Controversy Over High-Tech Brooms Sweeps Through Sport of Curling

HughPickens.com writes: Billy Witz reports at the NYT that the friendly sport of curling suddenly has become roiled in controversy over — what else? — the brooms. The crux of the debate is fabric — specifically, something called directional fabric. The use of this material in broom pads is the latest escalation in an arms race among manufacturers, whereby the world's best curlers can guide the 44-pound stone around a sheet of ice as if it were controlled by a joystick. Many of the sport's top athletes, but not all of them, signed an agreement last month not to use the newest brooms. But with few regulations on the books and Olympic qualifying tournaments underway this month, the World Curling Federation has stepped in and issued new rules that set severe restrictions on the types of brooms that can be used. "There's definitely some anger over it," says Dean Gemmell. "In curling, we're generally known for being pretty friendly with most of your opponents. Even at the big events, you see the top players hanging out. But it's sort of taken that away this year, that's for sure."

It was prototype brooms made by BalancePlus that were the focus of complaints at the Toronto tournament, but Scott Taylor, president of BalancePlus, says they were never intended for sale, and were meant to demonstrate the problems that the reversed fabrics could cause. Players say the brooms allowed sweepers to "steer" the rock much more than they were comfortable with, and even slow them down. The brooms have been compared to high-tech drivers that allow amateur golfers to hit the ball as far as a pro, or the advanced full-body swimsuits that were banned from competition in 2010 for providing an unfair advantage. Of his company's high-tech broom, Taylor says: "This isn't good. It's like hitting a golf ball 500 yards."

Comments

Looking forwards

[coastwalker]

I find it hard to decide whether banning human assistive technology in sport is a good thing. One day the average teenager with a toy or the right diet will perform better than the best athlete if we prevent athletes from using assistive technologies. So what should we do? Expect sportspeople to live outside society and perform "human" sport for our entertainment?

Re:Looking forwards

[Anonymous Coward]

One day the average teenager with a toy or the right diet will perform better than the best athlete if we prevent athletes from using assistive technologies.

To some extent that is already true. No cyclist in the world can compete with a teenager using a motorized version.

So what should we do? Expect sportspeople to live outside society and perform "human" sport for our entertainment?

Well, they already are. There is no inherent benefit from sports other than our entertainment and athletes already live a life pretty different from average Joe.

Re:Looking forwards

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a good thing because it's what the players, collectively, want. Those that do want to use enhancements are free to make curling 2.0 a popular sport. Note that while it's the same argument as "If you don't believe in the government I elected, get out of my country" except because the ramifications are much more limited, the argument that pro-sport follow whatever rules the players, in general, prefer is something I can get behind.

Re:Looking forwards

[CastrTroy]

Cycling, despite all the drug problems, is kind of in a similar place right now. You can go buy a road bike right now, that weighs just over 10 pounds. But the pros are restricted to using bikes that weigh at least 15 pounds. Some pros have even been known to add lead weight to their bike in order to not run afoul of the minimum weight limit. Note: This is completely within the rules.

I think that at the amateur level, there should definitely be rules about what kind of equipment you can use. Otherwise, many people who might end up being great at the professional level will never get there, as they were discouraged by the fact that they are continually losing to those with more money.

On the other hand, the professionals, with rich sponsors, it makes little reason to try and limit specific technologies. Obviously you want to disallow anything that would make the athletes unsafe. You probably also want to keep the general idea of the sport the same. Such as no recumbent bicycles in bike races meant for upright bikes. But limiting things like the fabric on curling brooms or the shape and material of your swimsuit seems like it's pushing things a little bit too far.

Re:Looking forwards

[PsychoSlashDot]

I find it hard to decide whether banning human assistive technology in sport is a good thing.

My issue with this stuff is it's all so arbitrary. Hockey players aren't forced to use sticks improvised from re-used household materials. Tennis rackets aren't reduced to whatever hardcover books the players can find laying around. Swimmers aren't required to don industry-standard street-wear.

No. Organized sports allow their participants and technology to optimize... until suddenly they don't.

The argument is usually "we want a level playing field", but that's still rubbish. Somali kids don't have access to the carbon-fiber gear kids in the US have. Even access to health-care and nutrition isn't balanced world-wide. When athletes are required to be raised from infants on the borderline-sufficient foods that some people live on, then we can call things "fair". Until then, I don't see a meaningful difference between steroid-use and nutritionally-balanced breakfasts, between cutting-edge broom-heads and custom-fit swimsuits.

These gentleman's agreements are bunk, making the very idea of sports competitions a joke. These are not the best of the best, they're the best of what they feel like allowing - for now.

Re:Looking forwards

[Tx]

That's a strange argument; it's not about banning or not banning, it's about a) ensuring that some players don't have an unfair advantage over others, and b) that the sport doesn't simply become a technological arms race. That doesn't mean that you stop all development, otherwise tennis players would still play with wooden raquets, for example, and we wouldn't have innovations like hawkeye and TV referees. But you place restrictions on equipment so that new technology is allowed when it's readily available to all players, and when it genuinely adds something to the sport, making it a better spectacle or whatever.

This curling issue is a perfect example; it would be impossible to have a fair competition with these directional fabric brooms right now, because even if all players got them, the ones that haven't been using them to date won't have so much time to figure out how to best use them. So they're banned for now. In the future, the curling governing bodies may look at them again, and decide that they make the sport a better spectacle, and as long as they're going to be readily available to all players they might then choose to allow them.

Re:Looking forwards

[Anonymous Coward]

"don't see a meaningful difference between steroid-use and nutritionally-balanced breakfasts"

There is. A balanced diet doesn't provide abnormal body mass.

It can also be somewhat quantified with statistical analysis of MLB.

Re:Looking forwards

[Anonymous Coward]

One day the average teenager with a toy or the right diet will perform better than the best athlete if we prevent athletes from using assistive technologies.

That's already the case. A boy on a bike will be able to go further and/or faster than many professional runners.

I think it helps to view sports like computer games. There's gonna be bugs (design flaws more so than coding mistakes), but since you can't patch the software running the universe you gotta live with them. When those bugs break the game, the gentlemanly thing to do is to agree not to make use of them, and compete as if they didn't exist.

You want to run? Just run. You want to swim? Just swim. You want to curl? Just curl. If you need technology to win, then in a grander sense you've already lost. Or at the very least you aren't being a good sport.

Re:Looking forwards

[damaki]

Then there are already a bunch of sports (motor included) which are a joke to you:
- Formula 1 and pretty much every motor sport gear has limitation on tire grip, engine power, aerodynamics, brake/acceleration assistance, and much more
- cycling, where they have to actually add weight to the bicycles. Consumer bikes go faster than pro ones - swimming, where full body suits were banned
- in athletics, they forbid some special floor material which allowed to break records (I don't remember the year, though), some shoes are banned and probably much more, I guess
- golf, some type of clubs are banned
- skiing, some kinds of skis and suits are banned
- tennis, some kinetic energy-recovering rackets were banned, as far as I can remember.
And there are probably many more...

Re:Looking forwards

[jittles]

Cycling, despite all the drug problems, is kind of in a similar place right now. You can go buy a road bike right now, that weighs just over 10 pounds. But the pros are restricted to using bikes that weigh at least 15 pounds. Some pros have even been known to add lead weight to their bike in order to not run afoul of the minimum weight limit. Note: This is completely within the rules.

I think that at the amateur level, there should definitely be rules about what kind of equipment you can use. Otherwise, many people who might end up being great at the professional level will never get there, as they were discouraged by the fact that they are continually losing to those with more money.

On the other hand, the professionals, with rich sponsors, it makes little reason to try and limit specific technologies. Obviously you want to disallow anything that would make the athletes unsafe. You probably also want to keep the general idea of the sport the same. Such as no recumbent bicycles in bike races meant for upright bikes. But limiting things like the fabric on curling brooms or the shape and material of your swimsuit seems like it's pushing things a little bit too far.

Even at the professional level there will disparities between what one team can afford and another. That is why some sports instituted things such as salary caps. The point is to keep the playing field level for all. I think that makes sense at every competition level. Of course, it'll never be completely level as those with money can devote more time and money on practicing and coaching. But at least you can guarantee that everyone is using roughly the same equipment. I'm not saying you should specifically disallow technology like this. I just think that the competition is better when there is some common requirement for equipment. It allows the athlete to shine and not the gear.

Re:Looking forwards

[coastwalker]

At some point we may be seeing humans with genetically improved optical senses such as the ability to see in the infra red or ultra violet. Do we automatically ban them from sports because they might have an unfair advantage? I do not know the answer but it is only going to get messier from here on in.

Re:Looking forwards

[jittles]

I find it hard to decide whether banning human assistive technology in sport is a good thing.

My issue with this stuff is it's all so arbitrary. Hockey players aren't forced to use sticks improvised from re-used household materials. Tennis rackets aren't reduced to whatever hardcover books the players can find laying around. Swimmers aren't required to don industry-standard street-wear. No. Organized sports allow their participants and technology to optimize... until suddenly they don't. The argument is usually "we want a level playing field", but that's still rubbish. Somali kids don't have access to the carbon-fiber gear kids in the US have. Even access to health-care and nutrition isn't balanced world-wide. When athletes are required to be raised from infants on the borderline-sufficient foods that some people live on, then we can call things "fair". Until then, I don't see a meaningful difference between steroid-use and nutritionally-balanced breakfasts, between cutting-edge broom-heads and custom-fit swimsuits. These gentleman's agreements are bunk, making the very idea of sports competitions a joke. These are not the best of the best, they're the best of what they feel like allowing - for now.

