...but I would argue with the conclusion of hypocrisy (turning on Boies) - I would accuse Boies' fans of being particularly naive. No offense to anyone who has a David Boies Fan Club sticker on their car.
That's a good analogy, but the atmosphere is a good bit more complex than that. First, the atmosphere doesn't 'pop' like a baloon would - if anything it would keep getting thinner. Second, with more surface area where the ozone layer is shifted to, more ozone will be produced, which should counteract the effect.
But ultimately, the ozone hole occurs at the south pole for two specific reasons: First, the poles get a lot less radiation that the rest of the earth, hence less ozone production there. Second, the air currents over antarctica serve to trap the CFC's and ozone there DURING WINTER, allowing the CFC's to devour the ozone without it being able to re-mix with the rest of the atmosphere.
Note that this year the ozone hole actually shrank and split in half, due to a change in the weather patterns over antarctica. So I would be extremely hesitant to use a baloon analogy to explain the ozone hole - atmospheric chemistry is so hideously complicated.
First, those "twins in different settings" weren't exactly the best studies because the control groups weren't always too well defined. There are also a lot of twins raised by the same parents who have very different occupations...
Also, people talk about nature vs. nurture as if nature=genetics. However, a LOT of a person is affected by development in the womb - before the person has any contact with the world, but after the genes are set. The mother's hormones, stress to the fetus, illness to the mother, exact timing of gene expression, etc all are extremely important, and is something that is minimized in nature vs. nurture issues.
Ultimately, it should not be surprising that, even comparing newborns, that two animals with the exact same genetic code should act completely differently.
...until the email server at work got hacked and someone stole the entire address list. Since then, all of us have been getting spam by the bucketloads. And since I depend on people being able to get my current work address, I can't change it. Thank God for SpamAssassin!
I do believe that was the intent! This was not, I imagine, intended as a textbook to be used in a marketing class - seems like the goal was the general amusement of those of us who *DIDN'T* lose a pile of cash on their IPO's. Or, maybe if you did, but have a dark sense of humor.
For what it's worth, we're basically saying the same things from different directions: You say that, for nonionizing radiation (ie, low frequency), power only matters. I say that, for a CELL PHONE (ie, obviously low power), only frequency matters. Clearly, both are true, and had you posted such, I wouldn't have disagreed. But, being as my statements were claimed as wrong, I think I have the right to defend them. I still maintain that I was perfectly reasonable to assume that, since we are talking about a small, handheld, FCC-approved device, no strong power source is present, nor need be addressed.
Btw, where does "non-ionizing" radiation officially start? Because even near-uv can cause damage to DNA...just wondering.
Now, if what you meant was to limit that to cell-phone levels, fine. But that's not what you said. Claiming ex post facto that it should be obvious is weak.
Since this was a post *about* cell phones, I think that's a reasonable assumption. I mean, any statement can be proven false if extended to ridiculous or out-of-context conclusions. I mean, did you call your classical physics teacher an idiot because Newton's laws were proven "wrong" by Einstein? Similarly, I would maintain that extending discussions of megawatt (or even kilowatt) transmitters to a discussion of cell phones certainly meets that standard.
And, by the way, if you're not able to hear objective criticism of your statements without taking it personally, maybe you would be better served not to make them.
I can take criticism, and I can return it. And if you criticize, you should expect your rebuttals held to a higher standard than that which you're criticizing. What I find annoying is nitpicking at posts where someone failed to state the obvious, when all parties realize what was implied. Or did you honestly think I was speaking of universal truths regarding the deletrious effects of radiative power?
The reason cell phones aren't dangerous has nothing to do with frequency - And has everything to do with their power. Analog phones (except for portable/car units) are 600 mW, digital CDMA is 200 mW.
Note: 200 mW of UV/gamma/X-ray CAN be dangerous, since instead of general heating, it essentially causes "bit flipping" in your DNA. 99.999999% of the time, that flipped "bit" does nothing or kills the cell, but every once in a while the right part of the DNA is corrupted and the cell becomes cancerous.
