Slashback: Ghana, Graphics, Tumors 151
The few, the proud, the advententurous, the dorky. Elvis Maximus writes: "Geekcorps has been mentioned here before and met with some interest. Their first batch of volunteers are winding up their tours in Ghana, and the Industry Standard has run a nice piece on their experiences. This is an interesting effort that deserves some attention."
Congratulations (and admiration) to those who participated in this. GeekCorps is good stuff.
Remember, saliva causes stomach cancer ... ByteHog points to this AP story about the alleged connection between cell phone use and cancer, writing: "Kinda interesting, but I'm still going to be wearing tinfoil around my head whenever I make a call ..."
This issue has been raised for years, with no clear winner. The upshot from this study is a data point for the null hypothesis, but inevitably this will drag on, and the next study to become famous will probably be one that contradicts this. Don your tin-foil, kneepads and breathing masks, until fatality is cured.
Resistance is futile, for now. Fervent writes: "Gamecenter has an interesting article on why 3DFX collapsed. Among the reason cited: the proprietary API Glide, not allowing OEM's to sell Voodoo hardware, and NVidia's agressive product cycle." This makes an intersting followup to the recent announcement of the absorption of 3dfx by NVidia.
Play, play, play, and be gone with ye! Greyfox writes: "According to USA Today Etoys is putting itself up for sale. It's the standard dot com failure story. It'd be delicious irony if the folks running the Etoy domain they sued a while back bought their domain name." DarkKnight points to this link at CNETas well.
Re:3dfx sucked it up... (Score:1)
I'm not sure I'd blame it on the lateness of the V3. I think that reputation could have held them through that one, if they hadn't gone with STB... 'course, maybe without STB they'd have been on time?
It's interesting that the V3 did show up on-board in Dell systems for a while. Makes me wonder why they did that, and yet not the old style 'buy our chips' deals.
Ah, well... I suppose we could speculate like that for a long long time...
Re:I miss Glide.. (Score:1)
Legalese Shmezalese (Score:2)
Re:There are big flaws with this cellphone study (Score:1)
Pull your head out of your ass. Rodents are used because they are very close to humans in several aspects: digestion, excretion, immune response, physiology, anatomy etc. Rodents are used because they're CHEAP. And, you can do studies with sucessive generations. So, you see, it's a damn good thing they don't live as long as humans. If they did, they wouldn't be used for experimentation. Where do you think half the drugs developed came from? They don't test new things on people right away - they use mice/rats.
"Besides, what causes cancer in rats doesn't necessarily cause cancer in humans".
I bet'cha all 226 of those were carcinogenic to humans - ranging from mild to severe. Remember, we're all mammals. Physiology is physiology. Ever notice how they group animals together? Birds, reptiles, amphibians, mammals... All mammals have a liver, a brain, etc.
The fact that you can irradiate a rat is a good thing. You can simulate YEARS of exposure over a course of a couple weeks.
The study should not be criticized for its use of rats or mice. You need to look at the scientific process. Examine their methodology. Perhaps someone messed up the statistics? Was it a controlled environment? Are there confounding variables? Example: to do this properly, they would need to expose the rats/mice over the course of their lifetime with comparable doses of radiation that a human would recieve.
Re:Western Arrogance (Score:1)
(To spell it out: You can find brutality and superstition anywhere. Especially in countries that still have the death penalty. Right beside that, you can find freedom, justice, and science. Life is complex; deal with it.)
Re:Isn't the Ghana 'expedition' a waste of resourc (Score:1)
Joshua
Terradot [terradot.org]
landlines suck (Score:1)
Re:SKIP the industrial revolution (Score:1)
In my mind it's more about giving the average Ghanian a window to the world outside Ghana, about giving them a voice in the global communications network of this planet. This is an important thing, I think. I'd never heard of Geekcorps before, but I find myself rather excited and intrigued by the idea.
Terradot [terradot.org]
Great 3dfx postmortem at The Motley Fool (Score:1)
Re:Cellphones (Score:2)
No? There are certainly ions involved in signal propagation down axons. Where do all the electrons go?
Re:Of course etoys is going under (Score:1)
Whelp, Stockmaster has the chart for MSFT [stockmaster.com]. Could you run up the anticipated date for us?
It's not quite so nearly monotonic as the dot coms you list, but it's still not the kind of thing that cheers stockholders.
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Re:Isn't the Ghana 'expedition' a waste of resourc (Score:1)
This person hit the nail on the head. In keeping with a 600+ year tradition, the white is about to fuck the black once again.
If any white person (or country) wanted to truly help an African, and by 'help' I mean with no strings attached, said white would feed said African or teach said African how to grow food. Instead, whitey always plants the seed of his own profit on African soil. Any 'gift' to Africa always has some string attached, such as an explicit (or implicit) agreement that will favor whitey sooner or later. For examples, foreign aid never comes without 'encouragement' to have a western-style government, or to house our troops, or to get addicted to our tobacco or our coca-cola (leading cause of diabetes worldwide). So, five years from now we'll be farming out our web design to a Ghanan for $1/hr, but he won't be able to afford our overpriced cancer drugs. It's like slavery, but enough money changes hands to make it appear not to be.
