertaining or meaningful as it used to be. There was something inherently more social about it than the current www-based "anti-social" media.
Slashdot Mirror
Nicely stated.
The way you phrase your analysis brought to mind another point of view about Facebook.
It is a cult.
Self-serving, self-aggrandizing, megalomaniacal autocrats promulgate a set of obscene antisocial philosophies that somehow hook in a group of followers solely on the basis of lies, subterfuge, or a perverse charisma (or money). They get their followers to "drink the Kool Aid" of thinking that there is something righteous in the plan or promotion. It all sounds so innocent or inspiring at first, but when it reaches its peak, or when the promoters slip up and "light the match", the dark side is revealed. It can happen on the small scale of the Manson Family, or on the massive scale of Hitler's Germany. Couched in the guise of a corporate entity giving its servile followers a free incentive (a website to post pictures of poochie), it all seemed so innocent, but Facebook is starting to look more and more like a genuine cult run by perverse leaders. (No disrespect is intended to anyone, reading this or otherwise, who is on Facebook.)
I have never been on Facebook - never understood the fascination, never understood how a medium that is inherently anti-social can be spun up as "social media", never understood the Kool Aid (Jonestown) that made others sign up, and never for a moment trusted that platform. Like a lot of young tech startups, it is sorely in need of of an adult or at least someone with a conscience somewhere in upper echelons.
How just it would be if Zuckerberg failed to show up for his Congressional hearing, and they found him dead, suicide, clutchinig a copy of Mein Kampf.
Every time this subject comes up, somebody says the same foolish things. Looking at studies like this does not make one a Luddite. On the contrary, it seems that there are those with a rabid zealous passion to defend the technology whatever the cost, science be damned.
First common mistake - "blah blah blah, it's not ionizing". True. High frequency, high energy bands, UV and gamma, cause ionization and they damage DNA and cause cancer. Radar, radio, mm - they are not ionizing, but they do have other effects on cells. Mechanisms at the cytosolic, nucleosomic, and cytoskeletal levels are not well characterized, but the gross effects are well known, even used therapeutically and as research tools on cell cultures. There are many causes of malignant transformation in cells, including non-biological vectors such as chemicals and even direct physical energy transfer (trauma - momentum & kinetic energy). Low frequency EM might not be unequivocally proven to cause cancer, but it does unequivocally stimulate cell proliferation and migration, necessary prodromes of malignant transformation.
Two - do the math. Remember, the inverse square law. Watts by themselves do not mean much. Field or flux must be known. So, using your examples, and knowing that surface of a sphere is 4 x pi x r-squared, and doing some rough rounded off calculations:
Cell phone, 0.6 watts at your ear, 4 inches or 10 cm from center of your brain - that is a flux of about 0.6 w / 1200 cm-sq = 0.0005 or half a milliwatt per cm-sq.
Radio tower, 50K watts 500 feet away from your house (in which is the center of your brain) - that is a flux of about 50K w / 2.7B cm-sq = 0.00002 milliwatt per cm-sq.
You cell phone thus has about 25 times more exposure per given time than that radio tower.
If you spent one hour talking on your cell phone, it would impart the same energy exposure to your pituitary or pons as living 500 feet away from the tower for a whole day.
"Long term epidemiological studies have shown that non-ionizing radiation has no observable health hazard . . ." You might be correct about that, and that ultimately is what matters for public health, but that does not negate that there are biological effects of radio frequency. Hot water burns and can kill, but that does not mean we shoudn't have hot water heaters and take baths or cook food. It just means that hot water at home must be used responsibly and safely. That is what research like this ultimately gets at. Do not derogate something as "quack science" until you actually know the full "spectrum" of the science.
You have a point, that people who are acting as speaker-sender thereby obligate the listener-receiver to tune in to whatever medium the message is being sent on. But that does not mean that FB or anyone else has a stranglehold on anything. It only appears that way because people capitulate to using that service. It was only a few years ago that FB did not exist and people had no problem communicating. Don't drink the Kool Aid.
Here's a simple suggestion: call or write or email to your teacher and the comedy clubs or agents. Explain that they need to use an alternative means of communication, by a list coupled to email or efax or DropBox or similar site or an old fashioned BBS or whatever. Explain that FB is no longer tenable due to data breaches, privacy hacks, and general bad citizenship. Get your friends and peers to send the same message. Make your voice known in a polite matter-of-fact way. If "they" are literate enough to be teachers and club operators, then they know about the current status of things. They might just accommodate you with no fuss whatsoever. Slashdot is fine place to discuss this, but the same message made to your associates might get you a fix.
