This would be true if it were conclusively proven that cell phone use is bad for you (I mean, aside from the obvious). If you, on the other hand, opened up a Poison Soda shop without telling your customers of the poison, that would be entirely different. Firstly, you're selling a product known and proven to be dangerous, and purposefully injecting a substance known to be harmful. Secondly, you're wrapping it in a product otherwise thought to be safe and tasty.
Cell phones, on the other hand, haven't (yet) been conclusively proven to be bad for you in any way, shape or form (besides temporary stupidity inducement). Secondly, the debate and questioning as to whether cell phones are damaging is a widely known public debate. It's not like we're fooling them into thinking that there's nooooo possible way that cell phones might have EEEEVER been proven to be bad for you.
In fact, the FCC has done a number of studies, enforced power regulation for modern phones, and every manufacturer prints in every manual a section on RF. No deception.
Certainly, if cell phones are proven harmful, you'll see them either (a) fixed or (b) discontinued. But I'll tell you my gut instinct -- and keep in mind, I plan to be out of this industry in a month: I think we'll find out that the effects are negligible.
I in fact have a sister who =used= to be that age... and let me tell you, if there IS any affect on brain function, we'll never notice.
=)
No, seriously. I know what you're talking about; it's ridiculous. But somehow the families never seem to get more than about 1500 or 2000 minutes to share between all four/five/eighty of them.
Maybe my piece of backwoods (Fort Walton Beach, Florida) just hasn't discovered the cell phone addiction yet.
/in which case I'm in the wrong business. //love the slashes.
Potentially true! But, like the tobacconist, I don't hold a gun to anyone's head and make them buy a cell phone. If they wanna rot their brain / not, or rot their lungs / not, it's entirely up to them. I just profit.;)
Some brief googling reveals very little about the study discussed in this article; the closest it comes to is a compilation of several different studies.
Link to the former-pdf, now HTML-ized Google cache of the study from the original site, in both Swedish and English: Here.
Even a cursory look at the linked study will show that there have been many, many studies on the effects of RF on animals with conflicting, confusing, and uncertain results. Unfortunately, I'm not a scientist specializing in this field, so I really can't comment one way or the other on the validity of the tests.
It's difficult not to hand-wave this study away without some real, significant, reproduceable results.
An increase from 1 person to 2.4 people getting cancer is serious, if your sample size is 10 people. If your sample size is 10,000 people, or 50,000 people, the difference between 1 and 2.4 is statistical error. To really derive anything further, we'd have to go read the study.
The trouble with doing scientific studies on real, moving people is that it's exceptionally difficult to control external variables. For instance: GSM cell phones (Cingular, T-Mobile, a few minor regional carriers) have a total of four bands they operate on, 850, 900, 1800 and another band that escapes me. CDMA phones (Verizon, Sprint, etc) operate on others, and iDen (Nextel, Southern LINC, etc) phones operate on yet another. Each type varies in wavelength and power output, so it's a vast generalization to say "Cell phones are bad for your brains", because of the vast differences between the services, the cell phones, and the effects of different frequencies on different parts of your brain.
Random appeal to authority: I'm a ham radio operator, and they make us learn interesting things about what too much RF does to you. But at the frequencies we operate, site surveys start being required when you're pushing more than 50 watts at 146 MHz (for instance). 50 watts is something like 50-100 times the amount of power that cell phones push, but, again, at different frequencies, so I'm not really sure I said anything relevant there. It's just hard to tell.
By the time the studies start showing reproduceable evidence, I'll be out of college and far away from the wireless industry, hopefully reducing my chances of being sued;)
I work for cell phones, so I'm really getting a kick out of some of these replies...
Er, wait, wrong website.
Seriously, though. I sell cell phones. The study alleges that heavy cell phone use results in a 240% increase in brain tumors on the cell-phone side. Firstly, I don't know about the rest of you guys, but I use my cell on both sides of my head.