Two consecutive and contradictory paragraphs. You just pointed out that the same power of two different frequencies can be potentially fatal in one circumstance, and innocuous in the other. That was THE POINT. Ask yourself, why can radio waves not cause any bit flipping? Because their frequencies are insufficient to effect an electronic transition.
Also, as far as which is more important, I still go with frequency. Double the frequency, and you will get about an 8-fold increase in the damage to chemical bonds (actually e^2, because of the exponential dependence). Double the power, and you get double the heat production. Again, this is the photoelectric effect - look it up if you've never heard of it, Einstein won the Nobel Prize for it.
I don't wand to belabor the point, but microwave absorption spectra are VERY SPECIFIC. No, 2170 is NOT close enough to 2400 GHz to cause significant excitation of the water rotational mode. A 10% difference is more than enough. If you are in doubt, I could recommend some good chemistry books, or you can find your own water microwave spectrum. This is exactly why the FCC forbids communications at this narrow band.
Ultimately, the only arguements for damage from sub-microwave radio is if you stand in front of a high-power transmitter. Well, duh. But when we are talking about something with LESS THAN A WATT of transmitting power, the only way for it to be dangerous is if it is at LEAST uv. Period. Otherwise, the only possible danger is from heat. With higher frequencies, you won't have enough power to generate heat, but you will cause tissue damage nonetheless. Hence, sunburn.
Not to flamebait the UFO people out there, but people, there's a reason that a WHOLE LOT of UFO sightings occur near military bases - at least that's how it occurs here in the states. I mean, I have no trouble believing our government lies to us, but it's more likely about next-generation military aircraft than space aliens.
I think fundamentally that some people have to believe in a higher power, and attribute all "unknown" phenomena to that power. Religious freaks do it all the time, and UFO people are doing the same thing. There has been, to date, no affirmative evidence for the presence of intelligent life having visited our solar system, but that doesn't dampen their spirits a bit.
Re:Cell Phones = Cancer is BULLSHIT
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Yeah, I didn't figure that the human brain absorbing cell-phone radiation was a good case for nonlinear optics;;)
Re:A few corrections...
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It absorbs energy from an RF field, energy that is converted into heat. When the energy is sufficiently high, this heat can damage cells. Your analysis is deeply flawed and ignores a wealth of literature that shows the effects of strong electromagnetic fields on humans and animals.
And if you had read what I actually wrote, I was dealing with a cancer risk due to low power emission (remember, we're talking about a damned CELL PHONE here, this is NOT a strong field), so your "wealth of literature" is irrelevant. As for "deeply flawed," the photoelectric effect is fairly clear - for two sources of the same power, the one with the higher frequency is the one with the greater ability to effect electron transitions (ie, breaking bonds in DNA).
As you mention, the FCC limits radiation emitted from cell phones to very low levels in order to prevent what you are talking about, so I found it pointless to deal with the possibility of damage from heat. Since we're talking about such a low level of total power, the only way to have any damage is through high-frequency radiation (ie, uv), or through a mode-specific absorption (ie, microwave at 2.4 GHz). I assumed this was obvious, I suppose you didn't see that.
If this were a risk, you should be able to show a significant temperature increase in the brains of cell phone users. Good luck.
Re:Cell Phones = Cancer is BULLSHIT
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Let's not get ahead of ourselves....
From the article: Dr. French emphasised that no link has yet been shown between the specific biological effects of mobile phone radiation and cancer, but that there was now a theoretical framework for such an effect that could be investigated.
So we have a guy theorizing that this could in fact be the case, without any real link, just a leap of faith. The research is nearly 2 years old. ANy follow up?
Re:Cell phone wavelengths ARE in microwave oven ra
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Bzzzt. Cellphones typically operate in one of several bands, including 0.8 GHz, 0.9 GHz, 1.8 GHz and 1.9 GHz. The latter two are not "far, far to low" -- microwave ovens operate at 2.45 GHz. They are well within the same octave (10x or 2x, take your pick:)
Sorry. There are two possible phenomena at work here. First is the possible damage to DNA from radiation. This is impossible, as mentioned. Second is possible heating by absorption of microwave radiation (I assume you mean water). These frequencies at which water does so are actually quite narrow, and a 1.9 GHz cell phone will not be absorbed much at all by water. Otherwise, your cell phone reception would go to shit on a humid day. I could send you a microwave absorption spectrum of water, and show you that it doesn't happen at 1.9.
