The main question is if the total accident rate has increased since cell phones became ubiquitous. As far as I know the answer is "no", the accident rate actually went down.
"Tied to" doesn't mean "caused", or "increased the chance of". Usually "tied to" is a lazy qualifier from a lazy researcher or journalist.
The post has two completely irrelevant numbers:
1. fires "about 17 every hour" (why the rate of fires in the whole country important? Many cars -> many fires per hour).
2. "one fire for every 33 million miles" - useless number without providing comparable stats for gasoline cars, and normalizing to the car age, adjusting for causes of fire, etc.
C'mon editors and writers, don't be lazy bums - there is enough of this stupid garbage in "mainstream media".
Chromium task manager shows that it is using 103,376K to show this page. Why are web browsers so inefficient? This page is ~400K in size. Why is the browser using ~250 bytes per byte of text?
Do you have any information about the absolute heating caused? I dunno, but a 4W light bulb is still hot to the touch - not sure I'd want to poke my brain with a 1W heat source.
Here's a simple experiment: wrap you hand around your cellphone antennae and call someone. Do you feel ANY heat? Didn't think so.
There are several problems with your bulb analogy. 1) While human body is almost opaque to the infrared light (i.e. absorbs most of the heat from the bulb) it is almost transparent to radio waves (that's why you don't lose cell phone signal when in a crowd of people). 2) Only a small spot heats up from the bulb - spread the same heat over the whole hand and you'd barely feel it. Spread over the volume of your body and you won't feel anything.
Btw, photons from Bluetooth headset ~3 times more energetic than the ones from your cell phone (2.4GHz vs 850MHz):) (Still negligible compared to the energy of photons at 300THz for visible light. Remember Herr Planck: E=h_bar*omega...).
What would be the physics behind cell phones causing cancer?
Photons of EM waves at 900MHz have tiny energy compared to bonding energy of molecules and compared to ionization energy of atoms. Radio waves simply can't cause chemical changes in the human body.
Amount of heat absorbed (cell phones emit ~1-2W, only small fraction is absorbed) is also insignificant compared to the amounts human body produces.
I think statistical fluke in their data is most likely reason for their conclusion.
Are they nuts? They could've hired a competent nice guy for less:)
Well, I know a place that has an opening for a well paid network admin. Sending my resume right now.
I think that the voting machines that San Francisco uses are the best design so far. We get a paper form on which you mark your vote (by drawing a line next to your choice). If you are voting in person, you feed the paper into a machine that 1) Alerts you if you overvoted or didn't mark anything 2) Counts the votes and 3) Stores the marked paper ballot.
This system has all the benefits: the preliminary results are available immediately from the electronic machine, there is a complete paper trail, you know if the machine couldn't read the ballot, and absentee ballots look exactly the same as the ballots in the precinct. Why isn't this system used everywhere?
I have a Ph.D. in Math (from UC Berkeley) and I've been tinkering with computers since middle school. Well more than tinkering - I worked as a programmer for a year between undergrad and grad school and have done everything from GUI to device drivers.
Anyway, the combination of Math+CS seems to do the trick. Every time I was looking for a job I got two or three offers. Usually from two areas biomed research and engineering, with engineering offers consistently being significantly better ($$$). Right now I'm developing algorithms for tomography.
If you go for a Math degree I would suggest trying to get involved in projects in applied areas (biology, optics, engineering, physics). In my case, tomography was a side project when I was working on my dissertation. Also, try to learn statistics well.
I work a lot with guys from there. They are good. The only potential problem -- it is in the middle of nowhere (upstate NY, 5hr drive from any place you may want to live).
Just remember that Lithium batteries begin to loose capacity after only 100 recharge cycles. My laptop battery is down to 1/2 the original capacity after ~110 cycles.
Would you buy a car that would only last you 150 days before very costly repairs? QED
Why is this article posted on/.? At best this is a report of a minor advance in a well established field. Hundreds of such advances are made in every field every week. Yes, PR department at Weitzmann Inst called it a breakthrough but that doesn't make it into one.
Is it possible to limit the science postings to real science news? Maybe have editors who know the field evaluate the postings before hand.
Well, as a regular/. reader I'm confused. In the past couple of year I've read dozens of reports here about breakthrough discoveries in cancer treatment and fusion research. However, neither cancer has been cured nor fusion reactors have been built.
I remember reading that flash memory can only be rewritten only about 10K-1M times. It works Ok for USB memory sticks, but having a page file on a solid state disk would destroy it in no time.
There were several cases recently when high profile research results turned out to be fraudulent. What I can't understand is what were the authors thinking... Yes, it is possible to get a fraudulent paper accepted, but immediately dozens of other labs will be trying to reproduce the results and discover the fraud.
I can believe that a third-rate paper published in a third-rate journal will not get much scrutiny from other researchers. However, these guys reported major results that many other labs were trying to achieve. What were they thinking?
AFAIK timeshares have pretty bad reputation because of the shady methods of selling them. So, many people who had their identity stolen may have already been (perfectly legally) swindled.
