I think this is called a "bug"

While swearing violently at Access 2007, I discovered that one of the problems doomed to make my day a misery was that after walking through the nice, automated, hand-holding steps to create a button which would open the item currently displayed in form "Show Item" in form "Edit Item", the resultant button would do no such thing. It would open "Edit Item" correctly, but it would open it at default, at item 1. Which only works correctly for one item, which isn't particularly useful when you're expecting the database to hold several hundred.

So eventually I gave up on Google, took a deep breath and dived into the code. I am not a programmer. I do not know VBA, I do not know SQL. Given statements in either of those languages I could, maybe, figure out their intent. But don't bet on it.

Eventually, however, I resorted to Microsoft Help and put the cursor in the "Where Condition" box in the Macro Tools page, and hit F1.

I was told that in order to do what I was trying to do I would have to enter a statement which, after dropping in the right values, looked like this:

[ID]=[Forms]![Show Item]![ID]

The problem being that the statement which Access had decided, after asking me what I wanted to do, to put into the code attached to the button in question ooked like this:

"[ID]=" & [ID]

Now I may just be a simple hyper-chicken, but they look different to me. There is a distinct air of difference about them, of not being the same. And I have a sneaking suspicion that computers care about exactness. That they don't actually work if the address you give it is "Oh, down from the corner with the fig tree on it, and on that side of the S-bend, you know."

Microsoft, you have fucked up.

Again.

Studies have shown that staying alive gives you more time to fight cancer

Having bitched quite recently about public health tax dollars being spent on researching complimentary medicines (reminder: "not mainstream medicine"="not effective". If it worked, it would be mainstream), I have to give credit where credit is due, to Queensland Health, who have been suing people who make "misleading health claims" (story couretsy of Courier Mail). Go and read it, it's quite a good article, considering the source.

There are many different factors for discussion in here, including the plausibility of ingested antioxidants having a direct effect upon cancer cells, the quality of the research quoted, comparisons between Dr Red and, say, a couple of oranges a day, how "the more concentrated the dose" relates to how you drink it (are we talking a whole bottle reduced down to a syrine?) and the language debate between "curative", "positive health outcomes" and "good for you". Plus, what's special about Dr Red if mega-dose vitamin C therapy has demonstrated basically no positive effect?

My brief opinion on the issue is that if Dr Red are able to demonstrate consistent benefits for cancer, they won't need to advertise, and will be supplying it in bulk to any hospital with an oncology ward. But they're not, and they are advertising, and it's getting them in trouble.

But perhaps the most interesting part of this article is the reason they're getting in trouble:

It is not an offence for details of human health trials to be made public in Queensland but it is illegal for those funding trials to publicise information.

In other words, if you have a conflict of interest that serious, shut up. Which is no guarantee of better quality reporting, and not much protection for the public, but is a positive step in the right direction.

And then we have the kicker, a comment on new legislation:

Ironically, legislation covering food health claims currently being considered by Parliament would, if enacted, allow companies to promote claims provided they could be substantiated.

Which is really the major argument, isn't it? "Provided they could be substantiated". Isn't this the whole point behind the nebulous, generally vague concept of "Proof in advertising"? Admittedly, all this is likely to do is give us a whole new nightmare of interpreting advertising claims to go with "Studies have shown", "part of", "may help", and "in combination with a balanced diet and regular exercise" (anyone remember the McDonalds versus health activists trial? Where a doctor got on the witness stand and said "You could eat a roll of sellotape as part of a balanced diet"?), but I'm all for putting a burden of proof into any legislation to do with health claims or in fact anything else.

I'm seriously hoping that if that legislation is passed, vitamins and supplements manufacturers start getting hit with "show us the proof" lawsuits as well.

Link to Courier Mail story
Link to my last rant on CAM

Oh, yes, please!

It's a flying motorbike! Sort of!




Courtesy of the always entertaining Hell For Leather, who got it from The New Cafe Racer Society, who got it from Aircraft Maintenance Technology Online and the actually company is Samson Motorworks.

It's actually a trike and uses a motorbike engine (which isn't surprising, given the power-to-weight advantage that your average common-or-garden sportsbike has over, say, a Ferrari) but it's still cool.

Ludicrously stupid interface design decisions: Access 2007

Microsoft Office 2007 has many ludicrous design decisions, but how's this for brilliant stupidity:

While trying to debug a form, I opened the "Subform Field Linker" dialogue box from the "Link child fields" line in the Data section of the Property Sheet. And there was a "Suggest" button, so I pressed it to see what would happne.

What happened was that I got a dialogue box showing 4 possible plain-English versions of SQL statements, and "None".

Here's the problem: Each line said "Show Categories Query for each record in Categories Query using " and then ran into the end of the text field.

I could not read the end of the line.

I could not scroll the text field sideways.

I could not even expand the size of the pop-up window, and therefore the size of the text field.

