Slashdot Mirror

Some Titanic enthusiasts are already pointing out errors, such as the rate of list and the time scale of the flooding; I can't speak for this having not seen the video but my analysis of how the ship sank is here. Personally I have doubts as one person who worked on the project is a known plagiarist and one of the authors is a cherry picker of data (he insists that the ship had a massive list to port when she went under but only one of the three survivors who was on the Titanic till the last mentioned it, and his evidence is suspect, like claiming he was in freezing cold water for hours without any ill effect whatsoever). BTW, my own Titanic stuff is on this page.

Some Titanic enthusiasts are already pointing out errors, such as the rate of list and the time scale of the flooding; I can't speak for this having not seen the video but my analysis of how the ship sank is here. Personally I have doubts as one person who worked on the project is a known plagiarist and one of the authors is a cherry picker of data (he insists that the ship had a massive list to port when she went under but only one of the three survivors who was on the Titanic till the last mentioned it, and his evidence is suspect, like claiming he was in freezing cold water for hours without any ill effect whatsoever). BTW, my own Titanic stuff is on this page.

Some Titanic enthusiasts are already pointing out errors, such as the rate of list and the time scale of the flooding; I can't speak for this having not seen the video but my analysis of how the ship sank is here. Personally I have doubts as one person who worked on the project is a known plagiarist and one of the authors is a cherry picker of data (he insists that the ship had a massive list to port when she went under but only one of the three survivors who was on the Titanic till the last mentioned it, and his evidence is suspect, like claiming he was in freezing cold water for hours without any ill effect whatsoever). BTW, my own Titanic stuff is on this page.

As the submitter of this article, I thought readers might like to see a list of missing and recovered episodes, all from the first 6 years on my website

In the past, I used to go on Ghost Hunts. Yes, you read that right. But now its all heavily commercialized and genuine researchers are being forced out. Damn you "Most Haunted" and your cheque-book negotiation tactics; now placed don't allow access unless you wave a big cheque under the owner's nose!

Yes, they managed to get the colour information back from 11 episodes, but strangely it was rather weak and needed a fair amount of extra work to enhance it. Even so, the results, while usually good, are variable in places. At the start of episode 2 of the Mind of Evil, the flesh tones of Jo and The Doctor seemed to be "flashing" for want of a better word. And when people move, there is sometimes a trail of multicoloured mess left behind them. Still, some colour is better than no colour. If you don't like it, turn it off :)

This rumour started off in the summer as "90 missing episodes found" and even some big name fans were taken in by it, but the BBC (and those in a position to know and/or find out) always rubbished it. The story seems to be this: in the summer, someone in Africa (probably an old TV company, but a private collector has also been mentioned) sent a large package of old TV material to a company in the UK. The shows were to be remastered from old, obsolete formats into something that could be played with modern technology, something that the company specialised it. Somehow this news got picked up by the Dr.Who fraternity who made 2+2=106. So, almost certainly its a case of "move along, nothing to see here."
At any rate, if Ethiopia has got anything, they never bought the broadcast rights to the Troughton era, so all we'd have to recover at best would be a handful of Hartnells, but still better than nothing.
BUT just suppose the rumour is true, could the BBC have kept it quote for all these months? Ostensibly yes. The two episodes found in 2011 were "found" in the summer but this was a well kept secret until "Missing Believed Wiped" at the British Film Institute in December. Even the programme said they would be showing "1960s BBC Science Fiction" with no mention as to what it was. No one had a clue until much closer to the event. And when "Tomb of the Cybermen" was found in 1991, the BBC put out a cover story that it was simply four episodes of an already existing story. The secret was apparently kept hidden for at least a few weeks; all other missing episode "finds" have been quite quickly reported.
Lastly, a little plug for my own website about the missing episodes of Dr.Who.

Episodes from Tom Baker's era onwards exist in their entirety. The catalogue of stories from before this is rather patchy, and I've put a list of what exists and what doesn't on my website (though you'll need to make sure Javascript is running to see the what the key of icons represents.)

There is the Tom Baker episode Shada which wasn't completed as opposed to being wiped.

Interestingly, when the "junking" of old Dr.Who episodes stopped in 1978, both the stories you cite ("Tomb" and "War Games") were either missing completely or the majority of episodes had gone; obviously they have since been recovered (the missing "War Games" episodes from the British Film Institute in 1979 and "Tomb of the Cybermen" from Hong Kong in 1991.)

