18 Jul 2006
Mutivalued datatypes considered harmful

Un-freaking believable! What was M$ thinking on this? "Multi-valued", indeed! I wrestle with Access tables almost daily, and I already hate every minute of it, mostly because of the arcane data types defined by Access, that don't map to types defined by other database systems or even programming languages. Mercifully the base system in use by my client is Access 98, which has fewer of these than Access 2000. But instead of solving this issue (and I know they're received complaints on it), M$ is seemingly making it worse!

Which is just exactly what their customers needed.

Increasingly developers are required to write applications that interact with database engines, typically Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, MySQL or Access. In many ways the database engine is pretty much immaterial; no matter what the flavour it's still simply a matter of tables, columns, rows and a variety of data types; text, memo, BLOB, numeric, whatever. However if you work with Access, a completely new data type is on the horizon for 2007: multi-valued. Unfortunately, this isn't just-another-data-type, this is a whole different ball game and a dangerous one: more like rollerball than baseball.

(link) [The Register]

07:50 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link

Another Study in Stupidity, with Media Distortion

This one goes into my general 'Musings' category rather than 'Humor', because it's not all that funny and it shows clearly the distortions applied to these bad studies by the media. Here's a more factual representation of the study from EurekAlert!:

Number of indoor swimming pools per capita linked to rise in childhood asthma across Europe

The prevalence of childhood asthma and wheeze rises around 2 to 3 percent for every indoor swimming pool per 100,000 of the population across Europe, indicates research published ahead of print in Occupational and Environmental Medicine.The researchers analysed the rates of wheezing, asthma, hay fever, allergic rhinitis and atopic eczema, reported in the International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood (ISAAC), by video or written questionnaire.  (link)

Note that no connection was made between individual child asthma sufferers and indoor swimming: the study was strictly based on the number of indoor pools per capita. Which also indicates relative wealth, among other things.

Of course, the chlorine in the pools may be a factor, but this study certainly didn't address that issue at all, even indirectly. It's like a study showing the number of cases of syphilis is higher in countries with active volcanoes: it may be true, but so what? Which is what makes this a "Study in Stupidity".

But now look what the BBC does with this information:

Swimming pool 'link to asthma'

Children who use an indoor swimming pool may be at increased risk of developing asthma, research suggests. (link)

How do you spell "jumping to conclusions"? A complete lack of critical analysis, and an utter disregard (at least in the headline) for the actual contents of the study.

This is the reason that folks tend to get suspicious of the media - wild eyed spewing of "facts" with no context or background whatsoever is what passes for "journalism" these days.

Kinda makes you wonder about a lot of other stories reported by the MSM, eh?

06:49 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

They Called Me a Child Pornographer

One family's journey to Hel and back, courtesy of a drugstore employee convinced that camp photos of their skinny dipping kids were child porn. To call this "Kafkaesque" would not be an understatement - no charges, no right to see the evidence against you, and if you retain an attorney he can only represent the parents: the children are automatically presumed to be under the protection of the agency doing the investigation that may result in their being removed from their parents home!

These kinds of incidents are becoming as disturbingly familiar as botched paramilitary police raids. The article details this particularly disturbing incident:

For instance, in Dallas in 2003, as the result of a complaint by an Eckerd drugstore employee, a 33-year-old woman was charged with "sexual performance of a child," a second-degree felony punishable by 20 years in prison, based on a picture of her breast-feeding her 1-year-old son. Although the district attorney dropped the charges in the case, the parents had to fight for weeks to get their two children back from the Dallas County Child Protective Services.

We are rapidly becoming a nation which would not be recognizable to our Founding Fathers. And once our freedom's gone, it's going to take another Revolution to get it back.

Won't somebody think of the children?

When she returned to pick up the film, she was approached by two officers from the Savannah Police Department. They told her they had been called by Eckerd due to "questionable photos."

(link) [Salon]

via MyAppleMenu:Reader

06:13 /Politics | 4 comments | permanent link