There was absolutely no way that I could find out what each of the four suggestions actually was.

This is really sad

How petty can people get?

From ABC News Online comes Monarchists upset by beer ad. Go and have a look at the ad, then come back. I rather like that billboard - it's get a very nice old/steampunk aesthetic to it.

But monarchists whinging like the poms they're so fond of (sorry to my English friends here, you know I love you), because it says "Forget the monarchy"? And don't you love that question "Why couldn't they say 'Forget the Republicans, support the Publicans'?" Because then it wouldn't be as funny, you pathetic toad.

Honestly, are they so scared of the constitutional monarchy being unable to defend itself? I say let politics get darwinian, the way everything else in a Democracy is supposed to be: may the toughest and most popular system of government win.

Link to ABC News Online report

You're spending my tax dollars on WHAT?

Bear with me, I need to vent.

I have just become aware of this particulare despicable little media release: Complementary Medicine Gets a Boost. From, of all bodies, the federally funded National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia. If you go to that link, a bare-bones web page bearing the media release, you may notice the date, 1 April, and laugh heartily and think that it's a sly joke perpetrated by a bored website admin.

No suck fucking luck. The release also appears on 31 March, here. It's genuine. In fact, you can download the grants allocation summary from both pages.

You have got to be kidding me. $7million into research into Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM, for those of you not familiar with the lingo)? Why? Haven't we already got sufficiently absolutely none evidence to throw this aside, be frostily polite to those who complain that they can't get their homeopathy on prescription (when all you really need to do is turn on a tap) and concentrate on medicine that has evidence behind it?

And then we have Senator Jan McLucas, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Health and Ageing, quoted as saying

"There is growing testimony that complementary medicine can make asignificant, cost-effective contribution to public health inchronic-disease management and in preventative care."

Where?

Oh yes:

"Until now there has been a gap between those who believe in and use complementary medicine and the strength of evidence to support that use. Today's announcement is intended to help bridge the gap."

Well fuck, do you think the gap is because there is no evidence? Perhaps those who "believe in" CAM have as much justification for doing so as those who believed that drinking poisoned Kool-Aid when comet Hale-Bop passed would result in being picked up by a passing space ship?

"More than $2 billion is spent nationally, with up to two-thirds of theAustralian adult population using at least one product and one in fourusing complementary medicine services."

That does not justify spending money on it. I know we live in a democracy, but fuck: Isn't there some basis for evidence in public health spending? Let them spend money on CAM, and then support the doctors to explain their idiocy to them when the treatments don't work and they end up in hospital.

The projects funded by the NHMRC will deliver evidence-based studies,including clinical trials, to strengthen acceptance and integration ofalternative therapies into the health-care system.

Oh really? You mean you've chosen the outcome before conducting the studies? I rather think that "evidence-based studies" (why are we having any other kind when dealing with health issues?) won't "strengthen acceptance and integration" at all. Quite the opposite.

Not only does my private health insurer provide rebates for chiropractic services, but now my tax dollars are directed towards proving the unprovable.

If there was a major political party worth voting for, I'd be jumping ship faster than a rat on speed.

Link to the media release, 1

Link to the media release, 2

Link to the NHMRC main page

Serious, for a moment: Rights and responsibilities of journalists

What are the responsibilities of the media? What responsibility do straight reporters (of the not-investigative variety) bear? What necessity to examine the factual basis of the claims they pass on do they have, and if you are skimming news outlets for headlines that may interest your readers, do you need to vet them first?

I have now begun my education in journalism, and as one of my first post-graduate subjects is Law and Ethics, I will probably be finding this out very soon. I have read the MEAA Code of Ethics (here), and, being journalistic, it talks about openness, fairness, honesty and respect for the rights of others.

Let's move on and say that you are an organisation with a public safety or public welfare manifesto, committed to improving the lives of your members and in some way improving Australian society.

Should you report a news item which may damage this goal, simply because it is relevant to your members? Should you even include it in a list of news items culled at large from the media on the basis that they'll pad out a newsletter?

The reason I raise this question is because I have just gone back over newsletters from my old organisation, not having signed up to the newsletter with my private address when I left and therefore stopped being the one compiling the newsletter, and found an article which hits right at these questions. Should an organisation dedicated to improving the rights of a group of people with an acquired disability, report without prejudice a news item which claims that world-wide public health attempts to reduce the incidence of that disability are backwards, misguided and contribute to the problem?

Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof, and a journalist investigating this story would do well to examine the presented proof extremely closely, when the claims go against national and international concensus.

My concern is that members of the public, looking for any attempt to discredit laws or practices they find personally inconvenient or uncomfortable, can and will jump upon any excuse to discredit them, no matter how crack-pot they are.

So: Should a disability organisation run the risk of making the problem worse by re-distributing without fear or favour? I have my doubts, I have my very severe doubts.

Link to Media, Entertaining and Arts Alliance Code of Ethics.