- Is Microsoft preparing us to move beyond Vista?
- Why Google wanted to lose wireless spectrum auction
- iPhone shortage fuels rumors of imminent 3G phone
- XP for cheap PCs: a second crack in the wall
- Darts into data: Leveraging random action to competitive advantage
- Most iPhone buyers are existing Apple customers
- AT&T's so-called open network principles
- Mono dev tool offered
- ActiveState upgrades IDE
- Serena plans SaaS products
July 27, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Cell phones bring bees to knees?
Forget the fears that cell phones are killing you. On a recent trip to Oregon with my family, in part a break from technology, I could not get away from the news that cell phones were killing bees.
This fear came to a head when my niece was stung on the nose, not by a threatened bee, but by a hornet while picking berries at Sauvie Island in Portland. (Mind you, she and my 5-year-old son were chasing insects with a miniature bug-catching vacuum for this Habitrail-for-insects thing at home.)
But if cell phones causing bee population declines -- and, as a result, flowering plant population declines -- were not enough, the curse that is modern telecom was slighted again with the news that cell phones were erasing hotel security keys. This was the word from a hotel in Yreka, Calif., where we were staying on our way home.
So, the question raised by these stories becomes: Is all this anti-cell phone news an attempt to claw back to the day when mobile phones did not run our lives? Or is it for real?
Posted by Mike Barton on July 27, 2007 02:02 PM
RATE THIS ARTICLE:
-
- COMMENTS
Don't know about the room keys erasures, but it sounds like hooey. Low-power RF erasing magnetic strips, and from a foot or more away? Unlikely. It's more likely that the keys were in a pocket too near another mag strip, and a little movement erased enough of the key so it was unreadable. It happens often, and it's happened to me.
As for the bees, these bee die-offs happen periodically, the last time in the northeast, a couple of years ago, from a fungus. Some local beekeepers shrug off the cell-phone connection, some admit they half-blame cell phones for lack of any other explanation (yet), and most are just mystified about this season's loss of bees.
Posted by: Kabby at July 30, 2007 04:25 AMI don't know about confusing bees, but the story about cellphones erasing electronic hotel keys is definitely true. I've personally erased dozens of keys before a hotel clerk wised me up. Carrying the key in the same pocket as the cell phone is asking for trouble. I've changed my key-carrying habits since then and have had no further issues with erased hotel keys.
Posted by: Rich N at July 31, 2007 10:49 AMTOP STORIES
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
- Remote Access: Maintain Security and Decrease the Burden on IT
- Beyond AntiVirus: Symantec Endpoint Protection
- What Every Enterprise Needs to Know About VDI
- Secure Your Mobile Data: Mobile Device Management for Dummies
- Help Simplify Virtualization
- Solution for Open Virtualization Provides Server Consolidation