I'd rather be a unix freak than a freaky eunuch
Re:There are big flaws with this cellphone study (Score:2)
Why the hell does the media report "effects" that aren't statistically significant? A study also has a 50% chance of finding a non-significant correlation between cell phone use and below-average penis size (assuming penis size and cell phone use are unrelated--if they are related, YMMV). This is just alarmism (kinda like my use of bolding above
"Since most solid tumors take 10 to 15 years to develop, it is probably too soon to see an effect"
If you did a study of the effect of smoking on people who have only been smoking for three years, it would be almost impossible for scientists to prove that smoking is harmful [snip] The same could apply to cell phones.
I am not an oncologist, but what you are saying sounds quite reasonable. Given that it takes 10 - 15 years for cancer to develop, any studies that do find a correlation between cell phone usage must be crap, since cell phones haven't been around that long. Now, since there's no evidence that cell phones are carcinogenic (how could there be if cancer takes longer to develop than cell phones have been around), why are we worrying?
Cell phones emit non-ionizing radiation at lower power levels. Compare this to the natural radioactivity and cosmic radiation which you're constantly exposed to (which is certainly ionizing). Now, without any reliable evidence to suggest a significant risk, why should we be concerned about cell phones? I think this whole scare has stemmed out of BYRS (Bourgeois Yuppie Resentment Syndrome), and not science.
Why give them any ideas? (Score:1)
Maybe. Until there's any reason to think that cell phones really do cause cancer, why give people ideas?
Regardless, such a wavier could note that the chances of future research revealing a non-zero cancer risk can be bounded by present research to be pretty dern low.
For details, see the FAQ file Cellular Phone Antennas (Base Stations) and Human Health [mcw.edu] maintained by Doc Moulder, prof of Radiation Oncology at the Medical College of Wisconsin.
(There are a number of other useful EMF FAQs available at the same site.)
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SKIP the industrial revolution (Score:5)
Your post reminds me of the posts in response to stories about 100" monitors that ask "what Quake player has the money?" when the product isn't even intended for retail.
This project isn't about turning the average Ghanaian into a happy websurfer. It's about giving the average Ghanaian a chance at a decent job, or his business a chance at success.
Don't discount third-world countries just because they haven't developed, say, an automobile industry: the time for that is past. That strategy was tried by the World Bank in 2nd tier countries like Brazil and India in the 1960s with disastrous results. Unregulated manufacturers polluted, the products were inferior to other markets, and the only people who made money were the bankers.
India has gotten smart. They never caught up industrially with the West. Jumping from agrarian to industrial proved expensive and futile. Instead, they've concentrated on the Second Industrial Revolution, building technical schools that turn out skilled programmers by the metric ton. These knowledge workers find work in outsourcing firms, or travel to the West for high-paying jobs. The resource that India is wisely exploiting here is its people.
It worries me to see that companies such as Shell and BT are contributing funds to send IT technicians there, when what we should be doing is sending agricultural experts and trying to attract magnates of industry
Another poorly considered policy of the latter half of Century Twenty was building Third World countries into agricultural exporters. Many of those countries could not feed their own people, and did not have the infrastructure or resources to support an exporting food industry. Once again, the bankers made money. The people often ended up poorer and hungrier. The grain available from traditional heartlands like the US and Russia was of higher quality and easily shipped. (Actually this fiasco largely predated the industrialization fiasco.)
Don't underestimate the ingenuity and inventiveness found in "third world" countries. Some of them are building out their telecommunications by skipping the 19th (copper) and 20th (fiber) century and jumping straight to the 21st (wireless). They don't have any installed base to protect. Innovations like "texting" (SMS messaging) and wacky computer virii have sprung from the Phillippines.
Dooming third world countries to another century of building up their economies "the hard way" is typical exclusivist Western thinking.
As the west moves towards an increasingly service based economy, there are opportunities for countries such as Ghana to grab onto our coattails and provide our manufacturing capabilty, before moving up to join us.
Perhaps. But they'd have to compete with already-cheap industrial powers like Mexico and China. Meanwhile, they have few resources, no industrial infrastructure, and it's enormously expensive to build.
Why, again, do they HAVE to have an industrial 20th century economy before they can move into the 21st? What does that gain them? What does it gain us? So in whose interest is it for them to build an old-style manufacturing base? Yep.
You'd make a great IMF banker a generation ago.
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Re:What that cell phone brain cancer story misses (Score:2)
The last time I moved, it took the phone company over a week to tell me why they failed to install my phone line. Apparently they had to dig a trench. Somewhere. Not sure where but it would definately take at least a month (this was from the person in charge of scheduling the area's work crews). I told 'em to get bent, traded in my old analog phone for digital, and haven't missed PacBell for a second. That was 1.5 years ago.
I'm not the only one doing this. My grandfather uses his cell phone exclusively when calling me because what's local on his cell phone is long distance on the land line. My dad's considering making the change as well. Several friends have decided it'll be part of their next move just for the simplicity if nothing else. When I got my phone, I was in and out in half an hour. When's the last time you had a "traditional" phone up and running that fast? :)
About the only reasons to keep a phone line these days are for internet access (assuming you can't/won't get a cablemodem) and fax machines.
Re:Isn't the Ghana 'expedition' a waste of resourc (Score:1)
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Re:There are big flaws with this cellphone study (Score:1)
Simultaneously, you could measure how long it takes the rats to figure out ebay and see if there is an increased amount of cancer cells in the brains of the rats when they keel over.
More seriously, you could attempt to model the RF output of the phones on a human's head to that of a rat and see useful data in a little less time.
