Erm, technically speaking the smoking, drinking, drunk driving and anti drug "ads" aren't ads. They are public service announcements. They aren't meant to sell any products.
Furthermore, you seem only to address a very narrow portion of advertising, many other commercials are made to be funny, and sometimes are.
I'm not saying that I don't hate commercials, I'm just saying that you're being pretty narrow.
I don't want to sound overly critical, but I wouldn't exactly classify someone who is interested in space or science to be "intellectual." Lots of people have a cursory interest in science; it doesn't mean they are scientists.
*ducks and covers*
Take Slashdot, for instance, there are untold numbers of people in the forums, and while some of them are what would be considered "intellectuals" there is a vast portion (if not majority) who are perhaps intelligent, but don't do a very good job of showing it. I myself have been the subject of some pretty heated attacks for stating what someone from a scientific background would consider obvious.
Not only are the attacks pretty childish, they have very poorly formed arguments such as, "you're using sources that anyone could find with Google," and, "you've never done [something], how could you know?"
Arguments such as this are indicative to me of a person who has little experience in science, and little experience in formal debate/thesis argument.
That being said, I do enjoy carrying on with these people, not because I like fighting battles that I will probably never win, but because I hold out on a tiny glint of hope that the argument will get them to read into the topic a little more and get them to come around eventually. When I was 13 years old and trolled around in forums, I argued with people who were a lot smarter than I was too. I may have made an ass of myself at the time, but it helped motivate me into learning how to research topics and formulate solid arguments, a skill that serves me well every day.
I realize stating "not everyone on Slashdot is an intellectual" is probably not the wisest thing to say to make friends, and I realize that I'm pretty much stating the obvious to a lot of people, but I felt it needed to be said. Think of it as a little reality chaser to follow that stiff shot of self-promotion, and know that I'm fully prepared for all of the angry, inflammatory, and otherwise unpleasant replies that this post will likely receive. Just remember this: if you are offended by a post that asserts that not everyone in a forum with over a million members is intellectual, what does that say about you?
Secondly, having used an SMP system as a workstation at my former employer, am quite familiar with the performance benefits of SMP. Dual core processors are indeed faster at encoding, and they are indeed faster at running games, but if you are encoding and playing a game at the same time, the major bottleneck isn't the processor, it's the hard drive and optical drives. They can't push data through nearly as fast as your processor can so your hard drive is stuck having to juggle back and forth between writing the information from your ripping application and reading information for the game, that's where the wait will occur.
Sure, if you're encoding to a different drive than the game is installed on, then you won't see a fall in performance, but if you have a sufficiently powerful single core processor, you wouldn't see a fall either.
As for the issue of compiling, you're only correct if you specifically instruct your compiler not to multithread. If you multithread, then both cores will be used to compile at the same time and your computer will run just as slowly as it did before, only it might take less time. Granted, you could adjust your settings so that this slowdown would be minimized, and your compile might take a bit longer, but you could accomplish approximately the same thing with a single core system.
The point of my post wasn't to say that dual core processors aren't good, because they are. My point was that dual core processors aren't magic they don't equate to double performance, and they aren't even really noticibly faster than single core chips. Their primary benefit is that they are cheaper to make, run a lot cooler, and they are more energy efficient.
And finally, the unit in question is a laptop, so yes, most of them have only one optical drive. Furthermore, walk through a Best Buy or Frys now and count the optical drives, it's back to one. The only reason that eMachines four years ago had both was because it was, at the time, cheaper than a combo drive. That is no longer the case.
People tend to have pretty great expectations of dual core systems. Partly due to marketing, and partly due to our own subconscious association, many tend to think that "dual core=twice as fast." While dual core hardware can get more done in the same amount of time as a single-core processor, anyone with even a cursory familiarity with SMP systems knows that the performance increase is variable. Single-threaded applications, for instance, aren't going to gain any direct benefit from an SMP system. (Although they might benefit to some degree from having another core to run other system processes, but the process itself won't go any faster)
I think what bothers me most here is the examples given, playing a game while encoding audio, playing a game while running a virus scan. I'm certain the dual core processor will keep your simultaneous CD ripping and virus scanning from interrupting your rousing game of solitaire but don't expect to be playing Doom 3 during these activities with any processor.
That's right, any processor. Reason? The main bottleneck for these activities isn't generally the processor, it's the other hardware involved.
You can't, for example, encode a CD any faster than the CD drive can read its data and load it into memory. This, of course, raises another question: Who the hell encodes audio while playing a game? Most games require some kind of optical media in the drive in order to play, so chances are pretty slim that you'll be doing any encoding while playing a game in the first place.... Unless of course you use a no-CD patch, which is a gross violation of the EULA, and only pirates do that! (please note sarcasm) I'd even be tempted to ask them if they are endorsing EULA violation, I'm sure the response would be pretty funny.
And virus scanning... firstly, not nearly as important as everyone thinks it is. I don't get an HIV test every week because I don't go putting myself in situations where I can contract HIV. Likewise, I don't compulsively virus scan my personal computer because I protect myself from getting infected in the first place.
Furthermore, both games and virus scanning are pretty hard-drive intensive. Unless you've got some kind of crazy dual-arm hard drive, chances are you're going to get a lot of disk thrashing if you try to play UT2004 while running McAffee.
It's almost as though the marketing department at Dell has a hat full of those magnets with words printed on them and they just toss a few at a blackboard when it comes time to write a new ad.
I'm saying that I'm not demanding that everyone use one of those systems. I frankly don't care what they use so long as it isn't Windows.
To say "people not using Windows would invalidate all my certificates" etc, is an appeal to consequence. It'd make my life harder if nobody used Windows, but it would be ultimately better for society.
Without windows vista, I'll have to switch to a real operating system like Linux or OSX... Wait... Yeah, that's right, I already did that a long time ago.
As an avid Linux user, I really couldn't care less what Microsoft does to their customer base. They could charge your left kidney for a copy, in fact, I hope they do because the further Microsoft pushes this envelope, the more people are going to become aware of their options and jump ship.
