# Restricted permits for new drivers (no rush hour, no driving between sunset and sun-up, etc).
Sorry, but how on earth would you enforce this?
# Governors on all engines so that it's not possible to exceed the speed limit
Ok, thats just stupid in so many ways, I wont even begin to argue, other than to say speed limits are there to generate revenue (tickets) rather than keep people safe. Go ahead and google for some studies that have shown this.
Do you really think that a static number on a sign will always give the correct "safe" speed given huge variances in traffic, weather, visibility, day/night?? Of course not.
# Get rid of "road tanks" (SUVs) that make people think they're invulnerable.
That argument is also ridiculous. Teach the people to not be stupid, or get the stupid people off the road - there's nothing inherently dangerous about a large vehicle. It's also much easier to roll-over a semi-truck, but we dont see people calling for those to be banned, do we? Gid rid of stupid people on the road, and you will no longer see SUVs as a problem. I for one see no relation between vehicle type and bad-driving-ness. Bad drivers drive all sorts of cars.
The well-being of the corporation is irrelevant, since a corporation is a means not an end, or at least that's the way it should be. The purpose of the corporation should be to improve the lives of people, and should corporations fail to achieve that, they should be reformed or abolished.
Must be nice to live in your idealistic world. Back in the real world, the purpose of any (publicly-traded) corporation is to maximize shareholder profits. Some good corporations realize that "doing the right thing" is what best accomplishes this over the long run - doing what's best for the customer - but a good corporation, for the most part, does not, and should not care about those peoples/groups that are not buying the corporations products/services. The point being, the corporation is better off by outsourcing, and thus, that corporation's customers are also better off. So what if everyone else gets screwed? It's not the job of a corporation to make your life better no matter what, you gotta suck it up and work hard yourself, buddy.
Even though people could fairly easy copy DVDs if they REALLY wanted to, it's just "easier" to walk into Best Buy and plop down the $20
Actually, for me it was easier to pick up about a hundred DVDs for $1 each in China than it was to copy them from another source, and certainly more economical than going to Best Buy (considering I needed to be in China for other reasons already).
Now if only those Chinese street vendors who sell DVDs would get a website and ship worldwide...
I'm not particularly convinced by this car... what happens if it breaks down on the motorway? Do you have to call the Volvo break down service? How about a dead battery? Or just flat one when you need a jump-start? What if you want to get an oil-change at a garage round the corner?
I can't answer all your questions but, Volvos (at least 2001 and newer) typically have the battery in the back of the car (trunk, or under the floor, if it's a wagon). They do this to get a bit closer to 50/50 weight distribution which means better handling etc... also, I'm sure, just like independent mechanics get the fancy computers to read the codes off a car's computer, they can also get the tool(s) needed to open this hood. I'm sure the good folks at Volvo have thought of all of these things.
No I dont work for volvo, I'm just a happy volvo owner!
I'm in a similar situation - I have 4 of the 3-yr-warranty 180GB/8MB models in a RAID 5 array (with the addonics scsi to ide adapters). I've had them for about 8 months now, no problems. I also have an older IBM 120GB drive that still works fine. My parents and sister have had 40GB and 80GB IBM drives with no problems for years, except when I dug around in my parents system and when I put it back together, their 40GB seems to have some really bad sectors... I was able to recover most of the data off the drive though... I blame this incident on myself and not IBM (since it failed right after I dickered around with it).
Also, I should note that my RAID 5 of the 180GBs gets VERY heavy use.
I wonder if drive temp has anything to do with these problems? My 180GBs and 120GB are right next to two case fans, they stay really cool...
If only we could just neglect *your* SUV - and your disingenuous "what, me worry?" attitude. All
your fellow gasguzzling, pollution-spewing truck drivers add up. Their soccermommobiles are not classified as cars by the US gov't, so they're immune to even the mamby-pamby emissions laws. Altogether, counting just their emissions, not to mention the emissions of the refining process to produce their gas, they are cranking out the pollution that is killing us with heat, monsoon, drought, famine and all the other global warming plagues. All so you can look cool, and imagine jumping the curb to offroad over some underbrush some day. Everytime you turn the key, you're spewing on our planet. You're taking us to hell in your handbasket - hope you're enjoying the ride.