Cell Phones in Class... (Score:2)
Re:Shame about etoys... (Score:2)
The people that started etoys were the same people that used to run linux.com years ago.
Re:There are big flaws with this cellphone study (Score:2)
Note that I'm not saying that evidence for cell-phone cancer is there, or not there, only that you cannot logically dismiss the possibility out-of-hand on the basis you're claiming.
Hmm, makes me glad to sleep on a simple futon.Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Re:RA-DI-ATION! (Score:1)
Radiation! Yes indeed! You hear the most outrageous lies about it. Half-baked goggle-bock, do-gooders telling everybody it's bad for you... pernicious nonsense!
Everyone go buy it on DVD and listen to the commentary.
Re:SKIP the industrial revolution (Score:1)
Fiber is the only way were going to get to the 21st century, it just takes longer to get it installed. These countries are going for whats economical and fast.
Even better (Score:1)
Re:Etoys Growth (Score:1)
burn, e-toys, burn...
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Re:Less wrong than you think. (Score:1)
Isn't that the case here? I though glide was proprietary, or at least way too long, and that's why it was not (or could not be) embraced by everybody in the industry.
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What that cell phone brain cancer story misses (Score:3)
I'd say that more research needs to be done about this, as cell phones are much much more common today than they were even 2 years ago. Not only that, but it is not uncommon for some people to use cell phones over 2 hours every day.
cancer. phooey (Score:3)
this is fabulous news for smokers - we got over that whole "oh shit, i could get cancer" thing a looooong time ago.
of course, this probably means that "cellers" are going to have to go to designated "celling" sections...and they'll have to associate with other "cellers" as non-cellers think it's a disgusting habit (you can SMELL all the gadgets they have. and their houses are littered with computers and other electronics!! peew!)
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
eToys and open source (Score:1)
Re:3dfx sucked it up... (Score:1)
I have always liked using STB cards with XFree86. They're just good hardware.
Cell phones: The only really safe solution. (Score:1)
Note that I wrote this with my tounge planted firmly in my cheek. I don't -completely- believe the research about the supposed dangers. I just wanted a chance to post from this thing.
Re:cancer and etoys (Score:2)
Etoys Growth (Score:3)
Isn't 17% growth decent anymore? Unrealistic growth is going to be traced to the real cause of the recession. If you grow at 17% a year isn't that enough. What growth is needed to make a viable business?
Re:There are big flaws with this cellphone study (Score:2)
I know very little about cancer (except for a bit about Gliomlastoma Multiforme [nih.gov]), but experience suggests that there are some quite deadly forms of cancer (brain and otherwise) that take significantly less than a decade to develop.
Some life-threatening tumors can form in less than a month or so, and others in less than six months.
I guess what bothers me, is that I am less concerned about the impact of the 10-15 year growth tumors. That suggests to me that they are very non-aggressive and could be discovered early and effectively treated.
What frightens me are the highly aggressive forms of cancer that that appear out of nowhere, and can cripple or kill someone within six months.
I'm not sure what my point is, really, and I have no reason to doubt Dr. Lai's credentials, but I feel like his closing statement in the article subtly suggests that the risk of cancer is pretty low and if it does strike, it is a slow process.
In some cases, it's not.
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D. Fischer
Re:Of course etoys is going under (Score:2)
You have hundreds of companies listed there. If your predictions are accurate, there really is a recession heading this way, at least in the information/internet sector.
Re:Ding dong etoys is dead(dying atleast) (Score:1)
The damage done? What damage was that? Pulling a lame website down for a few weeks? Have you spent a lot of time reading the insightful commentary at etoy.com since they went back up? It's about 99% Flash.
Its not like etoys was a great developer either, so they used Open Source, and didn't really contribute anything back.
And how would you know this? Do you spend a lot of time working on mod_perl? Do you track the patches to CPAN modules sent in by eToys employees? Did you ask VA Linux or the Apache foundation what they did with the money they received from eToys?
You don't know what you're talking about.
Re:the real eToys irony (Score:2)
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Re:There are big flaws with this cellphone study (Score:1)
Re:There are big flaws with this cellphone study (Score:1)
>of finding a non-significant
>correlation between cell phone use
>and below-average penis size.
Now THIS I would buy.
last, last, last post! (Score:2)
Re:What that cell phone brain cancer story misses (Score:1)
Say what you want, but nobody needs a cell phone, and they certainly don't need it for hours a day. And I prefer to give the morons on the road one less thing to be distracted by.
Etoys going down is good (Score:2)
Re:cancer. phooey (Score:1)
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
A metric ton of programmers... (Score:2)
Re:Isn't the Ghana 'expedition' a waste of resourc (Score:1)
Re:etoys for sale (Score:1)
Re:There are big flaws with this cellphone study (Score:4)
Besides, what causes cancer in rats doesn't necessarily cause cancer in humans. I remember hearing about a study of 226 known rodent carcinogens. Each substance was tested on both rats and mice. Something like 96 were carcinogenic in mice but not in rats, and 50-odd were carcinogenic in rats but not mice. Kinda makes you wonder if rodent studies have any relevancy to humans.
You could also strap phones to monkey heads, but you'd probably run into a lot of trouble there, and it would still take 10 - 15 years. You can't increase power levels to "speed up" the tests or "amplify" the effect because, at some threshold, you start running into significant heating effects that simply aren't an issue at lower levels.