I'm not saying they should use Linux, or OSX, or Be or any other system, I'm just saying they should use something that's not Windows. Microsoft has killed the hardware standard, they have killed open specifications, they have killed all the things that made software development explode into a massive industry 20 years ago. They made themselves the gatekeepers, the ones you must appease to gain the necessary knowledge and tools to develop for the mainstream and software has suffered as a result.
I, for one, want the good ol' days back. I want the days when I didn't have to pay for SDKs or wade through millions of malformed API calls that follow no logical topology, I want the days when software cost money because somebody sat down and worked hard on it, not because they had to license 20 different IPs to make it.
Do yourself a favor, and don't buy Vista. Your Dell probably can't run it anyway. Windows is so wasteful (Linux is too, but degrees of magnitude less) that my dual-boot laptop can run off battery for a full hour longer when I boot Linux and do the same amount of work. Running idle (even with a finly tuned startup configuration and very few resident applications running: daemon tools, zone alarm, and some inescapable Intel driver console nonsense) Windows requires an amazing 240 MB of memory just to sit there. When I start surfing the web, using GAIM, and whatever else I may need to do, that shoots up to over 600MB, and I'm in the swap. On Linux, while sitting idle (with X running, of course) my idle memory usage is... 14MB. That's right, less memory than my 486 had. When I start using Firefox, Gaim, wireless internet, etc. I shoot up to about 78~150. I can surf the web, chat, and write an OO document all without using the hard drive (once everything is loaded). That doesn't just beat Windows performance, that destroys it. Your computer isn't too slow to run a modern operating system, the operating system is just too fat.
That's not the whole of it either, Linux is getting slimmer. Every day, there are people debugging, trimming, fixing, and refining the code. The kernel gets smaller, things get more efficient, more secure, and the excess is cut away. When I upgrade to a new version of Linux my computer actually gets faster and that has never happened with Windows.
Don't support the forced hardware cycle, don't buy Windows, don't even pirate it.
Also, apologies to everyone for this turning into a rant of sorts, but it really needed to be said.
That is exactly what this country needs! Not less war, MORE war! And not just war on the ground, but war on the 'net, war on your television and phone! Instead of devising new and elaborate ways to fuck with eachother, why don't we spend a little time devising new and elaborate ways of getting along?
My land of the free and the brave will soon sadly be reduced to the land of the controlled and censored.
This is just yet another article referring to the fictitious condition known as "Electrical Hypersensitivity." Groups such as powerwatch and FEB claim that this condition is quite pervasive and becoming ever more common. The reality of it is, the WHO hasn't recognized it as a disease, and no well-conducted study has concluded that it is any more than psychosomatic.
With that said, somebody is going to spout off stuff like this (Google Cached HTML version of PDF) and claim that it's "conclusive." Those studies dealt with individuals, and they weren't blind tests either, that's hardly enough to conclude anything other than those involved were a bit loony. (Also notice who hosted the study;)
And look at it from a logical point of view, electricity is cleaner now than it ever was, devices are better at handling RF, and they use far lower voltages than their counterparts even a decade ago. It would stand to reason that if ES existed, it would be less common now than it was ten or twenty years ago because devices are better shielded, emit less interference, and use less electricity than they did in the past.
I'd first like to say that I don't play MMOGs. In fact, the prospect of willfully interacting with the many of the people who play online games makes me a little queasy. I say this because it means that I have no standing bias toward what is cheating and what isn't cheating in the online environment, it really makes no difference to me.
Cheating, however, is something I do happen to know quite a bit about, and not just codes, but the more esoteric forms like memory modification, and profile hacking. These things are definitely cheating, and have no place in a "fair" online environment. By definition to cheat is to circumvent the rules of the game in order to obtain some sort of unfair perk. More HP, higher levels, etc, those are all definitely cheating but buying something? That is where the lines become blurry.
Purchasing gold or other items from someone else is certainly not the noble way of doing things, and I wouldn't encourage it, but it's no more cheating than any other instance in which someone uses their financial status to circumvent the work to accomplish something. If your car breaks down, do you start learning how to repair cars, working through levels of apprenticeship up to those of master mechanic? More than likely not. You pay someone to do the work for you, while you reap the rewards. The game is no different. You don't necessarily want to become good enough at the game to gain the money, or perhaps you simply don't have the time to get it yourself, so you pay someone else to do it for you. Wherever there is a desire, there will be a market; pure and simple.
Ultimately, this is just a sign that the world of data and the world of real goods are starting to converge. You already pay real money for software, and you pay real money for music, and you pay real money for naked pictures too. How is paying real money for digital gold any different?
This is just AOL making a half-assed attempt as not appearing evil, it's about like sticking Stalin in a sundress.
I'm guessing this will be their version of what normal beings call a compromise, sure you can have your own clients, but you have to use our SDK. We'll fill your client full of bloat, and shut it down if you dare to make it useful.
Cell phones do transmit in the microwave band, but at wattages that are not even remotely close to that of your microwave. (less than ten watts, as compared to 700-1500 for a microwave) Without sufficient wattage, you won't be changing the alignment of the water atoms in your skin, and without doing that, you won't be heating anything.
Cell phones don't cause cancer, they can't cause cancer, and no correctly performed study will ever show anything that concludes that. There is no such thing as ES either.
Oh yeah, and Alasdair Philips (Powerwatch.org.uk) is a charlatan who is manipulating the fears of people in order to make tons of money for himself.
The post you're replying to really has nothing to do with theatres. Secondly, I can't really see any reason why one would want to spend money on faraday-screening paint when this could be accomplished just as easily using a relatively inexpensive interference generator. Cheaper, safer (nanotubes are an inhalation hazard), and easier to maintain.
I thought to myself that Western influence combined with booming economy would one day make China a relatively free country. Apparently I was incorrect. What is really happening is that the United States is learning that it can have free-market trade without giving freedom to its people.
Naturally, I'm thrilled to get the opportunity to live under an oppressive regime. Why should Eastern Europe and Northeast Asia get to have all the fun? Well, gotta go or I'll be late for four minutes hate.
Doesn't really end until the age of 25 in most people, that much has been seen. Interestingly enough, the last component of the brain to develop is the the one that helps one correlate current actions with future consequences.
The US CDC categorizes teenagers as anyone between the ages of 13 to 25. Through their statistics, they have found that the perception of risk for HIV and various other sexually transmitted diseases is only marginally higher in someone who is 21 as compared to someone who is 15, or even younger.