Peoples talent level is arbitrary also. No one is arguing that you should handicap more talented athletes. The point is to provide a common set of equipment to everyone so that the best athlete wins and not the guy with the most money. It's impossible to balance it out completely, as you've pointed out. People who come from abundant wealth will have more time to devote to their sport. Since they already have this advantage over the Somali swimmer, why would you let them wear a full body suit that has less drag than a person's skin? You're just increasing the gap instead of trying to close it. It leads to poor competitions and nobody wants to watch a complete blow out. Especially when that blow out is due to an obvious discrepancy in financial resources.

Re:Looking forwards

[operagost]

Yes, I agree they are jokes. Especially reducing tire grip... yeah, let's make the car less safe. NASCAR limits engine power, but that was originally to INCREASE safety, more than to level the playing field.

Re:Looking forwards

[coastwalker]

It is certainly true that they are already leading lives different to the average Joe when they can get a life ban from sport for using an over the counter cold treatment that contains a banned substance. Maybe one day we will be raising children in special camps where modern medicine is banned just so they can compete in sports. We could call the camps "Human Zoos".

Re: Looking forwards

[Anonymous Coward]

"No cyclist in the world can compete with a teenager using a motorized version." Oh yes they can. Just bash the twerp's head in with his own ride, then bury them quietly in a shallow grave in the woods.

Re:Looking forwards

[PsychoSlashDot]

My issue with this stuff is it's all so arbitrary.

You mean it seems arbitrary to you.

However, like many people, it may be that you think when somebody makes a decision you don't agree with, or don't properly understand that it must be arbitrary.

This may not be the case.

Don't tell me what I mean. I meant what I said. Unless you can demonstrate that I'm wrong, simply saying "you don't know stuff" isn't a meaningful rebuttal.

Re:Looking forwards

[PsychoSlashDot]

"don't see a meaningful difference between steroid-use and nutritionally-balanced breakfasts"

There is. A balanced diet doesn't provide abnormal body mass.

It can also be somewhat quantified with statistical analysis of MLB.

What's "normal"? To me it doesn't matter if the chemicals going into your body are stirred up at a Kellog's cereal plant or a Dow lab. Why it's okay to drink specially engineered shakes but not to shoot up HGH I simply don't know.

Re: Looking forwards

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, I forgot to add the "Given the established rules" clause, I thought that was implied.

Re:Looking forwards

[edtice1559]

At some point it is no longer an athletic competition and rather an equipment competition. That's what the governing bodies are trying to avoid.

Re:Looking forwards

[phantomfive]

Not to mention "nutritionally-balanced breakfasts" improve your overall health. Steroids are detrimental to health.

Re:Looking forwards

[Grishnakh]

Instead of banning full-body suits because Somalis can't afford them, why can't they just give some full-body suits to the Somalis? Seriously, how much can a swimsuit cost?

I get that there should be limits so that super-rich people don't win everything by throwing gobs of money at it and getting ultra-expensive gear. However it seems to me that athletes should be able to use readily-available, off-the-shelf consumer gear that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. If your average (not rich) non-professional swimmer can have a better-performing swimsuit than a competitive athlete, it's going too far.

Re:Looking forwards

[flopsquad]

Even more true in the context of this "dramatic advance" in curling tech. Unless I'm grossly misunderstanding TFA, it sounds like they literally flipped the broom pad over, which apparently enables godlike control over the frosty rock.

This isn't nanolaser-propelled unobtainium bike tires, it's reversing the grip tape on your baseball bat or taking the foam off your ping pong paddle. Again, corrections welcome if I misread it.

On a somewhat tangential note, I've always thought baseball would be more interesting with both steroids and deadly obstacles.

Re:Looking forwards

[Anonymous Coward]

Cycling, despite all the drug problems, is kind of in a similar place right now.

This isn't a problem limited to cycling right now. Cycling is notorious for blocking advancements. Derailleurs, recumbents, disc brakes, and even different positions (such as Obree's "superman" position) have all been banned at one time or another (or still continue to be banned).

It's an interesting sport for the human elements, but it's kind of like Nascar on the technology end of things - purposely limiting what can and can't be used.

What's frustrating with pro cycling is how it drives the technology for a lot of road cycling. To use the obligatory car analogy, on the low end (department stores), we sell bikes that are the equivalent to Yugos. On the high end, we sell bikes that are equivalent to off-street race cars, or bikes that are equivalent to Hummers ("mountain bikes", to use a common term for what is a variety of bikes). For anyone (like me) who uses a bike to get around, we're stuck in the middle trying to piece together the equivalent of a decent mid-range sedan using parts from a Hummer, a Nascar racer, and a Yugo.

Re:Looking forwards

[phantomfive]

My issue with this stuff is it's all so arbitrary

All of sports is arbitrary. Have you seen the rules of basketball? Carry the ball two steps without bouncing, and you're fine. But three steps? That's a penalty.

Baseball is even more crazy. Only one team can touch the ball, and the entire team is playing on the field against one (or up to four) players of the other team. Certain types of bats are allowed, and other types are heavily prohibited.

Every game has rules. If chess didn't have rules, you could win by reaching across the table and stabbing your opponent. The important thing isn't whether the rules are arbitrary, but whether they are (relatively) fair and entertaining to watch.

Re:Looking forwards

[derrickn]

Are you in favour of cork-ed bats, then, too? And, yes, I realize that a small part of the issue with corked bats is safety (some of them broke badly). But in general, its perfectly reasonable to limit the equipment that is used for specific sports. Hockey goalies can't wear pads that exceed certain dimensions, NFL QBs can't deflate footballs, and so on, and so on

Re:Looking forwards

[derrickn]

Hockey players are damned well forced to use sticks that have only a certain bend radius, and the blade of the stick is limited to certain dimensions. The material the stick is composed of is regulated, too. Baseball bats can't be corked. NFL footballs can't be deflated. Hockey goalie pads can't exceed certain dimensions. and so on, and so on.

Re:Looking forwards

[dj245]

I find it hard to decide whether banning human assistive technology in sport is a good thing.

My issue with this stuff is it's all so arbitrary. Hockey players aren't forced to use sticks improvised from re-used household materials. Tennis rackets aren't reduced to whatever hardcover books the players can find laying around. Swimmers aren't required to don industry-standard street-wear. No. Organized sports allow their participants and technology to optimize... until suddenly they don't. The argument is usually "we want a level playing field", but that's still rubbish. Somali kids don't have access to the carbon-fiber gear kids in the US have. Even access to health-care and nutrition isn't balanced world-wide. When athletes are required to be raised from infants on the borderline-sufficient foods that some people live on, then we can call things "fair". Until then, I don't see a meaningful difference between steroid-use and nutritionally-balanced breakfasts, between cutting-edge broom-heads and custom-fit swimsuits. These gentleman's agreements are bunk, making the very idea of sports competitions a joke. These are not the best of the best, they're the best of what they feel like allowing - for now.

That's completely fine. Don't forget that sports are just games. The rules of the game don't matter, as long as the rules are the same for everybody. Rules are often, and perhaps are unavoidably, arbitrary. I don't see a problem with that. Many rules in sports are arbitrary. Some rules arbitrarily try to make the game more exciting. Some rules draw a line on a level of risk to the players or spectators at some arbitrary point and prohibit dangerous behavior. Some rules arbitrarily try to ensure that the "rightful winner" should always win. As long as the rules are set and made known to all players well in advance, I have a hard time feeling any outrage, no matter how arbitrary the rules are.

Re:Looking forwards

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I agree they are jokes. Especially reducing tire grip... yeah, let's make the car less safe.

Regardless of more or less tire grip drivers would push to the limit and go over. Reducing the overall speed by reducing tire grip increases the safety and lessens the chance of permanent damage when they do crash.

Re:Looking forwards

[CastrTroy]

The only problem that I have with the corked bat is that traditionally in the pros, the bats have always been pure ash, or other hardwoods such as maple or hickory. If you're going to go the route of using corked bats, then that's fine, but you might as well allow any other materials such as aluminum. The simple solid wooden bat is a clear and distinct rule.

If curling was limited to straw brooms, then I could see why they would want to disallow everything but straw. But as soon as you let people start using synthetic fabrics, then disallowing one fabric will just cause the competitors to find a different fabric with the same properties. It basically creates an arms race for who can find the best way to go around the rules without technically breaking them.

Re:Looking forwards

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of banning full-body suits because Somalis can't afford them, why can't they just give some full-body suits to the Somalis? Seriously, how much can a swimsuit cost?

Legal waist-to-knee LZR Racer Elite 2 Jammer suits are nearly $300 on Amazon; presumably the full-body suits cost more than that.

Re:Looking forwards

[gstoddart]

Hockey players aren't forced to use sticks improvised from re-used household materials. Tennis rackets aren't reduced to whatever hardcover books the players can find laying around. Swimmers aren't required to don industry-standard street-wear.

No, but you can bet your ass that if a piece of equipment gave you an unfair mechanical advantage they sure as hell would change the rules.