Re:It's a quote from Repoman (Score:1)
serves 'em right (Score:1)
ha-ha!
Re:Shame about etoys... (Score:1)
Ah yes.
Another case of "Live fast. Die Young. Leave a good-looking corpse"
Re:What that cell phone brain cancer story misses (Score:2)
People have been distracted while driving by many things for many years. The same argument was used against radios, and could be applied to makeup, food, coffee... Funny how nobody's trying to ban drinking coffee while driving, or talking while driving.
As for people talking in public, what does it matter if people are talking on the phone or just to someone beside them?
Cell phones ringing in theatres, yes, that's evil, but that's just idiots who don't RTFM and put their phone on silent-vibrate mode (mine always is).
Re:There are big flaws with this cellphone study (Score:2)
I thought it was obvious I was being sarcastic. I guess not. My point was that nobody used them nearly as much as people use cell phones now, and the technology is significantly different, so data from them isn't very relevant. Modern cell phones haven't been around as long.
The whole point is that lower power may not indicate less damaging when considering long-term cumulative effects. No question but that some cosmic ray muon zapping through you has more power than a photon from your cellphone, but you get a lot more of those photons and they interact with your tissues very differently. Long-period low-frequency EM exposure and periodic exposure to single high-energy particles are incommensurable quantities. We cannot make any conclusions about the former based on our knowledge of the latter.
Argh, where to start... You missed my point, and you made a few errors. I was trying to compare risks not the actual radiation. Given that background radiation is long-term, is always present, and is ionizing, whereas cell phone radiation is only occasional, it seems likely to be much less dangerous. Also, you confuse energy and power. Power is the rate of energy. Cell phone radiation probably has more power than background radiation, but the individual photons have much less energy, so much less, in fact, that they are not capable of ionizing anything. This means that they can probably only do damage through thermal effects, but half a watt isn't much heat...
Note [snip] that you cannot logically dismiss the possibility out-of-hand on the basis you're claiming.
I admit it is a possibilty, I'm just pointing out that it is so unlikely, and the risk so small, that it shouldn't concern anyone.
Hmm, makes me glad to sleep on a simple futon.
Just wait until you have to move with the damn thing. It will get you then
Re:Isn't the Ghana 'expedition' a waste of resourc (Score:1)
So you're saying they have to slog through fossil fuel dependency and be our manufacturing bitches until they are worthy to have access to our vaunted technonogy? What condescending crap. Saying that since only .1% of the population is currently online they won't benefit from increased access is like saying since only .1% of them can read (just an example, not a fact) they won't need books or schools.
Re:"Repo Man" reference. (Score:1)
Re:What that cell phone brain cancer story misses (Score:1)
Mind you, I'm not by any means saying that the phones are in anyway evil. I don't have one myself, but there will come a day when I'll get one. Patricularly if I can get good PDA functions built in for a decent price (I badly need little electronic devices to think for me).
Mind you, I do hold something against them in the effect they've had on HDD prices by using up supplies of capacitors.
BYRS (Bourgeois Yuppie Resentment Syndrome) - Really? Do you still think that cellphones are a yuppie item? Because they're about as common and cheap as an imitation Rolex these days.
The thing that bothers me on both a logical and sociological level is the desire to be immediately contactable everywhere.
Here's a replay of what I heard coming from one of the stalls in a public mens toilet:
"Ring Ring"
Hello?
Yeah Greg here.
Where am I?
Well... actually I'm taking a dump in the McDonalds toilets at the moment...
*laughs*
Yeah, you can call me back. I'll let you know how it went.
Bye.
Okay... So what is it exactly that makes that situation desirable to anyone?
"How much truth can advertising buy?" - iNsuRge [insurge.com.au] - AK47
Re:There are big flaws with this cellphone study (Score:2)
I bet'cha all 226 of those were carcinogenic to humans - ranging from mild to severe. Remember, we're all mammals.
Rats are closely related to mice, yet the study found significant differences in their reactions to suspected carcinogens. Now are humans more closely related to rats than mice are? I don't think so. There are millions of years of evolution seperating us from Rodenta.
You can simulate YEARS of exposure over a course of a couple weeks.
This is so fucking stupid I can't believe it, especially since I explained why this was wrong in my last post. Here's another, simpler explanation for you.
Do you get it now? Many, many things are bad above a certain threshold, but harmless or even beneficial at lower levels (think vitamins). That's why claiming that low, normal levels of X are carcinogenic in humans based on rodent studies with super-high levels is Bad Science.
Examine their methodology.
They're using rodents. We want to know about humans. At best, their results should suggest an area for further research. They don't tell you how humans react to X.
Re:What that cell phone brain cancer story misses (Score:1)
My wife and I cut out the land line about 6 months ago. We each have a cell phone. More convenient, more features, and only a tad more money for 2 separate numbers. It's great.
We ended up putting a land line back in for our small business, and now a ReplayTV uses it too. But if not for the small biz we'd be land line free.
Screw the phone company! Oh, er, wait... Screw the land line division!
Re:What that cell phone brain cancer story misses (Score:3)
Say what I want? OK, you're an arrogant prick for thinking you know other people's needs better than they do. That feels much better, thank you.
Your car breaks down on a remote road. Nobody is driving by. It's cold. You need a cell phone to call for help. A lot of people get phones to keep in their cars for emergency situations.