That being said, I'm 22.
This poses an interesting question, I think, as I have been aware of this particular shortcoming of the human developmental cycle for some time. Growing up (and to this day) I have had a very strong interest in psychology and sociology, and because of that I have been making a conscious effort to make up for that which has not developed yet in my mind. The question is, by training myself to contemplate my actions and correlate outside circumstances with my own vulnerability to the point in which they are now instinctual, have I forced these sections of the brain to develop willfully? Or have I simply emulated it to the point in which it's like some sort of Pavlonian conditioning? Have I shortcut my own development, or will I find myself more able to perform these tasks in another few years?
Looking back introspectively, I can say that I am much more mature now than I was even as little as three years ago. At 18 I was faced with finding a job and supporting myself indefinitely and while this was something that I was able to choke down, it was nothing that I was happy about. I managed to get myself decently employed and to remain in school at the same time, something I found immensely stressful at the time and it pushed the limits of my sanity pretty hard. Now days I cope with these things more easily. I am able to manage my money more effectively, not to mention my time and other resources. I find that I'm able to do much more in a day than I ever thought was possible, and I am more capable of dealing with situations that would have previously caused a panic, now cause a thirty minute budgeting session. Will I look back in another three years and recount to everyone how I was quite a fool? Will I be able to stand the company of my peers at 25? Because as it stands I find it hard getting along with people under the age of 30, let alone 25. I suppose the best thing to do is wait and see.
There have actually been some interesting studies done that show a possible (mind you, only possible, not direct) link between the development of various brain disorders later in life and excessive drinking, especially in 18-21 year old males. It seems that flooding your brain with the "happiest hydrocarbon" while it's in the middle of a major restructuring can result in some defects. In what is perhaps the greatest irony of it all, the years that are most dangerous for people to drink heavily are the ones that the desire to drink heavily is the greatest. Fear not, if you've gotten slobberingly drunk a few times, I'm pretty doubtful that you've permanently damaged your brain. But those of you whose weekends are hazy clouds of intoxication... you might want to think about a little moderation.
Incorrect.
Microwaves work by changing the orientation of water, not by resonating it. WiFi devices also lack the necessary wattage to move enough water to cook anything.
Also cell phones lack the power to cook things. This is a humor article.
Take, for instance, your average microwave which can cook an egg in about two minutes. It has a magnetron that operates at roughly 2.5 GHz, at 700+ watts inside of a reflective faraday cage. While the egg is inside of the microwave, the radio waves emitted by the magnetron cause the water molecules inside to change orientation in sync with the polarity of the wave passing through them. This vibration results in friction, which creates heat, and in turn cooks the egg (or whatever other food is inside of the microwave). This affect is amplified by the fact that the microwaves are contained inside of a metal chamber which prevents them from escaping and helps to redirect them into the food.
Though some cell phones operate within the same frequency range of microwave ovens, they have a maximum (regulated by law) output of 6 Watts. This wattage, combined with the fact that the output is not contained within a localized area, means that the microwaves emitted by the cell phones would have a hard time even penetrating the shell of the egg, let alone cooking anything.
Furthermore, it is important to note that cell phones do not communicate directly with one another. When a call is made, the caller's phone signals the tower which contacts the second phone. All communication between the two phones is done through the tower. The two phones communicating between one another is made irrelevant by this.
Lastly, the if one explores the source site (Wymsey Village Web) for this page has the motto of "on the nick of the cutting edge of rural parody" and bills itself as a humor site. Taking stories from a site such as this would be just as foolish those things written on sites such as Something Awful, the onion, or Pointless Waste of Time. This only shows that one must always question the validity of ones sources, no matter how enticing or appealing their content may be.
It is somewhat disheartening to me that this would be covered on slashdot as factual information. I am bothered even more, however, by the fact that so many of my peers have readily accepted this as a fact even though it has an obvious air of incredulity.
Yes, I used sources that are academically acceptable. If you intend to prove me wrong by criticizing my sources, you have already lost. If you were really a member of the scientific community, you would know that claiming personal knowledge of something is not enough to justify a point, especially when the point is made anonymously. Where you try to justify your fact on your reputation, I am justifying mine with respected sources.
As for EHS, the WHO held a conference in Prague a while ago in which they concluded that EHS is a misleading name and agreed upon "Idiopathic Environmental Intolerance" as the overwhelming amount of evidence suggested that the disorder is not caused by EMF exposure but other factors including but not limited to psychological disorders.
You keep telling me that Mr. Philips is respected in the scientific community and that internet sources are completely unreliable, yet, the internet is the only place in which I can find information on Mr. Philips. From what I can tell, he has only been published by himself and I have searched:
EBSCOHost (A massive index of peer-reviewed journals)
The US Library of Congress (One of the largest libraries on the planet)
Science Magazine (A respected journal read by many in the science community)
IEEE (The organization that is heavily involved in communications standards)
Amazon.com (A large online book retailer)
British Journal of Cancer (Since you subscribe, you should know)
Allen County Library (One of the largest library systems in the U.S.)
You'll notice that all of these deal in paper publications, and not a one of them contains any mention of Mr. Philips. In fact, the only reference to him that I could find via a normal media outlet was a single article published on the BBC website. He was simply named as the leader of an activist group and nothing more. I was able to find a total of four references to him on Google news but none of them were paper publications and spoke of him in the same capacity as the BBC article. Using Google scholar, I was able to find a few references to him, but none mentioned him in a scientific capacity either (other than one editorial and an article on his own site). So far as I can tell, the only person in the scientific community who honestly believes Mr. Philips is you, and with no given credentials, your opinion of him carries no weight.
Your discussion of my sources is a digression, you are attempting to shift the point of the discussion, and I'm not going to allow that. Mr. Philips is quite obviously either unknown, or not cared about in the scientific and medical community.
You keep pointing out that a few studies have shown that there is a small statistical correlation between cell phone usage and the side of the brain in which cell phones are held. You fail to recognize that the vast majority of scientific research since the electromagnetic spectrum was published has demonstrated that non-ionizing radiation is harmless to humans except in specific circumstances of particular frequencies and extraordinary intensities.
