libertus

A response to this dreadful programme. A hatchet-job from start to finish, in the same vein as that God-awful Richard Dawkins programme I wrote about before.

Continue reading ‘Channel 4 – Dispatches – The New Fundamentalists’ »

House of Commons, Tuesday 14 February 2006, Orders of the Day — Health Bill,
New Clause 5 — Smoke-free premises: exemptions

Jim Devine (Livingston, Lab)

Is this not a simple health and safety issue? Passive smoking kills. Full stop. It does not matter whether it takes place in private members clubs or in public bars. Is that not the case?

Patricia Hewitt (Secretary of State, Department of Health)

My hon. Friend is right. It is also the case that about 95 per cent. of the deaths that result from passive smoking occur as a result of passive smoking in people’s homes, not in public places or in membership clubs.

Odd. If 95% of passive smoking deaths are caused at home, and this Bill doesn’t apply to homes, then a maximum of 5% of all possible deaths can be alleviated, 1 in 20, which according to the quote in the Minister’s opening statement amounts to “thousands of lives every year”. Saving a few thousand lives is a worthy cause, for sure, but will the Bill do so? Can it?

Continue reading ‘Smoking Ban’ »

Who’s This For?

Me, those involved in the conjuring discussion and both the common and lesser-spotted varieties of web standards geek.

Continue reading ‘That Darned title Attribute’ »

The fact is, you can always come up with made-up problems, and try to solve them. That’s what “Throwing out the baby with the bath-water” _means_ for christ sake! Using a solution that has _known_ problems (GPLv3) for a problem that you made up and don’t even know it’s real.

In engineering, it’s called over-desiging, and it’s stupid. In law, it’s called “billable hours”, and it’s encouraged.

From this post on the Linux kernel mailing list.

I invite discussion on the future of Microsoft Internet Explorer. If things keep going the way they are, not only will I not care about IE, the figures will give me a reason not to.

Continue reading ‘MS Internet Explorer 43.4% (2nd)’ »

Yes, the Richard Dawkins who craps on about evolution and thinks “morality” is a dirty word.

Mr. Darkens, please stop darkening our world with your semi-scientific, neo-Fascist humans are genetically programmed to obey authority nonsense. If you don’t, I’ll construct and publish scientific falsifications of any and all evolutionary theories on which you have depended. I shall not address them to you. I shall publish directly to the lay in terms they will understand. When people think climate change, I’ll make them think of all the hot air you generate.

If you are truly a scientist, why behave like a preacher? Crawl back under the rocks with the other bugs. That’s where all the evidence is to be found, after all.

What the f**k is the Department of Trade and Industry doing with £35,018,993,000 in “non-operating appropriations in aid”? That’s as much as the entire NHS costs to run.

Please read the Appropriation (No. 3) Act 2005. Find out how much your government spends, on what and why.

[Libertus' notes: this has been in draft form since 23rd November 2005 and I'm not inclined to delete it. It is in response to this comment on theyworkforyou.com and therefore predates but is related to my post and ensuing discussion entitled "Violent Pornography on the Internet" by a week.]

Victor,

It is naivety in the extreme to consider the Internet Untouchable by the rules of society
The Internet is not God

You have so totally nailed the internet. The game is up. You’re on to it. Everything on the internet comes from people, not God. It is absolutely controlled by our rules, not His, thank goodness. Therefore, it is free to observe the rules of society as expressed by the individuals that comprise society. We create the internet. Well, at least those of us who can afford computer and connection.

Continue reading ‘The Internet Is Not God’ »

I’ve seen a few. I’ve even used a few. But as programming languages go, Perl gets my vote as the “language most likely to be used by Satan and his many minions” and “language least comprehensible unless smoking crack“. Finally, Microsoft C++ gets knocked off the top spot.

So I’m building this prototype, right? I just want to prove a design, not write a product. It is a website so it calls for little more than some simple text processing. I need something practical, to extract data and text from a XML file and report out a few HTML pages. Nothing fancy.

I have tried to work with Perl, really I have, but must now accept the obvious and refuse to use it. It is too dangerous. It is unreadable, unwriteable and unmaintainable – attributes which can only be considered virtues by masochistic morons.
Continue reading ‘use Perl and die(“horribly”);’ »

As I wish to become involved in the political arena known as web standards and their anarchic demon-child, the semantic web, it is time for me to say my piece, state my position and share my intentions.
Continue reading ‘The Wild, Wacky World of World Wide Web Standards’ »