Well, as an anecdote to why simplicity (at least in it's current form) is bad... All but one of my smoke detectors in my apartment are unplugged because they kept going off when I was cooking (would happen at least once a week). I was more likely to die or get injured from climbing onto a wobbly stool to turn off the 4 overly sensitive smoke detectors than I ever was in a fire. I am getting the feeling that this thread is split into two types of people, those who get a lot of false positives from their detectors and those who don't.
I was a firefighter for seven years, many years ago.
One winter evening, we were dispatched to a chimney fire. After we extinguished it (with the homeowner's hose and a chimney nozzle) I did a walk through of the house and attic to check for extension.
I found his smoke detectors hanging open, with the batteries removed. When I asked the homeowner if he wanted some new batteries for them (we kept free batteries on the engine), he happily took them. When I asked him how long his smoke detectors had been without batteries, he quickly answered: "Since Christmas morning."
I have no doubt as to where the new batteries went...
