BBC Rules That Wi-Fi Radiation Findings Were Wrong 210
Stony Stevenson writes "A Panorama programme claiming that Wi-Fi creates three times as much radiation as mobile phone masts was 'misleading', an official BBC complaints ruling has found. The team involved in the research came under fire from the school where the 'investigations' were held for scaremongering, but now the BBC has come out with an official ruling. 'The programme included only one contributor (Professor Repacholi) who disagreed with Sir William, compared with three scientists and a number of other speakers (one of whom was introduced as a former cancer specialist) who seconded his concerns.'"
I have a dream! (Score:2)
Re:I have a dream! (Score:5, Funny)
Nice warm bed to get into every night? Yes please!
Re:I have a dream! (Score:4, Funny)
Nice warm bed to get into every night? Yes please!
Re:I have a dream! (Score:4, Funny)
They don't stay warm for long...
Re:I have a dream! (Score:5, Informative)
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Gamma rays [wikipedia.org] are a form of EM radiation... so they are related (though given that they have a much higher energy I agree that it's not that helpful to compare them in this instance).
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They share properties with other forms of EM radiation. This is highly relevent if you want to use gamma rays to kill a cancer with minimal harm to surrounding tissues.
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This is due to the photoelectric effect [wikipedia.org] which, simply put, means that if an incoming photon has an energy higher than a specific value, (called the material's work function [wikipedia.org]), it will give an electron in that material enough energy to break free and disappear off elsewhere. The material then gains a small positive charge - in other words, it becomes ionised.
Of course EM radiation in the sort of bands
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Re:I have a dream! (Score:5, Funny)
The BBC you say... (Score:5, Funny)
Peter Griffin: We'll move to England, huh? Worst they got there is, you know, drive-by... arguments...
[Meanwhile, in England]
Englishman: I say, Jeremy, isn't that Reginald B. Stifworth, the young upstart chap who's been touting the merits of a united European commonwealth?
Jeremy: Why yes, I daresay it is.
Englishman: Oh, let's get him.
[They drive up]
Englishman: Oh Reginald... I disagree.
[drives off]
Can't these people do maths?! (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as possible interactions with the human body go, the 900 MHz to 1900 MHz spectrum is roughly the same. Both WiFi and cell phones use bursts of transmissions with approximately the same spectral characteristics. So we can simplify the problem and focus only on intensity.
A cell phone that is far from the nearest tower can transmit up to one watt. A typical home router transmits 100 mW (one tenth of a cell phone). A very powerful cell tower transmits 1000 W. However, signal intensity per surface unit decreases as the square of the distance. So if you are 100 meters (300 feet, one-half furlong for our US friends) from a 1-kW cell tower, you get the same exposure as if you are one metter (0.005 furlong, 3 ft) from a wifi router. And of course, all of this is dwarfed by the intensity of signal you get a few centimeters away from a 1-W cell phone.
So test cell phones. If they don't fry your brain, forget about wifi routers and towers, their effect is negligeable next to a cell phone's signal flux. And cell phones were innocented by several studies.
Attention journalists: When you cover technology, either learn the basics of what you're talking about or go back to freelancing for people rags.
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Many moons ago, in an old programming job, I was chatting with the boss. I'd been working there three weeks, and this was the first time I'd ever seen him; the place was a small tech support company. Anyway, he talked for a while and then eventually pointed to a sizable scar just above his right temple and said "You're probably wondering what this is".
Turns out he was six weeks out of a brain surgery operation to remove a tumour the size of a golf ba
Re:Can't these people do maths?! (Score:4, Interesting)
So that's 5 anecdotes to your one, take it as you will. Brain tumors have been around for far longer than wireless transmissions, as has almost all types of cancer. Perhaps there is a statistical significance, but anecdotes can't prove that.
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Hmmm. I remember reading, while non-typical, max output from a cell phone (model dependent, more so on select GSM phones) can be up to 3 watts. Typical usage is far less than one watt.
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One could add that all of the radiation you mention is non-ionising, so not to be confused with nastier stuff.
The most harm non-ionising radiation has been proven to do, is cook seagulls in front of high-power radar.
Also, as you point out, the most intense signal you are likely to receive is from holding a cell phone close to your ear.
I suggest a headset, or a tinfoil hat...