The problem is how they react when sales go down or are flat compared to the late 90s, after the recession hits. They stopped throwing money after "long-shot" bands, preferring to focus only on sure sales - IE, boy bands, etc. Problem is, these are fickle markets, and their audiences eventually tire of them - leaving the **AA right where they are (note this has been the trend in movies AND music - note the load of sequels and mindless junk even more than usual lately).
So, as everybody mentions, they feel like using this as an opportunity to hit P2P networks. But really, they get what they get - if you don't invest money in new, fresh artists, don't be surprised when sales are flat.
It's just like any other industry, and they've cut the equivalent of R&D. Well, when your market is in durable goods (you don't sell someone the same CD over and over, though it seems like it), and you have no innovation, guess what? Your sales will suck! Quit blaming MP3's, guys!
Re:A few corrections...
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RF can be VERY dangerous because unlike visible light, it can penetrate the body. In some cases (HF most likely up to VHF) it goes right through without interacting. At the UHF/microwave regions, this changes - Significant percentages start getting absorbed by the body. 2.4 GHz is particularly nasty because of a molecular resonance with H20 - Water absorbs around here readily, which is why it's not primarily a communications band and why microwave ovens operate at 2.4 GHz.
Which is why there is no problem; last I checked cell phones don't operate in the microwave. (800 MHz I believe) Also, I was specific - microwaves are not radio waves, and I never claimed being near microwaves was safe.
As for power being irrelevant, it is when we're talking about radiation that is about 6 orders of magnitude too low in frequency to cause any sort of dangerous electronic transitions (UV is about 1,000,000 THz). The dependence is exponential - so if something is possible but improbable for UV, it is absolutely impossible for radio waves.
Bottom line, unless you have an exceptionally liberal definition of "radio," they won't be causing any damage.
Re:Cell Phones = Cancer is BULLSHIT
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Are you the same troll that corrects people's spelling? If I were publishing this in a damned journal, I *would* have said "power," jackass. And that's not actually *wrong*, since a Watt IS a unit of power last I checked.
Actually a good point....
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I know it's a troll, but it is a subtle distinction...
It took the physics guys this long to figure out that a beowulf cluster of skyscrappers works better ?
What's cool is that taking a signal of a given bandwidth, splitting it, bouncing it, and recombining it is actually better. It's a bit like saying that a Beowulf cluster made of 3 1GHz PIV's would beat the crap out of a single 3GHz PIV system - which should not happen. Crazy!
Cell Phones = Cancer is BULLSHIT
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Does anyone have any updated statistics on cellular safety? I wonder if this technology will affect that aspect of cellular use?
OK, I'm a physical chemist, and this junk drives me up the wall.
All these journalists assume that the wattage is what matters, and that being 1 cm from a 4 watt transmitter could be unhealthy. However, the wattage is irrelevant - Einstein showed this with the photoelectric effect. Basically, it is the frequency of the radiation that is dangerous, not the wattage, because one photon interacts with one electron - so the number of photons is irrelevant. For example, which would you rather be near - a 100W light bulb, or a 1W gamma ray emitter? Thought so...;)
To give you a baseline, cancer due to radiation occurs because photons of succicient energy actually break chemical bonds in your DNA. This requires low-UV or better to accomplish. That's why sunburn gives you cancer. Now, compare this to radio waves, which are far, FAR to low in energy to accomplish anything of the sort. In fact, radio waves are even to low to excite the vibrational or rotational states of a molecule (which is how a microwave oven works), so there is no risk of "cooking" your brain, either.
Ultimately, when pressed, these cell-phone-cancer freaks point at two cases where some habitual cell-phone user got cancer on the right side of his brain. Ergo, it was the cell phone. These "doctors" (and I use the term loosely) have never proposed any sort of mechanism or ANYTHING to explain how it could occur. Because it can't.
Bottom line, you have a better chance of getting cancer from your own body heat (you emit infrared radiation) than you do from a cell phone.