"What's past is prologue."
Now the fun begins.
Sometimes you hate lawyers, sometimes you like them.
Ionizing radiation can damage DNA and lead to cancers or other mutations - true.
That is by no means the only cause of cancer.
Many chemicals are carcinogenic.
Repetitive (even single) trauma can be carcinogenic.
Sustained inflammation can be carcinogenic.
Genetic variations cause cancer.
The mechanisms vary among all of them, but these are just the basic everyday stressors that lead to cancer. Among all of them, ionizing radiation is perhaps the least prevalent unless talking about skin cancers in certain locales.
Radiofrequency might or might not cause cancer. That is the question, maybe yes, maybe no.
But, radio does have demonstrable effects on cell proliferation, cell migration, and genomic expression.
Radio is not ionizing, but then again, nucleic acid ionization is not the only mechanism of tumorigenesis.
"Only ionizing radiation can effect the cells and cause mutations (and possibly cancer)" - that is simply incorrect.
The responses to this post tend to refute the conclusions or point out fallacies or biases or weak statistics or correlation factors. Much of that critique is valid - a whole lot of people here jumped onto the problems with the study. But, there are also a few points worth noting.
Biological effects -
Beginning in the latter 19th century, chemistry became the basis for understanding biology, and physical influences on biological systems were, and still are, relegated to lesser rank, not so robust methods, and lesser appreciation, sometimes even disdain among public an scientists alike. However, there is ample evidence of the effects of energy on biological systems, sometimes for the better and useful as therapy, sometimes of neutral influence, and sometimes provoking injury or pathological transformations. Common experience tells you this is so - get hit by a car and transfer kinetic energy, or get burned and transfer thermal energy, and that's bad. However, let a therapist apply ultrasound, diathermy, or e-stim, and significant benefits can accrue. Microwaves wiggle water molecules. Light waves interact with photoreceptor cells and molecules in the eye. Vibrational energies are transduced by the ear with discrimination of frequencies. The effects of EM radiation on cells and biological systems have been demonstrated in many ways. Note that I am referring to long wavelength low energy bands - radio, microwave, etc., not the high energy ionizing effects of x-ray and gamma. How it is that the effects of low frequency non-ionizing EM are transduced by cells or biochemical is another story, but not understanding how does not invalidate multitudes of observations that the effects are there.
Much of the attention in these studies focuses on certain organs and tissues and tumors because that is where prior studies, valid or invalid, have identified risk. Focus on the brain is based on studies suggesting incidence of brain tumors, and the obvious fact that you hold cellphones to your head. Regardless if there is a real effect or not, the types of tumors or tissues looked at have a commonality - they make lots of phospholipids, so that is an obvious nominal association that makes you wonder if there is an interaction. Phospholipids make cell membranes. For instance, schwannomas are mentioned. Schwann cells make the "insulation" around fast axons (a nerve cell's output "wire"). These cells are like a roll of tape of wound phospholipids - lots of "the stuff" filling the local space. Phospholipids are long alkyl chains, much like various other liquid crystals, about 2 nm long. Phase state transformations in these molecules have been observed in EM fields, so somehow they can transduce that energy.
Mechanisms
I have heard postulates that these long molecules can act like antennas for EM. If the molecule is 2 nm, and the EM is gigahertz range millimeter waves, that is 6 orders of magnitude difference in size, so maybe not a classic antenna, but remember that microwaves (and others) wiggle water, so other effects can happen as biochemicals absorb those energies. Many comments to this post point out lack of dose response, but that is not a necessary criterion. Many perturbations of biological systems exhibit other response curves, including hysteresis, bimodal, band pass, band stop, high or low pass, self-competition or saturational inhibition, and others. Who knows, the effects might not even be on membranes or cytosolic chemistry. Perhaps the very genes that make such chemicals, open and unwound in the nucleus as part of that cell's phenotypic expression, has a certain set of base pairs that makes the molecule loose or springy or rigid in key areas such that it is subject to extreme vibrational torques or bending which in turn initiates passive or active responses elsewhere in the nucleus leading to the malignant transformation. There is a vast ocean of possibilities out there that can be explored before finding a clear understanding of mechanisms.