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That should be "...1-kW (1.34 horsepower for our US friends) cell tower..."
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Um, not anywhere on planet earth. Typical output power from the final amplifier stage of an 800MHz cell amplifier is nowhere above 25-30w at the very most. 1900MHz CDMA cells average between 4w and 15w max output at those frequencies. If you can provide data on any cell tower with final amplifier output in even t
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Maybe someone got confused between the power consumption and the level of RF power emitted. (Or between cell sites and broadcast stations, whi
Re:Can't these people do maths?! (Score:4, Interesting)
Generally speaking, the higher the frequency the more is absorbed by air. So higher frequencies are actually _less_ dangerous.
Note that that's also why so many businesses are interested in the 700 MHz spectrum licenses for sale over at your side of the great pond. Less absorption means less base stations, repeaters and transmission power needed.
Re:Can't these people do maths?! (Score:4, Informative)
[1] For a good demo of this, put a lump of refrigerated butter in the microwave for 30 seconds without the plate spinning. When you take it out, it will be melted (and possibly under quite high pressure) in the middle, but still cold on the outside. Note that this will only work with microwaves where the food is rotated, not those where the magnetron moves.
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I used to be scared microwaves were poisoning the food. Then I learned in chemistry what was actually going on (it was causing water molecules to vibrate, which generates friction with other molecules, which turns into heat.)
Laugh? I heard a guy on the radio not a year ago doing scare mongering as to what microwaves were doing to your food (and why you sho
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During WWII, both British and American radar operators would get warm by standing in front of their radar beams. They didn't realize they were frying their future kids.
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IIRC this was where the idea of using microwaves to cook food.
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So higher frequencies are actually _less_ dangerous.
Quite wrong!
As a ham radio operator I have to point out that RF radiation exposure limits are a function of frequency and time, and the higher the frequency you deal with the less time you should be exposed to it!
Some helpful stuff on that for the concerned:
http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Engineering_Technology/Documents/bulletins/oet65/oet65b.pdf [fcc.gov]
http://n5xu.ece.utexas.edu/rfsafety/ [utexas.edu]
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A warship radar is several orders of magnitude more powerful than any cell phone or wi-fi system. Any comparison just isn't that meaningful.
dumbed down (Score:2, Insightful)
It's been obvious that the BBC's standards have been gradually eroding for about 20 years. It probably hasn't reached bottom yet. Biased tabloid journalism, and product placement to get round the no advertising rules, are the daily norm, not the exception nowadays.
Focus groups lead to mediocrity and bias. A similar thing is happening to the UK in many other areas too. If you have an IQ over 95 you're a statistical outlier, and are no longer catered to by corporta
Is a headcount the best way to decide balance? (Score:5, Insightful)
If the BBC shows a rerun of Sesame Street that claims that 1 + 1 = 2, do they have to give equal time to mathematicians who claim that it isn't? (Where would they find them?)
If the program was wrong, it wasn't wrong because they had the wrong number of scientists on each side.
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Well, as the slashdot sig goes, There are 10 types of mathematician - those that understand binary and those that don't.
Meanwhile, you're not really suggesting that the media can't make any sort of judgement distinguish between genuine areas of scientific disagreement and fringe quackery, are you? Gosh, that's almost like suggesting
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And the BBC journalist, in the conclusion remarks said "as always, the truth is somewhre in between". WTF? Truth is usuall
OT: Panarama is getting pretty bad (Score:3, Informative)
I love my BBC but when I have to step back and become objective, not because of the topic, but because of the way information is inappropriately portrayed, I'm a little sad inside.
Matt
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Only two people complained? (Score:4, Interesting)
Since this report was published Panorama was broadcast as usual on Monday night. There was no trailing "we got the wifi program badly wrong" apology, so I've complained again about that - we'll see what happens.
It's worth mentioning that the BBC is going through a sustained period of navel-gazing at the moment, ever since the Hutton Report. Among the items for consideration have been such earth-shattering topics such as the name of the Blue Peter cat http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/organgrinder/2007/09/it_fair_knocks_your_socks.html [guardian.co.uk] and whether two pieces of film about an unelected German woman had been reversed between the programme and the trail http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7079070.stm [bbc.co.uk]. In among this, ensuring basic scientific accuracy in a flagship current-affairs program clearly isn't very important.