Yeah right. We're all dying and going to hell and causing world hunger because of SUVs. As if going to hell, dying, and hunger didn't exist before SUVs.
Riiiight....
Try looking at some facts next time (like those in SE - particularly the one about the huge DECREASES in famine (hunger) over the past 30+ years... by your logic I could claim SUVS FEED THE HUNGRY!!!)
By my calculations, my mp3 collection could hit me with a $2.5 Billion dollar fine. Who knew that 100GB could be worth more than the GDP of most third-world countries?
> Still waiting for IBM's Model to come out. Not much yet.
They've been out awhile. You can find IBM's Power4 (which the 970 spun-off from) in their pSeries and iSeries machines, I believe. Certainly the iSeries, I've been working with their 6-way i825 all summer. Its a beast! Of course, it also costs a quarter mil or so...
Thank you for taking a stand against the ridiculously strong-armed tactics that the RIAA is taking against innocent people. $15K to $250K per song is "Cruel and Unusual"
Check out www.pckeyboard.com - they have it all! I bought a lexmark mini-clikey-key keyboard a few years ago and I'll probably buy another pretty soon. ________________________________________
I loved mine and I am still looking for one of those old clickity clackity huge heavy monsters with their wonderous tactile feedback feel.
HELLO! It's summer folks, students aren't at campus! Just wait till this fall... then she search engine will be back up finding real warez and music. WOO!:)
______________________________
The article says: "He has recovered over 83% of his savings lost to the RIAA, and his search engine is back up."
Apparently, that is not correct, as it says the following on the search engine's website (also linked in the article):
The ChewPlastic Campus Search Engine is currently available to the public as a demonstration of the site as it was. NOTE: The files listed through the results on this site are fictitious - they DO NOT EXIST. This means that you cannot download them because they are fake computers on a fake network. While there is a small assortment of files listed in the search engine, they are not meant to represent the actual assortment of files available during the Search Engine's operation.
He does, however, say "I am legally allowed to run my search engine - it is not forbidden by my dismissal. I have a first amendment right to free speech.", so maybe he intends to bring the search engine back up for real...
Check out www.ecomstation.com This is essentially OS/2. I checked up on some usenet groups discussing IBM's announcement, and it seems clear that the eCS folks knew about this when they started eCS, so OS/2 (in the form of eCS) should be around much much longer than 2004!:)
I read articles about this on CNN and newsweek (just look at google news for links right now). They all have it wrong. They claim he created software that can be used to illegally _duplicate_ a DVD. WRONG! DeCSS just lets you _PLAY_ a DVD not copy it. They should be prosecuting for allowing people to illegally play DVDs (that sounds rather silly, doesn't it?... maybe thats why they keep saying copy copy copy everywhere)
I dunno where you get your lousy mp3s from on the internet, but most of the full albums I download (mostly classical) have all the CD art scanned into jpgs or PDFs and i can download those along with the mp3s. Very nice indeed!
This reminds me of somehting a well known programmer from the days when the Apple ][e was still big said. (I'm sorry I can't remember who it was.) I can't remember it exactly, but he said he had no problem with M$'s success, they had earned it. His complaint was that they had earned it selling 3rd rate software.
If I recall, this was Steve Jobs. He said something like this on the PBS show "Triumph of the Nerds".
>The part in the article where the guitarist
>said he could hear the valves closing on
>the clarinet and bassoon... is utter bullshit.
>He probably heard some flanging artifact and
>thought it was a valve closure.
Okay, if you read the article, you know that the classical piece they listened to was the beginning of Stravinsky's Firebird, which you SHOULD know begins with a BASSOON SOLO! I don't know what particular recording they listened to, but my Reference Recordings recording of the MN Orchestra playing this piece has very audible bassoon-key clicks at the beginning of this piece, and I imagine most other recordings would too. If you dont believe me, email me and I'll send you an MP3 of the beginning of this piece - the clicks are VERY audible, even in an MP3!
