Ahead of the Crowd

Today’s pronouncement from the World Health Organization (WHO) that cellphone radio frequency (RF) emissions possibly cause cancer, is pusillanimous quackery with no scientific basis.

“The WHO International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has classified radio frequency electromagnetic fields as possibly carcinogenic to humans, based on an increased risk for glioma, a malignant type of brain cancer.”

A study, sponsored by the WHO and published one year ago, showed an elevated, but not statistically significant, rate of glioma among some study participants.

“There were suggestions of an increased risk of glioma at higher exposure levels, but biases and error prevented a causal interpretation.”

Any unbiased investigator applying rigorous scientific method would not have relied on experimental results that failed to pass the customary tests of statistical significance. The IARC admits that “biases and error” tainted the glioma evidence. Instead of responsibly labeling the experiment as inconclusive, the agency recklessly placed cellphone emissions in the same cancer risk category as the banned insecticide DDT. By failing to observe mainstream scientific principles, the IARC most likely will subject cellphone users to unnecessary regulation that will drive up costs and drag down performance.

Scientists, including physicist Bob Park at the University of Maryland, know that ionizing radiation (from X-rays, gamma rays, radioactive isotopes, and the like) damages chromosomes, which can lead to cancer. They also have known for decades that cellphones don’t emit ionizing radiation and cellphone radio frequencies are well below the damage threshold. What’s more, for cancer, frequency is what matters most, and “exposure level” is secondary. Albert Einstein received the Nobel Prize for explaining in the photoelectric effect that energy is proportional to frequency.

No mechanism has been found for radio electromagnetic fields below an 800 terahertz frequency threshold to cause cancer, regardless of exposure level. Cellphones operate at roughly one millionth of the 800 terahertz frequency threshold. So the cellphone-cancer link isn’t based on any mainstream scientific theory.

Even exposure level is low, thanks to government regulations. Though high exposure to radio frequency emissions may contribute to diseases other than cancer, cellphones operate at exposure levels that won’t hurt a fly. Cellphone exposure levels are orders of magnitude below the known threshold for harm.

Evidence of a cellphone-cancer link is exceptionally weak and almost certainly due to chance. I know of only one study with statistically significant findings out of about 20 (see this good survey of the evidence). I won’t bore you with the hideous methodological flaws and conflicts of interest that pervade many cellphone-cancer studies.

So even though cellphone usage is now among the zillion things on the IARC’s cancer risk list, the practical risk is nil. An hour in the sun at the beach or a short airline flight will expose you to more cancer-causing radiation than a lifetime of cellphone usage.

My advice: Don’t chuck your beloved Android phone just yet. Remember the power line scare of 1979? Reason ultimately prevailed, as it will on cellphones. Just don’t hold your breath.

Lenovo confirmed widespread speculation that its new competitor to the Apple MacBook Air is waiting in the wings. The ultraslim ThinkPad X1 embodies familiar ThinkPad styling and combines the Apple “innovation” of an integrated (not user replaceable) battery with remarkably fast charging. I wish Lenovo well, but if the X1 is as poorly executed as its X300 predecessor, it will be a nightmare.

The X300 debuted in February 2008 around the same time as the first generation MacBook Air. I was so excited about the Lenovo machine that I pre-ordered one as a gift for my daughter. Her X300 was one of the first produced. Alas, it was a lemon. My daughter, who is smarter than I, said “No, thanks, Dad” and returned the machine to me after suffering weeks of trouble with it.

The machine exhibited numerous symptoms. After six round-trips for Lenovo (IBM) service, including three (unnecessary) Windows reloads, one LCD replacement, and two planar/system board replacements, the X300 still crashed daily. Lenovo support personnel repeatedly ignored my assertions that the crashes correlated with wireless usage. After I bought a new Intel 4965AGN wireless board and installed it myself, the daily crashes were history.

The X300 still crashes randomly when I plug in a USB device. This is a known problem I can live with. Problems aside, I really like the machine.

Lessons learned: Unless you are a masochist, avoid buying serial number 00001 of the latest and greatest. And don’t make it a gift to a loved one.

One year ago, NVIDIA’s chipset business was on the ropes, courtesy of a lawsuit from Intel and declining AMD processor sales. News last week of Intel burying the hatchet seems good and NVIDIA losing Apple as a chipset customer sounds bad. But the combination is, in effect, the knockout punch, so adios NVIDIA chipsets, as I wrote in October 2009.

NVIDIA’s demise in the chipset game is no big deal, Barron’s magazine opines:

“This is not news,” [Needham & Co. analyst Rajvindra Gill] tells me this afternoon by phone. “The fate of the chipset business has been telegraphed for some time now by management and by the Street.” Chipsets are a business NVIDIA is exiting, so it’s really all about the pace of the run-off of that business.

Chipsets are a commodity with thin margins. Apple is, and always has been, a fickle customer for chip suppliers – just ask Motorola and IBM. So a bloody nose for NVIDIA should hardly have come as a surprise.

NVIDIA’s latest forays, the Tegra processor for mobile computing and Tesla graphics processor module with CUDA supercomputing architecture, look interesting. Investors agree, shooting the company’s stock skyward after a 40% dip last summer. Time will tell how the next round of the graphics fight versus AMD will play out. After losing the last round, NVIDIA’s latest punch lands with zing. My take: I won’t invest, but I still like NVIDIA graphics chips.