You state, "I accept that at the moment the mechanism by which microwave radiation at low power levels causes ill effects of all kinds is not known, but that does not mean it cannot happen." That's fine, I agree, it could happen, but just because you so desperately want it to does not mean that it does. Minimal amounts of evidence and dubious claims of personal knowledge are unconvincing to me, and would be unconvincing to anyone in the "scientific community."
I have a fully adequate basis for saying that ionizing radiation is more dangerous than non-ionizing radiation. The name itself gives ample reason in that it correctly suggests that it has enough energy to ionize matter. Other waves simply lack the energy and density to do this, and can only damage tissue at very high intensity. The difference between a gamma ray (which is known to reliably cause tissue damage after short exposure)
Again, your post is focused on attacking me ad hominem and lacks any real merit. For someone who still claims to be involved in the scientific community, you fail to grasp an understanding of how one writes a formal rebuttal. Your first post contained a single ethical appeal at the end, you state that you are involved in the scientific community and that is the basis for the justification of your point. Since this is completely and totally unverifiable, your argument lacks any formal weight.
In this post you claim to know Alistair Philips on a personal level, while that might hold some merit, it is also unverifiable. If you wish to contact me personally to offer me some scientific credentials, you can do so at "M Herber II at G Mail dot com" (I trust that you can concatenate that into my e-mail address) as I'd love to give you every chance to prove me wrong in my assertions
Acoustic Neuroma is not a brain tumor in the purest sense. It grows on the auditory nerve and can progress inward through the inner ear putting pressure on the brain. While some might consider it a brain tumor, since it is not a tumor that grows on the brain itself, it is reasonable to say that it is a tumor of the auditory nerve, not of the brain.
I criticize head nets not because I think they are useless (they do, in fact, shield the brain through an application of Gauss's law and they are what would be commonly known as a "Faraday Cage") but because I think they are unnecessary for normal conditions. Military applications do exist for such a device as personnel such as mobile radar operators are exposed to much greater levels of RF than the normal person would be while using a cellular phone. (Or any other common RF device for that matter) The amount and type of radiation that one is exposed to from radio towers is quite insignificant, and while it has increased in recent years, there has been no conclusive evidence to support your assertions or the assertions of Mr. Philips.
It is important to note that the study looked at gliomas because gliomas are one of the most common forms of CNS tumor. Because of the relative rarity of CNS tumors in general, it seems only logical for a study to handle the most common in order to avoid false conclusions based on small sample sizes. Furthermore, I am not basing my assertion on just this study, but a number of them that have occurred over the years and the overwhelming scientific evidence that cell phones simply lack the power and frequency to damage human cells.
Let's take a logical case into question here. Visible light operates in the 405-790 THz frequency range, significantly higher than that of microwaves which operate in the 30-300 GHz range. Taking that into account, along with the fact that visible light often comes in wattages FAR in excess of those used by cell phones it would be logical to state that visible light is a far greater cancer risk than that of microwaves. Put that into contrast with the fact that gamma radiation operates in the 300EHz (10^20) frequency range and the difference becomes quite clear. If microwave radiation is such a concern, it would only be reasonable to put research into all forms of non-ionizing radiation, including visible light.
While I take no offense to your insults (as for all I know, you are nothing more than an opinionated blowhard) you are going to have to try much harder to prove me wrong than you currently are. Citing non-specific sources and claiming personal familiarity with the person in question wouldn't hold water in a high-school research paper, and it certainly won't hold water with me.
Firstly, I hate to lower myself to grammar nitpicking, but for one who works in the scientific community your ability to spell, punctuate, and properly conjugate words is severely lacking.
Secondly, you cannot expect me to accept "I work in the scientific community" when you provide no credentials to me whatsoever. If you intend to have a debate with me on this, and you are so confident in your scientific qualifications, why not forgo the anonymous coward route?
Onto the "meat and potatoes" of your post (if you will)...
"The study suggests that there is no substantial risk of acoustic neuroma in the first decade after starting mobile phone use. However, an increase in risk after longer term use or after a longer lag period could not be ruled out." -- This is the last line of your first source, did you even read this? The risk increases were marginal, and could be ruled as coincidental. It's also important to note that acoustic neuroma is neither a brain tumor, nor a cancer. (Also, it's rather bothersome to me that none of your reports are full-text, how can I draw accurate judgment of your sources without full text? That is like reviewing a book by reading its sleeve.)
You extol Alasdair Philips as an expert and one who is qualified to make conclusions about the dangers of EMF and microwave affects on people, yet he doesn't seem to be a doctor, and the medical condition he speaks of isn't listed on WebMD or Wikipedia leading me to think that it's likely a farce. In fact, if one takes even a short browse of his website, they will find several dubiouslookingthings, all of which are enough to evoke the skepticism of someone of such esteemed scientific credentials as yourself.
You scoff at me for talking about the EMF of other devices and state that they only operate on the 50-60 Hz frequency range, and from that I can deduce that you mean to tell me that this frequency range is not dangerous to humans however, the man you speak of as being some sort of expert on the subject has posted a number of papers on how living under or near power lines can raise cancer risk.
And finally, you cannot tell me that "money-grabbing wacky organizations" cannot get significant coverage on large networks. In the United States, every news network in the entire country has covered right-wing religious organizations and their attempts at banning the teaching of evolution to children in schools and its replacement with the pseudo-scientific hokum that is "intelligent design." These groups have not only gotten coverage from media outlets, but they have even received what could be considered positive coverage by some. Extreme and sensationalist points of view make good news, they entertain people and they get more viewers, it's not at all surprising that your news outlets covered Mr. Philips for this reason.
Your argument holds very little water, while you're correct on two things: that it has not been unquestionably proven that EMF does not cause cancer, and we are being exposed to more microwaves than ever before, you fail to provide any proof that Alasdair Philips is anything more than a opportunistic hack, or that microwave EMF causes cancer. Your subsequent source postings are lackluster google attempts at finding something to back up your assertions and, perhaps worst of all, it seems that the goal of your post was simply to insult me. You can walk around in
If you have a look at the powerwatch website, you'll notice two sections that are rather interesting: catalog and price list.