What is most surprising is that the listener said he COULDNT hear the clicks on the compressed audio, not that he COULD on the cd... they must have used a VERY low bitrate to drown out those clicks!
I saw this article posted on the Mayo Clinic intranet, so I thought I would post it here, since I don't think it is accessible through their web site to the general public (yet).
Here it is:
Mayo Clinic Study Debunks Possible Link Between Heavy Computer Use and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
Surprising even the researchers themselves, a new study from Mayo Clinic found that heavy computer use, even up to seven hours per day, did not increase a person's risk of carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS).
The results of the research, to be published in the June 12 issue of Neurology, indicate that only 10.5 percent of the study participants, all of whom used computers extensively, met clinical criteria for CTS. This incidence is similar to that found in the general population in past studies, according to the authors of Mayo Clinic's manuscript.
"We had expected to find a much higher incidence of carpal tunnel syndrome in the heavy computer users in our study because it is a commonly held belief that computer use causes carpal tunnel syndrome," says J. Clarke Stevens, M.D., Neurology, and lead author of the study. "The other finding was that among our cases of carpal tunnel syndrome, two-thirds of them had very mild carpal tunnel syndrome. Our study results were unexpected," said Dr. Stevens. Dr. Stevens formerly served as chair of the Department of Neurology at Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Ariz.
This is the first major study to consider the association between the syndrome and computer usage.
"The findings are contrary to popular thought, but nobody has studied the problem carefully," says Dr. Stevens. "There has been very little formal study of carpal tunnel syndrome in computer users, and there is not much to find in the literature on this topic. We studied computer users because though there is a commonly held notion that using a computer causes CTS, there really have been few studies published that looked at this in a scientific way."
Dr. Stevens offers a message of relief for those who may have wondered about their risks of the so-called "office plague" due to long hours spent in front of a computer. "I'd like computer users to know that prolonged use of a computer does not seem to lead to carpal tunnel, at least not in our employees who used computers up to seven hours per day," says Dr. Stevens. Carpal tunnel syndrome is a common condition in the population, however, which means that some computer users will develop carpal tunnel syndrome. Our study suggests, however, that the risk of developing the syndrome is not increased by working at a computer."
Dr. Stevens indicates that though computer use may not be as highly associated with CTS as thought, it is associated with numerous other medical issues. "Carpal tunnel syndrome in computer users has been thought of as a repetitive motion disorder, and it has been assumed that computer use might cause carpal tunnel syndrome as part of such a disorder. People who use the computer do get a lot of other aches and pains in the neck, shoulder, arm and wrist, but most of them do not get carpal tunnel syndrome from using a computer."
As CTS is not the only ergonomics issue related to computer usage, a correct office setup still has great merit, according to Dr. Stevens.
"The question arises as to whether ergonomically correct work stations are important," he says. "I think they continue to be very important, because there are a variety of aches and discomfort that can result from using a computer. A majority of the computer users in our study, including those without carpal tunnel syndrome, had experienced neck and upper extremity pain during the two years prior to the study. "What we are saying is that at least in our employees studied, computer use did not seem to increase the risk of getting carpal tunnel syndrome."
There are a variety of factors that do contribute to CTS, according to the study authors. "The major risk factors for developing carpal tunnel syndrome are being female and middle-aged," says Dr. Stevens. "There are many other causes of carpal tunnel syndrome, such as wrist trauma, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and pregnancy."
Repetitive motions in industries outside the office also have been linked to CTS, Dr. Stevens says.
"There is certainly a whole variety of other jobs that are much more labor-intensive that we think might cause carpal tunnel syndrome, such as working in a meat packing plant or using a jackhammer," says Dr. Stevens. "There have been a number of studies of factory workers and people in packing plants that suggest that type of repetitive motion does seem to be associated with carpal tunnel syndrome."
Though the Mayo Clinic study authors consider their study to be an important first step in studying CTS and computer use, they would like to see further research conducted on the topic.
"I think the study needs to be confirmed by other centers, possibly with a larger number of computer users," says Dr. Stevens. "I think more study is needed of this question."