Secondly, they define "heavy usage" as "one hour per workday", or 60 minutes a day. Assuming they don't touch their cell phones during weekends, or after work, that comes out to 1320 minutes. A month. Dear god. I think perhaps 2-5% of the people I sell phones to get plans that would accomodate that.
But let's assume they use it for an average of 1.2 hours per day, to account for weekend and after-work usage. 36 hours a month, or 2160 minutes PER MONTH. It's like saying, OMG SUN === CANCER!!!!!oneoneeleventy because laying out in the sun three hours a day increases your risk of skin cancer. Sure, maybe it does, but WHO DOES THAT?
/so glad april fool's pink is gone //importing fark slashies. ///trend?
Do mobo makers have leverage in this area?! Or is it likely to be the other way round, "This motherboard doesn't support Vista, I ain't buying it" kinda scenario.
Well, who do you think has stronger branding -- Microsoft, or Gigabyte / Asus / Whomever?
/easy question //microsoft doom machine! ///too much time on fark.
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses ( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected ( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money ( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks ( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it (x) Users of email will not put up with it ( ) Microsoft will not put up with it ( ) The police will not put up with it ( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers ( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once (x) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers (x) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists ( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it ( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email ( ) Open relays in foreign countries (x) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses ( ) Asshats ( ) Jurisdictional problems ( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes ( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money ( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP ( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack ( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email (x) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes ( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches ( ) Extreme profitability of spam ( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft ( ) Technically illiterate politicians ( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers ( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with Microsoft ( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with Yahoo ( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves (x) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering ( ) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical ( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable ( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation (x) Blacklists suck (x) Whitelists suck ( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored ( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud ( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks ( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually ( ) Sending email should be free ( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers? ( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses ( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem (x) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome ( ) I don't want the government reading my email (x) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work. (x) This is a stupid idea, and you're a fascist for suggesting it. ( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!
As a ham radio operator, I have to ask why you were cooking hot dogs at two meters.
As the ARES Emergency Coordinator for Okaloosa County, Florida, I'm intrigued by your new fail-safe cooking methods, and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
As a Skywarn storm spotter who routinely pushes 60 watts out at two meters, a few inches above my head, I compltlly den ythat two metarra radio has ann yffect on brawin tishhhue.
The thought, however, is that the Ph. D. in Astrophysics gives him a -much- better chance of BEING right than either you or I, Mister Anonymous Coward. Your psychobabble about theories being approximations reflects a grave misunderstanding of what a scientific theory actually is.
Y'know, I promised myself I'd never do one of these, but it just makes too much sense. All we can do is pray and filter on the client side. Spam is not goin' nowhere. We're not going to stop it. It's never going to stop making money. So...
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses (x) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected (x) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money ( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks ( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it (x) Users of email will not put up with it (x) Microsoft will not put up with it ( ) The police will not put up with it ( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers (x) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once ( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers ( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists ( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it (x) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email (x) Open relays in foreign countries ( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses (x) Asshats (x) Jurisdictional problems (x) Unpopularity of weird new taxes (x) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money (x) Huge existing software investment in SMTP ( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack ( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email (x) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes ( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches (x) Extreme profitability of spam ( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft ( ) Technically illiterate politicians (x) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers (x) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with Microsoft (x) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with Yahoo (x) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves ( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering (x) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(x) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical ( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable ( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation ( ) Blacklists suck ( ) Whitelists suck ( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored (x) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud ( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks ( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually (x) Sending email should be free (x) Why should we have to trust you and your servers? ( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses ( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem ( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome ( ) I don't want the government reading my email (x) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
(x) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work. ( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a fascist for suggesting it. ( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!
See, though, that's the point. It's all been said before. We've all hashed over this. Spam isn't going anywhere. We're not going to stop it. All we can do is client-side filtering and pray for the best.
Slashdot Mirror
....Greasemonkey?
Well, since this case is in Europe, I'd assume it's a metric fucktonne.
Yeah, I have that problem too.
