I did that for a while, too, back before the dotcom crash when I actively considered quitting medicine in order to cash in on my tech background. I was running a full slashcode site, which was quite an education to set up and customize, and I had recruited a couple other MDs to help me choose articles and post discussions.
However, I had grossly overestimated either
a) the relative interest of the subject matter (basically, slashdot but focussed on medical news), or
b) my ability to write in an interesting, engaging manner.
I like to think it was a) but it might well have been b)...
Anyhow, I had a submission or two accepted to slashdot, and every time I posted worthwhile comments that were moderated up I saw nice spikes in my logs. However, the traffic always fell off within a couple of days. After the NASDAQ tanked, I realized I was never going to get rich or even get anything out of running the site beyond the LINUX and slashcode education I had already achieved, so now my server is relegated to a more appropriate use--personal firewall, bookmark page via APACHE, easy email service through the good guys at Squirrelmail, and a wonderful ftp server for my friends and me to share.
Not to insult or anything, but if you really want a good single-player FPS, you owe it to yourself to try out Thief, Thief 2, System Shock 2, or Deus Ex. It sounds like some of the interactive stuff that has been in those games for years is starting to make it into the eye-candy laden Q3-derived stuff.
Honestly, after playing Half-Life, I thought I had tried the greatest single-player game ever. Then I tried some of these others I just mentioned, and I no longer consider games like Elite Force or Blue Shift as anything more than the game equivalent of a comic book. And I'm not talking graphic novel, either. Compared to those, these other games are head and shoulders above them. Gameplay isn't dead, it's just been hiding inside Warren Spector's head, from what I can tell.
Thank you, zCyl. Your response cuts right to the heart of the problem with not just this issue, but also that of the record companies & Napster.
Once the "consumers" of books, music, movies, and so on realize that we are living with a ridiculously outmoded artificial scarcity of these "products", we will see the end of intellectual property. And not a moment too soon.
The reason I put quotes around consumers and products is because these aren't such things the way we are used to thinking of them. As I read in a quote from one of the Grateful Dead recently (paraphrasing, as I don't have it here), "I refuse to call listeners 'consumers'. If someone consumes my song he's done something wrong with it." I couldn't agree more.
What about my server? It has no OS?
on
Is UNIX An OS?
·
· Score: 1
According to the Mac-dude, I guess my server doesn't have an OS.
I installed linux, no GUI, along with Apache and mySQL; I found it ran nicely, reliably, and never crashed, so I've gone so far as to remove the keyboard and monitor (along with the video card). I can only access it through its ethernet.
So does the lack of all that superfluous sh*t make it an OS-less computer?
...and I'm not just talking about the giant population of them in our intestines. You are aware that there are more bacterial cells in your guts than there are human cells in your body, right?
No, I'm talking about the fact that our very mitochondria, the little energy releasers in our bodies, the very things that let us do things that plants can't (like walk, talk, think, have circulatory systems,...)--well, those mitochondria are believed to be just an ancient bacteria that got into a very happy symbiotic/synergistic relationship with some simple animal cells.
Thus the origin of all interesting life on the planet.
So, as you said, don't believe the hype, believe the physics, but you must also ALWAYS believe what empirical evidence has shown to be true, especially if it flies in the face of known principles of biology, physics, etc. It is specifically because we find these "rule breakers" that we discover important new phenomena, and are able to refine/correct our existing equations.
As others have pointed out, this article from New Scientist isn't really that new.
More recently, there was a nice summary of research done over at Medscape which I discussed at my website. Since I'm an oncologist and an electrical engineer, I happen to have a keen interest in the issue from both sides.
If you take a look at my comments on the matter, you may find some food for thought. Basically, this sort of radiation may well pose a threat to our health, but it may do so at such a low rate and take so long to show effects that it may not even matter.