The Mayo Clinic study was conducted with employees identified to be heavy computer users at Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Ariz.
"We chose Mayo Clinic employees because we knew we could find out who were computer users at our medical center," says Dr. Stevens. "We have a large number of secretaries and people who do transcription and patient accounts billing. All of those are occupations that make heavy use of a computer, so we had our own ready-made study group right in our own facility."
The investigators sent surveys to 314 employees inquiring about hand numbness and sensations of "pins and needles," common symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome. Of the 257 people who responded to the survey, those who indicated symptoms suggestive of carpal tunnel syndrome were invited to a clinical study unit for an interview and completion of further questionnaires. Unless these patients were clearly diagnosable with a condition other than CTS, they were tested for CTS via electromyogram (EMG), or a nerve conduction study. Only 27, or 10.5 percent, of the participants met clinical criteria for CTS, and in nine, or 3.5 percent, EMG confirmed the syndrome.
Though the researchers did not discover CTS in a high percentage of the participants, other conditions potentially linked to the office work environment were present in a larger number of participants.
"There were about 30 percent of our employees surveyed who had tingling of various sorts in the hand, but only 10.5 percent of them turned out to have carpal tunnel syndrome," says Dr. Stevens. "They had tingling from involvement of other nerves and a variety of symptoms that are likely not clinically significant. The vast majority of the people who had tingling in the hand but didn't have carpal tunnel syndrome did not have any serious illness as far as we could determine. A few of them had what is called an 'ulnar neuropathy,' which relates to another nerve in the hand, a few of them had pinched nerves in the neck, and a lot of them had rather mild and nondescript tingling that really did not mean much clinically."
For those who suspect that they may have problems in their hands, Dr. Stevens suggests consulting one's family physician first, who would then make a decision about obtaining nerve conduction studies or perhaps refer to a hand clinic or surgeon for further evaluation.
Research suggests that one person in 10 will develop symptoms of CTS over a lifetime. CTS is a compression of the median nerve at the wrist, leading to numbness tingling and pain in the hand. The median nerve passes through the carpal tunnel at the wrist and into the palm where it sends branches that control feeling to the thumb, index, middle and part of the ring fingers. Symptoms of CTS include tingling, pain or numbness in the hand and fingers. "It's typically worse with reading a newspaper or book, talking on the phone or driving a car, and frequently it wakes people up in the middle of the night with tingling or pain in the hand," says Benn Smith, M.D., co-author of the study and neurologist at Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Ariz. "Very often, people obtain temporary relief by shaking the hand or rubbing it, causing the numbness and tingling to go away."
CTS is treated by wearing a splint at night to reduce waking up or by an injection of cortisone to reduce swelling. If these measures are not successful, carpal tunnel release surgery, which sections the tough transverse carpal ligament and relieves pressure on the median nerve, may be performed.
Maybe someone already mentioned this, but wasn't Descent released before Doom? If not Doom I, then certainly Doom II. And DEFINITELY before Quake. And yet, Descent had a true 3d engine many years before Quake. Even before Duke 3D's pseudo-3d engine. Yet it was not mentioned in the GameSpot article at all. Sad.
The line "Quake revolutionized the genre by introducing a fully 3D world" is plain bullshit. Descent I and II were both released before Quake, and those games had a truly 3d engine, and full 3d movement - you were not stuck to the ground like you are in Quake:)
No. I didn't know that. You cannot save a streamed audio file "just as easily as you can with Napster."
Sure, it can be done, but it's not part of the mechanism and would require extra know-how and effort
on the part of the user. That's the whole point distinguishing My.MP3 from Napster.
Extra know-how? How hard is it to right click, and choose "save streamed file"? Thats all I have to do to save a streamed mp3 file with my mp3 player (PM123).
Well over half the people I know who use an instant messanger service of ANY type actually use BOTH AIM and ICQ, so if the two really combine, I doubt the user base would actually be as high as was stated.
I hope that SDMI never takes off because I dont think it is possible to watermark music without SOME small reduction in quality. I'm sure the audiophile types who spend $10000 on a stereo system will be real happy when their new CDs start sounding shitty because of the SDMI.