/long live the slashie.
The phrase you're actually looking for is "Die in a fire".
... .. aww, fark it.
a d=3&sid=8901
It was uttered by a
RTFA: http://www.kdhnews.com/docs/daily/headlines.aspx?
So yes. "Die in a fire". =)
What, like Nutrasweet?
This would be true if it were conclusively proven that cell phone use is bad for you (I mean, aside from the obvious). If you, on the other hand, opened up a Poison Soda shop without telling your customers of the poison, that would be entirely different. Firstly, you're selling a product known and proven to be dangerous, and purposefully injecting a substance known to be harmful. Secondly, you're wrapping it in a product otherwise thought to be safe and tasty.
Cell phones, on the other hand, haven't (yet) been conclusively proven to be bad for you in any way, shape or form (besides temporary stupidity inducement). Secondly, the debate and questioning as to whether cell phones are damaging is a widely known public debate. It's not like we're fooling them into thinking that there's nooooo possible way that cell phones might have EEEEVER been proven to be bad for you.
In fact, the FCC has done a number of studies, enforced power regulation for modern phones, and every manufacturer prints in every manual a section on RF. No deception.
Certainly, if cell phones are proven harmful, you'll see them either (a) fixed or (b) discontinued. But I'll tell you my gut instinct -- and keep in mind, I plan to be out of this industry in a month: I think we'll find out that the effects are negligible.
I in fact have a sister who =used= to be that age... and let me tell you, if there IS any affect on brain function, we'll never notice.
/in which case I'm in the wrong business.
//love the slashes.
=)
No, seriously. I know what you're talking about; it's ridiculous. But somehow the families never seem to get more than about 1500 or 2000 minutes to share between all four/five/eighty of them.
Maybe my piece of backwoods (Fort Walton Beach, Florida) just hasn't discovered the cell phone addiction yet.
Yeah, okay, I definitely missed something here. Cool movie, but... somehow I missed the connection here.
Er. Well, not at the same time....
oh god. my poor brain. make the numbers stop.
Potentially true! But, like the tobacconist, I don't hold a gun to anyone's head and make them buy a cell phone. If they wanna rot their brain / not, or rot their lungs / not, it's entirely up to them. I just profit. ;)
Some brief googling reveals very little about the study discussed in this article; the closest it comes to is a compilation of several different studies.
;)
Link to the former-pdf, now HTML-ized Google cache of the study from the original site, in both Swedish and English: Here.
Even a cursory look at the linked study will show that there have been many, many studies on the effects of RF on animals with conflicting, confusing, and uncertain results. Unfortunately, I'm not a scientist specializing in this field, so I really can't comment one way or the other on the validity of the tests.
It's difficult not to hand-wave this study away without some real, significant, reproduceable results.
An increase from 1 person to 2.4 people getting cancer is serious, if your sample size is 10 people. If your sample size is 10,000 people, or 50,000 people, the difference between 1 and 2.4 is statistical error. To really derive anything further, we'd have to go read the study.
The trouble with doing scientific studies on real, moving people is that it's exceptionally difficult to control external variables. For instance: GSM cell phones (Cingular, T-Mobile, a few minor regional carriers) have a total of four bands they operate on, 850, 900, 1800 and another band that escapes me. CDMA phones (Verizon, Sprint, etc) operate on others, and iDen (Nextel, Southern LINC, etc) phones operate on yet another. Each type varies in wavelength and power output, so it's a vast generalization to say "Cell phones are bad for your brains", because of the vast differences between the services, the cell phones, and the effects of different frequencies on different parts of your brain.
Random appeal to authority: I'm a ham radio operator, and they make us learn interesting things about what too much RF does to you. But at the frequencies we operate, site surveys start being required when you're pushing more than 50 watts at 146 MHz (for instance). 50 watts is something like 50-100 times the amount of power that cell phones push, but, again, at different frequencies, so I'm not really sure I said anything relevant there. It's just hard to tell.