Today NVIDIA suspended developing chipsets for the latest Intel microprocessors, ostensibly because of a licensing dispute with Intel. But I think this move has long been in the cards for other reasons.

I’ve purchased and used a wide variety of motherboards with NVIDIA nForce chipsets, all paired with AMD processors. These boards suffered myriad minor maddening problems attributable to the chipsets. The final straw came in 2007 with Windows Vista: NVIDIA never provided drivers for its nForce2 chipset and later dropped support of nForce3. If your motherboard used those chipsets, tough luck, no Vista (or Windows 7) for you.

I swore never to buy or recommend another motherboard with an NVIDIA chipset.

The handwriting was on the wall over two years ago. NVIDIA’s primary chipset partner, AMD, acquired NVIDIA’s arch rival, ATI, in 2006. AMD then rapidly declined in processor market share. Few compelling reasons remain for using NVIDIA chipsets with Intel processors. And Intel litigators never sleep. So NVIDIA’s prospects for making big money in chipsets are nil.

Though I’ve had excellent luck with NVIDIA graphics, I won’t wax nostalgic for nForce chipsets. Hasta la vista, baby.

I rooted for IBM to acquire Sun Microsystems, praying for a bright future for Java and MySQL. IBM understands open source software better than any major computer industry player. But the antitrust risk of the combined hardware business seems to have reared its ugly head. So the deal was off.

The Oracle transaction startled me. Yet this insightful analysis by InfoWorld’s Neil McAllister foretold Oracle’s move. Namasté, Mr. McAllister.

At the shoe shine stand on Friday, the workers busily buffed and chatted with customers. When I mentioned I worked in Information Technology, the shoe-shine guy bragged he had just flown back on the red-eye from the O’Reilly Emerging Technology (ETech) conference in San Diego.

How was the conference? “Great, I was amazed at how much fun everyone had,” he gushed. “Especially those alpha geeks, the scraggly guys with Apple laptops.” I gave him a skeptical look. “All the beautiful people were there, but I was disappointed to miss the rock star who got the death threat,” he intoned with a visible wince. Could that be Kathy Sierra? “Yeah,” he marveled, “she writes a wonderful world-class weblog.”

What’s the buzz on emerging technology? “To be honest, we non-geeks had no idea what the alpha geeks were talking about. But the geeks grokked each other and their stuff looked pretty cool,” he confided as he stroked the final buff. I handed him a wad of cash including a generous tip. Deftly straightening the rumpled bills, he whispered, “I have an even better tip for you: Buy Google stock.”

Pondering this surreal encounter, I felt as though I had passed through a time machine and landed on Wall Street in 1928, six decades before alpha geeks roamed the planet. Back then, Joseph Kennedy, Sr. spoke these prophetic words: “You know it is time to sell when the shoe-shine boy tries to give you stock tips.”

How many Dell employees does it take to screw in a light bulb? According to Heard on the Street (paid subscription) in today’s Wall Street Journal, that’s a question CEO Michael Dell and his management team are now deliberating. The company’s employee base jumped by nearly 50%, to 82,200 workers, in the past two years. Wall Street thinks now is a perfect time for Dell to reduce headcount, just as rival Hewlett-Packard successfully did two years ago. A Goldman Sachs analyst upgraded her rating of Dell’s falling stock to ‘buy’ because she predicts that slash-and-burn moves are imminent. I counsel thinking one more move ahead in this chess game.

Given that the key to Dell’s past success was an efficient direct sales model, why did headcount go out of control? Was it sloppy management? Or is something more fundamental going on?

No doubt missteps occurred, including an ongoing SEC investigation into company finances as senior managers fell on their swords. After Dell faded in customer satisfaction and laptops exploded in flames, plenty of bad press ensued. In response the company said last September it was investing $150 million to enhance customer relationships, including adding 2,000 support staff. But that move failed to reignite sales.

Why didn’t ramping up support headcount pay off? It’s tempting to blame poor execution. But I think that Windows PC support costs are rising so fast that Dell, no matter how hard they run, will never profitably catch up. When customers suffer malware, phishing attacks, or defective patches, they call tech support. With razor-thin margins in the PC hardware business, every tech support call erases a pile of profit. As a thought experiment, imagine what two additional years of support (above the one year warranty) for a $359 PC should cost. Now go to the Dell website, price that computer, and check out the support cost. Ouch.

Why is Dell considering offering Linux on its computers? Hint: it’s not just to save the few dollars that go to Microsoft for every computer shipped. Support costs are almost certainly a key part of the equation. Imagine how many tech support calls would vanish if Dell delivered a robust operating system.

What’s more, Dell is struggling with a global trend: transition from a computer industry driven by corporate information technology to one that’s centered on consumers. The company’s response involved broadening its product mix to include consumer items like digital cameras and television sets. That strategy didn’t pan out for CompUSA; it nearly put them out of business. Considering Dell’s accounting issues, it’s hard to evaluate the toll this strategy has taken, but the outlook isn’t favorable.

So the time has come not just to “streamline the organization,” but to consider real alternatives to the Dell 1.0 business model, which has grown too long in the tooth. The company must recognize that Windows PCs have become low-margin appliances like lamps, dishwashers, and toasters. Going forward, PCs need to be reliable like lamps and supported like toasters. You can’t achieve that by throwing thousands of warm bodies into a call center in India in a futile attempt to screw in that light bulb. Dell 2.0 ought to mean reshaping PC support by totally redefining the PC product experience. Else nobody will be left at Dell to turn out the lights.