I can easily find over 100 ftp/http sites that have illegal mp3s, ready for easy download. Does that mean Metallica should sue the creators of the http and ftp protocols? Or maybe they should sue the creators of the particular httpd/ftpd software? NO! They go after the owner of the server.
The same should be done with the "Napster Protocol". Napster Inc. does not have any mp3s on their servers, or software that they write. The true servers with illegal mp3s belong to Joe User.
Going after Napster Inc. is like going after the inventor of ftp or http. Napster is just another protocal IMHO.
Slashdot Mirror
# Restricted permits for new drivers (no rush hour, no driving between sunset and sun-up, etc).
Sorry, but how on earth would you enforce this?
# Governors on all engines so that it's not possible to exceed the speed limit
Ok, thats just stupid in so many ways, I wont even begin to argue, other than to say speed limits are there to generate revenue (tickets) rather than keep people safe. Go ahead and google for some studies that have shown this.
Do you really think that a static number on a sign will always give the correct "safe" speed given huge variances in traffic, weather, visibility, day/night?? Of course not.
# Get rid of "road tanks" (SUVs) that make people think they're invulnerable.
That argument is also ridiculous. Teach the people to not be stupid, or get the stupid people off the road - there's nothing inherently dangerous about a large vehicle. It's also much easier to roll-over a semi-truck, but we dont see people calling for those to be banned, do we? Gid rid of stupid people on the road, and you will no longer see SUVs as a problem. I for one see no relation between vehicle type and bad-driving-ness. Bad drivers drive all sorts of cars.
Must be nice to live in your idealistic world. Back in the real world, the purpose of any (publicly-traded) corporation is to maximize shareholder profits. Some good corporations realize that "doing the right thing" is what best accomplishes this over the long run - doing what's best for the customer - but a good corporation, for the most part, does not, and should not care about those peoples/groups that are not buying the corporations products/services. The point being, the corporation is better off by outsourcing, and thus, that corporation's customers are also better off. So what if everyone else gets screwed? It's not the job of a corporation to make your life better no matter what, you gotta suck it up and work hard yourself, buddy.
Actually, for me it was easier to pick up about a hundred DVDs for $1 each in China than it was to copy them from another source, and certainly more economical than going to Best Buy (considering I needed to be in China for other reasons already).
Now if only those Chinese street vendors who sell DVDs would get a website and ship worldwide...
I can't answer all your questions but, Volvos (at least 2001 and newer) typically have the battery in the back of the car (trunk, or under the floor, if it's a wagon). They do this to get a bit closer to 50/50 weight distribution which means better handling etc... also, I'm sure, just like independent mechanics get the fancy computers to read the codes off a car's computer, they can also get the tool(s) needed to open this hood. I'm sure the good folks at Volvo have thought of all of these things.
No I dont work for volvo, I'm just a happy volvo owner!
-Dave
Agreed. There should have been a "pick the best Descent: 1, 2, or 3"!! Definitely the best game ever!
I'm in a similar situation - I have 4 of the 3-yr-warranty 180GB/8MB models in a RAID 5 array (with the addonics scsi to ide adapters). I've had them for about 8 months now, no problems. I also have an older IBM 120GB drive that still works fine. My parents and sister have had 40GB and 80GB IBM drives with no problems for years, except when I dug around in my parents system and when I put it back together, their 40GB seems to have some really bad sectors... I was able to recover most of the data off the drive though... I blame this incident on myself and not IBM (since it failed right after I dickered around with it).
Also, I should note that my RAID 5 of the 180GBs gets VERY heavy use.
I wonder if drive temp has anything to do with these problems? My 180GBs and 120GB are right next to two case fans, they stay really cool...
Cheers,
Dave
Yeah right. We're all dying and going to hell and causing world hunger because of SUVs. As if going to hell, dying, and hunger didn't exist before SUVs.
Riiiight....
Try looking at some facts next time (like those in SE - particularly the one about the huge DECREASES in famine (hunger) over the past 30+ years... by your logic I could claim SUVS FEED THE HUNGRY!!!)
