Oddly enough, that reminds me of my college days...
Ripple flashback.
Subtitle: Lincoln, Nebraska: 1984
My best friend was an EE major. Every Sunday, he, two other buddies, and I would get together to play cards and smoke really cheap cigars.
Both of the other two friends were nuts. They lived across the alley from the local Salvation Army, where they'd go dumpster-diving.
That's right: they would go looking for crap that not even the Salvation Army could re-sell.
Well, one day they found a pair of huge concert speakers that were inoperable save for the very large magnets in them. The one crazy guy placed one magnet at the head of his bed and the other at the foot. He believed this would "align the minerals in his body."
He also found an old ruined lamp. He cut the electrical cord from it, stripped the ends of the wires, and would occasionally plug it into the wall outlet and grab the exposed ends. He'd hang on as long as he could because he thought he could "align the vitamins in his body" via 120V alternating current.
We called it "home electroshock therapy."
Then there was the other guy, the first one's roommate. He thought he controlled the weather and streetlights with his mind.
Well, one night there was a tornado. The first friend, the EE major, happened to be on his bike when it hit and had to dive for the nearest ditch. He emerged unscathed, but he was really rattled for a week after. I think it was one of those moments we all have when we realize we're not immortal after all.
So the crazy dude who thought he controlled the weather was going on about how he'd created the storm and its accompanying tornado. He was all excited about it, going on about how he was standing in his front yard making all this stuff happen.
The EE major finally said:
"Tim, you've got to stop playing God like that! I was almost killed!"
The crazy friend was taken aback, then apologized profusely. We never attempted to correct him because we were too busy laughing our asses off behind his back.
I hear that he found religion later in life, and considers his previous use of his "gifts" as Satanic. He consequently does not attempt to control streetlights not the weather any more.
As the OP mentions, there is absolutely no medical evidence that electronic devices are in any way harmful.
Anyone "suffering" from this "syndrome" is nothing but a hypochondriac with no scientific knowledge whatsoever.
If they had any scientific knowledge, they'd know that just radiation from natural sources (such as the Sun or the Earth's magnetic field) floods them with more EM in an hour than humans could generate in a lifetime.
Well, unless you had access to, say, an unshielded particle accelerator...
... where people think common, everyday contrails are the government spraying all of North America with chemicals, why should anyone be surprised when someone believes more BS?
The truly tragic part is that whatever this girl had, it wouldn't have been treated had you put her inside a Faraday Cage.
You know, maybe I should develop a portable Faraday Cage. It would need to be collapsible and a little larger than a person sitting when deployed. Then, when deployed, it would cover a person sitting in their seat, with special arm holes.
Y'all don't understand how anxiety disorders work:
When we go off our meds, it doesn't turn us into murderous psychopaths. It makes us curl up into a ball and try not to scream for days at a time.
When I said, "go to pieces so fast people would be killed by the shrapnel," I was quoting Ford Prefect. He was talking about Zaphod Beeblebrox in The Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy
In my particular case, I first learned I was on a terrorist watch list in 2004, when I renewed my drivers' license.
The lady at DMV informed me of it, and said there would be an additional three-week wait for my license while they did a background check on me.
Ever since, every time I've flown, I've been pulled aside for additional searches and questioning,
The fun part is that there's no way to get off the list. I've now have three Congressman and a Senator from two different States tell me this.
The really infuriating part is that I suffer from an anxiety disorder. The only danger to those around me is if I go off my meds and then fly to pieces so fast people get hit by the shrapnel.
I consider any of these types of studies to have faulty logic.
Humans have only been creating electromagnetic signals for about a century. None of them make it to Alpha Centauri, four light-years away. There isn't a radio transmitter with the power.
Furthermore, as we enter an age in which we live largely in virtual worlds of our own design, strong radio emissions (radio, TV) are decreasing. Sure, there's plenty of wifi, but we all know that signal won't make it more than a couple of blocks, let alone four light-years.
Perhaps it's that I'm in the field, but it seems to me that we're ultimately headed for a world in which human consciousnesses are housed in something we would not today recognize as a machine.
If other civilizations followed our same path (i.e. trapped by the speed of light within our own solar system), then their radio emissions would never be detected. They'd also be fairly short-lived -- a couple of centuries at best.
Once you're a "download" (for lack of a better word) and living your life entirely in virtual worlds that only interface with the real world for power and maintenance, why would you broadcast anything?
In short: these types of approaches assume that civilizations emit greater energy and detectable emissions the older the civilization is. I suspect the reverse is true: the older the civilization, the less it emits.