I think Microsoft is scared. they are running from the Linux/Open Source Communinity while trying to figure out how to live by the "if you cant beat em, join em" Business Plan. 20$ says Bill gates will see how bad the TCPA is, and scrap it, like he did with Microsoft Bob.
1. TCPA is hardware and, as far as I can tell, an open spec. Bill can't "scrap" it. In fact, Bill isn't the major push for it - that would be the **AA, if you believe the conspiracy theories (I do). Not to say RTFA, but... And anyway, I have no idea what TCPA and Microsoft's stance on it has to do with Microsoft's fear of OpenSource.
Microsoft Bob...HAHAHAHA! Now THAT was funny. I would love to know who greenlighted that one - probably heading Microsoft Iceland right about now.
...where Southwest forced Orbitz (a coalition of most airlines except Southwest) to stop listing its prices. Why? Because they thought that Orbitz was intentionally listing Southwest's less-than-best prices, with the intention of making Southwest look uncompetitive. And like you say, if enough consumers keep seeing your company looking bad, they will go with a competitor, not realizing that the company was hosed.
Same with Sun - they had to either get MS to completely abandon any fake Java implemetation, or to ship theirs, which is what happened.
is that Apple doesn't have a monopoly to leverage if they wanted to. If M$ didn't have the market share they do, none of what they do would be illegal. I'm not saying Apple is a bunch of greedy assholes - but I am saying that there's no way to tell that they're not just as bad.
I'm sure M$ could bust every word processor ( like whoever owns Word Perfect these days, or Sun, their favorite target) for "reverse-engineering" their file formats. Of course, they'll probably 2 months after they remove file conversion support from office.
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I mean, come one, that one was obvious.
...but I would argue with the conclusion of hypocrisy (turning on Boies) - I would accuse Boies' fans of being particularly naive. No offense to anyone who has a David Boies Fan Club sticker on their car.
But ultimately, the ozone hole occurs at the south pole for two specific reasons: First, the poles get a lot less radiation that the rest of the earth, hence less ozone production there. Second, the air currents over antarctica serve to trap the CFC's and ozone there DURING WINTER, allowing the CFC's to devour the ozone without it being able to re-mix with the rest of the atmosphere.
Note that this year the ozone hole actually shrank and split in half, due to a change in the weather patterns over antarctica. So I would be extremely hesitant to use a baloon analogy to explain the ozone hole - atmospheric chemistry is so hideously complicated.
...MAYBE his client was. The lawyer is just the mouthpiece - he likely would have defended MS had they approached them first.
Slackware does not use the SysV init, though it has a compatibility program available.
Reason #69 for using Slackware: telling those SCO lawyer maggots to take their lawsuits and shove 'em up their asses!
I can't wait -- bring 'em on!
Also, people talk about nature vs. nurture as if nature=genetics. However, a LOT of a person is affected by development in the womb - before the person has any contact with the world, but after the genes are set. The mother's hormones, stress to the fetus, illness to the mother, exact timing of gene expression, etc all are extremely important, and is something that is minimized in nature vs. nurture issues.
Ultimately, it should not be surprising that, even comparing newborns, that two animals with the exact same genetic code should act completely differently.
...until the email server at work got hacked and someone stole the entire address list. Since then, all of us have been getting spam by the bucketloads. And since I depend on people being able to get my current work address, I can't change it. Thank God for SpamAssassin!
I do believe that was the intent! This was not, I imagine, intended as a textbook to be used in a marketing class - seems like the goal was the general amusement of those of us who *DIDN'T* lose a pile of cash on their IPO's. Or, maybe if you did, but have a dark sense of humor.
Btw, where does "non-ionizing" radiation officially start? Because even near-uv can cause damage to DNA...just wondering.
Now, if what you meant was to limit that to cell-phone levels, fine. But that's not what you said. Claiming ex post facto that it should be obvious is weak.
Since this was a post *about* cell phones, I think that's a reasonable assumption. I mean, any statement can be proven false if extended to ridiculous or out-of-context conclusions. I mean, did you call your classical physics teacher an idiot because Newton's laws were proven "wrong" by Einstein? Similarly, I would maintain that extending discussions of megawatt (or even kilowatt) transmitters to a discussion of cell phones certainly meets that standard.