They sell worthless junk along the same lines as aluminum foil hats, and magic-crystal healing devices. They aren't protecting people from EMF, they are getting rich of scaring people into believing that it's going to destroy them and their families.
They completely disregard the fact that we have been, and continue to be bombarded by radiation from natural sources such as the sun, celestial events, and the Earth's magnetic core. Making our homes into faraday cages just means that we won't be bombarded by EMF in our houses, but wait! Every single electronic device emits some amount of EMF, from your toaster, to your microwave, to your vibrator, it's all going to emit some amount of EMF and you really can't escape it without becoming a Luddite and living in a sealed hovel in some remote location.
It's also important to note that there are different kinds of radiation, at its purest definition, it's the transmission of energy via waves. In that case, sound is radiation, ripples in water, also radiation. What most people confuse, however, is electromagnetic radiation versus particle radiation. Electromagnetic radiation is the oscillation of magnetic fields, particle radiation is caused by nuclear decay and the two are quite different. Electrons moving around is a lot less invasive than a red hot proton ripping through the nuclei of your cells which leads us to how cancer is caused by radiation. Particle radiation, caused by nuclear decay, shoots off ions at high velocities which actually shoot through your body and kill cells. Sometimes, in the process of doing this, they will damage the nucleus of a cell but not so much that the cell dies, just enough to mangle its DNA. This can cause faulty reproduction of this cell which can, in turn, cause tumors, or even cancerous growths. This kind of radiation is fundamentally different from the kind of radiation that makes your microwave and even oven (yes, heat is radiation!) work.
It's this lexical confusion that throws a lot of people off, yes it's radiation, no it's not dangerous unless at very high energy levels. And even then, it just cooks you like so much hot dogs. You don't grow tumors, you don't get cancer, you don't turn into a hideous fly-man, you just pop like a big water-ballon.
Slashdot Mirror
Furthermore, you seem only to address a very narrow portion of advertising, many other commercials are made to be funny, and sometimes are.
I'm not saying that I don't hate commercials, I'm just saying that you're being pretty narrow.
Episode 220: Season 2, Episode 20.
*ducks and covers*
Take Slashdot, for instance, there are untold numbers of people in the forums, and while some of them are what would be considered "intellectuals" there is a vast portion (if not majority) who are perhaps intelligent, but don't do a very good job of showing it. I myself have been the subject of some pretty heated attacks for stating what someone from a scientific background would consider obvious.
Not only are the attacks pretty childish, they have very poorly formed arguments such as, "you're using sources that anyone could find with Google," and, "you've never done [something], how could you know?"
Arguments such as this are indicative to me of a person who has little experience in science, and little experience in formal debate/thesis argument.
That being said, I do enjoy carrying on with these people, not because I like fighting battles that I will probably never win, but because I hold out on a tiny glint of hope that the argument will get them to read into the topic a little more and get them to come around eventually. When I was 13 years old and trolled around in forums, I argued with people who were a lot smarter than I was too. I may have made an ass of myself at the time, but it helped motivate me into learning how to research topics and formulate solid arguments, a skill that serves me well every day.
I realize stating "not everyone on Slashdot is an intellectual" is probably not the wisest thing to say to make friends, and I realize that I'm pretty much stating the obvious to a lot of people, but I felt it needed to be said. Think of it as a little reality chaser to follow that stiff shot of self-promotion, and know that I'm fully prepared for all of the angry, inflammatory, and otherwise unpleasant replies that this post will likely receive. Just remember this: if you are offended by a post that asserts that not everyone in a forum with over a million members is intellectual, what does that say about you?
Sure, if you're encoding to a different drive than the game is installed on, then you won't see a fall in performance, but if you have a sufficiently powerful single core processor, you wouldn't see a fall either.
As for the issue of compiling, you're only correct if you specifically instruct your compiler not to multithread. If you multithread, then both cores will be used to compile at the same time and your computer will run just as slowly as it did before, only it might take less time. Granted, you could adjust your settings so that this slowdown would be minimized, and your compile might take a bit longer, but you could accomplish approximately the same thing with a single core system.
The point of my post wasn't to say that dual core processors aren't good, because they are. My point was that dual core processors aren't magic they don't equate to double performance, and they aren't even really noticibly faster than single core chips. Their primary benefit is that they are cheaper to make, run a lot cooler, and they are more energy efficient.
And finally, the unit in question is a laptop, so yes, most of them have only one optical drive. Furthermore, walk through a Best Buy or Frys now and count the optical drives, it's back to one. The only reason that eMachines four years ago had both was because it was, at the time, cheaper than a combo drive. That is no longer the case.
I think what bothers me most here is the examples given, playing a game while encoding audio, playing a game while running a virus scan. I'm certain the dual core processor will keep your simultaneous CD ripping and virus scanning from interrupting your rousing game of solitaire but don't expect to be playing Doom 3 during these activities with any processor.
That's right, any processor. Reason? The main bottleneck for these activities isn't generally the processor, it's the other hardware involved.
You can't, for example, encode a CD any faster than the CD drive can read its data and load it into memory. This, of course, raises another question: Who the hell encodes audio while playing a game? Most games require some kind of optical media in the drive in order to play, so chances are pretty slim that you'll be doing any encoding while playing a game in the first place.... Unless of course you use a no-CD patch, which is a gross violation of the EULA, and only pirates do that! (please note sarcasm) I'd even be tempted to ask them if they are endorsing EULA violation, I'm sure the response would be pretty funny.
And virus scanning... firstly, not nearly as important as everyone thinks it is. I don't get an HIV test every week because I don't go putting myself in situations where I can contract HIV. Likewise, I don't compulsively virus scan my personal computer because I protect myself from getting infected in the first place.
Furthermore, both games and virus scanning are pretty hard-drive intensive. Unless you've got some kind of crazy dual-arm hard drive, chances are you're going to get a lot of disk thrashing if you try to play UT2004 while running McAffee.
It's almost as though the marketing department at Dell has a hat full of those magnets with words printed on them and they just toss a few at a blackboard when it comes time to write a new ad.
To say "people not using Windows would invalidate all my certificates" etc, is an appeal to consequence. It'd make my life harder if nobody used Windows, but it would be ultimately better for society.