Hah.
By my calculations, my mp3 collection could hit me with a $2.5 Billion dollar fine. Who knew that 100GB could be worth more than the GDP of most third-world countries?
Dave
> Still waiting for IBM's Model to come out. Not much yet.
They've been out awhile. You can find IBM's Power4 (which the 970 spun-off from) in their pSeries and iSeries machines, I believe. Certainly the iSeries, I've been working with their 6-way i825 all summer. Its a beast! Of course, it also costs a quarter mil or so...
Send you ideas, thanks, whatever to Norm here:
m
http://www.senate.gov/~coleman/contact/index.cf
This is what I sent, short and simple:
Thank you for taking a stand against the ridiculously strong-armed tactics that the RIAA is taking against innocent people. $15K to $250K per song is "Cruel and Unusual"
Check out www.pckeyboard.com - they have it all! I bought a lexmark mini-clikey-key keyboard a few years ago and I'll probably buy another pretty soon.
________________________________________
I loved mine and I am still looking for one of those old clickity clackity huge heavy monsters with their wonderous tactile feedback feel.
Anyone else in the same boat?
At least I still have my Logitech 3 button mouse.
What is your favorite keyboard type?
HELLO! It's summer folks, students aren't at campus! Just wait till this fall... then she search engine will be back up finding real warez and music. WOO! :)
...
______________________________
The article says: "He has recovered over 83% of his savings lost to the RIAA, and his search engine is back up."
Apparently, that is not correct, as it says the following on the search engine's website (also linked in the article):
The ChewPlastic Campus Search Engine is currently available to the public as a demonstration of the site as it was. NOTE: The files listed through the results on this site are fictitious - they DO NOT EXIST. This means that you cannot download them because they are fake computers on a fake network. While there is a small assortment of files listed in the search engine, they are not meant to represent the actual assortment of files available during the Search Engine's operation.
He does, however, say "I am legally allowed to run my search engine - it is not forbidden by my dismissal. I have a first amendment right to free speech.", so maybe he intends to bring the search engine back up for real
Check out www.ecomstation.com :)
This is essentially OS/2. I checked up on some usenet groups discussing IBM's announcement, and it seems clear that the eCS folks knew about this when they started eCS, so OS/2 (in the form of eCS) should be around much much longer than 2004!
-Dave
I read articles about this on CNN and newsweek (just look at google news for links right now). They all have it wrong. They claim he created software that can be used to illegally _duplicate_ a DVD. WRONG! DeCSS just lets you _PLAY_ a DVD not copy it. They should be prosecuting for allowing people to illegally play DVDs (that sounds rather silly, doesn't it?... maybe thats why they keep saying copy copy copy everywhere)
DeCSS has nothing to do with copying.
-Dave
I dunno where you get your lousy mp3s from on the internet, but most of the full albums I download (mostly classical) have all the CD art scanned into jpgs or PDFs and i can download those along with the mp3s. Very nice indeed!
-Dave
If I recall, this was Steve Jobs. He said something like this on the PBS show "Triumph of the Nerds".
>said he could hear the valves closing on
>the clarinet and bassoon... is utter bullshit.
>He probably heard some flanging artifact and
>thought it was a valve closure.
Okay, if you read the article, you know that the classical piece they listened to was the beginning of Stravinsky's Firebird, which you SHOULD know begins with a BASSOON SOLO! I don't know what particular recording they listened to, but my Reference Recordings recording of the MN Orchestra playing this piece has very audible bassoon-key clicks at the beginning of this piece, and I imagine most other recordings would too. If you dont believe me, email me and I'll send you an MP3 of the beginning of this piece - the clicks are VERY audible, even in an MP3!
What is most surprising is that the listener said he COULDNT hear the clicks on the compressed audio, not that he COULD on the cd... they must have used a VERY low bitrate to drown out those clicks!
Here's a URL link to the article I just posted:
l
http://www.mayo.edu/comm/mcs/news/news_1633.htm
I saw this article posted on the Mayo Clinic intranet, so I thought I would post it here, since I don't think it is accessible through their web site to the general public (yet).