Biases
The study posted he
When I read the article, the first thing I thought of was a singular event that defined for me the transition between hands-on and brains-in enthusiasm for new technology versus passive disinterest or boredom with new technology. Byte magazine. For those who never had the opportunity to read it, it was hard core nerd stuff, printed from 1975 to 1998. In those burgeoning early days of IC's and PC's, it was a great way to learn about digital and computer technologies. It was not a technical journal. It was a general interest magazine, but Byte stories got in-depth on processor architectures, fab methods, system building, application programming, peripheral interfacing, and so on. It was a great way to stay informed about what was then a genuinely innovative and exhilarating set of new technologies. Remember, this was the era of Space Invaders, Pac Man, Tron, Tandy, Commodore, Lotus, VisiCalc, and early PC-Mac. Then, in the early 1990's, the internet started to gain traction. General public enthusiasm bloomed with the dot-com era of the later decade, but in the early decade, the days of Netscape and Mosaic, Byte saw the future and decided to shift the magazine's focus. It went all in on the internet, changing name to byte.com.
I remember reading the first new edition, where the publisher explained the shift in focus. However, instead of adhering to their admired focus on technology reporting, they reported on where the internet could take you. Imagine a world class automobile magazine that was exalted for its in-depth articles on engine design, torque and hp, engine machining, carburetor specs and tuning, tire manufacture, highway engineering, and traffic control systems. Then suddenly in the 1960's, suburban shopping malls start popping up, so Auto Magazine then switches its entire format to describing what you can buy in the stores at the mall, which of course the car will take you to. It reports solely on where and how to go to the mall to buy shoes and clothes for a Sunday jaunt, or tires or a battery at Sears Auto, or fuses at Radio Shack. You could even buy other stuff at the Mall. Wow! That is what Byte became, a guide to online places and experiences. Bye bye Byte.
It is easy to get beguiled by something solely because it is new. Back then, the internet was new, and it was exciting. But the underlying technology per se was perhaps too arcane or unseen for most people to care. The applied internet was what caught attention, those things that ordinary people could do with it, but not the physical infrastructure underneath. Even for the hobbyist or hacker, you couldn't just tap into an internet trunk on your own, so the technology itself became less tangible.
It depends on how you define technology. Wireless is a great new technology that has radically altered how we do things. But, "wireless" is just radio, telephone, and pc all comingled, and each of those are old technologies. Are iterative improvements or logical machine hookups the same as fundamental new technologies? It does seem that a lot of the new technologies of the past 30 years are iterative extensions or market driven mashups of prior genuinely novel advancements.
Growing up in the Philly area, we had Kiddie City, which was much like Toys R Us, and it was okay to go there sometimes, but not really great. By the time Toys R Us showed up, I was old enough not to care so much, and I agree with the comment here that it "was like a KMart from 20 years ago, poor, uncovered fluorescent lighting, drab interior, know nothing staff". For me, there were two toy shopping experiences that trumped everything.
One, looking through the Sears catalog. Sears was the wizard of merchandising, they knew what people liked or wanted, and what to stock and how to show it off in their catalog. Even if I didn't buy anything from it (well, cajoled my parents to buying something for me), it let me know what I wanted to buy if I walked into Kiddie City. It was the reverse of book browsing in modern day Walden Books then buying on line at Amazon. There was something beguiling about "shopping" at home that way. It would be nice if Amazon and other modern online retailers created more of a catalog or browsing experience like those old mail order catalogs used to be. It would be a nice mix of old and new paradigms, taking the best of what worked from each.
Two, the corner drug store. When mom and dad needed a weekend alone, we got to stay with the grandparents, who were ever over-indulgent. One of the biggest treats was walking a block up to the corner drug store (independent, pharmacist owned, quaint, and packed solid with merchandise along narrow isles in a small space) to get goodies. One of those narrow racks had the kid stuff. There might not have been much by the standards of a Toys R Us, but I never failed to find a toy plane to fly or a plastic model to build or some cheap board game that was a good excuse to have fun with my grandparents or cousins. I'll take that experience over Kiddie City and Toys R Us any day of the year.
Above, Anonymous Coward wrote "Just for the record, 335 acres is about 1/2 square mile. Not quite as big as it sounds. I'm not saying that makes it no big deal...just clarifying context."