Swimmers, for instance have been banned from wearing some full-body suits because the advantage they gave over others wasn't shaving off a tiny bit, they were shaving off a lot.

Show up at Wimbleton with something which gives you an extra 15% ball speed due to some mechanical trickery ... and you can bet your ass they'd outlaw it.

Being the best of the best comes down to individual skill and training. When it comes down to "someone wearing/using this is 50% more likely to beat someone not wearing/using it when everything else is equal", that's precisely the stuff which gets banned.

Re:Looking forwards

[AK Marc]

It is certainly true that they are already leading lives different to the average Joe when they can get a life ban from sport for using an over the counter cold treatment that contains a banned substance.

Yeah, and they can get a ban for eating a salad (made of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...). Over simplifying the issues and presenting as an absolute with the intention of deceiving is a lie. You are lying. An athelete with a cold can go to a medical doctor, have their symptoms diagnosed, and be issued a prescription for a banned substance, then compete while on that banned substance and test positive for that banned substance, and not have any sanctions taken against them, even if they win (which, is unlikely if they are competing with a bad cold).

Now, if the athlete is sneaking banned substances and breaking the rules by taking it in secret in unknown doses, the sensitive tests that look for it will get a true positive, and without the pre-disclosure and documented treatment regimen, will be assumed to be an abuser.

The system works as intended, and isn't nearly as bad as the abusers claim it is.

Re:Looking forwards

[Anonymous Coward]

The suits were banned also for aesthetic reasons. Like Beach Volleyball the Olympic organizers want to showcase the Olympian bodies.

Re:Looking forwards

[Anonymous Coward]

Until then, I don't see a meaningful difference between steroid-use and nutritionally-balanced breakfasts, between cutting-edge broom-heads and custom-fit swimsuits.
 

The difference between steroid use and balanced nutrition, is that steroid use has well known negative long term health effects, and proven effectiveness at enhancing short term perfomance in sports.

By allowing steroid use you create an environment where the cost of playing the sport is your long term health as if you aren't on steroids you won't win, and the steroids will eventually mess you up pretty bad.

Re:Looking forwards

[skovnymfe]

People want entertainment and skill. Taking the most amount of steroids or doping is a feat of strength as much as is hitting a homerun or cycling over a mountain. But if your baseball bat hits the ball for you or your bicycle doesn't require pedaling, then there's no entertainment. Or in this case, if you can just carve a path in the ice with your broom and make the stone go where you want it to, then what's the point having a skilled thrower? If all you have to do is jump in the water and your magic swimsuit automatically pushes the water in front of you to the back, then what's the point? If your golf club autocorrects any lack of training and strength and whacks holes in one every time, then whats the point?

Re:Looking forwards

[ottothecow]

These gentleman's agreements are bunk, making the very idea of sports competitions a joke. These are not the best of the best, they're the best of what they feel like allowing - for now.

Maybe they need to have both. For instance, in sailing, there are several types of competition. There is One Design racing, where the boats are all required to be pretty much identical. Different boats have different restrictions (some restrict costs by doing things like limiting how many sets of sails you can buy each year, others pretty much say no limits), but within a fleet, the boats are pretty much identical. At some events, boats are even provided and/or you rotate between boats. This really means that the best sailor wins since they can't do anything to significantly alter the boat.

Then there are classes where the boats are all similar, but not identical. They are built to a specific rule, e.g. "As long as the boat fits in X dimensions and has sail area less than Y and the ballast doesn't weight more than Z". The boats tend to be fairly even, since a fast design soon takes over the competition, so the best sailors still tend to win. But it also leads to innovation. For instance, the Moth class has evolved from a boat that looks like this, to a crazy high performance design that hydrofoils above the water like this. The old moth would never be able to compete with the new designs...but that's ok. That's the price of allowing people to innovate.

There are even events that really have no rules...but generally people don't care much about them since the competition completely turns into a money pit. Generally what happens there, is a standards body assigns a handicap to level the playing field. So the super rich dudes still compete for who can have the flat-out fastest boat, but everybody else (and the people who have the fastest boat from 10 years ago) just compete for the best corrected time according to handicap.

Re:Looking forwards

[AK Marc]

cycling, where they have to actually add weight to the bicycles. Consumer bikes go faster than pro ones

That's simply false. You pick the level track, and the person on the 15 lb pro bike will have an advantage over the 10 lb consumer bike. The weight was to prevent the $5,000,000 bike having an advantage over the $20,000 pro bike on climbs and such. There's a point where spending $1,000,000 per gram (of lightness) no longer has anything to do with skill or ability. So minimum weights were set in the days where it was reasonable for a bike set in race trim. That carbon fiber and such made it to sub-$1000 bikes doesn't require a rules change.

But the aerodynamics, geometry and mechanical advantage would still have an athlete with a 10 lb store bike lose to a 15 lb race bike, for anything other than maybe a long climb stage.

Yes it's heaver. Yes it's artificially handicapped. But that doesn't mean that it's actually inferior. That you don't realize this is proof that you don't know what you are talking about for the other items as well. But bikes is something I'm an expert on, so I know you to be wrong there.

Uniformly, they look at the rules and see that someone willing to spend $10B can guarantee a win against a team of lesser means. That's not a "sport" of skill or ability, but a sport of who can spend the most (and game the rules the most).

I can't think of any pro sport that doesn't have equipment rules. Basketball and soccer not only specify the ball quite explicitly, but also the uniforms. Maybe not to the degree of skiing, but both sports have rules on what you can wear to play. So why do you single out skiing? Every sport has rules. Most rules are there to enforce "fair" of one nature or another.

And there are probably many more...

Yeah, every sport. Clubs and balls (and shoes) in golf, disks in disk golf, something in every sport. So to single out a few is silly. "Every single sport in the history of the planet" is a more complete list. I bet you'd get disqualified (and beat up) if you showed up to a kaber toss with a corked kaber.500 years ago.

Even the ancient greek olympic games generally specified the suits allowed. and generally that was "none". If you want a fair contest, you have the gear provided by the meet, and everyone must perform naked. Shoes don't give you an advantage in grip for the long jump or 110m hurdles when you can't wear shoes.

Re:Looking forwards

[AK Marc]

All of sports is arbitrary. Have you seen the rules of basketball? Carry the ball two steps without bouncing, and you're fine. But three steps? That's a penalty.

Not if you are jumping for a dunk. You get 2 steps and a jump, and no limit on the number of steps in a "jump", that's not only arbitrary, but capricious.

Re:Looking forwards

[coastwalker]

I would be surprised if even physicians were on top of the list of banned substances, it is quite a long one. http://www.usada.org/substance...
Not to mention the fact that not all medications list their full contents, the best advice these days says take nothing at all and just drink more water. http://www.sportsinjurybulleti...

Re:Looking forwards

[Sumus Semper Una]

Organized sports allow their participants and technology to optimize... until suddenly they don't.

The argument is usually "we want a level playing field", but that's still rubbish.

I actually have a different theory about why technology becomes banned in sports. In order for a sport to catch on and have staying power, the way its played has to have mass appeal. There are an awful lot of factors that go into a sport finding and keeping an audience. If you change a sport's rules and style of play too quickly, you run a very real risk of losing most of your audience. You could potentially gain more audience instead, but you're more likely to lose people if your sport is already well established and you change the rules.

So, a sport will allow new strategies, new technologies, and new refinements of the rules until just before the point where the sport would no longer feel like the widely accepted version of the sport. Over time, the sport can see drastic changes. But new technology like these brooms would cause such a rapid change in the way curling is played that there's a very real risk that the sport could lose most of what few fans it already has if it allows them in tournament play.

The choice of what to allow or ban in a sport is not arbitrary or inconsequential. Nor is it usually clear-cut or easily quantifiable. It's really a marketing decision that must rely on gut feeling more than statistical analysis.

Re:Looking forwards

[Anonymous Coward]

"So what should we do?"

I suggest we just stop wasting so much time and energy on sporting competitions. There's a whole slew of productive tasks that could be accomplished with the same energy, money and time. You know, things that could actually benefit the world and its inhabitants.

Re:Looking forwards

[AK Marc]

Not to mention the fact that not all medications list their full contents,

It's not that nobody knows what's in the medicines, but that the list of regulated substances from the sport don't match the legal regulations, so an ingredient isn't required by law to be listed, so it isn't, but it's still a banned substance.

Further is that the banned substances lists are often silly, as the body will create or metabolize the banned substance, such that consuming a non-banned substance can generate a "fail" because the non-banned substance will be metabolized into a banned substance in the body, or trigger the release of a banned substance by the body itself. If you made a pill that was not banned, but it triggered a release of HGH inside your body, then the pill is effectively banned, even if nothing in it is banned, nor is metabolized into a banned substance.

Almost all of this is known and not a surprise, but the trainers feign ignorance as they guide athletes to the best performance they can, hopefully (but not always) within the rules.

And none of that matters, as Lance can dope for years, over many tests, and never test positive. The tests are obviously beatable. The only way to win is cheat, for most sports. Train with steroids, then stop at some threshold before testing, so you get a pass result. Worked for Arnold (and almost everyone else in the sport). The muscles you cheat on don't disappear when you stop taking the steroids. But the tests will come back with a pass.

Re:Looking forwards

[sjames]

Andreea Rducan was stripped of a gold medal due to a cold remedy actually handed to her by a doctor. In hearings following the incident, suspension was on the table.