You could just as easily say nobody needs a phone, either. In some sense, all you really need is food and shelter, but that doesn't make all of modern civilization bad. I'd say you're a serious luddite, and are suffering from BYRS (Bourgeois Yuppie Resentment Syndrome).
I happen to have a cell phone instead of a regular phone, because it's about the same cost as a land line, and is more convenient. Radiation risks? Ha! I'm a physics student. I laugh at your 0.5 watts of non-ionizing radiation. If I have anything to worry about, it's working at the local particle accelerator [triumf.ca] for 4 months next summer.
Not flaws (Score:2)
In any case, how on earth could they get the statistical sample for usage of significantly over 3 years?
As for your third flaw--it isn't even a valid point! Unless it is your claim that people who are "potentially developing" tumor or have undiagnosed tumors are somehow over-represented in the mobile-phone-using group? On the contrary, I would expect that the group that owns the mobile phones is also the same groups that can afford the quality doctors who would find serious health problems early on. In other words, I would expect mobile phone usage to have a mild correlation to people who FIND OUT they have brain cancer--the people who can't afford the phones also can't afford the doctors.
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MailOne [openone.com]
Ding dong etoys is dead(dying atleast) (Score:1)
Re:SKIP the industrial revolution (Score:3)
Countries export what they are rich in (standard Ricardian view of trade). India has over a billion people, it is very easy for them to export what we think are significant amounts of people, but to their overall population, it isn't even a drop in the bucket. Ghana (or most third world nations) doesn't have this luxury. Anyway, the only way a thriving IT industry is going to develop is if the base infrastructure is there already, which in most third-world countries, it isn't. (Bangalore is an exception, and unlike many parts of India in that respect.)
What works for an India -- and we have no idea if this focus on IT is going to work or is just a blip on the overall economic radar -- may not work for the rest of the developing world. Most countries have far more important things to do than "jumping straight to the 21st [century]," like educating or improving health or infrastructure. Remember, the Phillipines and Ghana are on two VERY different points in their development paths, and it is difficult to draw conclusions for one based on another.
I'm not disagreeing that a lot of industrialization can be skipped if done correctly. Every country does not need a car industry, et al. However, countries should first educate most of their population, before trying to jump ahead into high tech. Having an educated minority really only benefits that minority, unless you believe in trickle-down. However, a broadly educated population is often a good impetus for growth - look at South Korea or Taiwan.
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i could be wrong (Score:1)
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Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
Re:There are big flaws with this cellphone study (Score:2)
Funny, my first programming job was at a company that did consulting in the cell phone industry. That was 10 years ago. Yeah, every self-important yuppie scumbag didn't yet have one attached to his or her ear, but they were around.
Yes, which is why you shouldn't compare the two. It's like trying to compare the immediate and obvious effects of being shot in the head with a bullet with the subtle cummulative effects of repeated head contact in sports - the former is obviously a Bad Thing, the latter can be harmless but there's definitely a danger level. Figuring out what that danger level is can be tricky. Risk analysis involves not only the odds of an incident, but the loss per incident. The odds of cell-phone related cancers may seem, based on available data, to be low, but a brain tumor loses real big.Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
No, there's nothing wrong. (Score:2)
In short, we're not hypocrites, as much fun as it may be to paint us that way, as long as you understand our positions.
Cellphones (Score:1)
Fuck Em (Score:1)
Ban Cell Phones in the work place (Score:2)
Re:There are big flaws with this cellphone study (Score:2)
Can you really call those bricks portable phones? Nobody used them anywhere near as much as people do now, and frequencies and power levels used have changed since then. I should have said modern cell phones, so sue me...
Yes, which is why you shouldn't compare the two.
Um, why not (your analogy sucks, BTW)? If the backround radiation is more damaging/higher power than what cell phones produce, than we can probably ignore the cell phones. There isn't any solid evidence for cell phones causing cancer, nor is there a reasonable mechanism by which low-level non-ionizing radiation could cause cancer. Until somebody comes up with a well-done study showing a strong correlation, I won't worry.
Risk analysis involves not only the odds of an incident, but the loss per incident. The odds of cell-phone related cancers may seem, based on available data, to be low, but a brain tumor loses real big.
A hundred or so people die every year by having their beds collapse on them or through some other mechanical failure while sleeping. Nobody stresses about that, but death is about the biggest loss you can take (and what a way to go). Once the odds of dying (over your lifetime) from a particular cause drop below 1 in 10,000, it's probably not going to worry you, especially since there are better things to stress about. Keep risks in perspective.
Of course etoys is going under (Score:4)
It's worth pointing out that, while sometimes the company outlives its cash, the stockholders almost never do. There are a number of ways a cash-short company can stave off bankruptcy, but from a stockholder perspective, they all suck. More on this at Downside [downside.com] if you're interested.
Etoys stock is at 1/4 today, down from a high of 40. If you had invested $1000 in Etoys stock at the high, you would now have $6.25.
Re:Of course etoys is going under (Score:2)
Actually, as I noted on Deathwatch, Salon made some errors in their 10-Q filing with the SEC that make them look worse off than they are. They need to file a revised 10-Q.