As an avid Linux user, I really couldn't care less what Microsoft does to their customer base. They could charge your left kidney for a copy, in fact, I hope they do because the further Microsoft pushes this envelope, the more people are going to become aware of their options and jump ship.
I'm not saying they should use Linux, or OSX, or Be or any other system, I'm just saying they should use something that's not Windows. Microsoft has killed the hardware standard, they have killed open specifications, they have killed all the things that made software development explode into a massive industry 20 years ago. They made themselves the gatekeepers, the ones you must appease to gain the necessary knowledge and tools to develop for the mainstream and software has suffered as a result.
I, for one, want the good ol' days back. I want the days when I didn't have to pay for SDKs or wade through millions of malformed API calls that follow no logical topology, I want the days when software cost money because somebody sat down and worked hard on it, not because they had to license 20 different IPs to make it.
Do yourself a favor, and don't buy Vista. Your Dell probably can't run it anyway. Windows is so wasteful (Linux is too, but degrees of magnitude less) that my dual-boot laptop can run off battery for a full hour longer when I boot Linux and do the same amount of work. Running idle (even with a finly tuned startup configuration and very few resident applications running: daemon tools, zone alarm, and some inescapable Intel driver console nonsense) Windows requires an amazing 240 MB of memory just to sit there. When I start surfing the web, using GAIM, and whatever else I may need to do, that shoots up to over 600MB, and I'm in the swap. On Linux, while sitting idle (with X running, of course) my idle memory usage is... 14MB. That's right, less memory than my 486 had. When I start using Firefox, Gaim, wireless internet, etc. I shoot up to about 78~150. I can surf the web, chat, and write an OO document all without using the hard drive (once everything is loaded). That doesn't just beat Windows performance, that destroys it. Your computer isn't too slow to run a modern operating system, the operating system is just too fat.
That's not the whole of it either, Linux is getting slimmer. Every day, there are people debugging, trimming, fixing, and refining the code. The kernel gets smaller, things get more efficient, more secure, and the excess is cut away. When I upgrade to a new version of Linux my computer actually gets faster and that has never happened with Windows.
Don't support the forced hardware cycle, don't buy Windows, don't even pirate it.
Also, apologies to everyone for this turning into a rant of sorts, but it really needed to be said.
My land of the free and the brave will soon sadly be reduced to the land of the controlled and censored.
With that said, somebody is going to spout off stuff like this (Google Cached HTML version of PDF) and claim that it's "conclusive." Those studies dealt with individuals, and they weren't blind tests either, that's hardly enough to conclude anything other than those involved were a bit loony. (Also notice who hosted the study ;)
And look at it from a logical point of view, electricity is cleaner now than it ever was, devices are better at handling RF, and they use far lower voltages than their counterparts even a decade ago. It would stand to reason that if ES existed, it would be less common now than it was ten or twenty years ago because devices are better shielded, emit less interference, and use less electricity than they did in the past.
Cheating, however, is something I do happen to know quite a bit about, and not just codes, but the more esoteric forms like memory modification, and profile hacking. These things are definitely cheating, and have no place in a "fair" online environment. By definition to cheat is to circumvent the rules of the game in order to obtain some sort of unfair perk. More HP, higher levels, etc, those are all definitely cheating but buying something? That is where the lines become blurry.
Purchasing gold or other items from someone else is certainly not the noble way of doing things, and I wouldn't encourage it, but it's no more cheating than any other instance in which someone uses their financial status to circumvent the work to accomplish something. If your car breaks down, do you start learning how to repair cars, working through levels of apprenticeship up to those of master mechanic? More than likely not. You pay someone to do the work for you, while you reap the rewards. The game is no different. You don't necessarily want to become good enough at the game to gain the money, or perhaps you simply don't have the time to get it yourself, so you pay someone else to do it for you. Wherever there is a desire, there will be a market; pure and simple.
Ultimately, this is just a sign that the world of data and the world of real goods are starting to converge. You already pay real money for software, and you pay real money for music, and you pay real money for naked pictures too. How is paying real money for digital gold any different?
I'm guessing this will be their version of what normal beings call a compromise, sure you can have your own clients, but you have to use our SDK. We'll fill your client full of bloat, and shut it down if you dare to make it useful.
Cell phones don't cause cancer, they can't cause cancer, and no correctly performed study will ever show anything that concludes that. There is no such thing as ES either.
Oh yeah, and Alasdair Philips (Powerwatch.org.uk) is a charlatan who is manipulating the fears of people in order to make tons of money for himself.
The post you're replying to really has nothing to do with theatres. Secondly, I can't really see any reason why one would want to spend money on faraday-screening paint when this could be accomplished just as easily using a relatively inexpensive interference generator. Cheaper, safer (nanotubes are an inhalation hazard), and easier to maintain.
Naturally, I'm thrilled to get the opportunity to live under an oppressive regime. Why should Eastern Europe and Northeast Asia get to have all the fun? Well, gotta go or I'll be late for four minutes hate.
The US CDC categorizes teenagers as anyone between the ages of 13 to 25. Through their statistics, they have found that the perception of risk for HIV and various other sexually transmitted diseases is only marginally higher in someone who is 21 as compared to someone who is 15, or even younger.
That being said, I'm 22.
This poses an interesting question, I think, as I have been aware of this particular shortcoming of the human developmental cycle for some time. Growing up (and to this day) I have had a very strong interest in psychology and sociology, and because of that I have been making a conscious effort to make up for that which has not developed yet in my mind. The question is, by training myself to contemplate my actions and correlate outside circumstances with my own vulnerability to the point in which they are now instinctual, have I forced these sections of the brain to develop willfully? Or have I simply emulated it to the point in which it's like some sort of Pavlonian conditioning? Have I shortcut my own development, or will I find myself more able to perform these tasks in another few years?
Looking back introspectively, I can say that I am much more mature now than I was even as little as three years ago. At 18 I was faced with finding a job and supporting myself indefinitely and while this was something that I was able to choke down, it was nothing that I was happy about. I managed to get myself decently employed and to remain in school at the same time, something I found immensely stressful at the time and it pushed the limits of my sanity pretty hard. Now days I cope with these things more easily. I am able to manage my money more effectively, not to mention my time and other resources. I find that I'm able to do much more in a day than I ever thought was possible, and I am more capable of dealing with situations that would have previously caused a panic, now cause a thirty minute budgeting session. Will I look back in another three years and recount to everyone how I was quite a fool? Will I be able to stand the company of my peers at 25? Because as it stands I find it hard getting along with people under the age of 30, let alone 25. I suppose the best thing to do is wait and see.