The doctor involved was suspended for prescribing a banned substance (telling us that the medication WAS acknowledged to be prescribed AND that the athlete was still penalized for taking it). Just to top it off, the medication made her feel dizzy, so it was far from performance enhancing for a gymnast.

So if GP's exaggeration of the penalties makes the post a lie, your post is an even bigger lie.

Re:Looking forwards

[Anonymous Coward]

> Steroids are detrimental to health.

Depends on who you are.

Re:Looking forwards

[Chris Mattern]

Taking the most amount of steroids or doping is a feat of strength as much as is hitting a homerun or cycling over a mountain.

But "who can take the most performance-enhancing drugs without dying" is not a competition I think most of us want to encourage. It's kinda tough on the losers--and not all that gentle on the winners either, come to think of it.

Re:Looking forwards

[Coren22]

http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_...

Miguel Tejada was suspended for 105 games for failing to renew his Adderall exemption. He has ADHD and legitimately takes Adderall, but because it is on the banned substance list, and his exemption expired, he has a huge suspension.

Re:Looking forwards

[EnsilZah]

I hope you're aware we're discussing a sport where a bunch of people take turns sliding a piece of polished granite with a handle towards a circle on an ice-covered floor and some of the people are allowed to sweep the path in front of the stone with a mop to alter its path.
Aren't sports by definition a bunch of silly arbitrary rules that some guys back in the annals of history thought would make for a fun way to spend an afternoon and have evolved to huge lucrative opportunities to find people who happen to be predisposed to this particular combination of rules and use them to sell advertising spots on TV?

Re:Looking forwards

[lgw]

"don't see a meaningful difference between steroid-use and nutritionally-balanced breakfasts"

There is. A balanced diet doesn't provide abnormal body mass.

It can also be somewhat quantified with statistical analysis of MLB.

Among pro athletes who are training as much as a human can:
* If you ban steroids, then whoever's body naturally produces the most wins
* If you don't ban steroids, then almost everyone must take them to complete

Either way there are problems, but banning steroids actually makes for a less even playing field. There are still sport like power lifting where steroid use is normal (and yet some winners don't use them, as their body naturally produces enough: they're in the top 0.1% or whatever of natural production.) OTOH, to the extent that steroids can cause medical issues, banning them also makes sense.

There really are arguments to be made either way, and sports that work both ways to research for how things are turning out.

Re:Looking forwards

[unrtst]

I think this is a great point, and I think it's very easy to solve for competitions. Just issue everyone involved identical equipment.
Depending on the sport, one could draw a line regarding various pieces of the equipment (ex. the shorts and jerseys used in soccer probably don't matter all that much; the ball is already shared, so that's already equalized; shoes... there are standards right now, but they don't issue standard equipment for each game).
For curling and baseball, the brooms and bats should, IMO, just be issued per-event so everyone has the same pool of brooms/bats to choose from (if there is any difference at all in sizes... otherwise, just all identical models).
For cycling, are we racing bikes, or people? This isn't a horse race. Just give everyone the same model bike, or at least have a small list of approved ones. They have put in many restrictions in this area already, but for how much money is involved in the big races, the race presenters should just buy and supply bikes for everyone - problem solved IMO.

Re:Looking forwards

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. Run them on rails, they'd still find a way to fly off. GP is a fucking idiot.

Re:Looking forwards

[Hognoxious]

Swimmers, for instance have been banned from wearing some full-body suits because the advantage they gave over others wasn't shaving off a tiny bit, they were shaving off a lot.

In a full-body suit you can't see how much they're shaving. Or where.

Re:Looking forwards

[phantomfive]

Seems reasonable if it makes the game more entertaining.

Re:Looking forwards

[Harlequin80]

This would require there to be the same attribute being the deciding factor for all competitors. If you take cricket bats for example they are fixed width but there is a huge variation in weight. Heavier bats hit are but slow your ability to react and hence mean you have to plan shots earlier. Lighter bats mean you have to swing harder but have far more scope to start your shots later or change angle mid shot.

When it comes to cycling the gearing will be tuned to the particular rider. Watch a cycling competition and you will see riders travelling at the same speed with very different foot speed. This is particularly noticeable on the mountain stages, are you a low force high rpm rider or a high force low rpm rider.

Re:Looking forwards

[UnknowingFool]

Swimmers aren't required to don industry-standard street-wear.

Well not industry standard but some of the suits that swimmers used years ago are now considered banned as it gave too much an advantage to some swimmers. After 20 new world records were set in the 2009 World Championships, a serious discussion had to occur. Eventually FINA banned the suits for competition.

Re:Looking forwards

[UnknowingFool]

Er what? There is actual science on why the suits made swimmers faster. During the 2009 World Championships, 20 new world records were set.

Re:Looking forwards

[AK Marc]

Then it's no longer a game of skill, but instead a sports exhibition. The rules as written aren't followed, but the interpretation of the rules dominates the rules.

Re:Looking forwards

[phantomfive]

Then it's no longer a game of skill, but instead a sports exhibition.

It's definitely partially a sports exhibition. Skill is involved, but if it weren't an exhibition, it wouldn't be making prime time TV.

Re:Looking forwards

[CastrTroy]

The problem is that the bikes are paid for by sponsors. If you give everybody the same bike, or 1 of 3 bikes to choose from, then basically nobody will sponsor the sport, and you lose out on a huge amount of money. Bike racing is just a huge advertisement for bicycle manufacturers and other sponsors.

Re:Looking forwards

[AK Marc]

Exhibition vs test match. They are the Globetrotters vs Washington Generals, not a competition. If you ignore any of the rules to make it more entertaining, it shouldn't be able to legally be called a sport.

Re:Looking forwards

[phantomfive]

If you ignore any of the rules to make it more entertaining, it shouldn't be able to legally be called a sport.

Legally? Is that regulated by the OED? What is their typical violation for such a punishment?

Re:Looking forwards

[quantaman]

Train with steroids, then stop at some threshold before testing, so you get a pass result. Worked for Arnold (and almost everyone else in the sport).

Why would he stop? I didn't think professional bodybuilding involves drug tests.

Re:Looking forwards

[ChrisMaple]

No one is arguing that you should handicap more talented athletes.

Some horse races handicap superior horses with additional weight. Some golf contests use calculated handicaps, also some league tenpin bowling.

Re:Looking forwards

[AK Marc]

Some of them have toyed with the idea on and off. I think Arnold claims he recognized the damage it did and stopped. Those that are tested, like olympic weight lifters have regular tests, not just at competition because you can be cleat at the competition and still had had an unnatural advantage.

Re:Looking forwards

[Anonymous Coward]

@Anonymous Coward with the bike issues.
After 30-40,000 km on my Trek 7000 (a hybrid, that is, mountain bike frame and handlebars but road tyres) it was no longer effective to spend at least the purchase price (US$350 or so) of the bike on a full rebuild to keep it going another year or two. I did it about 18 months ago, but ended up, this time,considering replacing it with the new equivalent model (I think a Trek 7.1?) was US$500 or so) buying a Cannondale Quick Speed 2 (I think that's what the full name is).
Lightweight, narrow high pressure road tyres, carbon forks, 20 speeds (yes, 2 x 10!) with wide flat bars and it gets easier to go faster the faster you go (or so it feels to me).
No stupid fad 'disk brakes', this has callipers on the wheel rim, making 700mm diametre disk brakes.
No suspension, just light weight and strong forks for roads and bike paths (90% of my journey is on dedicated bike/pedestrian paths).
Sensible, practical (if you have safe storage, it's a US$1000 bike) and easy to ride fast.
Not a Hummer, racer or Yugo, but a solid bike made by taking the most cost effective ideas from each to make a bike that suits me, who commutes by bicycle 29 km (round trip) a day for about 9 months of the year.
Works for me, might not for you.

Re: Looking forwards

[Anonymous Coward]

But MLB players are forced to used wooden bats.

Re:Looking forwards

[rockout]

Miguel Tejada was, and is, a lying, cheating, excuse-making sack of crap. You forgot to mention the string of evidence, starting in 2005, that preceded his eventual suspension, including the one year of probation that he accepted as part of his guilty plea for lying to Congress. And to be clear, it's only Tejada that claims his testing positive for amphetamines because of Adderall; when you look at his history, it's very convenient that he developed ADHD in order to be able to fail drug tests for amphetamines - he could've been taking anything.

Don't forget that he also was exposed for lying about his age (a somewhat common practice among Dominican players in MLB in the 1990s-2000s - if you're two years younger, you can get a longer contract) in 2008, and admitted later that he'd been lying about it for his entire career. You're painting a very different picture from the reality.

Re:Looking forwards

[unrtst]

When it comes to cycling the gearing will be tuned to the particular rider. Watch a cycling competition and you will see riders travelling at the same speed with very different foot speed. This is particularly noticeable on the mountain stages, are you a low force high rpm rider or a high force low rpm rider.

Their choice of gear combination while riding does not mean they have different gears installed on their bikes, it just means they changed into a different gear while riding. I strongly suspect that the vast majority of pro riders are running with the same gear ranges (there aren't that many combos).
That said, they could easily offer a variety of standard cassettes, or even mix-and-match gears to choose from... those things are very easy to change out. Offering standard sets would mean that all competitors would be using the same quality and weight of products, and they could still easily offer a range of options, especially in the major events.