So, as someone who lives in Arizona, allow me to clarify context.
This is a hot and dry State, and 15 years of drought has created a lot of dry brush, aka "fuel" in our forests and chaparral and grasslands and deserts. This is also an outdoor activities State, and people camping and hiking can do dangerous things with campfires and other tools and toys. Also, as suburban settlement pushes farther into rural areas, not only does ignition risk go up, but risks of injury, death, and lost property also increase. You might have seen last year's movie "Only the Brave" about the Yarnell Hill fire in 2013. That was a relatively small fire, only 8500 acres, in which 19 firefighters were killed.
Here are some numbers:
Year _ Number of fires _ Acres Burnt
2004 _ 2,602 _ 219,900
2005 _ 4,027 _ 975,456
2006 _ 3,274 _ 177,427
2007 _ 2,240 _ 101,381
2008 _ 1,850 _ 85,496
2009 _ 2,371 _ 263,358
2010 _ 1,517 _ 74,445
2011 _ 1,969 _ 1,036,935
2012 _ 1,684 _ 216,090
2013 _ 1,449 _ 100,836
Fire Name _ Year _ County _ Acres Burnt _ Structures Lost _ Human Deaths _ Cause
Dude _ 1990 _ Coconino _ 28,000 _ 63 _ 6 _ lightning
Rattlesnake _ 1994 _ Cochise _ 25,000 _ 0 _ 0 _ lightning
Rio _ 1995 _ Maricopa _ 23,000 _ 0 _ 0 _ lightning
Lone _ 1996 _ Maricopa _ 61,300 _ 0 _ 0 _ human
Pumpkin _ 2000 _ Coconino _ 14,760 _ 0 _ 0 _ lightning
Rodeo–Chediski _ 2002 _ Coconino _ 468,638 _ 426 _ 0 _ human
Aspen _ 2003 _ Pima-Pinal _ 84,750 _ >325 _ 0 _ human
Willow _ 2004 _ Gila _ 119,500 _ 0 _ 0 _ lightning
Nuttall-Gibson _ 2004 _ Graham _ 30,000 _ 0 _ 0 _ lightning
Cave Creek _ 2005 _ Maricopa-Yavapai _ 243,950 _ 11+ _ 0 _ lightning
Florida _ 2005 _ Santa Cruz _ 23,183 _ 0 _ 0 _ lightning
Schultz _ 2005 _ Coconino _ 15,075 _ 0 _ 0 _ human
Horseshoe 2011 _ Cochise _ 222,954 _ 23 0 _ 0 _ human
Monument _ 2011 _ Cochise _ 30,526 _ 64 _ 0 _ human
Wallow _ 2011 _ Apache-Graham-Greenlee-Navajo _ 538,049 _ 72 _ 0 _ human
Gladiator _ 2012 _ Yavapai _ 16,240 _ 6 _ 0 _ human
Yarnell Hill _ 2013 _ Yavapai _ 8,500 _ 129 _ 19 _ lightning
Slide _ 2014 _ Coconino _ 21,227 _ 0 _ 0 _ human
[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ]
Many fires are small, but they cost time, effort, risk, and dollars to prevent growing into huge conflagrations. Fire prevention and containment is serious business here in Arizona. Counties regularly issue prohibitions about not only campfires, but even about burning wood in urban fireplaces. Human caused fires are on the increase, and latest numbers from the State are that ninety percent, 90%, of Arizona wildfires are man made, some deliberately, but mostly inadvertent, some honest accidents, and many just plain stupid acts by idiots. Penalties vary but can be costly in terms of dollars and time in jail. In other areas that are more temperate, rainy, and wetland, wildfire risk may not be so severe, but here in Arizona, playing with motorized ignitable toys in forested areas is a genuine threat, even for just "small" fires.
Godzilla. If this was a Japanese innovation, it would be Godzilla.
Insulin is made in the pancreas. After pancreatitis or pancreatectomy (such as for trauma or cancer), you no longer have the islets of Langerhans in which the insulin is made. No insulin, thus you have diabetes. Type 1 and Type 2 (and this new nomenclature) refer to endogenous disorders for which some disease, understood or otherwise, is at work. Post-pancreatic diabetes is not related to the endogenous Types. Its pathogenesis, diagnosis, and treatment are all clear cut. Your insulin making machine has been repossessed. To manage it, take food and administer insulin in a balanced ratio, and your blood sugars and metabolic needs remain on track. Sounds like your original disease also left you with a bad case of sour grapes.