Here it is:
Mayo Clinic Study Debunks Possible Link Between Heavy Computer Use and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
Surprising even the researchers themselves, a new study from Mayo Clinic found that heavy computer use, even up to seven hours per day, did not increase a person's risk of carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS).
The results of the research, to be published in the June 12 issue of Neurology, indicate that only 10.5 percent of the study participants, all of whom used computers extensively, met clinical criteria for CTS. This incidence is similar to that found in the general population in past studies, according to the authors of Mayo Clinic's manuscript.
"We had expected to find a much higher incidence of carpal tunnel syndrome in the heavy computer users in our study because it is a commonly held belief that computer use causes carpal tunnel syndrome," says J. Clarke Stevens, M.D., Neurology, and lead author of the study. "The other finding was that among our cases of carpal tunnel syndrome, two-thirds of them had very mild carpal tunnel syndrome. Our study results were unexpected," said Dr. Stevens. Dr. Stevens formerly served as chair of the Department of Neurology at Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Ariz.
This is the first major study to consider the association between the syndrome and computer usage.
"The findings are contrary to popular thought, but nobody has studied the problem carefully," says Dr. Stevens. "There has been very little formal study of carpal tunnel syndrome in computer users, and there is not much to find in the literature on this topic. We studied computer users because though there is a commonly held notion that using a computer causes CTS, there really have been few studies published that looked at this in a scientific way."
Dr. Stevens offers a message of relief for those who may have wondered about their risks of the so-called "office plague" due to long hours spent in front of a computer. "I'd like computer users to know that prolonged use of a computer does not seem to lead to carpal tunnel, at least not in our employees who used computers up to seven hours per day," says Dr. Stevens. Carpal tunnel syndrome is a common condition in the population, however, which means that some computer users will develop carpal tunnel syndrome. Our study suggests, however, that the risk of developing the syndrome is not increased by working at a computer."
Dr. Stevens indicates that though computer use may not be as highly associated with CTS as thought, it is associated with numerous other medical issues. "Carpal tunnel syndrome in computer users has been thought of as a repetitive motion disorder, and it has been assumed that computer use might cause carpal tunnel syndrome as part of such a disorder. People who use the computer do get a lot of other aches and pains in the neck, shoulder, arm and wrist, but most of them do not get carpal tunnel syndrome from using a computer."
As CTS is not the only ergonomics issue related to computer usage, a correct office setup still has great merit, according to Dr. Stevens.
"The question arises as to whether ergonomically correct work stations are important," he says. "I think they continue to be very important, because there are a variety of aches and discomfort that can result from using a computer. A majority of the computer users in our study, including those without carpal tunnel syndrome, had experienced neck and upper extremity pain during the two years prior to the study. "What we are saying is that at least in our employees studied, computer use did not seem to increase the risk of getting carpal tunnel syndrome."
There are a variety of factors that do contribute to CTS, according to the study authors. "The major risk factors for developing carpal tunnel syndrome are being female and middle-aged," says Dr. Stevens. "There are many other causes of carpal tunnel syndrome, such as wrist trauma, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and pregnancy."
Repetitive motions in industries outside the office also have been linked to CTS, Dr. Stevens says.
"There is certainly a whole variety of other jobs that are much more labor-intensive that we think might cause carpal tunnel syndrome, such as working in a meat packing plant or using a jackhammer," says Dr. Stevens. "There have been a number of studies of factory workers and people in packing plants that suggest that type of repetitive motion does seem to be associated with carpal tunnel syndrome."
Though the Mayo Clinic study authors consider their study to be an important first step in studying CTS and computer use, they would like to see further research conducted on the topic.
"I think the study needs to be confirmed by other centers, possibly with a larger number of computer users," says Dr. Stevens. "I think more study is needed of this question."
The Mayo Clinic study was conducted with employees identified to be heavy computer users at Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Ariz.
"We chose Mayo Clinic employees because we knew we could find out who were computer users at our medical center," says Dr. Stevens. "We have a large number of secretaries and people who do transcription and patient accounts billing. All of those are occupations that make heavy use of a computer, so we had our own ready-made study group right in our own facility."