Re:Looking forwards

[Harlequin80]

I think you need to read about the gearing that is used by the pros. They often tune the gearing of their bike to a particular stage and have only a small number of gears to choose from while riding. You need to minimise the amount of lateral movement there is in the chain otherwise you create a huge powerloss. They even have a number of different crank lengths and will swap them as required.

Of course you can run standardised equipment if you wanted to, but personally I think it would be a huge step in the wrong direction and it would limit the approaches that people can take to win. I think you should have some basic restrictions, such as weight and length but outside of that I don't see a problem in letting manufacturers use sports as a method of improving their products.

Internet News

[Anonymous Coward]

When controversies in curling become news, ...

There are more important things. Like the behavior of professional bowlers. I mean those guys make footballers look like school girls.

And let's get into the problems in the Gin Rummy and Bridge communities. I mean come on! There are more important things to talk about!

Re:Internet News

[Anonymous Coward]

American footballers are schoolgirls. Too soft to play without armour, too thick to follow the rules of rugby union.

Re:Internet News

[bev_tech_rob]

American footballers are schoolgirls. Too soft to play without armour, too thick to follow the rules of rugby union.

Yeah right. But I don't see rugby players drilling someone at full speed preparing to catch the ball liike they do when American Football punt receivers are about to catch a punt (unless they call fair catch of course).

Re:Internet News

[bev_tech_rob]

Case in point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:Internet News

[3.5 stripes]

Yeah, did you see that thing about armor?

Re:Internet News

[interval1066]

American footballers are schoolgirls.

And then there's Curling. Real blood sport. My experience with Curling: Went to Ottawa for business, stopped in Vancouver for a connecting flight. In one waiting area bar was a few televisions with people watching Curling. I had two hours to kill so I sat down with a beer and watched Curling. Two hours later I left to get my connecting flight. Two hours of looking at my watch, drinking Molsen's, and watching Curling. Two hours. Seemed like 5. I tried to get into it, honestly. Then I left Vancouver. That was my last experience with Curling. Seriously. It could have been an English documentary on cheese making. I left with the same impression. Woah. Need a sleep-aid? Watch Curling.

Re:Internet News

[Anonymous Coward]

When the catching is wearing a full suit of armour, who cares how hard they're hitting each other. In rugby union, half the players don't even wear a gum shield.

American football is a ladies game.

I played rugby once with a guy who played a bit of AF at uni he said it was hilarious because you were invincible with all the armour. Like bubble football or something.

Re:Internet News

[operagost]

Rugby rules are nonsensical. Camp was a genius when he created the system of downs. It rather beats "everyone pile onto the ball carrier until the official figures he's had enough".

Re:Internet News

[Anonymous Coward]

Schoolgirl stuff.

Here's some hits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWILREWptvs

Re:Internet News

[myowntrueself]

American footballers are schoolgirls. Too soft to play without armour, too thick to follow the rules of rugby union.

Yeah right. But I don't see rugby players drilling someone at full speed preparing to catch the ball liike they do when American Football punt receivers are about to catch a punt (unless they call fair catch of course).

American football players are athletes! They run miles in training! They run for 6 seconds, have a 5 minute break, run another 6 seconds etc.

Re:Internet News

[Higaran]

Tell that to all the retired american footballers with lifetime brain damage.

Re:Internet News

[dj245]

When controversies in curling become news, ...

There are more important things. Like the behavior of professional bowlers. I mean those guys make footballers look like school girls.

And let's get into the problems in the Gin Rummy and Bridge communities. I mean come on! There are more important things to talk about!

Curling is an interesting sport because the physical fitness requirements aren't terribly rigorous. Anyone who can lift/push 40 pounds or sweep a broom continuously for about 60 seconds can play. That's a very low bar compared to other sports. It is much more of a game of skill and teamwork than a game of pure athleticism. That means that players can continue playing competitively into their 30s, 40s, and even 50s. It's refreshing to watch a game where some players have decades of experience. You don't see that in most other sports where ~30 can be a common retirement age.

Re:Internet News

[Anonymous Coward]

There aren't that many sports where ~30 is the common (median) average retirement age. I doubt that football (soccer to Americans) players even retire that early. What athletic games are you thinking of where they retire that young, as an average? IIRC even the NFL is 36 as an average (discounting those who retired due to injury). Runners keep running until their 60s. Golfers move to Masters and Grand Masters, etc.

Re:Internet News

[Anonymous Coward]

At least a documentary on cheese making might teach you something about cheese making.

Re:Internet News

[AK Marc]

Banned in my country

Re:Internet News

[AK Marc]

Flag on that play. Doesn't count as an example of what's allowed.

Re:Internet News

[AK Marc]

Rugby watchers say the same about American football.

And some of the rules are contradictory and inconsistent. Lying on the ground in basketball? Getting up without moving either foot is "traveling" when you didn't move either foot. But doing the caterpillar while on the ground and moving half the length of the court isn't traveling.

Re:Internet News

[Garfong]

It's like baseball: if you understand it, it can be super interesting. If you don't understand it, it's a bunch of guys (mostly) standing around.

Re:Internet News

[Gibgezr]

HE HEY HEY now! How can you not love a sport that lets you drink beer while you play?

Re:Internet News

[quantaman]

American footballers are schoolgirls.

And then there's Curling. Real blood sport. My experience with Curling: Went to Ottawa for business, stopped in Vancouver for a connecting flight. In one waiting area bar was a few televisions with people watching Curling. I had two hours to kill so I sat down with a beer and watched Curling. Two hours later I left to get my connecting flight. Two hours of looking at my watch, drinking Molsen's, and watching Curling. Two hours. Seemed like 5. I tried to get into it, honestly. Then I left Vancouver. That was my last experience with Curling. Seriously. It could have been an English documentary on cheese making. I left with the same impression. Woah. Need a sleep-aid? Watch Curling.

Could have been worse, you could have been watching baseball.

Though seriously curling is like any sport, way better if you understand it and have some context for what's going on.

Re:Internet News

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell that to all the retired american footballers with lifetime brain damage.

Yep, and playing football didn't make it better.

Re:Internet News

[ChrisMaple]

I love curling. I think it's hilarious.
The rules seem straightforward, but the strategies baffle me.

Re:Internet News

[sjames]

If you understand the strategy in play, it gets a lot more interesting.

Re:Internet News

[toddestan]

I seriously doubt that the average retirement age in the NFL is 36. Maybe that's the average age of players that choose to hang up their helmets and call it quits, but the average NFL player only plays in the NFL for less than 4 seasons. My guess is that the typical NFL player "retires" sometime in their mid-late 20's when no team is willing to sign them, not of their choice.

Re:Internet News

[Anonymous Coward]

The 'pile on' ( ruck ) basically continues until either a player intentionally plays the ball while off his feet ( penalty ), the man on the floor doesn't release the ball ( penalty ), the tackler doesn't release the tacklee ( penalty ), a player enters the ruck from the side ( penalty ), the referee determines the ball cannot escape ( scrum ), or the ball is taken out of the ruck ( continue play ).

Simple.

Oh come on

[Hognoxious]

It's a silly idea in the first place. You don't take a penalty in football and have your team mates shifting the goalposts around. You don't see someone combing the grass to make a golf putt go in.

Re:Oh come on

[rhazz]

But you do see golf clubs evolving over the years when novel materials are used to manufacture them, or when data shows a different mold is better. You get lighter clubs. Differently balanced clubs. Clubs with different grips, lengths, shapes, etc. All of which make it easier to do things that previous generations had to work very hard at, and therefore the previous generation is very biased towards maintaining the old status quo. I would bet that previously as new clubs allowed people to drive further, they just made bigger golf courses.

Re:Oh come on

[cjjjer]

I would bet that previously as new clubs allowed people to drive further, they just made bigger golf courses

That is what is happening right now most of the PGA sanctioned courses have over the last decade been modifying lesser difficulty holes to be either longer, more strategic with hazard placement or redesigning the green area.

Re:Oh come on

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a silly idea in the first place. You don't take a penalty in football and have your team mates shifting the goalposts around. You don't see someone combing the grass to make a golf putt go in.

However, both football and golf would turn into a more interesting sport if they were played on ice with balls weighting 40 pounds.

What?

[valnar]

What's the world coming to when people are cheating at shuffleboard?

Boring Professional Sports

[GabeGhearing]

It'll make the official games more boring

• MLB banned the spitball... and baseball got more boring
  NASCAR banned everything... and made a "sport" for idiots

Re:Boring Professional Sports

[Hognoxious]

NASCAR? Didn't they even ban turning right?

Re:Boring Professional Sports

[Anonymous Coward]

NASCAR has not banned the right turn. They just strongly suggest you keep the number of them made during the race to a bare minimum.

We miss you Dale Sr.

Re:Boring Professional Sports

[BiggoronSword]

We need sports leagues that allow for steroid use and technology that provides for superhuman abilities. That will make for interesting sports.

Re:Boring Professional Sports

[Anonymous Coward]

The spitball was banned because it made the game boring. It lessened the effect of the skill of the batter and pitcher, and it slowed the game down.
If you don't know anything about baseball, at least do some research before you post.
(I won't comment on Nascar since I don't know that much about it.)