Re:LibreOrifice - GAY NIGGERS Endorse LibreOrifice
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What the frak is this?
Ok, I recognize the GNAA trolling group, but the rest...
Lawmakers at the Federal level have not upheld their Oaths of Office for over a century. That includes every President, Senator, and Congressman in my lifetime -- Rand and Ron Paul excluded.
The Constitution is a joke no longer worth the parchment on which it's written. It ceased to be of any relevance a century ago. It's a figurehead, like the Queen of England.
There is no point in discussing Constitutonality. The Constitution is wholly and utterly irrelevant.
We live in a growing Police State. There is absolutely nothing that can be done about it. Nothing.
The only thing left to us now is simply react to the tyranny and protect ourselves as much as possible,
Get used to bending your knee. The United States as conceived is gone and will never return.
But the kind of science you want is also not occurring in academic labs. It will never again occur in academic labs, because academics has been undermined by the multiple generations of decreasingly literate students.
For details of the long-term problem, see The Happy Days Ahead by Robert A. Heinlein.
(One thing to keep in mind about Heinlein: he was a compulsive newspaper-clipper. That is to say that he would clip newspaper articles about a subject and file them away. By the time he wrote The Happy Days Ahead, he had about 50 years' newspaper clippings on the subject. He could cite long-term trends in education, with the decades of clippings to back it up.)
No, they were illiterate in the truest sense of the word.
I had students who were unaware that books have page numbers. That's how frequently they cracked a book during twelve years of compulsory education:
I.e., never.
They couldn't read the textbooks. They couldn't read my PowerPoint presentations. They were incapable of following lab manuals -- a complete killer if you're in a systems or network administration class. They detested typing and would not accept my assertion that it's a key skill, one that they'll use continuously in the field.
Real science -- the kind that actually advances human progress -- is no longer occurring in academic laboratories. Rather, it's occurring within companies like Cisco, Google, Apple, even occasionally Microsoft.
Real science make extensive use of the quantuum tunnelling effect, for example. Real science has changed everything about the way we live. Indeed, it's changed it several times during my life (I'm 50).
Science coming out of universities is at best marginal. That coming out of government institutions doesn't even follow the Scientific Method.
"Science" is doing just fine. It's academic institutions that are completely broken.
I say this, by the way, after three years' teaching at a technical college. Most of our incoming students were outright illiterate. They could neither read nor write nor perform the most basic math.
(Want the true definition of "futile"? Try teaching binary mathematics and logic to students that can barely count to ten using their fingers.)
We have raised an entire generation of illiterate ignorami. Small wonder that this bleeds into academic science.
I wish I had your options. Unfortunately, I got divorced too late in life to ever recover financially. I became above-water on all my bills last month -- the first time since my 2004 divorce.
I have no property beyond some furniture and books. I will never again own a home. I drive a 2001 POS and will never own another new car. I had to liquidate my retirement accounts years ago to keep above water on my child support.
I have nothing and I never will again.
(I'm not complaining, BTW. I'm not unique. I've just described a little under 50% of the men of my generation.)
Unfortunately, retiring isn't an option for me. I assume I'll wind up a greeter at Wal-Mart in a few years. After that, well, my family owns some South Dakota ranchland of which I'm fond. When I can no longer physically even be a greeter, I'll go there to die.
Wish I had your resources. Short of that, I'm chomping at the bit for the Singularity, so I can upload my consciousness and leave this insanity behind.;)
I taught at a technical college for three years. That's not a good option.
The unfortunate fact is that the majority of today's US High School grads is that they're illiterate. I don't mean functionally illiterate, I mean absolutely, hands-down illiterate. They could neither read nor write nor perform the most basic math.
Try teaching binary logic and arithmetic to people who can't count to ten using both hands.
No fooling, no exaggeration: it's just that bad.
Consequently, you're faced with a choice: grade honestly and flunk damned near everyone; or falsify your grades.
The former choice causes unemployment. The latter choice inflicts incompetents on the field.
I graded honestly -- and lost my job.
Oh, and teaching positions pay horribly. It was very bad for my morale to walk into the nearby convenience store and see them advertising managers making about what I was as an instructor.
This is fascinating to me, inasmuch as I just hit a landmark birthday (the Big Five-Oh). Theoretically, I've got all the accumulated talent that one would be looking for in my field.
However, the reality is that the industry likes youth. I'm one of the oldest people at the company where I work, and absolutely the oldest sysadmin.
