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Mill Valley joins effort to constrain 5G proliferation
The city of Mill Valley has enacted an urgency ordinance to regulate "small cell" towers amid concerns that cellphone companies want to grow their 5G networks and install new equipment in Marin. "We do intend to do more work and studies to craft a permanent ordinance within the next year," Mill Valley Mayor Stephanie Moulton-Peters said Friday. "The urgency ordinance has standards to limit and prohibit the installations of devices in residential neighborhoods, but there is more that we can do."
The decision came on a unanimous vote by the City Council on Thursday, after residents from across Marin packed the council chambers as part of a campaign urging local officials to block cellphone companies from attempting to build 5G towers in the county. No proposals for 5G towers have been submitted to Mill Valley, staff said.
The issue is that 5G towers, which would allow for faster and higher-capacity video streaming and other transmissions, could exacerbate health symptoms already suspected as a result of exposure to electromagnetic fields, according to the EMF Safety Network, a group advocating to keep communities EMF-free. Those symptoms can include fatigue, headaches, sleep problems, anxiety, heart problems, learning and memory disorders, ringing in the ears and increased cancer risk, according to the EMF Safety Network website.
"What 5G does is it adds another cloud to what we refer to as 'electromagnetic smog' into an environment that is already pretty saturated," said Fairfax resident and activist Valeri Hood. "In Fairfax, what we're doing is asking our council to step up in the way councils have in the past, and just say no to 5G."
Also at HardOCP.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday September 12 2018, @02:49PM (1 child)
It IS an attainable goal. (Or at least extremely close to zero.) The only question is at what cost? Is it a pyrrhic victory? [wikipedia.org]
It's like bug free software. Or software that is absolutely on schedule.
Let me point out the Space Shuttle avionics software program. (I read an amazing article about this in the very early 2000s) All the developers on this were middle aged, parents, married, station wagons, etc. No rockstar developers. Everything was planned and documented before any code was written. When it came time to write the code, every function was already documented, what parameters it would take, what it would do, etc. In effect the documentation was the code in some sense. All of the algorithms had been worked out. All of the orbital calculations. Navigation. Procedures and contingencies for various events detected.
This software development group had only one product. The Space Shuttle avionics software.
There was a ceremony that had to happen prior to launch. The director had to fly out to somewhere and sign a document that said that the software WOULD work.
There were only 2 bugs in the entire history of the program (up to the date of that article). And they were minor.
Wow! That's Amazing!
Yep. The only thing is that the development and maintenance cost was $35,000.00 per line of code.
This is probably like that zero accidents thing. It's one thing to have a culture of safety. Disney is more safety conscious than any corporation I've seen. But it can be taken to ridiculous levels.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday September 12 2018, @02:55PM
I kind of missed my point with the above.
It may be worth it to spend lavishly on safety to save lives (or billions of dollars of equipment!) to prevent loss of vehicle.
But most software development doesn't go to these extremes.
Microsoft has shown us that it is possible to have a culture where customers are the beta testers.
For web developers I would point out the following. ALL web developers have a testing environment. The lucky ones (like me) also have a testing environment that is separate from the production servers. (in case you miss my meaning, the unlucky ones use production as their testing system)
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.