Re:Boring Professional Sports

[Anonymous Coward]

If you own anything in this world, then you own your body. You should have every right to do whatever you want with your body. Nose job. Boob job. Pec job. Butt job. Steroids. Tattoos. Piercings. Hair implants. Hair removal. Neural implants. Whatever, it's your body.

Sports is an entertainment industry. Let's accept that one. Professional, amateur, whatever. People watch it, and pay to watch it, as a form or entertainment.

We have long accepted that certain entertainers will alter their bodies, mainly with cosmetic surgery, in order to compete better within their industry.

Many sports already have doping as the norm. Cycling, and Track and Field have the mentality of "it's only cheating if you're not doing it". Create leagues that allow doping and let the entertainers who want to perform in those leagues do so.

Re:Boring Professional Sports

[Ol Olsoc]

It'll make the official games more boring

• NASCAR banned everything... and made a "sport" for idiots

You should post that over in the "How Bill Nye Insulted NASCAR. Someone over there is talking about how Stupid Nye is because NASCAR is the most scientifically based racing on earth (paraphrasing)

Pushrods and carbs - cutting edge from a hundred plus years ago.

Re:Boring Professional Sports

[AK Marc]

You can do whatever you want, you just can't play a sanctioned NFL game while doing so. Want to start your own league? Go for it. But the established sporting bodies say "not in my league".

A new olympics

[LordWabbit2]

I say we should start a new Olympics. Like we have one for disabled people we should have one for people who can take whatever drugs they like, can use any new fancy dangled tech they want. I would pay to watch that! 100 meter sprint and two people hearts explode. AWESOME!

Re:A new olympics

[Anonymous Coward]

They should combine sports too. Imagine combining archery with the high jump, or hockey with the 100 yard dash. Or go to extremes and create a sex while trampolining.

Re:A new olympics

[coastwalker]

Regretfully I have to say that this is a highly likely scenario if sport does not accommodate augmented humans.

Re:A new olympics

[Anonymous Coward]

Could have sworn someone was already working on a augmented Olympics some years back. Not sure what came off it.

Re:A new olympics

[Anonymous Coward]

I want this so hard!

Re:A new olympics

[JazzLad]

I think 2 genders is enough, besides, how many geneticists actually trampoline?

Re:A new olympics

[operagost]

Saturday Night Live already did that bit...

Re:A new olympics

[T.E.D.]

Yup. The All Drug Olympics

Re:A new olympics

[Nidi62]

Could have sworn someone was already working on a augmented Olympics some years back. Not sure what came off it.

The Soviets tried it back in the 80s.

Re:A new olympics

[AK Marc]

So the 100m dash will be a race between two people shot from cannons. Entertaining I agree, but hardly "sporting".

*spoiler alert*
the human cannonball wearing rocket boosters wins.

Re:A new olympics

[kylemonger]

Not just the Soviets. Everybody tried this back in the 80's. And the 70's, 60's, 90's and 00's. We've never had a drug-free era in sport, not in any of our lifetimes, not in any country involved in the Cold War.

Re:A new olympics

[Anonymous Coward]

So the 100m dash will be a race between two people shot from cannons. Entertaining I agree, but hardly "sporting".

It would be sporting if you told them they had to stick the landing.

Re:A new olympics

[swb]

I think this is a great idea, actually.

As they say, water will find its own level. A sport that says "sure, take whatever drugs you want" will probably follow some kind of path.

At first, it will be weird, high tech drugs that have minimal risks and probably marginal improvements. But the pressure of competition will result in increasingly risky drugs being used. Eventually athletes will die -- during competition, after competition or suffer debilitating chronic conditions after their careers are over.

At some point, the athletes will only take drugs with minimal risks which will likely mean minimal performance enhancement and we'll reach the point where everybody is back to the same place.

Re:A new olympics

[AK Marc]

That's not a requirement in the current 100m dash, so why would you change the rules? The issue was about equipment and if there was no limit on equipment, not if you also changed the rules of the game. It'd no longer be a 100m dash at that point. It'd be a long jump, with a stick. If you wanted to hear my plan for a long jump, it involves renting a 777 ER, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:A new olympics

[Chris Mattern]

At some point, the athletes will only take drugs with minimal risks which will likely mean minimal performance enhancement and we'll reach the point where everybody is back to the same place.

I admire your optimism and belief in people's rationality. Alas, I can't say I believe in it. People will continue to push the envelope and continue to die until it is banned once again.

Re:A new olympics

[toddestan]

Actually, that's what they should do with the current Olympics. Then we can create a new Olympics that bans any technology the ancient Greeks didn't have. Oh yeah, and all the athletes compete naked.

I say

[bytesex]

So long as you don't electrify the damn things, there shouldn't be a problem.

Re:I say

[prunus.avium]

The problem is they don't know what it will do to the ice surface.

Curling is not played on smooth ice. The ice is sprayed with droplets of water that freeze quickly to create a bumpy surface called "pebble". Even with normal brooms this pebble can break down during play. A more abrasive material on the brooms could damage that pebble faster.

Re:I say

[Ol Olsoc]

The problem is they don't know what it will do to the ice surface.

Well seems to me like they could answer that question easily in a weekend. They can even have fun with it.

Take a rink, and have an "experimental tournament". run it the whole weekend using the new brooms, and see what happens.

Then free beer for everyone!

Re:I say

[prunus.avium]

I think that's the plan eventually. It's just a logistics issue of getting the governing body together with enough beer to make a decision.

Re:I say

[AK Marc]

Well seems to me like they could answer that question easily in a weekend. They can even have fun with it.

You and I have vastly different definitions of "fun".

Re:I say

[Ol Olsoc]

Well seems to me like they could answer that question easily in a weekend. They can even have fun with it.

You and I have vastly different definitions of "fun".

Could be. I am assuming since these folks participate in curling, they enjoy it on some level.

EMBroiled

[wonkey_monkey]

the friendly sport of curling suddenly has become roiled in controversy over — what else? — the brooms

I think you meant "embroiled." I don't think you can be "roiled" in something.

Re:EMBroiled

[Anonymous Coward]

With the advent of modernity and search engines, you don't need to think - you can know! And, if you knew, then you'd not have bothered trying to look like you were better or smarter and then, as it turns out, proving you're neither of those.

At least you got this right: "I don't think..."

Re:EMBroiled

[wonkey_monkey]

verb
past tense: roiled; past participle: roiled

        1.
        make (a liquid) turbid or muddy by disturbing the sediment.
        "winds roil these waters"

As I said, something cannot be roiled in something. It's just not that kind of verb.

Waiting for the doping scandal

[NotDrWho]

It's no secret that curlers are probably using performance enhancing drugs.

Re:Waiting for the doping scandal

[Anonymous Coward]

I really wonder what kind of drugs would enhance a curlers performance.

While curling is a lot more physically challenging than people expect, at a certain point there is no gain in being more physically fit. It's a game of finesse, muscle memory, and strategy. I guess it would be the same kind of drugs pro gamers are into, ones that help you focus/calm your nerves?

Re:Waiting for the doping scandal

[Anonymous Coward]

Pro-gamers or chess players. There were chess tournaments where nicotine was banned.
As for e-sports (Yep, I'm going to use that word because competitive gamer is ambiguous.) it isn't mature enough to ban enhancing drugs. So far drug testing there has only been a farce testing for drugs similar to those used in more "athletic" sports instead of testing for the drugs that the players actually use (Nicotine and adderall.) and if any tournament were to ban those it would cause some controversy considering that those are so accepted today.
They still cause the same problem, the players that doesn't want to get addicted to it are at a disadvantage.

Re:Waiting for the doping scandal

[GuB-42]

E-sports recently banned enhancing drugs following a small scandal a few months ago where it was revealed that most pro-gamer used them (mostly Adderall).
Stimulants like amphetamines (what Addreall is), nicotine and cocaine are all on the list. How is it actually tested, I don't know.

Re:Waiting for the doping scandal

[phantomfive]

I really wonder what kind of drugs would enhance a curlers performance.

From what I've read, they mostly depend on alcohol. Serious scandal. Reprehensible, unconscionable, etc.

Re:Waiting for the doping scandal

[onkelonkel]

Canadian Club Rye Whisky.

Don't do that.

[Anonymous Coward]

You know very well what. Just don't it.

Don't wanna be a canadian idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't wanna be a canadian idiot

Well maple syrup and snow's what they export
They treat curling just like it's a real sport

Re:Don't wanna be a canadian idiot

[rossdee]

You know that curling is a sport that is played in some countries besides Canada
I think it was invented in Scotland, I know its popular here in Minnesota, and they used to play it in Central Otago
(thats in The South Island of NZ) when the winter was cold enough.

Is this phrase out of a Harry Potter movie?

[tkrotchko]

" World Curling Federation has stepped in and issued new rules that set severe restrictions on the types of brooms "

It reminds me years ago when Illie Nastase used the infamous Spaghetti Racket which was mired in controversy decades ago when there was virtually no restrictions on tennis rackets.

http://www.tennis.com/gear/201...

High Tech Brooms?

[Anonymous Coward]

I call Shenanigans!

Who the fuck cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

See: subject

LOL ... wait, what?

[gstoddart]

The brooms have been compared to high-tech drivers that allow amateur golfers to hit the ball as far as a pro

OK, where the hell can I get one of these? Is it rocket powered?

Kidding aside, I do agree that sometimes the technology reaches the point where it really provides an unfair advantage and buggers up the concept of a level playing field.