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I'm Spartacus!
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Reminds of an episode of Yes Minister. (Score:2)
Both the MP and his civil servent had no idea if it was safe of not because they didn't know any science.
"Minister I have a classical eduction. I don't know any science."
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So it makes me wonder when did Rupert Murdoch buy the BBC
Scaremongering? (Score:2)
Lemme guess - there was an "overwhelming consensus" that WIFI was gonna cook all of our children's brains
That never happens - right?
Scientist and researchers never exaggerate or manipulate results in order to further a hidden agenda - right?
I'm so disillusioned right now
Crackpot (Score:2)
One sure sign of a crackpot is that he takes every chance he can get to insult and demean the scientific establishment. That shit won't fly here. It does not make you seem smart or wise in anyone's eyes. It just points out to all the smart folks here that you are an anti-intellectual dolt.
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Actually, no. Quite the contrary; there's about a half-dozen cranks who say that, yet who get a quite astonishing amount of media attention for their pains. Analogies to other fields of research are left to the reader.
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Please tell am of ANY scientific consensus that with was wrong, or didn't change in the wake of scientific evidence to the contrary.
"Scientist and researchers never exaggerate or manipulate results in order to further a hidden agenda - right?"
Some do, but guess what? if it is science it can be duplicated, results verified, falsifiability can be confirmed.
"
I'm so disillusioned right now
funny statement, considering g
"Radiation" (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, never mind that 1W of radiation coming out of your phone or Wifi router. There's maybe 100W coming out of your light bulbs (or less if you have Al Gore-compliant lightbulbs). And what's more, that radiation doesn't pass straight through you, a lot of it is intercepted by the body! I think we need a campaign to stop radiation in the 400nm to 700nm wavelength range from infecting our children! Ban it now! That, and Dihydrogen Monoxide...
Bad Science [badscience.net] has lots of info on this and other science quackery.
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Notice how they refer to it as 'radiation', because radiation is clearly a *bad thing*. It killed all those people in Hiroshima didn't it? Nasty.
It didn't even necessarily kill all those people [slashdot.org]. Radiation was just set up as a boogeyman because it's invisible and really easy to be scared of. I'm not saying it's not dangerous, I'm saying that policy makers and other people that communicate to the public don't have the requisite experience or knowledge to adequately judge it.
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A sizable part of the output of an incandescent lamp is both "radiation" and invisible too. Which was the original poster's point. That many people don't understand that the term "radiation" applies to a lot of things...
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A simple example. .
60 htz wall socket power in conjunction with the Earth's magnetic field resonates with the Lithium ion, exciting it and causing it to move on a vector. This is based on the principle of cyclotronic resonance. Your blood stream has a natural lithium content and it plays a role in the balancing of your brain activities. When artificially excited, lithium ions cro
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Yeah. I've always found that curious. I wonder if there's any connection to the fact that most of Europe, with the exception of England, isn't also leading the charge into disaster these days. Also, the magnetic properties of the Earth fluctuate somewhat.
The point I was trying to make was to illustrate how mechanisms above and beyond ionizing EM radiation are something to be aware of. Many people seem
Misunderstanding Lithium (Score:5, Insightful)
No it hasn't. Lithium in the body is normally under the "trace" level. Unless you're on meds.
In fact Lithium is highly toxic, and the therapeutic margin (doses at which it can be used in meds without causing the toxic effect) is pretty narrow.
That's why it is forbidden in product that will be consumed by humans.
Also I have some doubt about 30-to-60T and 60Hz being the correct parameters needed, and I have also serious doubt the 60Hz AC current found in houses generates a strong enough emission to have an impact on lithium. But I'll give you the benefit of doubt.
WTF ? Lithium - as a ion - is charged, whereas the blood-brain barrier is hydrophobic. Moving the ion around won't make it cross the barrier, it would just get stuck against it and refuse to move further (the size orders aren't the same : the lithium would have to cross a width several order of magnitude it's own radius. And path has defavorable properties on its whole length).