Re:Of course etoys is going under (Score:2)
Still,
- that's only about twice as long as some of the dotcoms listed on the deathwatch site; and
- as Animats said at the top of this thread -
Contrary to what the unwashed masses believe, MS is (and long has been) more about money than about software, and in particular has been very much about stocks. In that light, it might be educative to see MS given the same analysis as the dotcoms, which we all know are seriously ill.--
Shame about etoys... (Score:3)
...Really. <g> But at least they'll leave behind a nice building. I drive by it every day on my way to/from work, and I watched as they built it over the last year. If you're near the Westside (West Los Angeles/Santa Monica), and you like the high-tech postmodern architecture look, I'd highly recommend swinging by. It's located on the south side of Olympic Boulevard between Bundy and Centinela. I haven't been inside, so I can't attest for the interior layout, but the exterior is great. If anyone has any information about the building (who designed it, whether it follows sustainability guidelines, etc.), I'd appreciate the info.
Less wrong than you think. (Score:2)
but wasn't Glide open source?
Yes, it was once released as free software. There was even a project to port it to DJGPP (a DOS version of GCC).
wasn't it quite easy to use (better than what was available when it was launched)?
Glide beat even DirectEcch 5 in just about every way.
Tetris on drugs, NES music, and GNOME vs. KDE Bingo [pineight.com].
Western Arrogance (Score:2)
the facts are that we know these countries have very bad problems that we don't have over here. but we should admit, at least as a starting point, that we have no freakin' clue whatsoever how they should solve their problems. we don't.
i think grass-roots things like Geekcorps are in fact the only way we can help. they don't pretend to have an all-encompassing solution to all problems OR a five year plan on how to change everything. instead, they help where they can and they certainly don't do any damage. which can absolutely not be said for attempts at industrialization - those often did more harm than good.
humility, please. learn from the mistakes of the past.
Re:Etoys going down is good (Score:2)
Re:Why 17% isn't enough (Score:2)
-- kwashiorkor --
Leaps in Logic
should not be confused with
Re:Isn't the Ghana 'expedition' a waste of resourc (Score:2)
After college I plan to go back and teach computer science. And here's why.
People in American businesses don't use computers because it's fun or because they like the pretty graphics. People use computers because at a very fundamental level they allow you to do business more efficiently. Cheaper, faster, better...
In Africa we don't just need food and medicine for the needs of today. We need to plan ahead. To create a sustainable business infrastructure so we can compete on a global market place.
The things you mentioned are a part of this. Computers are another part.
Think about this for a second. In 1995 you couldn't assume by default that people had email addresses. But email has become necesary for business today.
Today there are still people who can't type faster than they can write by hand. Tomorrow we will assume by default that any educated person can type faster than they can write and at least do some basic programming.
Computers aren't caviar, they're water... You just can't do business with out them.
3dfx sucked it up... (Score:3)
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
There are big flaws with this cellphone study (Score:4)
The average number of years of cellphone use among participants is only 3 years.
The study covers analog phones, not the newer digital models, which may produce different effects.
It looks only at people who are already diagnosed with brain tumors, and not those who may be potentially developing them or whose tumors go undiagnosed.
The news is good for those of us who are using cellphones regardless of their possible consequences, but it's disappointing that better studies aren't being conducted. We need a study that looks at longer-term use (say 6 years) and which keeps up to date with the latest devices the same way the general population is doing. Unfortunately, such proper studies are years off.
Re:Even better (Score:2)
Isn't the Ghana 'expedition' a waste of resources? (Score:2)
It worries me to see that companies such as Shell and BT are contributing funds to send IT technicians there, when what we should be doing is sending agricultural experts and trying to attract magnates of industry.
As the west moves towards an increasingly service based economy, there are opportunities for countries such as Ghana to grab onto our coattails and provide our manufacturing capabilty, before moving up to join us.
Lets not do things back to front here.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
Re:Isn't the Ghana 'expedition' a waste of resourc (Score:2)
As an American in Zambia I was raised never to state any political views whether negative or positive about Zambian affairs. I still feel this is a wise rule to live by.
However, if there is one thing that I wish America would do to help Zambia it would be to forgive all the debt that Zambia accumulated in the 1980's. They already have forgiven around 2 billion but there is still 6.5 billion that Zambia owes. About half to the IMF. 6.5 billion dollars is not a lot of money for the United States but for a country of 9 million people where the average person makes $300 a year it is an impossible amount.
The average zambian should not be held responsible for this because they only recieved a tiny fraction of this money.
One thing I'm gratefull for is that when Zambia had a terrible drought in the mid 1990's America sent a lot of food to us. Otherwise many people would have starved.
RA-DI-ATION! (Score:3)
pernicious nonsense.
a guy could take a hundred chest xrays a year.
ought ta have em too. .
Actually (Score:3)
Why 17% isn't enough (Score:3)
They needed that 119% growth to break even. Like most other .com's, they are running out of the money they raised in their IPO, but they still need to pay the bills.
Because their profit margins are razor thin, the only way to get enough money to stop the cash-burn is to sell lots of stuff.
That's how they do their estimates of growth: How much growth do we need to break even? 115%? Okay, well if we grow 119%, then we will even make a profit - lets say we are going to do that. Obviously, it has as much resemblance to reality as their initial stock price.
Re:Etoys going down is good (Score:2)
...But theres more possible outcomes here. (Score:2)
Now in a bizarre twist of fate, nVidia sweeps in and cuts 3dfx's head off. nVidia stuck to the chip-selling and licencing guns, and out shot a self-wounded chip designer, aquiring the technologies, patents, STB (what's left of it, which isn't much), and of course, the trademarked brandname "3dfx" which may very well be the heart of this deal.