And, by the way, if you're not able to hear objective criticism of your statements without taking it personally, maybe you would be better served not to make them.
I can take criticism, and I can return it. And if you criticize, you should expect your rebuttals held to a higher standard than that which you're criticizing. What I find annoying is nitpicking at posts where someone failed to state the obvious, when all parties realize what was implied. Or did you honestly think I was speaking of universal truths regarding the deletrious effects of radiative power?
The reason cell phones aren't dangerous has nothing to do with frequency - And has everything to do with their power. Analog phones (except for portable/car units) are 600 mW, digital CDMA is 200 mW.
Note: 200 mW of UV/gamma/X-ray CAN be dangerous, since instead of general heating, it essentially causes "bit flipping" in your DNA. 99.999999% of the time, that flipped "bit" does nothing or kills the cell, but every once in a while the right part of the DNA is corrupted and the cell becomes cancerous.
Two consecutive and contradictory paragraphs. You just pointed out that the same power of two different frequencies can be potentially fatal in one circumstance, and innocuous in the other. That was THE POINT. Ask yourself, why can radio waves not cause any bit flipping? Because their frequencies are insufficient to effect an electronic transition.
Also, as far as which is more important, I still go with frequency. Double the frequency, and you will get about an 8-fold increase in the damage to chemical bonds (actually e^2, because of the exponential dependence). Double the power, and you get double the heat production. Again, this is the photoelectric effect - look it up if you've never heard of it, Einstein won the Nobel Prize for it.
I don't wand to belabor the point, but microwave absorption spectra are VERY SPECIFIC. No, 2170 is NOT close enough to 2400 GHz to cause significant excitation of the water rotational mode. A 10% difference is more than enough. If you are in doubt, I could recommend some good chemistry books, or you can find your own water microwave spectrum. This is exactly why the FCC forbids communications at this narrow band.
Ultimately, the only arguements for damage from sub-microwave radio is if you stand in front of a high-power transmitter. Well, duh. But when we are talking about something with LESS THAN A WATT of transmitting power, the only way for it to be dangerous is if it is at LEAST uv. Period. Otherwise, the only possible danger is from heat. With higher frequencies, you won't have enough power to generate heat, but you will cause tissue damage nonetheless. Hence, sunburn.
I think fundamentally that some people have to believe in a higher power, and attribute all "unknown" phenomena to that power. Religious freaks do it all the time, and UFO people are doing the same thing. There has been, to date, no affirmative evidence for the presence of intelligent life having visited our solar system, but that doesn't dampen their spirits a bit.
Yeah, I didn't figure that the human brain absorbing cell-phone radiation was a good case for nonlinear optics; ;)
And if you had read what I actually wrote, I was dealing with a cancer risk due to low power emission (remember, we're talking about a damned CELL PHONE here, this is NOT a strong field), so your "wealth of literature" is irrelevant. As for "deeply flawed," the photoelectric effect is fairly clear - for two sources of the same power, the one with the higher frequency is the one with the greater ability to effect electron transitions (ie, breaking bonds in DNA).
As you mention, the FCC limits radiation emitted from cell phones to very low levels in order to prevent what you are talking about, so I found it pointless to deal with the possibility of damage from heat. Since we're talking about such a low level of total power, the only way to have any damage is through high-frequency radiation (ie, uv), or through a mode-specific absorption (ie, microwave at 2.4 GHz). I assumed this was obvious, I suppose you didn't see that.
If this were a risk, you should be able to show a significant temperature increase in the brains of cell phone users. Good luck.
From the article: Dr. French emphasised that no link has yet been shown between the specific biological effects of mobile phone radiation and cancer, but that there was now a theoretical framework for such an effect that could be investigated.
So we have a guy theorizing that this could in fact be the case, without any real link, just a leap of faith. The research is nearly 2 years old. ANy follow up?
Sorry. There are two possible phenomena at work here. First is the possible damage to DNA from radiation. This is impossible, as mentioned. Second is possible heating by absorption of microwave radiation (I assume you mean water). These frequencies at which water does so are actually quite narrow, and a 1.9 GHz cell phone will not be absorbed much at all by water. Otherwise, your cell phone reception would go to shit on a humid day. I could send you a microwave absorption spectrum of water, and show you that it doesn't happen at 1.9.