It was also extremely difficult finding this job. I had to be clear that I'm very negotiable on salary, and in fact I took less than I've earned in 20 years.
But it was the only job for someone my age.
Where do old geeks go? We can't all go into management -- I know I lack the temperament for it. Many of us do.
So where are all the people who theoretically could meet the exacting standards of experience that some employers require?
Honestly: where do they go? Where are all the people I started out with in my 20s? They're not at any company I've worked for in the last ten years.
I just left teaching IT at the collegiate level (a trade school). There are two issues:
Not many black students enter IT programs. Don't ask me why. I have theories, but to voice them might open me to charges of racism. Suffice to say that I heard a black commentator recently bemoan how some black people denigrate other black people who try to better themselves. They call it "acting white."
IT is bettering yourself. It's "acting white."
The vast majority of High School graduates are now outright illiterate. They cannot read nor write nor perform the most basic math.
Want real fun? Try teaching binary logic and arithmetic to students who can count to ten if they remember to include both their thumbs.
I had students that were unaware that books had page numbers. Consider the implications of that, for a moment.
We have raised an entire generation of illiterate ignorami. Small wonder that this might include black people, who tend to be hurt even worse than whites in situations like this.
We have raised an entire generation of illiterate ignorami.
I was in the industry for 20 years and now teach at a technical school. I constantly tell my students about the dangers of government involvement in IT:
The guys we send to government aren't really that bright. Those who are bright are also universally attorneys. They've spent their lives learning the law, not technology.
Consequently they have no idea what technology is. This makes them unfit to regulate it. This is a good thing.
They regulate at the speed of law. We innovate past the regulation at the speed of light.
Slashdot Mirror
Oddly enough, that reminds me of my college days ...
Ripple flashback.
Subtitle: Lincoln, Nebraska: 1984
My best friend was an EE major. Every Sunday, he, two other buddies, and I would get together to play cards and smoke really cheap cigars.
Both of the other two friends were nuts. They lived across the alley from the local Salvation Army, where they'd go dumpster-diving.
That's right: they would go looking for crap that not even the Salvation Army could re-sell.
Well, one day they found a pair of huge concert speakers that were inoperable save for the very large magnets in them. The one crazy guy placed one magnet at the head of his bed and the other at the foot. He believed this would "align the minerals in his body."
He also found an old ruined lamp. He cut the electrical cord from it, stripped the ends of the wires, and would occasionally plug it into the wall outlet and grab the exposed ends. He'd hang on as long as he could because he thought he could "align the vitamins in his body" via 120V alternating current.
We called it "home electroshock therapy."
Then there was the other guy, the first one's roommate. He thought he controlled the weather and streetlights with his mind.
Well, one night there was a tornado. The first friend, the EE major, happened to be on his bike when it hit and had to dive for the nearest ditch. He emerged unscathed, but he was really rattled for a week after. I think it was one of those moments we all have when we realize we're not immortal after all.
So the crazy dude who thought he controlled the weather was going on about how he'd created the storm and its accompanying tornado. He was all excited about it, going on about how he was standing in his front yard making all this stuff happen.
The EE major finally said:
"Tim, you've got to stop playing God like that! I was almost killed!"
The crazy friend was taken aback, then apologized profusely. We never attempted to correct him because we were too busy laughing our asses off behind his back.
I hear that he found religion later in life, and considers his previous use of his "gifts" as Satanic. He consequently does not attempt to control streetlights not the weather any more.
I guess if you're crazy ... hey, whatever works. :)
As the OP mentions, there is absolutely no medical evidence that electronic devices are in any way harmful.
Anyone "suffering" from this "syndrome" is nothing but a hypochondriac with no scientific knowledge whatsoever.
If they had any scientific knowledge, they'd know that just radiation from natural sources (such as the Sun or the Earth's magnetic field) floods them with more EM in an hour than humans could generate in a lifetime.
Well, unless you had access to, say, an unshielded particle accelerator ...
Well, these people are idiots, so a hood wouldn't do.
They need a full-body covering. Perhaps a jumpsuit with a hood and face screen? >:)
Again, a pointless device sold to technological luddites.
This is a non-problem. There is nothing that will help.
Might was well make a few bucks off the marks. ;)
You're forgetting that I'd be selling a pointless to technological luddites.
The placebo effect alone would sell it.
... where people think common, everyday contrails are the government spraying all of North America with chemicals, why should anyone be surprised when someone believes more BS?
The truly tragic part is that whatever this girl had, it wouldn't have been treated had you put her inside a Faraday Cage.
