asuffield

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• Commented on It's healthy for kids to get dirty
  I know that everybody wants to believe it, but it's lies, sorry. Dirt may or may not be good for children, but the researchers said nothing of the sort; they were investigating mice, not children, and have not examined whether...
• Commented on Brits: sign petition to kill three-strikes law
  How could such a thing fly in court? It can't. The whole point of the exercise is to avoid the courts, which would not allow this sort of thing....
• Commented on Placenta fluid massage to treat soccer player's injury
  Well, placenta sounds a lot like placebo, so that makes sense to me....
• Commented on Under the spreading cellphone tower, I bought you and you sold me
  Sigh. This is really quite simple, entirely normal, and happens for every single crime. There is nothing unusual about declining to release the names of somebody before they have even been charged with a crime. And you're all proving quite...
• Commented on USB grenade flash drive
  Personally, I am waiting for the day when TSA confiscates photographs of handguns. "Because it might scare other passengers"...
• Commented on The decline of civilization symbolized in a modern light socket
  To be fair, you can still buy decent ones. Even in your local hardware store. Don't buy the cheap parts, they're for ignorant people....
• Commented on Apple patents anti-user attention-complianceware
  We've seen adware preinstalled on windows boxes for years. It does not lead to cheaper computers. Manufacturers just make larger profits....
• Commented on Crime ring that hit 280 cities' ATMs at once busted
  When the government is spinning up a mere $9m this hard, you know they're desperate for approval from somebody....
• Commented on BBC's outrageous plan to put DRM on TV broadcasts shot down in flames -- thanks to you!
  Don't know that I'd call it "shot down" - they just said "prove your case"....
• Commented on What Role Should GM Food Play in the Future of Agriculture?
  Our crops have been 'modified' and 'unnatural' for longer than we've all been alive. You don't need gene splicing in culture to do it, cross-breeding works just as well. The only thing we've changed is the rate at which we...
• Commented on Disposable laptop design
  Disposable cameras are a special case. They work because of a secret: they aren't disposable. You buy the single-use camera, take your photos, return it to the store. They extract and develop the film, and give you your photos. They...
• Commented on Council bans parents from play areas
  Of course, it's taken a couple days for the true story to come out, and everybody rushed to press with this daft-sounding tale that turns out to be a complete invention of a tabloid newspaper. Yes: it's a lie. http://dorothythornhill.mycouncillor.org.uk/2009/10/29/adventure-playgrounds/...
• Commented on Barclay's terrible bank-security
  ID checks wouldn't help much anyway - fake IDs are readily available, as are "legitimate IDs that just aren't yours, but have a similar photograph". Bank clerks are not usually capable of spotting an improper ID. The only thing that...
• Commented on European Internet sinking fast under 3-strikes proposals
  the complete disintegration of copyright law destroys the incentive to create intellectual property I don't see why we want to create 'intellectual property' or why we need to have incentives for people to do it. I'd far rather have free...
• Commented on Dear Britain, please stop helping the fascists
  Much of the UK political community is today saying that they're glad he was finally dragged out in public so that everybody can see what he's really about. While commentators have previously been eager to label Griffin as a "racist"...
• Commented on Google Wave (Huh! Good God, Y'all!) What is it good for? Absolutely something! (say it again)
  The linked article is an excellent example of why geeks say wave doesn't really solve anything, and the technology-ignorant think it does. Any geek would look through his list of points and know offhand exactly how these problems are already...
• Commented on Type design experts, browser makers, take another crack at webfonts
  One of the most challenging things about visual design for the web is the inability to make a layout look the way you intended it to The most challenging thing about visual design for the web is to get out...
• Commented on Type design experts, browser makers, take another crack at webfonts
  I can honestly say I have never thought "What this website needs is a different font". However, I have on many occasions thought "What this website needs is to stop trying to look pixel-for-pixel the same on every device". I...
• Commented on British Airways adds a "fly next to your children" fee
  BA's new policy says nothing about children specifically, so I'd imagine they will continue to seat them with their accompanying adults like they always have. Groups of adults may get split up, however. De-sensationalising Cory's spin a little, it's a...
• Commented on American health care UI: snapshot
  I often see people complaining about "text interfaces" and how a "GUI" would be better, but they don't seem to have thought this through. Consider: what would a "GUI" version of this look like? Well, you'd have all the same...
• Commented on Ask the Government Printing Office to release the US Constitution in XML
  Oh for pity's sake... things are not somehow better when you wrap them in XML. Ask for them to be published "in any reasonable, readily parseable, unrestricted format". Plain text, for example....
• Commented on Britain's postal-code database online at Wikileaks: produced at public expense, not owned by the public
  Sigh, what a lot of silly political posturing. None of this is about the constitutional nature of the UK. The postcode database (and several other things) are, plain and simple, vestigial political sillyness. It's like how the US government pays...
• Commented on BBC wants to put DRM on the TV Brits are forced to pay for
  Encryption is mathematically analogous to uncompression (not compression; it makes the data larger, not smaller), yes. For practical purposes we avoid saying 'encrypted' and instead say 'any technical method that effectively prevents people from accessing the content' or something like...
• Commented on UK police watchdog finally gets off its butt to investigate terrorism detention-and-search of children, theft of electronics
  I for one would insist on taking any plainclothes 'officer' to the station before handing over any property, and I would demand a copy of the paper trail. Even if they are real police, they're probably thieves....
• Commented on Harvard Crimson runs ad for Holocaust denier
  A person who questions their existence and use as such is being either deliberately lazy or deliberately dishonest. I dispute that on general principle. It is the person who never questions that is being deliberately lazy or deliberately dishonest. Such...
• Commented on How the UK gov't spun 136 survey respondants into 7m infringers
  I agree with Beryllium that 1176 people might make up a decent enough sample size to draw conclusions from. Independent research which has proved the validity of its sampling methods may use those techniques to extrapolate to the population. From...
• Commented on IT restrictions hurt productivity
  I'll stop locking down the desktops when management implements my IT literacy test for all new hires and starts docking people's pay for every system they break by putzing around with personal toys, the same as they do for physical...
• Commented on UK govt proposes idiotic two-strikes-and-you're-out Internet copyright rule
  To inject a little sanity into the discussion: this isn't an actual law, it's a government proposal for a law. We're all stamping on it hard so it probably won't every be a law. The Labour government is completely out...
• Commented on Downloading student must pay $675K for 30 songs to 4 record labels.
  I wonder how many five- and six-figure judgments the record industry has to win before they make up the claimed loss of revenue due to downloading. They don't actually get payouts from this - nobody can pay the stupid fines....
• Commented on US Military May Ban Twitter, Facebook as "Security Headaches"
  Further, when you put on the uniform and take the oath you put yourself under a different set of rules than the average citizen and having your voice censored has always been the case. Spoken like a true paper-pushing bureaucrat...