Look at smoking: if you smoke, you have a 7000% increased risk of developing some sort of aerodigestive cancer (oral cavity, larynx, esophagus, lung, etc.) as well as a much higher risk of cervical cancer in women, increased risk of skin cancers, bladder cancer, pancreatic cancer, yadda yadda yadda. That data was easy to find and tease out due to the incredible rarity of these tumors in nonsmokers.
However, now you're talking about much more rare tumors, and not a very large rate of increased risk. You don't even need statistics to see that smoking has a high association with cancer, but when you look at human tumors that only affect 1 in 100,000 people, then try to see if the rate is 2 in 100,000 among those exposed (or, as is more likely, 1.1 in 100,000 among those exposed) you are in a different world. You will need amazingly large populations in order to show a statistically significant difference of even 100% higher risk. And then, even if you do, your research is subject to criticism because you aren't going to be able to do a randomized trial. All retrospective, cohort, or other nonrandomized trials can be picked apart by either the phone manufacturers or consumer interest groups (the two sides, as I see them, in this debate).
In the end, you also have to ask yourself if it matters to you. I know lots of patients who continue to smoke because they just damn like it, and forget trying to get them to quit. They'd literally rather get another cancer than give up their favorite habit. Lots of cell phone (or insert your favorite high tech device here) users will just say to hell with it and continue to use the devices. After all, I still love to ride motorcycles, even after working in an ER.;-)
Statistics are thrown around every 5-6 years decrying the US educational system for producing scads of lawyers and nowhere near enough engineers. It helps to goad guys like me to join EE programs in college (it sure as hell worked on me).
As others have said, once I graduated (Summa Cum Laude, from NC State University, double major in computer and electrical engineering, minor in mathematics), I found a very different picture. Of course, that was way back in '91, and things were pretty crappy in general for the job market, but still... I ended up working as a temp for IBM for a few months, switched to a programming job at $24K/year, and then got the hell out and went to medical school.
Now I'm an MD and more or less have no worries regarding getting a job for the rest of my life. I miss working as an engineer enough to run a website, set up networks for friends and family, run a PC repair/upgrade service on the side, and in general keep my hands dirty on weekends. But I remain a trifle bitter whenever I hear this crap about shortages in the tech field.
Don't believe the hype, boys. I'm a libertarian and all that entails, but I also believe there's something bordering on a conspiracy to try and ensure that geeks and techies don't get too scarce and so keep their wages low.
When I first read the article, I thought it was about some sort of excruciating torture; then I looked closer and found that it wasn't in fact, about Nut Bursting.
If this doesn't outperform AMD's offering, then the parodies will be flying fast.
Dieter: My guest today is Jon Katz, a talking head from an online news and discussion forum. He embodies all that I find irresistable about the dot-commune mentality. Down with ze corporatism, ja?
Katz:...and this new paradigm is signalling a shift in the demographics of this New Media elite who can...
Dieter: Jon Katz, I cannot parse what you are saying. What is this stream of word-like noise that comes from you?
Katz:...death-knell of the old guard with the introduction of the freedom which information confers on those who will wield its awesome power...
Dieter: Jon Katz, your noise has become tiresome. Now is the time ven ve DANCE!
I think of this whole open media business as just a natural extension of the new ease of publishing. I loved the idea of getting nerd-news from nerds, and so found myself hanging around here to stay current on tech topics.
In my other work-life, I decided that I could help to contribute to a more focused news site myself. Thanks to the wonders of the Linux-led revolution, I now do.
The greatest benefit of this type of new media is really the ability to exclude all sorts of information that you don't want to hear/know about/care about. Of course, relying on this media source also means that you are running some risk of not getting news that is otherwise important to you but that you excluded based on your chosen filter, but that's a risk regardless.
After reading Slashdot for a while, I decided that I should get in on a new media information site myself, one that I can meaningfully contribute to. Being a geek, I thought maybe I could add something in the tech world, but after further reflection I decided to do something a bit more specialized. I grabbed the slash code, muddled about a bit, and voila! Now I have my own site, with news processed through the eyes of a doctor.