It seems worthwhile to put this in perspective of general medical science and progress. In every age, doctors and scientists try to understand disease within the framework of contemporaneous knowledge. When new discoveries are made, everyone scrambles to reevaluate what they know with respect to their primary field of interest. This then propels extensive new nomenclatures of disease, new therapeutics, and new clinical treatment schemes. This is the normal flow of progress in medicine, since forever, but especially easy to trace the waves of discovery and development over the past two centuries.
As example, consider breast cancer, another disorder which, like diabetes, is of profound incidence, morbidity, death, and public health interest and funding. Before the 1850's, it was described by features on physical exam, and doctors knew and named them as "medullary", "scirrhous", and "ulcerated". After the 1850's, we best understood tissue pathology by what we saw under the microscope, and clinical histology became the mandatory standard by which diagnoses were made and treatments decided. Breast cancers were then designated as "ductal" or "lobular" depending on cell or structure of origin. In the past 30 years, discoveries from the proteomics and genomics world have identified genes and receptors which govern tumor behavior. What the cells look like under the microscope is not so prognostic as how they behave, and hormone and cytokine receptors and genes (ER, PR, HER2, BRCA) now rule the diagnosis. Whenever such new discoveries force a rethinking of diagnostic and treatment paradigms, there are usually international nomenclature conventions or committees which organize to bring some sense of logic and order and common language to the new and old systematics.
That is what this new diabetes research is about, getting more refined, more focused, more granular in understanding the pathogenesis of the disease. It makes up for profound deficiencies in the adequacy of old nomenclatures. Eons ago, there was just "diabetes", recognized by profuse urination (with a multitude of later complications). By the Middle Ages, distinction was made between diabetes in which the urine was either sweet or tasteless (yes indeed, taste test was the chem lab of its day). Sweet urine was then called diabetes mellitus (honey like), versus diabetes insipidus (tasteless) which we now know is due predominantly to ADH deficiency from the pituitary.
Diabetes was relatively uncommon before the 20th century. By mid century, increasing prevalence forced everyone to start rethinking the nature of the disease, inasmuch as various clinical subtypes and profiles were easily discerned. Anomalous forms such as "adult onset diabetes" and "non-insulin-dependent diabetes (niddm)" and then "obesity related diabetes" were obviously different than classical "true" diabetes, so a distinction had to be made with a more robust vocabulary. Thus, "Type 1" and "Type 2" diabetes, but these terms were adopted only circa 1990. But those two designations alone do not cover the spectrum of clinical presentations, for instance is niddm really the same as obese diabetes? Also, these designations do not address underlying physiological mechanisms. In a patient whose diabetes, blood sugar control, and life itself are dependent on exogenous therapeutically delivered insulin (iddm), is his disease because his pancreas not make insulin, or because it actually does make insulin, but peripheral cells do not have receptors to bind the insulin?
Recall a few basics about sugar and insulin. Cells use glucose as their primary fuel. The body has a complex multi-control system to regulate glucose levels in the blood so that cells get it when they need it, so that dietary sugars can be stored for later use, and stored carbon can be mobilized between feedings or during high demand. Insulin is central in this process, having multiple aspects of control and regulation within this complex machine. Its most immediate and profound function is, by bindi
Exactly, just what I thought. I expected an expose on the latest breach of or rogue behavior by an internet company, but instead it is about "Dropbox filing will take company public". Words and grammar make a difference. Btw, nice title.
Wording of that press release is a little loose, but what it implies is that this is just a demo track, which if successful, will permit [nationwide?] buildout to a larger network that will eventually handle 150M per annum.
Good point, and true. But as others have also pointed out, some things are best manufactured on orbit, such as a mile long lightweight truss that would not do so well at the surface with gravity induced bending moments.