The investigators sent surveys to 314 employees inquiring about hand numbness and sensations of "pins and needles," common symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome. Of the 257 people who responded to the survey, those who indicated symptoms suggestive of carpal tunnel syndrome were invited to a clinical study unit for an interview and completion of further questionnaires. Unless these patients were clearly diagnosable with a condition other than CTS, they were tested for CTS via electromyogram (EMG), or a nerve conduction study. Only 27, or 10.5 percent, of the participants met clinical criteria for CTS, and in nine, or 3.5 percent, EMG confirmed the syndrome.
Though the researchers did not discover CTS in a high percentage of the participants, other conditions potentially linked to the office work environment were present in a larger number of participants.
"There were about 30 percent of our employees surveyed who had tingling of various sorts in the hand, but only 10.5 percent of them turned out to have carpal tunnel syndrome," says Dr. Stevens. "They had tingling from involvement of other nerves and a variety of symptoms that are likely not clinically significant. The vast majority of the people who had tingling in the hand but didn't have carpal tunnel syndrome did not have any serious illness as far as we could determine. A few of them had what is called an 'ulnar neuropathy,' which relates to another nerve in the hand, a few of them had pinched nerves in the neck, and a lot of them had rather mild and nondescript tingling that really did not mean much clinically."
For those who suspect that they may have problems in their hands, Dr. Stevens suggests consulting one's family physician first, who would then make a decision about obtaining nerve conduction studies or perhaps refer to a hand clinic or surgeon for further evaluation.
Research suggests that one person in 10 will develop symptoms of CTS over a lifetime. CTS is a compression of the median nerve at the wrist, leading to numbness tingling and pain in the hand. The median nerve passes through the carpal tunnel at the wrist and into the palm where it sends branches that control feeling to the thumb, index, middle and part of the ring fingers. Symptoms of CTS include tingling, pain or numbness in the hand and fingers. "It's typically worse with reading a newspaper or book, talking on the phone or driving a car, and frequently it wakes people up in the middle of the night with tingling or pain in the hand," says Benn Smith, M.D., co-author of the study and neurologist at Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Ariz. "Very often, people obtain temporary relief by shaking the hand or rubbing it, causing the numbness and tingling to go away."
CTS is treated by wearing a splint at night to reduce waking up or by an injection of cortisone to reduce swelling. If these measures are not successful, carpal tunnel release surgery, which sections the tough transverse carpal ligament and relieves pressure on the median nerve, may be performed.
Maybe someone already mentioned this, but wasn't Descent released before Doom? If not Doom I, then certainly Doom II. And DEFINITELY before Quake. And yet, Descent had a true 3d engine many years before Quake. Even before Duke 3D's pseudo-3d engine. Yet it was not mentioned in the GameSpot article at all. Sad.
:)
The line "Quake revolutionized the genre by introducing a fully 3D world" is plain bullshit. Descent I and II were both released before Quake, and those games had a truly 3d engine, and full 3d movement - you were not stuck to the ground like you are in Quake
Just my 2 cents.
Extra know-how? How hard is it to right click, and choose "save streamed file"? Thats all I have to do to save a streamed mp3 file with my mp3 player (PM123).
Well over half the people I know who use an instant messanger service of ANY type actually use BOTH AIM and ICQ, so if the two really combine, I doubt the user base would actually be as high as was stated.
Someone should encode DeCSS in a DVD movie ;)
Ok. Here goes.
I can easily find over 100 ftp/http sites that have illegal mp3s, ready for easy download. Does that mean Metallica should sue the creators of the http and ftp protocols? Or maybe they should sue the creators of the particular httpd/ftpd software? NO! They go after the owner of the server.
The same should be done with the "Napster Protocol". Napster Inc. does not have any mp3s on their servers, or software that they write. The true servers with illegal mp3s belong to Joe User.
Going after Napster Inc. is like going after the inventor of ftp or http. Napster is just another protocal IMHO.
Thats all.