So, as everybody mentions, they feel like using this as an opportunity to hit P2P networks. But really, they get what they get - if you don't invest money in new, fresh artists, don't be surprised when sales are flat.
It's just like any other industry, and they've cut the equivalent of R&D. Well, when your market is in durable goods (you don't sell someone the same CD over and over, though it seems like it), and you have no innovation, guess what? Your sales will suck! Quit blaming MP3's, guys!
Which is why there is no problem; last I checked cell phones don't operate in the microwave. (800 MHz I believe) Also, I was specific - microwaves are not radio waves, and I never claimed being near microwaves was safe.
As for power being irrelevant, it is when we're talking about radiation that is about 6 orders of magnitude too low in frequency to cause any sort of dangerous electronic transitions (UV is about 1,000,000 THz). The dependence is exponential - so if something is possible but improbable for UV, it is absolutely impossible for radio waves.
Bottom line, unless you have an exceptionally liberal definition of "radio," they won't be causing any damage.
Are you the same troll that corrects people's spelling? If I were publishing this in a damned journal, I *would* have said "power," jackass. And that's not actually *wrong*, since a Watt IS a unit of power last I checked.
It took the physics guys this long to figure out that a beowulf cluster of skyscrappers works better ?
What's cool is that taking a signal of a given bandwidth, splitting it, bouncing it, and recombining it is actually better. It's a bit like saying that a Beowulf cluster made of 3 1GHz PIV's would beat the crap out of a single 3GHz PIV system - which should not happen. Crazy!
OK, I'm a physical chemist, and this junk drives me up the wall.
All these journalists assume that the wattage is what matters, and that being 1 cm from a 4 watt transmitter could be unhealthy. However, the wattage is irrelevant - Einstein showed this with the photoelectric effect. Basically, it is the frequency of the radiation that is dangerous, not the wattage, because one photon interacts with one electron - so the number of photons is irrelevant. For example, which would you rather be near - a 100W light bulb, or a 1W gamma ray emitter? Thought so...;)
To give you a baseline, cancer due to radiation occurs because photons of succicient energy actually break chemical bonds in your DNA. This requires low-UV or better to accomplish. That's why sunburn gives you cancer. Now, compare this to radio waves, which are far, FAR to low in energy to accomplish anything of the sort. In fact, radio waves are even to low to excite the vibrational or rotational states of a molecule (which is how a microwave oven works), so there is no risk of "cooking" your brain, either.
Ultimately, when pressed, these cell-phone-cancer freaks point at two cases where some habitual cell-phone user got cancer on the right side of his brain. Ergo, it was the cell phone. These "doctors" (and I use the term loosely) have never proposed any sort of mechanism or ANYTHING to explain how it could occur. Because it can't.
Bottom line, you have a better chance of getting cancer from your own body heat (you emit infrared radiation) than you do from a cell phone.
1. TCPA is hardware and, as far as I can tell, an open spec. Bill can't "scrap" it. In fact, Bill isn't the major push for it - that would be the **AA, if you believe the conspiracy theories (I do). Not to say RTFA, but... And anyway, I have no idea what TCPA and Microsoft's stance on it has to do with Microsoft's fear of OpenSource.
Microsoft Bob...HAHAHAHA! Now THAT was funny. I would love to know who greenlighted that one - probably heading Microsoft Iceland right about now.
Same with Sun - they had to either get MS to completely abandon any fake Java implemetation, or to ship theirs, which is what happened.
is that Apple doesn't have a monopoly to leverage if they wanted to. If M$ didn't have the market share they do, none of what they do would be illegal. I'm not saying Apple is a bunch of greedy assholes - but I am saying that there's no way to tell that they're not just as bad.
I'm sure M$ could bust every word processor ( like whoever owns Word Perfect these days, or Sun, their favorite target) for "reverse-engineering" their file formats. Of course, they'll probably 2 months after they remove file conversion support from office.
In Soviet Russia, you no take off hat, it will nailed to your head.
Okay, actually, that was under Ivan the Terrible, but I digress...