:
What you need is either
- changing the properties of the barrier (for an example see how electric fields are used to transfer transgenes inside bio-engineered cells. It's not used because it makes the genes move (like in a electrophoresis gel) but because it makes the properties of the cell surface change and it becomes transiently permeable to the gene. Similarly ultrasounds are used in needle-less injectors to make the skin permeable to the drug)
or
- special transporter (that what may be the case with lithium, because it mimics closely enough Sodium, and may sometimes be using the same channels).
In fact the "get stuck against the barrier instead of forcibily crossing it" effect is used in some medical NMR image techniques like tractography (imagery of nervous fibres inside the brain). To explain it in a simple way : you make the water vibrate along a specific direction, if there's room for the water to move, you'll get a signal, if the water encounters a barrier, you get none. Thus you can know if the fibres are oriented in the same direction (because water can move along them) or not (because water can't easily cross their borders). Do it for a lot of different directions and you can get a nice map of the overall fibers directions in the whole brain.
There's no water leakage produced by this method with water forcibly crossing the nervous cell membrane (for that you would need to change their surface properties, or change the amount of water channels on the surface like killing-white-cells do).
FYI, your confusing with mania & bipolar drugs, which may be based on lithium.
Depression drugs are mostly organic compounds that interfere the metabolism of monoamines (mostly serotonin in most recent product like fluoxetine/Prozac, or mostly dopamine and nor-adrenaline in other drugs).
No. Although, not all the details of the Lithium effect are known in details, :
the logic of lithium is putting in a substance that was never meant to be here in the first place and thus can interfere by several mean
- concurrence with sodium : it may replace it in some circumstance, but not be processed in the same way by all ionic pumps. Most of the toxicity also comes because of Lithium replacing Sodium.
OR MAYBE
- interfere with the expression of some genes.
OR EITHER
- interfere with the function of some enzymes.
There's almos
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A trace quantity was the level being discussed. --Here's a the relevant excerpt from the referenced study [geocities.com] taken from this book. [amazon.com]
But please do me a favor: stop trusting random snake-oil vending charlatan's crackpot theories just because they use nice buzzwords like "natural" and "energize" and try to sell you a "natural magnetic therapy cyclotonic machine".
Ouch. --Do me a favor please and don't make such bold assum
Re:"Radiation" -well, no, not really (Score:2)
From Wikipedia, (so must be true, eh?)
"directly killing an estimated 70,000 people. By the end of the year, injury and radiation brought total casualties to 90,000-140,000".
Although, also note:
"Since then, thousands more have died from injuries or illness attributed to exposure to radiation released by the bombs."
So yes, radiation from a nucler bomb is a bad thing, but in the rea
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3 x 0 = 0 (Score:2)
It remains that three times negligible remains negligible.
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" applies to all claims, including those that handily advance socialist causes.
I'm shocked. (Score:2)
epistemology (Score:2)
OK, so how come they got it so wrong? (Score:2)
Oh, wait
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So, don't taze me, bro!
(Oh, global warming, imagination, figment of, one each...)
Re:I can't wait! (Score:5, Insightful)
1)I think A
2)People with better qualifications say A is a bad idea
3)People with better qualifications have been wrong before
4)Therefore they are wrong now.
5)Thus A is a good idea.
6)People who don't want A are opposed to good ideas, so they must be evil.
7)It is all a conspiracy to tax/ruin our morals/benefit coorporations/steal your freedom/eat babies...
Really, from Homeopaths to Inteligent Designers, it is always the same. "Qualified people are sometimes wrong, so you should listen to my wacky idea instead." It is usually commbined with some conspiracy theory or general criticism of the scientific method interspersed with emotional or irrelevant arguments "Al gore is wasteful and just want to STEAL your tax dollars, hence GW isn't real." etc...
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I whole-heartedly agree with you. However, I think there's sometimes a bias among otherwise smart people to only realize this thinking process is going on in certain situations and not others. For most "controversial" ideas where something could in theory be settled by the proper application of logic and science (although perhaps fully convincing data doesn't yet exist), the argumentative "believer" partisans operate like this on both sides of the argument. The Global Warming thing is a perfect example.
You can't learn that in a classroom. (Score:2)
You don't learn to do that by sitting in a classroom.
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Somewhat ironically, the most balanced summary the public will ever get about this is available here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming [wikipedia.org]
Written in layman terms, properly sourced, reviewed by god knows how many experts... Sure, it's not perfect but it is as close as you will come without a a university degree
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Don't follow parent's links.