How will a high speed Vindaloop traveling through a tight tunnel Curry favor among riders that prefer sitting on the outside of the rail cars? Let's face it, India has a big population with transportation challenges. In dense urban areas, people can practice Pakora, running obstacle course style through the crowds, but that only gets you so far. Elsewhere in the world, small buses and shared taxis known as jitneys can transport small groups, but the Indian version, Chutney's, can hardly keep pace with the large traveling public. Conventional overland rail companies like the Mumbai & Western, and the Chapati & Papadum are already overcrowded and far too slow, not to mention safety issues of a ridership that prefers rooftop seating. The Vindaloop is a beguiling technology, but will it be accepted by those who prefer having their Kofta's squeezed out the window on every ride? The proposed trains will sport beige colors, because dark colors will absorb more light, and the coefficient of expansion might swell them too large to fit the fine tolerance tunnels, and when those Tan Doors close, the people best be all on the inside. Our reporter, Sam Osa, spoke with locals who expressed their concerns. One mother, Ma Sala, told us she feared for her boys who ride the train. "Things will get too crowded inside, but with no leg room outside, then what?" Naan of that matters of course if it proves safe. One can only hope that the J.D. Powers Raitas will be high enough to attract ridership.
Right on, kinda like telling them how to build nuclear reactors as well.
Feb 19, now 2 or 3 days after Google switched the way they serve images, and guess what.
There are already two extensions at the Chrome store that restore the View Image functionality.
https://chrome.google.com/webs...
https://chrome.google.com/webs...
On smaller scale projects in earth orbit, the raw materials could be rocketed and orbited to the manufacturing site as we do now. Sooner or later though, the cost of hoisting large megastructure masses to orbit could be prohibitive. If the raw materials were to come from space, then asteroid mining is a hypothetical idea, but it seems to me to have too many practical and economical limitations in this nascent concept stage. So, what about the moon? Here is a vision for the not too distant future.
Whatever the raw materials might be, lifting them out of lunar gravity to earth capture should be relatively cheap or on par with lifting to earth orbit. So, we set up lunar bases, meant to prospect for useful mineral deposits, then start mining. Like any new colony, buildings and infrastructure need a bootstrap process and period of time to ramp up to capacity. But, put a few essential pieces of machinery up there to start with, to extract and process some pioneer metals and materials, then use printers to build more machinery. Take advantage of no atmosphere and lots of sunlight to power the mining, milling, smelting, and manufacturing operations. Furthermore, use that same energy abundance to create or power electric propulsion systems or mass drivers to pop the processed materials off the surface enough to clear the Lagrange point. Earth gravity can then bring the materials to working orbit. A fleet of space tugs or ferries, operating perpetually up there, can help pilot the delivery pods to their precise orbit and location for actual manufacture. The entire affair can be made economically feasible by also mining the moon for profitable use back on Earth, such as precious metals, rare earths, and lithium.
Aside from having air to breath, the voyages of Columbus and the habitation of the Antarctic were not so far different. If the social and political will was there, it could be done.
Just an idea.
Works, thanks very much.
A few days ago here on Slashdot was an article about Google changing the way it handles image searches. Due to a dispute with a commercial entity (Getty Images if I recall correctly), Google was no longer going to serve the full image when you clicked on the thumbnail, just take you to the origin website. It would have made much more sense to just offer content owners a way to opt out of having their images displayed. The Slashdot replies are full of sensible comments and insights.
This weekend, Google made the switch. Now, you can no longer preview an image in Google, not from any source. For me, doing a lot of graphic and imagery intensive work, that was one of Google's most important features. Now suddenly, Google sucks for that purpose. I just tried doing image searches on Bing, and they still work properly, I can see the full image.
Brand loyalty has nothing to do with anything. Getting the job done is everything. So now, when I need to find images, hello Bing, get lost Google. MS should find a way to capitalize on that. Starting with a name change wouldn't be a bad idea.
As a showcase point-of-pride project, it will know doubt have a wow factor of the highest magnitude. Read the article and links within it - wood skyscrapers seem to be an idea on the ascendancy. Many of the putative benefits from a social, engineering, and ecological point of view no doubt have merit. However, there is a potential downside which was the first thing that came to my mind. Fire.
Looking at the concept renders in the article, try this estimate: 20 residential units per story, times 70 stories, average occupancy 3 people per unit, then add public crowds in office and retail space, and there could easily be 5000-6000 people present at a time. New York's twin towers were steel and concrete, and no one thought they could burn, yet the 2001 incident revealed unanticipated fire induced failure. In contrast, wood burns, no secret there. If there ever was a fire in such a structure, it would be a nightmare.