If we are talking about civil or mechanical or chemical engineers why do we need more? The infrastructure in the US is very much built out and there is not much new construction going on. India and China have a lot of new construction going on and that's where engineers are needed most.
Isn't it just like saying that US has fewer farmers than India or China? True, but who cares if they can supply all the food we need.
Slashdot Mirror
The main question is if the total accident rate has increased since cell phones became ubiquitous. As far as I know the answer is "no", the accident rate actually went down. "Tied to" doesn't mean "caused", or "increased the chance of". Usually "tied to" is a lazy qualifier from a lazy researcher or journalist.
Bittorent Sync. Works quite well. http://getsync.com/
The post has two completely irrelevant numbers: 1. fires "about 17 every hour" (why the rate of fires in the whole country important? Many cars -> many fires per hour). 2. "one fire for every 33 million miles" - useless number without providing comparable stats for gasoline cars, and normalizing to the car age, adjusting for causes of fire, etc. C'mon editors and writers, don't be lazy bums - there is enough of this stupid garbage in "mainstream media".
Chromium task manager shows that it is using 103,376K to show this page. Why are web browsers so inefficient? This page is ~400K in size. Why is the browser using ~250 bytes per byte of text?
Do you have any information about the absolute heating caused? I dunno, but a 4W light bulb is still hot to the touch - not sure I'd want to poke my brain with a 1W heat source.
Here's a simple experiment: wrap you hand around your cellphone antennae and call someone. Do you feel ANY heat? Didn't think so.
There are several problems with your bulb analogy. 1) While human body is almost opaque to the infrared light (i.e. absorbs most of the heat from the bulb) it is almost transparent to radio waves (that's why you don't lose cell phone signal when in a crowd of people). 2) Only a small spot heats up from the bulb - spread the same heat over the whole hand and you'd barely feel it. Spread over the volume of your body and you won't feel anything.
Btw, photons from Bluetooth headset ~3 times more energetic than the ones from your cell phone (2.4GHz vs 850MHz) :) (Still negligible compared to the energy of photons at 300THz for visible light. Remember Herr Planck: E=h_bar*omega...).
Photons of EM waves at 900MHz have tiny energy compared to bonding energy of molecules and compared to ionization energy of atoms. Radio waves simply can't cause chemical changes in the human body.
Amount of heat absorbed (cell phones emit ~1-2W, only small fraction is absorbed) is also insignificant compared to the amounts human body produces. I think statistical fluke in their data is most likely reason for their conclusion.
Are they nuts? They could've hired a competent nice guy for less :)
Well, I know a place that has an opening for a well paid network admin. Sending my resume right now.
Who came up with the name like Hadron for the elementary particles? What was s/he thinking?
This system has all the benefits: the preliminary results are available immediately from the electronic machine, there is a complete paper trail, you know if the machine couldn't read the ballot, and absentee ballots look exactly the same as the ballots in the precinct. Why isn't this system used everywhere?
No, but you are welcome to camp out near that Safeway and get Jamies autograph :)
at my local supermarket (Diamond Heights Safeway). He looks exactly like he does on TV (doh...).
Anyway, the combination of Math+CS seems to do the trick. Every time I was looking for a job I got two or three offers. Usually from two areas biomed research and engineering, with engineering offers consistently being significantly better ($$$). Right now I'm developing algorithms for tomography.
If you go for a Math degree I would suggest trying to get involved in projects in applied areas (biology, optics, engineering, physics). In my case, tomography was a side project when I was working on my dissertation. Also, try to learn statistics well.
Good luck.
I work a lot with guys from there. They are good. The only potential problem -- it is in the middle of nowhere (upstate NY, 5hr drive from any place you may want to live).
Rule #7625: No law of robotics will protect you from being naturally (un)selected.
Would you buy a car that would only last you 150 days before very costly repairs? QED
Palm has been going down the drains for many years now. Too bad - I like my Palm Pilot. Maybe getting bought by Apple will save the platform...
Why is this article posted on /.? At best this is a report of a minor advance in a well established field. Hundreds of such advances are made in every field every week. Yes, PR department at Weitzmann Inst called it a breakthrough but that doesn't make it into one.
Is it possible to limit the science postings to real science news? Maybe have editors who know the field evaluate the postings before hand.
that Boris Zhidkov didn't contact the russian mob... :)
What am I missing? :)
I guess Apple investors are willing to pay more for the company. I vote "irrational exuberance" :)
I remember reading that flash memory can only be rewritten only about 10K-1M times. It works Ok for USB memory sticks, but having a page file on a solid state disk would destroy it in no time.
I can believe that a third-rate paper published in a third-rate journal will not get much scrutiny from other researchers. However, these guys reported major results that many other labs were trying to achieve. What were they thinking?
"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is..." Groucho Marx (AFAIK)
AFAIK timeshares have pretty bad reputation because of the shady methods of selling them. So, many people who had their identity stolen may have already been (perfectly legally) swindled.
Isn't it just like saying that US has fewer farmers than India or China? True, but who cares if they can supply all the food we need.