There have actually been some interesting studies done that show a possible (mind you, only possible, not direct) link between the development of various brain disorders later in life and excessive drinking, especially in 18-21 year old males. It seems that flooding your brain with the "happiest hydrocarbon" while it's in the middle of a major restructuring can result in some defects. In what is perhaps the greatest irony of it all, the years that are most dangerous for people to drink heavily are the ones that the desire to drink heavily is the greatest. Fear not, if you've gotten slobberingly drunk a few times, I'm pretty doubtful that you've permanently damaged your brain. But those of you whose weekends are hazy clouds of intoxication... you might want to think about a little moderation.
For you, perhaps. Some of us have had to support ourselves while attending school. To us, "generally screwing around" sounds pretty foolish.
Incorrect. Microwaves work by changing the orientation of water, not by resonating it. WiFi devices also lack the necessary wattage to move enough water to cook anything. Also cell phones lack the power to cook things. This is a humor article.
Take, for instance, your average microwave which can cook an egg in about two minutes. It has a magnetron that operates at roughly 2.5 GHz, at 700+ watts inside of a reflective faraday cage. While the egg is inside of the microwave, the radio waves emitted by the magnetron cause the water molecules inside to change orientation in sync with the polarity of the wave passing through them. This vibration results in friction, which creates heat, and in turn cooks the egg (or whatever other food is inside of the microwave). This affect is amplified by the fact that the microwaves are contained inside of a metal chamber which prevents them from escaping and helps to redirect them into the food.
Though some cell phones operate within the same frequency range of microwave ovens, they have a maximum (regulated by law) output of 6 Watts. This wattage, combined with the fact that the output is not contained within a localized area, means that the microwaves emitted by the cell phones would have a hard time even penetrating the shell of the egg, let alone cooking anything.
Furthermore, it is important to note that cell phones do not communicate directly with one another. When a call is made, the caller's phone signals the tower which contacts the second phone. All communication between the two phones is done through the tower. The two phones communicating between one another is made irrelevant by this.
Lastly, the if one explores the source site (Wymsey Village Web) for this page has the motto of "on the nick of the cutting edge of rural parody" and bills itself as a humor site. Taking stories from a site such as this would be just as foolish those things written on sites such as Something Awful, the onion, or Pointless Waste of Time. This only shows that one must always question the validity of ones sources, no matter how enticing or appealing their content may be.
It is somewhat disheartening to me that this would be covered on slashdot as factual information. I am bothered even more, however, by the fact that so many of my peers have readily accepted this as a fact even though it has an obvious air of incredulity.
Someone please stop the planet, I'm getting sick and I want to get off.
As for EHS, the WHO held a conference in Prague a while ago in which they concluded that EHS is a misleading name and agreed upon "Idiopathic Environmental Intolerance" as the overwhelming amount of evidence suggested that the disorder is not caused by EMF exposure but other factors including but not limited to psychological disorders.
You keep telling me that Mr. Philips is respected in the scientific community and that internet sources are completely unreliable, yet, the internet is the only place in which I can find information on Mr. Philips. From what I can tell, he has only been published by himself and I have searched:
EBSCOHost (A massive index of peer-reviewed journals)
The US Library of Congress (One of the largest libraries on the planet)
Science Magazine (A respected journal read by many in the science community)
IEEE (The organization that is heavily involved in communications standards)
Amazon.com (A large online book retailer)
British Journal of Cancer (Since you subscribe, you should know)
Allen County Library (One of the largest library systems in the U.S.)
You'll notice that all of these deal in paper publications, and not a one of them contains any mention of Mr. Philips. In fact, the only reference to him that I could find via a normal media outlet was a single article published on the BBC website. He was simply named as the leader of an activist group and nothing more. I was able to find a total of four references to him on Google news but none of them were paper publications and spoke of him in the same capacity as the BBC article. Using Google scholar, I was able to find a few references to him, but none mentioned him in a scientific capacity either (other than one editorial and an article on his own site). So far as I can tell, the only person in the scientific community who honestly believes Mr. Philips is you, and with no given credentials, your opinion of him carries no weight.
Your discussion of my sources is a digression, you are attempting to shift the point of the discussion, and I'm not going to allow that. Mr. Philips is quite obviously either unknown, or not cared about in the scientific and medical community.
You keep pointing out that a few studies have shown that there is a small statistical correlation between cell phone usage and the side of the brain in which cell phones are held. You fail to recognize that the vast majority of scientific research since the electromagnetic spectrum was published has demonstrated that non-ionizing radiation is harmless to humans except in specific circumstances of particular frequencies and extraordinary intensities.
You state, "I accept that at the moment the mechanism by which microwave radiation at low power levels causes ill effects of all kinds is not known, but that does not mean it cannot happen." That's fine, I agree, it could happen, but just because you so desperately want it to does not mean that it does. Minimal amounts of evidence and dubious claims of personal knowledge are unconvincing to me, and would be unconvincing to anyone in the "scientific community."
I have a fully adequate basis for saying that ionizing radiation is more dangerous than non-ionizing radiation. The name itself gives ample reason in that it correctly suggests that it has enough energy to ionize matter. Other waves simply lack the energy and density to do this, and can only damage tissue at very high intensity. The difference between a gamma ray (which is known to reliably cause tissue damage after short exposure)
In this post you claim to know Alistair Philips on a personal level, while that might hold some merit, it is also unverifiable. If you wish to contact me personally to offer me some scientific credentials, you can do so at "M Herber II at G Mail dot com" (I trust that you can concatenate that into my e-mail address) as I'd love to give you every chance to prove me wrong in my assertions
Acoustic Neuroma is not a brain tumor in the purest sense. It grows on the auditory nerve and can progress inward through the inner ear putting pressure on the brain. While some might consider it a brain tumor, since it is not a tumor that grows on the brain itself, it is reasonable to say that it is a tumor of the auditory nerve, not of the brain.