Re:LOL ... wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I once worked at the sort of place where the golfers would have their new $600 clubs sent to the office so their wives wouldn't know they were spending money.

One day, one of them said, "Hey, you're in pretty good shape. You should take up golfing. You could probably drive a ball 300 yards."

I replied, "If I was going to take up golfing, I'd want to know how I stacked up against the best. So what I'd do is get a set of Tour-legal equipment, and save the rest of the money to take vacations to play where the pros do. And I'd worry a lot more about my putting than my driving."

They left me alone after that.

Re:LOL ... wait, what?

[PPH]

Hey, you're in pretty good shape. You should take up golfing.

Now there's a non sequitur if ever there was one.

Re:LOL ... wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's right up there with: "Hey you're in pretty good shape. You should take up smoking."

Remember everyone...

[Anonymous Coward]

Technology everyone has access to and can purchase is an "unfair advantage" but random genetic and physiologic differences you can't change or improve aren't "unfair" at all.

Forcing everyone to use the same inferior equipment in the name of "fairness" while not taking steps to limit innate physical advantages is pretty hypocritical.

What's unfair?

[NotQuiteReal]

I don't know what's unfair, but I know it when I see it.

apologies to judge Potter.

Mostly a ploy by BalancePlus

[BadgerRush]

From what I gather, the whole controversy was manufactured by the broom manufacturer BalancePlus as a way to discredit or even ban the competitor manufacturer Hardline. Basically BalancePlus created a prototype broom which is meant to resemble their competitor's model in a few aspects, but also have a many "enhancements" which completely break the game (this is the "magical" broom that can control the rocks "like a joystick"). They created this game-breaking broom with the sole purpose of getting it banned and trying to get their competitor's model banned in the wake, which they accomplished.

It is a bit like when Tomas Edison created AC contraptions to electrocute puppies in order to prove to everybody that Tesla's AC was dangerous and that everybody should use his DC standard instead.

Re:Mostly a ploy by BalancePlus

[Anonymous Coward]

I see it as more like a security researcher showing off a proof-of-concept zero-day so software publishers can patch it.

Olympic std mayonnaise or unlimited garnishing?

[Overzeetop]

When you need to be the first one down that alligator gullet, you know there are going to be people who look for any advantage.

Ah yes...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because sticking to the old ways instead of progressing is totally for the best isn't it... If all teams had those brooms, nobody would bat an eye. This is once again the ones who can't afford to get the shiny new stuff, complaining about it.

PC Principles

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

You nerds should similarly give up on your high tech fleshlights and make one final effort to pussy crush.

Cute girls doing cute Curling things!

[Guppy]

Speaking of schoolgirls, the Japanese even made a curling manga, title is "Orange Delivery":

http://www.crunchyroll.com/ani...

Re:Cute girls doing cute Curling things!

[Chris Mattern]

The Japanese will make a manga out of almost any sport. There's ping-pong manga. There's yo-yo manga.

Terminated for trespassing

[liquid_schwartz]

If you own anything in this world, then you own your body. You should have every right to do whatever you want with your body...

Indeed. Women can terminate infants just for trespassing on their bodies regardless of what the father wants.

Re:Terminated for trespassing

[Cederic]

Too right. Fucking parasites, endangering the health of the hosts.

There's an easy solution

[ne0n]

If you can't play quidditch with it, don't allow it in curling.

It's their sport

[piRSqrd]

Let them decide what curling means. If they want to start using a ditch digger, let them. Sport is ultimately entertainment. The people who care will collectively decide what equipment will be used. Personally, I'd be more interested in seeing what professionals could do with special brooms. Could they make the stone go backwards?

Ban all the brooms

[bestweasel]

In what other sports are you allowed to rearrange the field of play? Though my main objection is that all that frenzied sweeping just looks very silly. It turns a (semi) serious sport into housework on ice.

Re:Ban all the brooms

[ChrisMaple]

Calvinball.

You can get banned for prescribed meds

[Zeorge]

I remember this one, he was taking finistride for baldness, had a prescription, the medication provides no athletic enhancement. Strictly cosmetic.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/19/fashion/thursdaystyles/19skin2.html?_r=0

Embrace Movement

[Tablizer]

Seems to me this could help the sport more than hurt it. If the guidance is more visible, it makes it more interesting to spectators. Something that swerves is more fun to watch than something that mostly stays in a straight line.

Re:Embrace Movement

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose that does depend on what people are there to see. It could even branch into its own game. In that event, though, they would probably want to increase the difficulty of the game somehow in order to balance the new capabilities of the equipment.

dca7d0fe92a6510

Re:Embrace Movement

[quantaman]

Seems to me this could help the sport more than hurt it. If the guidance is more visible, it makes it more interesting to spectators. Something that swerves is more fun to watch than something that mostly stays in a straight line.

The problem is you can make rocks do this and this. The thrower is irrelevant on a shot like that since even a moderate sweeper can put the rock wherever they want. The skill and precision of the throwers is the big draw of the sport, along with the sweepers working like crazy to cause a moderate difference. With those brooms you end up turning it into a weird game of chess.

Note that the brooms from that video were never actually released to market, they were just used to spark the controversy as a demonstration of what could be done.

In fact both those brooms and the sweeping technique used were likely illegal under the previous rules.

WTF?

[oldmac31310]

What is this shite?

Many curlers think this is BS

[quantaman]

Sorry for the lengthy post but I've been following this very closely since is started and the media account has been highly misleading so far.

Basically this is largely a controversy involving two companies, BalancePlus (BP), a long established broom manufacturer, and Hardline (HL), a company that's been around for about 5 years and is built around their broom.

Both companies sponsor teams, that's the major way they market equipment since brush effectiveness is really hard to evaluate, so often the only way a club curler will trust a broom is if they know elite curlers are using it.

Hardline's broom was a big step technologically. There's a number of nice features but a couple are the fact it's very light (you can sweep a lot faster), and instead of sweeping with a woven fabric there's a diamond pattern applied to the fabric that seals it against moisture (brooms become less effective when they're wet).

Now no one really heard much of Hardline for the first few years but then last year they sponsored some of the top young teams and a couple of those teams had breakthrough seasons and started winning a lot. It could just be because they were young teams poised for a breakthrough, or it could be because the brooms gave them a huge advantage. Either way a lot of elite curlers started looking at the brooms and thinking they were really good, some decided to try getting Hardline sponsorship, some pushed their own sponsors to design comparable brooms, and others may have started thinking the brooms were too effective and were detracting from the skill of the game.

Now jump to October of this year and people are suddenly talking about a players meeting that happened in Toronto and some agreement among top curlers. Eventually over the next week the news starts leaking out. There was a big World Curling Tour event with a lot of the top teams including those sponsored by both BalancePlus (BP) and Hardline (HL). The BP teams came with a special kind brush that was doing ridiculous things, they could make a rock that would normally curl 6 feet one way fall 4 feet the other way, or make a draw run completely straight, the brooms also destroyed the ice in the process. Everyone present could see that whatever they were using shouldn't be allowed in the sport. Either way the BP teams said they'd stop using their brooms if the HL teams stopped using theirs.

BP then released a statement talking about how they'd been told the HL brooms were doing unnatural things to the rocks, so they investigated and found they used "directional fabric" (no one know what this means). So BP says they did this stunt to show that if they really wanted they could make a broom so effective it would wreck the sport but that they really felt that no one should use directional fabric (this was mixed in with all sorts of shots at the HL broom).

So within a week of this event there was an agreement that the HL sponsored teams would flip their brushing material inside out (it's just a cover with ordinary fabric on the underside). If the diamond pattern was "directional fabric" they'd just have an ordinary fabric. Of course they kept on winning and so people decided it must be something else. This seems to the motivation behind the World Curling Federation ruling that bans the texturing HL used on their fabric (supposedly the "directional fabric") and some other extra modifications to make the brush head firmer.

Here's the problem, there's absolutely no actual evidence that's been presented that the HL brooms are any different than other brushes, the only thing BP released is the two videos of their own demo brooms doing unnatural things. No one has ever shown HL brooms doing the same (and there's a lot of people who have them). In fact they only actual test I've heard of involved two teams trying to sort it out by testing with both brooms at some event. The test finished with both brushes perfor

Re:Many curlers think this is BS

[coastwalker]

Fascinating story, could do with some mod points but alas I have none.

Re:Many curlers think this is BS

[Anonymous Coward]

Similar opinion (with swearing added): http://inthehousecurling.blogspot.cz/

Use a Roomba

[kmoser]

A Roomba could be programmed to know exactly how to treat the ice for maximum performance.

Coren22 = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!" #1/6

[Anonymous Coward]

"Apk doesn't think DNS servers are worth running & believes Microsoft Active Directory can run w/out DNS." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday October 27, 2015

Where'd I say it? Show us (not illogic logic but where I literally said it). I say AD needs internal DNS far back as 2007

http://forums.tweaktown.com/wi...

See "To warn users who have ActiveDirectory/AD LAN-WAN setups to NOT use external DNS servers" there in my security guide.

Fact: You shoot your mouth off lying about it & me, hmmm?

(It's your mentally damaged goods assburgers brain acting up trying to put words in my mouth I never said? Yes...)

---

Where did I say I don't use DNS too?