So like I said, let's assume nVidia cauterizes 3dfx's wounds. First of all, I doubt that nVidia won't be changing its plans just yet. It will still be in the chip-selling/licencing thing. But with another company that can make boards for them, on top of all their bedfellows (ASUS, Hercules, et al.), they'll be much stiffer competition for the contendors that do both chip design and board manufacturing. ATI has been wanting to step up in the 3D market, but still has a foothold all over the mobile video and OEM markets, and there's always been Matrox who has its niches (and some decent 3D hardware to boot, although they don't have much to compete with the GeForce2). Even though ATI and Matrox don't have anything that really matches up with a GeForce2Ultra, they're much bigger, and diverse that nVidia or 3dfx ever are/were. This is why 3dfx died - it wanted to go head to head with the larger beasts but didn't have much to strike with.
I would go as far as to say maybe we should expect to see 3dfx boards with NV chips at their core. After all, the 3dfx is a trusted name in the industry. I doubt we'll see it die out completly, but it definitly won't be what it once was.
I'd been using my old Canopus Voodoo2 for days. The on-board Fan (cutting edge at the time!) made horrible sounds, and driver stability sucked - the reference drivers sucked because Canopus tweaked with the Ref. design, and Canopus sucked for refuseing to release updated drivers after they ditched the 3D Market (they still make Video Editing hardware, but I've heard rumors they'll be pursuing the 3D market again with nVidia). Still, it played Q3A (for half-an hour at best, but hey it was better than my Canopus TNT board). My parents bought me a GeForce2MX board, and I haven't looked back. That MX chip is something else, lemme tell ya. For the price, it sure packs one badass rendered punch. I'll tell ya, I was almost tempted to grab a Voodoo5 5000, but I wanted to do more homework on it. Found something on SharkeyExtreme that showed every GF2MX chip outperformed the V5 hands down, and every board costed at least $50 less than a V5.
Wow, am I glad I did my homework. Half-Life at 1024x768 pumped out of a Pentium II 266. Never once thought that could happen. 800x600x32 in Q3:A, now (tho a bit glitchy at 25-40 FPS - I'll bet a Mobo/Processor upgrade'd fix that up-GF2MX likes AGP 2.0, and my crummy 440LX Mobo is too damn old). I was only doin 640x480x16 with my V2 (25FPS at Best! HA!).
Kagenin
Re:Etoys Growth (Score:2)
By losing hand over fist, they gained a significant first mover advantage which has kept rivals out of the money. You do not apply the same strategies to a sprint and to a marathon. Gaining traction in the
It's pretty clear that *some* of the rules in the new economy are truly different than in the old one. Look at how easy (even now) it is to get capital compared to ten years ago. The
etoys (Score:2)
and maybe not.
ITS RAINING
What I'd do if I made cell phones (Score:2)
Pass the buck! (Score:3)
"... and that mean slashdot site. They keep picking on us, and global warming! It affected out sales! Yeah, that's the ticket! And.. my dog ate all the orders! My car broke down! I had to go out of town, There was an earthquake! A terrible flood! Locusts! IT WASN'T OUR FAULT!!! *whine* *whine*"
Or, another dot.bomb with no business plan? You decide.
Re:Isn't the Ghana 'expedition' a waste of resourc (Score:2)
On some level I agree. I'm not sure how things are in Ghana, but if people are starving and dying of cureable diseases at a high rate, that should certainly have a high priority.
OTOH, holding the high end down generally *doesn't* pull the low end up. Many people made arguments similar to yours during the Apollo Moon missions. I dare say that if it weren't for the tremendous ammount of "spinoff" research associated with the space race, we might not be surfing Slashdot and having this discussion today and the economy might be a lot worse.
Also, there is no need for 3rd world development to parallel the development of the west by evolving through the industrial revolution to the technical. This has been demonstrated by the quick adoption of wireless technology in some countries--bypassing the copper stage of the communications industry.
Agriculture needs IT as well (Score:3)
However, one problem is that we lose contact with out students once they graduate, so we can't use them to distribute information about new methods from the research programs to the national farming communities. An IT network would help them to stay in touch with us, and thus up to date with the research. It will also make it easier for them to use the specialized expertice of our people, and vice-versa.
Re:3dfx sucked it up... (Score:2)
Bah, you don't have to install that Vision crap... the Lightspeed 128 was a great card in it's day, it served me well in Windows and X and console (nice built in console fonts). I still have it laying around as a spare.
"Free your mind and your ass will follow"
Re:Isn't the Ghana 'expedition' a waste of resourc (Score:4)
I'm an international development professional currently working in Egypt on a girls' education project. At other phases of my career I have worked on microcredit and small business development, all fairly "traditional" development interventions.
So do I think bringing IT to developing countries a waste of resources? Absolutely not. In fact, in my judgement, it is the single most important unmet need in international development today. Why? Because IT poses both a significant danger and a wonderful opportunity for the economies of these countries.
The developing world does not need an industrial revolution in the sense that we experienced it in the West. The world no longer works that way. Someone mentioned the automobile industry, and this is actually a great example of what I am talking about.
Go to a local new car dealer and pick a car -- any car, of any make or model. Take it apart and organize the parts by country of origin. You will have a great many piles of parts, and I will be very surprised if you find that more than 40% of them are from any one country. Certainly you will not find that most of the parts in that car came from the car's country of "manufacture." On top of that, many of the parts will be composed of raw materials from another country entirely.
