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Anyone purchasing or filling any kind of tank (including, but not limited to oxygen, water, CO2, propane, argon, nitrogen, etc.) will need to be registered, fingerprinted, and relinquish their constitutional rights and future social security payments.

Actually, last I knew, at least here in the US, if you want to have your tanks filled, you needed to be registered with PADI.

that's PADI: http://www.padi.com/scuba/

unless you were thinking about rice.. ;hot water, rice... server farms finally derserve their names !

PNG = PADI National Geographic dive approved site. Papua New Guinea has several qualifying sites.

Forgive me, I missed one thing. You can start the process of becoming an instructor at 60 dives. But it requires 100 to complete. Which can still be accomplished in 6 months easily.

I mean, look at the sort of "specialties" PADI is offering now. Peak Performance Bouyancy? Bouyancy control is one of the cornerstones, perhaps THE cornerstone(given that it emcompasses good breath control as well), of good diving technique. This should be part of the basic openwater certification. A failure in this area leads directly to clumsy, overweighted divers who can and do inflict serious damage to underwater habitats, and are a danger to themselves and others.

How do you think PADI and the other certification agencies started? Certified divers who were instructing got together and came up with teaching standards.

It is not that these people are looking to circumvent the standards now used. It is that they find those standards and practices to be, in many cases, insufficient. They don't wish to eliminate the certification agency. They want to make a new one that has more strict standards, with an emphasis on a mentoring style of teaching, versus the abbreviated classroom style favored today.

Besides, given that PADI would certify someone as an instructor with only 6 months and 60 dives worth of experience is, frankly, scary.

In order to get a SCUBA tank filled with compressed air you have to flash certification credentials saying that you've the knowledge to use it without killing yourself.

I have dived w/o a lisance for a while now. Yeah, thats right, 70 feet down and I never had one lesson.

I was with a divemaster and other ppl who had gone though all the yada yada bs that you had to do to get your Padi lisance but I never did. And you know what? It really was not that hard.

Oh no! You say that I could have killed myself! Well damn skippy pal. You can kill youself every day by doing any number of things that don't require some sort of bs lisance, and really in much easier ways. Oh, how did I convicnce the divemaster that I was lisanced? Simple, I lied. I told him that I had one, told him however that I was a bit rusty and that if he could give me a quick refresher course that it would be all good. Then I was good to go.

That 1st set of dives was kind of rough yeah, I was learning fast and getting used to operating some equipment that I had never used before but in all reality it was not that hard. To say that you have to have a lisance to do that imo is a load of crap.

However, I am well aware that this planet is populated with a bunch of people that are fscking clueless. If they had tried to do what I did they might have ended up dead or mamed or some bs that would have caused much grief for not only themselfs but everyone that they were involved with. And so we, thanks to the general stupidity of humainity, have to have these lisances on what we consideder dangerous.

So, back to the point. Is being online w/o a lisance of having a clue dangerious? In my, even though I'm posting this as a AC I am no computer/inet noob, opinion hell no. Can you cause harm/be harmed on this open internet invention that was created upon the ideas of free speech and trust, well yeah kind of. But is the level of harm such that we have to have listancing requirements? Can you unplug your computer from the internet and still have a working machine? Of course. Can you install a better browser, or hell maybe I don't know have the powers that be enforce some anti-trust laws to prevent obvious monopolys that crank out rev after rev of software that sucks, charges you for it, and even then gets slimeballs to attack the next best thing?

Ok, I'm going to stop ranting now because I think I've made my point. It's just kind of annoying to have to pay for everyone elses ignorance/stupidity every day of your life and then watch some moron who proably knows even less about computers and life in general (even though they may even be friggen older than me) start screaming that *I* need to be lisanced to do what I've been doing for years just because they are too lazy to get a fscking clue.

My wife and I are getting PADI Open Water SCUBA certified. My work (a Dept of Defense research lab) has a pool on-site making this pretty easy. As said previously (about HAM radio), if you just rent the gear and get wet it is not very technical, if you go all the way and learn deep diving, wreck diving, ice diving, etc it gets very technical!

My wife and I are getting PADI Open Water SCUBA certified. My work (a Dept of Defense research lab) has a pool on-site making this pretty easy. As said previously (about HAM radio), if you just rent the gear and get wet it is not very technical, if you go all the way and learn deep diving, wreck diving, ice diving, etc it gets very technical!

Not Marianas, but you can certainly go explore SF Bay. PADI or NAUI should be able to connect you with the right people.

SCUBA is the best thing you'll ever do with your clothes on.