By the time the studies start showing reproduceable evidence, I'll be out of college and far away from the wireless industry, hopefully reducing my chances of being sued
I work for cell phones, so I'm really getting a kick out of some of these replies...
/so glad april fool's pink is gone
//importing fark slashies.
///trend?
Er, wait, wrong website.
Seriously, though. I sell cell phones. The study alleges that heavy cell phone use results in a 240% increase in brain tumors on the cell-phone side. Firstly, I don't know about the rest of you guys, but I use my cell on both sides of my head.
Secondly, they define "heavy usage" as "one hour per workday", or 60 minutes a day. Assuming they don't touch their cell phones during weekends, or after work, that comes out to 1320 minutes. A month. Dear god. I think perhaps 2-5% of the people I sell phones to get plans that would accomodate that.
But let's assume they use it for an average of 1.2 hours per day, to account for weekend and after-work usage. 36 hours a month, or 2160 minutes PER MONTH. It's like saying, OMG SUN === CANCER!!!!!oneoneeleventy because laying out in the sun three hours a day increases your risk of skin cancer. Sure, maybe it does, but WHO DOES THAT?
I haven't read the comic, for fear that it'll spoil my enjoyment of the movie ;)
god I hate this pink colour.
Reminder that one cannot Godwin a thread simply by mentioning Godwin.
Motherfuckin' ponies on a plane?
/sorry.
...you beat me to it! Damnit!
Great movie, though. Great movie.
England PREVAILS!
...Fixed that for you.
Do mobo makers have leverage in this area?! Or is it likely to be the other way round, "This motherboard doesn't support Vista, I ain't buying it" kinda scenario.
/easy question
//microsoft doom machine!
///too much time on fark.
Well, who do you think has stronger branding -- Microsoft, or Gigabyte / Asus / Whomever?
My brain!!! The filters do nothing!!!
You Personally advocate a
(x) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
(x) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
(x) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
(x) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
(x) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
( ) Asshats
( ) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
(x) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with Microsoft
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with Yahoo
( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
(x) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
(x) Blacklists suck
(x) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
(x) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
(x) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
(x) This is a stupid idea, and you're a fascist for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!
As a ham radio operator, I have to ask why you were cooking hot dogs at two meters.
As the ARES Emergency Coordinator for Okaloosa County, Florida, I'm intrigued by your new fail-safe cooking methods, and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
As a Skywarn storm spotter who routinely pushes 60 watts out at two meters, a few inches above my head, I compltlly den ythat two metarra radio has ann yffect on brawin tishhhue.
73 de KI4IIB
The thought, however, is that the Ph. D. in Astrophysics gives him a -much- better chance of BEING right than either you or I, Mister Anonymous Coward. Your psychobabble about theories being approximations reflects a grave misunderstanding of what a scientific theory actually is.
But I really don't have time to waste on trolls.
Y'know, I promised myself I'd never do one of these, but it just makes too much sense. All we can do is pray and filter on the client side. Spam is not goin' nowhere. We're not going to stop it. It's never going to stop making money. So...
You personally advocate a
( ) technical ( ) legislative (x) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
(x) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
(x) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
(x) Users of email will not put up with it
(x) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
(x) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
(x) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
(x) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
(x) Asshats
(x) Jurisdictional problems
(x) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
(x) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
(x) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
(x) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
(x) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
(x) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
(x) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with Microsoft
(x) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with Yahoo
(x) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
(x) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(x) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
(x) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
(x) Sending email should be free
(x) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
(x) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
(x) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a fascist for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!
See, though, that's the point. It's all been said before. We've all hashed over this. Spam isn't going anywhere. We're not going to stop it. All we can do is client-side filtering and pray for the best.
I am a leaf on the wind... watch as I GRAAHHHHH!!! DEATH TO JOSS WHEADON! DEAAATH!!!! DEAAATH!!!
:\
*sob* Sorry. I'm still in recovery from that scene