You know, maybe I should develop a portable Faraday Cage. It would need to be collapsible and a little larger than a person sitting when deployed. Then, when deployed, it would cover a person sitting in their seat, with special arm holes.
I could make a mint off the tinfoil hat types.
Y'all don't understand how anxiety disorders work:
When we go off our meds, it doesn't turn us into murderous psychopaths. It makes us curl up into a ball and try not to scream for days at a time.
When I said, "go to pieces so fast people would be killed by the shrapnel," I was quoting Ford Prefect. He was talking about Zaphod Beeblebrox in The Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy
Jeez, you people need some geek cred.
In my particular case, I first learned I was on a terrorist watch list in 2004, when I renewed my drivers' license.
The lady at DMV informed me of it, and said there would be an additional three-week wait for my license while they did a background check on me.
Ever since, every time I've flown, I've been pulled aside for additional searches and questioning,
The fun part is that there's no way to get off the list. I've now have three Congressman and a Senator from two different States tell me this.
The really infuriating part is that I suffer from an anxiety disorder. The only danger to those around me is if I go off my meds and then fly to pieces so fast people get hit by the shrapnel.
I consider any of these types of studies to have faulty logic.
Humans have only been creating electromagnetic signals for about a century. None of them make it to Alpha Centauri, four light-years away. There isn't a radio transmitter with the power.
Furthermore, as we enter an age in which we live largely in virtual worlds of our own design, strong radio emissions (radio, TV) are decreasing. Sure, there's plenty of wifi, but we all know that signal won't make it more than a couple of blocks, let alone four light-years.
Perhaps it's that I'm in the field, but it seems to me that we're ultimately headed for a world in which human consciousnesses are housed in something we would not today recognize as a machine.
If other civilizations followed our same path (i.e. trapped by the speed of light within our own solar system), then their radio emissions would never be detected. They'd also be fairly short-lived -- a couple of centuries at best.
Once you're a "download" (for lack of a better word) and living your life entirely in virtual worlds that only interface with the real world for power and maintenance, why would you broadcast anything?
In short: these types of approaches assume that civilizations emit greater energy and detectable emissions the older the civilization is. I suspect the reverse is true: the older the civilization, the less it emits.
What the frak is this?
Ok, I recognize the GNAA trolling group, but the rest ...
Anonymous Coward, please, in the name of Ghu's Holy Purple Robes, learn two basic things:
Oh, and one other suggestion:
Seek psychological help. Now.
Sure, any normal, sane individual doesn't want 24x7 monitoring of all their activities.
However, their governments do.
In the US, we are powerless to stop it. Our rulers will pass whatever law they like, no mater how odious.
Lawmakers at the Federal level have not upheld their Oaths of Office for over a century. That includes every President, Senator, and Congressman in my lifetime -- Rand and Ron Paul excluded.
The Constitution is a joke no longer worth the parchment on which it's written. It ceased to be of any relevance a century ago. It's a figurehead, like the Queen of England.
There is no point in discussing Constitutonality. The Constitution is wholly and utterly irrelevant.
We live in a growing Police State. There is absolutely nothing that can be done about it. Nothing.
The only thing left to us now is simply react to the tyranny and protect ourselves as much as possible,
Get used to bending your knee. The United States as conceived is gone and will never return.
But the kind of science you want is also not occurring in academic labs. It will never again occur in academic labs, because academics has been undermined by the multiple generations of decreasingly literate students.
For details of the long-term problem, see The Happy Days Ahead by Robert A. Heinlein.
(One thing to keep in mind about Heinlein: he was a compulsive newspaper-clipper. That is to say that he would clip newspaper articles about a subject and file them away. By the time he wrote The Happy Days Ahead, he had about 50 years' newspaper clippings on the subject. He could cite long-term trends in education, with the decades of clippings to back it up.)
So they make money in the process of pushing back the boundaries of science.
What's wrong with that?
No, they were illiterate in the truest sense of the word.
I had students who were unaware that books have page numbers. That's how frequently they cracked a book during twelve years of compulsory education:
I.e., never.
They couldn't read the textbooks. They couldn't read my PowerPoint presentations. They were incapable of following lab manuals -- a complete killer if you're in a systems or network administration class. They detested typing and would not accept my assertion that it's a key skill, one that they'll use continuously in the field.
No, sadly, they are simply illiterate,
Real science -- the kind that actually advances human progress -- is no longer occurring in academic laboratories. Rather, it's occurring within companies like Cisco, Google, Apple, even occasionally Microsoft.