The article states that the company itself estimates a construction cost double a steel and concrete high rise of same size. That seems like a recipe to cut corners or overlook features, to trivialize the things that no one will overtly see. The recent June 14, 2017 Grenfell Tower high rise fire and deaths in London were a testimonial to crappy architectural design, crappy construction and oversight, and inept public administration. Nearly every high profile multi-fatality fire that makes the news can be traced to problems of that nature. The money goes into the gee whiz what-you-can-see-features (or in the case of the recent article about Apple's new glass walled headquarters, the things you can't see). Safety issues get trivialized, ignored, excluded.
Any building as proposed needs to have peremptory and big bucks attention to fire retardant design, fire recognition and suppression systems, human factors engineering, evacuation and rescue systems, first responder access. No doubt the sponsors, developers, and engineers will claim they did, but nearly every fatal building fire can be traced back to lapses in such. It will all look beautiful until the day it burns down, and then it's too late. One can only hope that they put safety up there with or even ahead of visual design and high concept.
This is the normal cycle of new gadgets. Appliances. Think of any of these technological tools as appliances. New technologies or inventions arrive to make some aspect of daily life better or easier. The device penetrates the market at some rate, greater or slower, depending on many things: sense of relevance to your daily life (perhaps heightened by ambitious advertising), the cost of the new technology which invariably subsides with greater market penetration and competition, and giving up on old paradigms of doing things as the new technology proves itself or younger generations favor it or as older generations wait until breakage or obsolescence of the old devices requires them to update.
This happened when electric lights replaced gas lighting and candles, when motorized automobiles replaced horse and carriage, when washing machines replaced slapping your clothes on a stone by the river, and for any other mechanized or electrified appliance. For all of them, market penetration increases as the populace adopts it. After that, sales are flat, varying only in relationship to population expansion, steady state turnover of devices as old ones break and must be replaced, and episodic upswells in sales as some new feature or fad or incremental improvement beguiles the populace.
By analogy, I went to find info on this by looking for information on washer-dryer penetration over the past century, an arbitrary pick, it could have been microwave ovens or stereo music systems or whatever. I came across the following article of interest that covers all technologies, "The Spread of Technology since 1900". It is a great little article that looks at penetration and saturation of a whole host of common household devices:
https://pietistschoolman.com/2...
For the past few years, especially with respect to the appearance of tablet computers and Win 8, then Win 10, the industry got nervous, claiming "the end of the PC, the end of the desktop", and that Win PO8 had killed the PC. No, it is just that the market has matured, newer devices seem to be more hardened against changing technologies thus having a longer useful life, and various form factors that supplant the big box machines have all found their niches. Thus sales must reduce to the rate of steady state turnover. Now, in just the past few months, reports have revealed nervousness over tablet sales declining. The market is saturated, everybody who wants one has one, and turnover will be steady state replacement, unless some compelling new technology or feature drives everyone to upgrade.
The computerized handheld telephone has now hit that steady state plateau. Without compelling new features or paradigms of use to spur a global upgrade, and with an already robust set of features, more than any one person needs or uses, reasonably durable and well made, the market is now in its steady state dynamic.
Companies or investors looking for the huge profits of a new and advancing market will be disappointed. Investors looking at such technologies as commodities or utilities à la gas, sewer, and electricity, can always garner some low level income over the long haul. The fascinating question is, what will be the next lifestyle and society changing gadget which will then go through the same 10 or 100 year lifecycle?
We interrupt our regular programming to bring you this important breaking news. We have just learned that an unknown spacecraft is approaching Earth, origins and intentions unknown. Radar and satellite imaging reveal it to be massive in size. No direct contact has been possible so far. However, an emissary from the spaceship has teleported to the Missouri headquarters of Enterprise Rent-A-Car. This non-corporeal entity has occupied the body of an executive secretary who now speaks on behalf of the enigmatic stellar visitor. The entity is quoted as saying, “We seek the Musk unit. You will assist us. I have been programmed by St’man to observe functioning of the carbon-based units infesting the Enterprise. St’man travels here to find the Creator. You may not speak directly to St’man, but if the carbon based units insist on direct dialogue, you will be permitted to speak to copilot Don Panic.”
Me too. It's still there, but nowhere as busy and entertaining or meaningful as it used to be. There was something inherently more social about it than the current www-based "anti-social" media.