What I see as truly revolutionary is the change that is possible with such sites as Slashdot and my own--no longer are we stuck with just getting journalists' views or their judgements of what's important. I don't have to slap the newspaper and rant to my wife about how clueless/wrong/brilliant/etc. some article is. Now I can actually do something about the news, even if it is just filtering it through the eyes of an MD. It's participatory, fluid, and I think it's a fundamental change in the way to get news.
Slashdot Mirror
I did that for a while, too, back before the dotcom crash when I actively considered quitting medicine in order to cash in on my tech background. I was running a full slashcode site, which was quite an education to set up and customize, and I had recruited a couple other MDs to help me choose articles and post discussions.
However, I had grossly overestimated either
a) the relative interest of the subject matter (basically, slashdot but focussed on medical news), or
b) my ability to write in an interesting, engaging manner.
I like to think it was a) but it might well have been b)...
Anyhow, I had a submission or two accepted to slashdot, and every time I posted worthwhile comments that were moderated up I saw nice spikes in my logs. However, the traffic always fell off within a couple of days. After the NASDAQ tanked, I realized I was never going to get rich or even get anything out of running the site beyond the LINUX and slashcode education I had already achieved, so now my server is relegated to a more appropriate use--personal firewall, bookmark page via APACHE, easy email service through the good guys at Squirrelmail, and a wonderful ftp server for my friends and me to share.
And you know, I couldn't be happier.
Honestly, after playing Half-Life, I thought I had tried the greatest single-player game ever. Then I tried some of these others I just mentioned, and I no longer consider games like Elite Force or Blue Shift as anything more than the game equivalent of a comic book. And I'm not talking graphic novel, either. Compared to those, these other games are head and shoulders above them. Gameplay isn't dead, it's just been hiding inside Warren Spector's head, from what I can tell.
Please. If anything ever called out for the term, this certainly does:
Butt Pirates. huh huh, huh huh. Yeah, Beavis.
Once the "consumers" of books, music, movies, and so on realize that we are living with a ridiculously outmoded artificial scarcity of these "products", we will see the end of intellectual property. And not a moment too soon.
The reason I put quotes around consumers and products is because these aren't such things the way we are used to thinking of them. As I read in a quote from one of the Grateful Dead recently (paraphrasing, as I don't have it here), "I refuse to call listeners 'consumers'. If someone consumes my song he's done something wrong with it." I couldn't agree more.
I installed linux, no GUI, along with Apache and mySQL; I found it ran nicely, reliably, and never crashed, so I've gone so far as to remove the keyboard and monitor (along with the video card). I can only access it through its ethernet.
So does the lack of all that superfluous sh*t make it an OS-less computer?
Christ, some people can be so dense.
No, I'm talking about the fact that our very mitochondria, the little energy releasers in our bodies, the very things that let us do things that plants can't (like walk, talk, think, have circulatory systems, ...)--well, those mitochondria are believed to be just an ancient bacteria that got into a very happy symbiotic/synergistic relationship with some simple animal cells.
Thus the origin of all interesting life on the planet.
Take ultraviolet radiation as an obvious example; it clearly causes cancer.
Even simple, low power magnetic fields have biological effects. Higher powered magnetic fields can do even more to sensitive tissues like the brain.
So, as you said, don't believe the hype, believe the physics, but you must also ALWAYS believe what empirical evidence has shown to be true, especially if it flies in the face of known principles of biology, physics, etc. It is specifically because we find these "rule breakers" that we discover important new phenomena, and are able to refine/correct our existing equations.
Note that I am not saying that cell phone radiation is harmful; however, there isn't enough evidence to say it is clearly NOT harmful.
More recently, there was a nice summary of research done over at Medscape which I discussed at my website. Since I'm an oncologist and an electrical engineer, I happen to have a keen interest in the issue from both sides.
If you take a look at my comments on the matter, you may find some food for thought. Basically, this sort of radiation may well pose a threat to our health, but it may do so at such a low rate and take so long to show effects that it may not even matter.