Real science make extensive use of the quantuum tunnelling effect, for example. Real science has changed everything about the way we live. Indeed, it's changed it several times during my life (I'm 50).
Science coming out of universities is at best marginal. That coming out of government institutions doesn't even follow the Scientific Method.
"Science" is doing just fine. It's academic institutions that are completely broken.
I say this, by the way, after three years' teaching at a technical college. Most of our incoming students were outright illiterate. They could neither read nor write nor perform the most basic math.
(Want the true definition of "futile"? Try teaching binary mathematics and logic to students that can barely count to ten using their fingers.)
We have raised an entire generation of illiterate ignorami. Small wonder that this bleeds into academic science.
I wish I had your options. Unfortunately, I got divorced too late in life to ever recover financially. I became above-water on all my bills last month -- the first time since my 2004 divorce.
I have no property beyond some furniture and books. I will never again own a home. I drive a 2001 POS and will never own another new car. I had to liquidate my retirement accounts years ago to keep above water on my child support.
I have nothing and I never will again.
(I'm not complaining, BTW. I'm not unique. I've just described a little under 50% of the men of my generation.)
Unfortunately, retiring isn't an option for me. I assume I'll wind up a greeter at Wal-Mart in a few years. After that, well, my family owns some South Dakota ranchland of which I'm fond. When I can no longer physically even be a greeter, I'll go there to die.
Wish I had your resources. Short of that, I'm chomping at the bit for the Singularity, so I can upload my consciousness and leave this insanity behind. ;)
I taught at a technical college for three years. That's not a good option.
The unfortunate fact is that the majority of today's US High School grads is that they're illiterate. I don't mean functionally illiterate, I mean absolutely, hands-down illiterate. They could neither read nor write nor perform the most basic math.
Try teaching binary logic and arithmetic to people who can't count to ten using both hands.
No fooling, no exaggeration: it's just that bad.
Consequently, you're faced with a choice: grade honestly and flunk damned near everyone; or falsify your grades.
The former choice causes unemployment. The latter choice inflicts incompetents on the field.
I graded honestly -- and lost my job.
Oh, and teaching positions pay horribly. It was very bad for my morale to walk into the nearby convenience store and see them advertising managers making about what I was as an instructor.
This is fascinating to me, inasmuch as I just hit a landmark birthday (the Big Five-Oh). Theoretically, I've got all the accumulated talent that one would be looking for in my field.
However, the reality is that the industry likes youth. I'm one of the oldest people at the company where I work, and absolutely the oldest sysadmin.
It was also extremely difficult finding this job. I had to be clear that I'm very negotiable on salary, and in fact I took less than I've earned in 20 years.
But it was the only job for someone my age.
Where do old geeks go? We can't all go into management -- I know I lack the temperament for it. Many of us do.
So where are all the people who theoretically could meet the exacting standards of experience that some employers require?
Honestly: where do they go? Where are all the people I started out with in my 20s? They're not at any company I've worked for in the last ten years.
I call shenanigans.
I just left teaching IT at the collegiate level (a trade school). There are two issues:
Not many black students enter IT programs. Don't ask me why. I have theories, but to voice them might open me to charges of racism. Suffice to say that I heard a black commentator recently bemoan how some black people denigrate other black people who try to better themselves. They call it "acting white."
IT is bettering yourself. It's "acting white."
The vast majority of High School graduates are now outright illiterate. They cannot read nor write nor perform the most basic math.
Want real fun? Try teaching binary logic and arithmetic to students who can count to ten if they remember to include both their thumbs.
I had students that were unaware that books had page numbers. Consider the implications of that, for a moment.
We have raised an entire generation of illiterate ignorami. Small wonder that this might include black people, who tend to be hurt even worse than whites in situations like this.
We have raised an entire generation of illiterate ignorami.
It's not the work schedule that makes me unproductive. It's corporate policies and standards.
"Work harder, not smarter," could be the company motto almost anywhere I've worked.
Guess I'll be looking for a VPN provider overseas.
I was in the industry for 20 years and now teach at a technical school. I constantly tell my students about the dangers of government involvement in IT:
The guys we send to government aren't really that bright. Those who are bright are also universally attorneys. They've spent their lives learning the law, not technology.
Consequently they have no idea what technology is. This makes them unfit to regulate it. This is a good thing.
They regulate at the speed of law. We innovate past the regulation at the speed of light.
It's Time To Send the H-1Bs Home
I have a blog on the subject, if anyone cares:
It's Time To Send the H-1Bs Home.