* Posts by digibadger

5 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Aug 2008

Apple bars radiation nanny from App Store

digibadger
WTF?

@james 139

Nonsense. Carcinogens damage DNA; enough damage to your DNA and you start developing cancer. Go look up the two-hit hypothesis. (Actually, here, I saved you the trouble http://www.nature.com/milestones/milecancer/full/milecancer09.html ) What your DNA is like to begin with has virtually nothing to do with it with such potent carcinogens as are contained in cigarette smoke and delivered to your lungs.

The vast majority of people who develop lung cancer would not have developed that cancer if they had never smoked. Hard fact. Ten percent of smokers will develop lung cancer. Also hard fact.

Just because smoking does not cause cancer in every smoker does not mean it did not cause cancers in the vast majority of those smokers who do develop lung cancer.

digibadger

For those who think there's no evidence showing smoking causes cancer

Urban myth, I'm afraid. The statistical evidence is incredibly strong, and it's not just Doll's data; here's a paper based on a much more recent study:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2601691/

which shows heavy smokers have about 60 times the incidence of never-smokers. The mobile phone data certainly show that any increased incidence of brain cancer is vastly smaller than the effects of tobacco smoke - about 10% of long-term smokers will develop lung cancer.

And if you mean that the association doesn't demonstrate the mechanism, there is a long, long list of carcinogens contained in tobacco smoke. This is is the most recent free article I can find:

http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/91/14/1194?view=long&pmid=10413421

and things have moved on from there.

Note to Captain Kirk: Warp speed will kill you

digibadger

Oh dear

Oh, what a shame. Because before that, everything about Star Trek was completely scientifically plausible.

Palm to take on iPhone with web 2.0 banana phone

digibadger
Go

@olof - GSM version is in the works...

... according to Engadget

http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/08/there-will-be-a-umts-palm-pre/

Slimmer and lighter cameras promised

digibadger

definitely a rangefinder

These are not SLR cameras - the R stands for reflex, meaning the mirror which flips up when the photo is taken, which is the part of the SLR that's been taken out for this range.

It sounds really interesting: large sensor, interchangeable lenses, and probably a large enough body for a fistful of controls still.

But you lose the SLR viewfinder, which will be an issue for some folks.