Take apart the same make and model that came off the production line six months earlier, and I expect you will find many of the parts are from different countries than they were in the first car you took apart. You will also have a really pissed-off car lot owner.
This is basically just comparative advantage taken to extreme. We can take it to these extremes because we have transportation and communication technology that makes it feasible for a producer of a big ticket item like a car to get bids from all over the world for parts that meet its specifications and transport them quickly and reliably to the place of manufacture. This ability in turn creates pressure on the car manufacturer to do just that, because if it is not searching far and wide to save money on components, its competitors will.
As we've seen from the recent B2B boom on the Internet, the same resources are now becoming available and affordable to manufacturers of less complex, less expensive goods.
So does it make sense to start a Ghanaian car industry? Probably not. But it might make sense to produce particular components of cars, computers, and other goods that Ghanaian manufacturers are well-positioned to produce.
But without access to the kinds of technologies that would allow (in this example) Ghanaian producers to communicate directly with potential customers and competitors to determine specifications and market prices, and to make sales, such an industry is impossible. And Ghanaian producers could not hope to match the efficiencies of, say, Taiwanese producers, without access to IT.
On the other hand, with access to what are now relatively inexpensive information technologies, producers in developing countries have an unprecedented opportunity to compete with the big boys without having their huge capital investment. You've seen the IBM commercial where the Japanese company gets a bid from a small producer in Texas? Well, that producer could just as well be in Accra, or Cairo, or Almaty. If the technology is available in those places.
The same is true even for unprocessed agricultural commodities. These are traditionally exported through middlemen based in the developed world. But with modern communication technologies, developing-country producers can access those markets and make contacts directly, improving the prices it can get for those commodities. The flip side to this is that without those technologies, the need for middlemen either will price the commodity out of the market or will provide the producer with an even smaller return for its goods.
There are many other excellent arguments for promoting IT in developing countries, but for me this is the killer, and it is not specific to one class of countries. All countries have an interest in the forces that move export markets. Haiti exports. Burma exports. Ethiopia exports. With access to the modern tools that have transformed the Western economy over the last 5-10 years, they could have a chance at a better economic situation than ever before. Without access to those technologies, they're trapped.
-
Re:Agriculture needs IT as well (Score:2)
This is a good point. The original poster talked about sending agriculture experts instead of technology experts. Ag experts are, of course, necessary, but not sufficient, and they use IT like everyone else.
Most people are at least familiar in passing with the famine cycle in the Horn of Africa (Somalia, Ethiopia). One of the problems was that farmers would get a lousy harvest and be forced to eat the next year's seed crop just to stay alive. Then ag experts from donor countries gave them bags of new seeds -- not necessarily what the farmers had been planting, but whatever happened to be on hand.
Often, these failed the following year. Some farmers would get good results, others would not, and would be forced to eat the whole crop and it would start all over again.
After this happened a few times, the US Agency for International Development commissioned a GIS survey of the area, taking into account soil types, elevation, rainfall, etc. It turned out that the Horn of Africa is a crazy quilt of these factors, to a much greater degree than most other parts of the world. A crop that might grow well on one farm might grow very poorly on another just a few miles away. The new GIS was to be used in future seed distributions (though in truth I do not know what became of this and whether it was successful or not).
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Re:Isn't the Ghana 'expedition' a waste of resourc (Score:2)
I have always sort of thought that if rich "western" countries want to help "underdeveloped" countries, they should do it in a way that is the least interfering. E.g., simply giving money to the country to let *it* figure out what it wants to do (yes, yes, that is given a somewhat democratic non-corrupt government...). This is as opposed to forcing the government to adopt certain policies, or letting western industry come in to exploit and pollute the country.
Being a native Zambian...what are your opinions on this sort of imperialistic industrialization of underdeveloped countries? I don't know much about Zambia, or other African nations, but Africa was once host to large and prosperous civilizations. Why, in the last few hundred years, has Africa appeared to devolve into a "third world" state?
I ask these questions, because as people of non-western underdeveloped states, some unfortunately on the recieving end of western "help", know, there are significant trade-offs and certainly penalties for allowing western influence and control, and embracing the global economy. Is the west wrongheadedly (or in many cases intentionally) influencing poorer countries for the worse, or for their own benefit, or to remake them in its image? Or am I just a crank, and the west is really percieved as some saintly benefactor who is just enriching and saving these countries?
(Yes, I use a lot of quotes around things that people have inherent assumptions about but probably shouldn't)
is it really that important? (Score:2)
i kinda wish that long term exposure to cell phones did cause cancer. then all the fscking people could focus more on their driving than the oh so important conversation that cannot wait until they are at their destination.
i understand that sometimes it's necessary for people to get in touch with you, but it really pisses me off when i'm sitting in a class and i hear someones cellphone go off.
if i'm ever a professor, i'll state on the first day of class that the person who forgets to turn off thier cell phone (or what ever it is that people are using then) will be failed.
----/RANT----
use LaTeX? want an online reference manager that
"Repo Man" reference. (Score:2)
-Isaac
Re:I miss Glide.. (Score:2)
Yes. _NO_ game developers are doing Glide development: It's all D3D v8 (PC/Xbox), OpenGL (PC), and/or consoles propeitary API (PS2/DC/etc).
Of course Glide won't completely die, since it is Open Source. It will be up to the "amateur's" to keep it alive.