Clue: I do & detailed it for you AGAIN (via my std. post on DNS vs. hosts) -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

---

"You must really suck at programming" - by Coren22 on Monday November 23, 2015

What've you programmed? Other /.'ers disagree:

"his hosts program is actually pretty good" - by xenotransplant (4179011) on Monday August 10, 2015 @03:34PM (#50287195)

"I like your host file system." - by Karmashock (2415832) on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @03:57PM (#50489401)

"APK is kinda right... I've given up on JS based adblocking and gone to blackholing in /etc/hosts, just like it was back in the 90s. The computational load has gotten intolerable for any ad-blocking using JS. I've tried his hosts file generating software. It works." - by bmo (77928) on Thursday October 15, 2015 @11:30AM (#50736071)

"his hosts tool is actually useful for those cases in which one does indeed want to locally block stuff outright while consuming minimum system resources" by alexgieg (948359) on Friday September 25, 2015 @09:57AM (#50596461)

"No complaints from me, I like APK's spam. Reminds me to use a host file. Also, his stuff is free." - by aaaaaaargh! (1150173) on Tuesday November 17, 2015 @09:31AM (#50947415)

APK

P.S.=> Con't. in 2/6... apk

Coren22 = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!" #2/6

[Anonymous Coward]

"figured out why privilege escalation's a bad thing?" - by Coren22 on Tuesday September 22, 2015

How else can I programmatically update hosts itself?

---

"it requires elevation to write hosts" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday September 23, 2015

Hypocrite later admits it!

Even MalwareBytes AntiMalware DEMANDS it or it can't do a job fully like many security tools!

---

"Needing admin privileges every time a program updates is poor design" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday November 10, 2015

Mine doesn't to get new data to update hosts vs. threats. Only hosts itself updates need it vs. WFP/SFP. Users set it too. It's not programmatic impersonation.

---

"90's tech to fight modern war" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday November 10, 2015

Ozymandias/Watchmen per a namesake:

"I resolved to apply antiquities teachings" (hosts) "to our world today & began my path to conquest - Conquest not of men but of the evils that beset them: Fossil Fuels (antispyware), Oil (antivir), Nuclear Power (addons) are like a drug & you gentlemen along w/ foreign interests are the pushers"

It works Aryeh Goretsky NOD32/ESET hosts = good security-> http://it.slashdot.org/comment...

Oliver Day (Symantec) too-> http://www.securityfocus.com/c...

MalwareBytes' hpHosts' Admin hosts + RECOMMENDS my APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-2 32/64-bit-> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl...

APK

P.S.=> Con't. in #3/6... apk

Coren22 = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!" #3/6

[Anonymous Coward]

"I guess we should avoid your crap, it looks like it is marked as malware." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Monday November 02, 2015 @03:52PM (#50850445)

62 reputable sources + /. users say different:

Safe by 57 antivirus programs in 64-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

+

the 32-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

&

Per VirScan (installer too)-> http://f.virscan.org/APKHostsF...

---

MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee) hosts & recommends it -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl... & MalwareBytes = BEST antivirus per this VERY recent testing of them all http://www.av-test.org/en/news...

(& he certified my source http://slashdot.org/comments.p... - he wouldn't host it, much less recommend it, minus that...) /.'ers say my work is good too:

"his hosts program is actually pretty good" - by xenotransplant (4179011) on Monday August 10, 2015 @03:34PM (#50287195)

"I like your host file system." - by Karmashock (2415832) on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @03:57PM (#50489401)

"APK is kinda right... I've given up on JS based adblocking and gone to blackholing in /etc/hosts, just like it was back in the 90s. The computational load has gotten intolerable for any ad-blocking using JS. I've tried his hosts file generating software. It works." - by bmo (77928) on Thursday October 15, 2015 @11:30AM (#50736071)

"his hosts tool is actually useful for those cases in which one does indeed want to locally block stuff outright while consuming minimum system resources" by alexgieg (948359) on Friday September 25, 2015 @09:57AM (#50596461)

"No complaints from me, I like APK's spam. Reminds me to use a host file. Also, his stuff is free." - by aaaaaaargh! (1150173) on Tuesday November 17, 2015 @09:31AM (#50947415)

APK

P.S.=> Con't in part #4/6... apk

Coren22 = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!" #4/6

[Anonymous Coward]

"His newest post is trying to refute that MiTM attack opportunity his software provides" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday November 18, 2015

I DISPROVED it: Hardcoded favs users provide themselves are REVERSE DNS verified & my program filters 5,500++ false positives:

1.) Search engines
2.) Antivirus (e.g. updaters)
3.) Security community sites
4.) Captchas, brower home pages + download pages
5.) Ebay/Amazon (shopper & banking)

(Security community I get hosts data from do false positives filters in current data + removal lists).

---

"won't demonstrate security of his product be exposing the source (someone might steal it!)" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday November 18, 2015

I don't give away work to be stolen OR misused like GOOGLE CHROME http://it.slashdot.org/story/1...

"the secretary at MalwareBytes took a look at his source code and said it looked all good to them" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Wednesday November 18, 2015

My ware went thru code verification by Mr. Steven Burn of Malwarebytes' hpHosts

http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

A competent coder & BEST security researcher I know of FROM THE BEST ANTIMALWARE THERE IS http://www.av-test.org/en/news...

NOT a secretary!

---

YOU BLEW IT ON ADMIN PRIV TOO: My program doesn't require it hosts does (WFP/SFP): my program protects hosts beyond it!

I.E.-> I run manually minus admin priv & drag result to hosts naming it "hosts" overwriting original.

Only auto update needs it (WFP/SFP) & users set it themselves in program shortcut: Not programmatic impersonation.

---

DNS introduces a SECURITY ISSUE RIDDLED SINGLE POINT OF FAILURE & doesn't secure down to endpoints on a LAN -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

How I use remote filtering DNS combined w/ hosts is there showing many DNS security issues hosts overcome.

APK

P.S.=> Con't in part #5/6... apk

Coren22 = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!" #5/6

[Anonymous Coward]

"Virus scanners/Adblock software don't need admin priv to update" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday November 10, 2015

Neither does my program. AV does to remove threats - Adblock addons = Vastly INFERIOR in abilities + efficiency vs. hosts as I proved & no one proved me wrong to date!

---

"your software does" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday November 10, 2015

No hosts do (WFP/SFP) - Intake update of new hosts data doesn't!

---

"won't reveal your source code" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday November 10, 2015

I don't owe you it. I don't give away work to be stolen OR misused like GOOGLE CHROME http://it.slashdot.org/story/1...

---

"What's stopping you from pointing my bank's web site at your private server?" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday November 10, 2015

I don't keep a server. Security guru (not - you create no ware for security & your forensics skills = non-existent): Put it in a VM, trace it via process monitor + wireshark (don't need code)!

---

"the possibility of being caught, which would be pretty hard to catch w/ such a large hosts file, as no one can go through it manually." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday November 10, 2015

I put hardcoded fav sites @ top of hosts for speed & reliabilty - spotted easily & bulk of hosts = sorted blocked known bad threats provided by the security community (filtered vs. 5,500++ false positive possibles in my program & by current security community data).

---

"What are you going to do when Windows gets rid of the hosts file completely?" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday November 10, 2015

Hasn't happened!

---

"They have already taken steps to make it useless in Windows 10." - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday November 10, 2015

It works there!

Telemetry's killed 10 by itself: VISTA = Win10 = Win8 = flops - who're you fooling other than yourself?

APK

P.S.=> Con't. in #6/6... apk

Coren22 = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!" #6/6

[Anonymous Coward]

Coren22 'eats his words' vs. me 2x yet again:

"introduces risk you are relying on a 3rd party to update a hosts file potentially opening you up to MITM attacks" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday November 17, 2015

How? My prog puts entries in as non-blocking to hostnames on ones users give it as favs to speed up @ TOP of hosts REVERSE DNS VERIFIED!

(For more speed, & reliability + security - in RAM as 1st resolver queried = faster & more secure vs. remote DNS w/ all its security issues in Kaminsky flaw, DNSChanger malware IP stack settings, routers bushwhacked in DNS settings, rogue DNS, Open DNS servers abused by malware. It aids in reliability vs. redirects).

YOU'D SPOT IT INSTANTLY @ TOP OF CUSTOM HOSTS & can easily edit anything you want out!

(Rest = known bad sites from 10 reputable security community sites for blocking - the MAJORITY of what's in my hosts files!)

+ my sources do removal lists vs. false positives & helped me create a "FP" filter in my program (5,500++ of them)!

---

"maybe one day you can get a score 5 comment" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday November 17, 2015

See subject & ~ 12 +5 upmods: "Eat your words" (1st one: You tried using what I post there against me to FAIL):

+5 'modded up' posts by "yours truly" (11):

http://news.slashdot.org/comme...
http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...
http://news.slashdot.org/comme...
http://science.slashdot.org/co...
http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...
http://hardware.slashdot.org/c...
http://news.slashdot.org/comme...
http://news.slashdot.org/comme...
http://hardware.slashdot.org/c...
http://yro.slashdot.org/commen...
http://yro.slashdot.org/commen...

"You believe you are getting the better of me" - by Coren22 (1625475) on Tuesday November 17, 2015

YOU GOT THE BEST OF YOURSELF in fails & lies about me. Your immature signatures about me SCREAM you're butthurt - Did it to yourself.

APK

P.S.=> You fail Coren22... apk