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WARNING: Unsafe Redirect, mod down parent. (Score:2)
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You get a program on a computer, a programme on TV.. english is funny like that.
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The better the SNR is on analogue, the better the sound, the easier it is to understand somebody. The old analogue phones freqently transmitted on maximum power all the time, for best quality(and cheaper construction cost).
On digital, the SNR only has to be sufficient to be able to reconstruct the signal*, so you have much more in the way of reducing transmission power when the SNR is good. Most modern digital phones, for example, transmit at a quarter or less of what the old analogu
Re: Unscientific bunk (Score:4, Informative)
I think that's a lot of the problem... people haven't figured out that cell phones and wireless transmissions AREN'T magic. Hell, I didn't even get into wave physics until my second year in college, and that was at an engineering school... what chance does a liberal arts major or high-school dropout have of understanding it?
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Actually, there is plenty of evidence. (Score:2)
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Huh? I wouldn't be what? If you want to offer mean-spirited opinions rather than ask for clarification, you would do well to actually make sense when you write. You defeat your own intentions otherwise.
-FL
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The study you refer to didn't even use EM radiation - it used a magnetic field oscillating at 60 Hz, in tandem with a steady magnetic field of 0.2 Tesla aligned in parallel.
The cancer cell division studies require the presence of a promoter chemical - pure RF at 2.45 GHz caused no increase in cell division.
I see nothing to worry me in the studies you reference - the levels of RF radiation used in the studies are far higher than my WiFi router (
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Re:Is BBC it for TV in the UK? (Score:4, Informative)
The problem is the BBC used to offer alot of quality shows and things like Panorama and Eqinox (channel 4) used to be great for those intereting in technical things. Unfortunatly the BBC seems to be slowly deciding to cater to the lowest common denominator, so shows like Panarama have turned into complete rubbish and it seems every new BBC documentary has to repeat itself every ten minutes with flashy graphics. Its not that people want this. Heck recently the BBC editors blog asked what things he should think about when he went off to meet other TV producers at some conference. The 600/700 replies all asked for the BBC to go back to producing challenging and inteligent shows and to get rid of stupid reality tv shows.
The BBC isn't the only channel we get in the UK but it tends to be the best with the most varied tv and inteligent, when you've got the BBC producing the Planet Earth documentary compared to Channel 4's chantelle's throwing a tantrum in the recent big brother, or some old woman killing someone in corrie on ITV what do you think is going to get reported.
BTW the TV channels over here keep being hit by various scandals (From the Blue Peter people choosing anouther rabbits name and not the one people voted for, to various phone in competitions being rigged.)
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http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/terrestrial/epg/ [digitalspy.co.uk]
The first five of those are available analogue (which is currently being phased out); everything is available on a series of digital multiplexes which may or may not be available depending on where you live. If you follow the website links from the Digitalspy page you should be able to get to "who owns what", but in brief the BBC is publicly owned and licence-fee supported, ITV is a standalone company,
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When TV got started in the UK, there was the BBC and only the BBC and it was good. This is also the source of the TV tax in the UK. Where as in the US, we had CBS, NBC and ABC. PBS in the US was not established until 1969. In the UK, it was THE station at the beginning. Another difference, the BBC gets most (all?) of it's funding from the TV tax. The PBS stations get over 85% of it's funding from donations. The
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I don't mean so much in terms of quality in terms of shows (many of the best shows are US, which obviously have much better production values) but in so far as regulations such as "how much advertising is allowed" (i.e. none on the BBC, only X minutes in every hour on other stations, with no more than Y breaks in an hour) also there rules about product placement (which is not legal in the UK, on any channel - though sponsorship is fine
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OT: sig comment (Score:2)
Who the f*** decided that sentences on the Internet shall no longer be formatted with two spaces after a period?!
It was decided during the development of typography, pre-internet, by typesetters, editors, and designers.
Double spaces between sentences are for monospaced fonts [wikipedia.org], like typewriters or courier font families. Variable-width fonts like the one you're probably using to read this don't need two spaces, largely because the eye groups words more easily. E.g.: typesetting in books uses singe spaces between sentences. Old newspapers are more variable.
Maybe you're confusing Usenet with the Internet, or email (tx