I criticize head nets not because I think they are useless (they do, in fact, shield the brain through an application of Gauss's law and they are what would be commonly known as a "Faraday Cage") but because I think they are unnecessary for normal conditions. Military applications do exist for such a device as personnel such as mobile radar operators are exposed to much greater levels of RF than the normal person would be while using a cellular phone. (Or any other common RF device for that matter) The amount and type of radiation that one is exposed to from radio towers is quite insignificant, and while it has increased in recent years, there has been no conclusive evidence to support your assertions or the assertions of Mr. Philips.
It is important to note that the study looked at gliomas because gliomas are one of the most common forms of CNS tumor. Because of the relative rarity of CNS tumors in general, it seems only logical for a study to handle the most common in order to avoid false conclusions based on small sample sizes. Furthermore, I am not basing my assertion on just this study, but a number of them that have occurred over the years and the overwhelming scientific evidence that cell phones simply lack the power and frequency to damage human cells.
Let's take a logical case into question here. Visible light operates in the 405-790 THz frequency range, significantly higher than that of microwaves which operate in the 30-300 GHz range. Taking that into account, along with the fact that visible light often comes in wattages FAR in excess of those used by cell phones it would be logical to state that visible light is a far greater cancer risk than that of microwaves. Put that into contrast with the fact that gamma radiation operates in the 300EHz (10^20) frequency range and the difference becomes quite clear. If microwave radiation is such a concern, it would only be reasonable to put research into all forms of non-ionizing radiation, including visible light.
While I take no offense to your insults (as for all I know, you are nothing more than an opinionated blowhard) you are going to have to try much harder to prove me wrong than you currently are. Citing non-specific sources and claiming personal familiarity with the person in question wouldn't hold water in a high-school research paper, and it certainly won't hold water with me.
I find it very depressing that this post is indicative of the slashdot community. Events in fictitious worlds... Alas, I am surrounded by kids.
Secondly, you cannot expect me to accept "I work in the scientific community" when you provide no credentials to me whatsoever. If you intend to have a debate with me on this, and you are so confident in your scientific qualifications, why not forgo the anonymous coward route?
Onto the "meat and potatoes" of your post (if you will)...
"The study suggests that there is no substantial risk of acoustic neuroma in the first decade after starting mobile phone use. However, an increase in risk after longer term use or after a longer lag period could not be ruled out." -- This is the last line of your first source, did you even read this? The risk increases were marginal, and could be ruled as coincidental. It's also important to note that acoustic neuroma is neither a brain tumor, nor a cancer. (Also, it's rather bothersome to me that none of your reports are full-text, how can I draw accurate judgment of your sources without full text? That is like reviewing a book by reading its sleeve.)
You extol Alasdair Philips as an expert and one who is qualified to make conclusions about the dangers of EMF and microwave affects on people, yet he doesn't seem to be a doctor, and the medical condition he speaks of isn't listed on WebMD or Wikipedia leading me to think that it's likely a farce. In fact, if one takes even a short browse of his website, they will find several dubious looking things, all of which are enough to evoke the skepticism of someone of such esteemed scientific credentials as yourself.
You scoff at me for talking about the EMF of other devices and state that they only operate on the 50-60 Hz frequency range, and from that I can deduce that you mean to tell me that this frequency range is not dangerous to humans however, the man you speak of as being some sort of expert on the subject has posted a number of papers on how living under or near power lines can raise cancer risk.
And finally, you cannot tell me that "money-grabbing wacky organizations" cannot get significant coverage on large networks. In the United States, every news network in the entire country has covered right-wing religious organizations and their attempts at banning the teaching of evolution to children in schools and its replacement with the pseudo-scientific hokum that is "intelligent design." These groups have not only gotten coverage from media outlets, but they have even received what could be considered positive coverage by some. Extreme and sensationalist points of view make good news, they entertain people and they get more viewers, it's not at all surprising that your news outlets covered Mr. Philips for this reason.
Your argument holds very little water, while you're correct on two things: that it has not been unquestionably proven that EMF does not cause cancer, and we are being exposed to more microwaves than ever before, you fail to provide any proof that Alasdair Philips is anything more than a opportunistic hack, or that microwave EMF causes cancer. Your subsequent source postings are lackluster google attempts at finding something to back up your assertions and, perhaps worst of all, it seems that the goal of your post was simply to insult me. You can walk around in
They sell worthless junk along the same lines as aluminum foil hats, and magic-crystal healing devices. They aren't protecting people from EMF, they are getting rich of scaring people into believing that it's going to destroy them and their families.
They completely disregard the fact that we have been, and continue to be bombarded by radiation from natural sources such as the sun, celestial events, and the Earth's magnetic core. Making our homes into faraday cages just means that we won't be bombarded by EMF in our houses, but wait! Every single electronic device emits some amount of EMF, from your toaster, to your microwave, to your vibrator, it's all going to emit some amount of EMF and you really can't escape it without becoming a Luddite and living in a sealed hovel in some remote location.
It's also important to note that there are different kinds of radiation, at its purest definition, it's the transmission of energy via waves. In that case, sound is radiation, ripples in water, also radiation. What most people confuse, however, is electromagnetic radiation versus particle radiation. Electromagnetic radiation is the oscillation of magnetic fields, particle radiation is caused by nuclear decay and the two are quite different. Electrons moving around is a lot less invasive than a red hot proton ripping through the nuclei of your cells which leads us to how cancer is caused by radiation. Particle radiation, caused by nuclear decay, shoots off ions at high velocities which actually shoot through your body and kill cells. Sometimes, in the process of doing this, they will damage the nucleus of a cell but not so much that the cell dies, just enough to mangle its DNA. This can cause faulty reproduction of this cell which can, in turn, cause tumors, or even cancerous growths. This kind of radiation is fundamentally different from the kind of radiation that makes your microwave and even oven (yes, heat is radiation!) work.
It's this lexical confusion that throws a lot of people off, yes it's radiation, no it's not dangerous unless at very high energy levels. And even then, it just cooks you like so much hot dogs. You don't grow tumors, you don't get cancer, you don't turn into a hideous fly-man, you just pop like a big water-ballon.