Look at smoking: if you smoke, you have a 7000% increased risk of developing some sort of aerodigestive cancer (oral cavity, larynx, esophagus, lung, etc.) as well as a much higher risk of cervical cancer in women, increased risk of skin cancers, bladder cancer, pancreatic cancer, yadda yadda yadda. That data was easy to find and tease out due to the incredible rarity of these tumors in nonsmokers.
However, now you're talking about much more rare tumors, and not a very large rate of increased risk. You don't even need statistics to see that smoking has a high association with cancer, but when you look at human tumors that only affect 1 in 100,000 people, then try to see if the rate is 2 in 100,000 among those exposed (or, as is more likely, 1.1 in 100,000 among those exposed) you are in a different world. You will need amazingly large populations in order to show a statistically significant difference of even 100% higher risk. And then, even if you do, your research is subject to criticism because you aren't going to be able to do a randomized trial. All retrospective, cohort, or other nonrandomized trials can be picked apart by either the phone manufacturers or consumer interest groups (the two sides, as I see them, in this debate).
In the end, you also have to ask yourself if it matters to you. I know lots of patients who continue to smoke because they just damn like it, and forget trying to get them to quit. They'd literally rather get another cancer than give up their favorite habit. Lots of cell phone (or insert your favorite high tech device here) users will just say to hell with it and continue to use the devices. After all, I still love to ride motorcycles, even after working in an ER. ;-)
As others have said, once I graduated (Summa Cum Laude, from NC State University, double major in computer and electrical engineering, minor in mathematics), I found a very different picture. Of course, that was way back in '91, and things were pretty crappy in general for the job market, but still... I ended up working as a temp for IBM for a few months, switched to a programming job at $24K/year, and then got the hell out and went to medical school.
Now I'm an MD and more or less have no worries regarding getting a job for the rest of my life. I miss working as an engineer enough to run a website, set up networks for friends and family, run a PC repair/upgrade service on the side, and in general keep my hands dirty on weekends. But I remain a trifle bitter whenever I hear this crap about shortages in the tech field.
Don't believe the hype, boys. I'm a libertarian and all that entails, but I also believe there's something bordering on a conspiracy to try and ensure that geeks and techies don't get too scarce and so keep their wages low.
If this doesn't outperform AMD's offering, then the parodies will be flying fast.
Katz: ...and this new paradigm is signalling a shift in the demographics of this New Media elite who can...
Dieter: Jon Katz, I cannot parse what you are saying. What is this stream of word-like noise that comes from you?
Katz: ...death-knell of the old guard with the introduction of the freedom which information confers on those who will wield its awesome power...
Dieter: Jon Katz, your noise has become tiresome. Now is the time ven ve DANCE!
Amen to that, Dieter.
In my other work-life, I decided that I could help to contribute to a more focused news site myself. Thanks to the wonders of the Linux-led revolution, I now do.
The greatest benefit of this type of new media is really the ability to exclude all sorts of information that you don't want to hear/know about/care about. Of course, relying on this media source also means that you are running some risk of not getting news that is otherwise important to you but that you excluded based on your chosen filter, but that's a risk regardless.
Vive la revolucion!
--
After reading Slashdot for a while, I decided that I should get in on a new media information site myself, one that I can meaningfully contribute to. Being a geek, I thought maybe I could add something in the tech world, but after further reflection I decided to do something a bit more specialized. I grabbed the slash code, muddled about a bit, and voila! Now I have my own site, with news processed through the eyes of a doctor.
What I see as truly revolutionary is the change that is possible with such sites as Slashdot and my own--no longer are we stuck with just getting journalists' views or their judgements of what's important. I don't have to slap the newspaper and rant to my wife about how clueless/wrong/brilliant/etc. some article is. Now I can actually do something about the news, even if it is just filtering it through the eyes of an MD. It's participatory, fluid, and I think it's a fundamental change in the way to get news.