After leaving University in 1997 I was employed for 10 years before finally being forced to take a sabbatical due to workplace bullying damaging my mental health. I took the time out to write a book, and the success of that one has prompted me to write a second one, which is due out soon.
It wasn't my planned career goal. I have been trying for many years now to re-enter the workplace and I would be willing to do anything, from data input to development to straightforward admin; and most people won't even look at my CV - perhaps because I have reached that magic age (40) where long-term unemployment becomes an inevitability. I hardly ever receive an acknowledgement for my CV, but have noticed some small recognition after someone suggested that I write a more conversational resume to make it stand out. I try to maintain an active interest in the latest technology and often indulge in small projects to keep my programming edge, but beggers truly can't be choosers, and I'd settle for any employment.
Because I left my last job, I get no Job Seekers Allowance, and we get a token £5 reduction in our £100+ council tax. Also because my wife works we get little support from anyone - even though, despite working for a major multinational bank and is the recognised top performing employee for this region, she gets paid peanuts.
I have written to every benefits agency I can think of, and have even tried my MP (Andrew Lansley) but they won't/can't help. Its almost as if the Government is happy to take money off people but when it comes to dispensing support they all turn their backs.
I am overwhelmed with guilt as my parents, both pensioners, help us with our rent each month to the tune of £500 (our rent is £700, we can't afford to move or put our stuff into storage so we're in a no-win situation); all we get is £100 in benefits and we make up the balance meaning that we often go to bed hungry.
So good luck to anyone who thinks we live in a society that cares for its down-trodden citizens. Once you're on the road to penury there is little chance of escape.

...and extremely bad TV minseries!

..including a list of all messages sent to and from the ship here

A pity he didn't fix any of the errors in his film rather than being glib and implying that apart from a few discrepancies in the set (and Murdoch's suicide, which he kept in), that there weren't any.

Neil de Grasse Tyson is also in the news for being the proud (?) author of the only modification to be suggested and approved for inclusion in the new version of Titanic:3D - theres a mention here

Maybe Cameron did it to escape the mess that is Julian Fellowes's version of the Titanic disaster?

Indeed. When he comments that his projects are accurate in the hope that it will silence critics, and then is proven to be demonstrably wrong, it makes we wonder what else this high-flying egomaniac is going to claim next. James Cameron discovers the Higgs Boson? James Cameron travels faster than light? James Cameron travels back in time...to find out that he is God?

Look here

When I was writing my own book on the Titanic and the Californian (the infamous ship that saw the Titanic and her distress rockets and did practically nothing to offer assistance), I came across a report written in 1961 by Captain Quick of the UK Board of Trade technical department. It mentioned the possibility that super-refraction had existed that night and had allowed the two ships to see each other "over the horizon" due to the bending of light rays caused by warmer areas of air mixing with colder areas. I mention this in my book, but I don't go into it in any great depth, as I feel that you don't need to invoke super refraction to explain what was seen and done that night. Simple analysis of witnesses reports and an appreciation for the current affecting ship's navigation will suffice. Incidentally, my book (quick plug) is here and my own Titanic pages are here

Epic fail, so the current idiom goes....

http://www.btinternet.com/~m.brown1/intro.htm
https://www.msu.edu/~gobeski1/Missing.htm
http://www.paullee.com/drwho/missingwithouttrace.html

These are the accepted accounts - two junkings (one for fire safety reasons, one to make space) with absolutely nothing to do with contracts or magnetic tapes (beyond BBC central not having a copy) - along with a description of the transfer from video to film.

As far as I'm concerned, the current BBC description is a highly edited description of the events with NO mention of the telerecordings and the Wikipedia account seems to be pure mythology. I can find ZERO evidence for it. Almost everything definitive known about the early Doctor Whos was written in the Disused Yeti newsletters, with articles contributed by BBC staffers with inside knowledge, often due to being there at the time. This link gives you the archive for it:

http://archive.whoniversity.co.uk/dy/dy_main.htm

Absolutely no story whatsoever should be accepted on face-value if it contradicts an official or semi-official statement in the newsletters. They're the premiere source of authenticated information.

Theres a list of missing episodes on this website but it hasn't yet been updated to include the new discoveries. With the finding of "The Underwater Menace" part 2, we now have a new "earliest surviving episode to feature Patrick Troughton." Hopefully the BBC can do their usual magic to restore these episode...there are apparently bits missing.

plug. My book is available in paperback, kindle and epub format here,

I think that, compared to the paperback version of £16/$23 (US), about £8/$12 (US) is about right. There are various matters that dictate the price of an electronic book; do you exclude the printing costs that are inherent in the printed version? The ethical answer would be yes, but how much do you exclude? Do you want the ebook to subsidise the sales, or lack of, of a printed book? Also, how much do you want to charge compared to competitors books? Too little and you'll never make a profit; too much and you'll price yourself out of the market. Then theres the pricing structure that Amazon and nearly everyone else imposes under the Independant Publisher Programme (if you decide to publish your books yourself without a publishing house to do all the work); if you want 70% of the royalties, then your book is limited to be within a certain pricing band, which suppresses any potential profits.

I can't help but think that if you try and publish a book yourself, you're almost certain to be doomed to failure. You don't have the overheads of printing and distribution but then again, you don't have the clout of a marketing house to do all the hard work. Writing books
does not pay very well, unless you're Dan Brown or of his ilk. A friend of mine writes books on the same subject matter as mine, and his books sell for about £16. When his sales hit 1000 copies, he gets £1000. This doesn't seem fair to me; the author did all the hard work
and without all his work, there'd be no book for any other organisation to milk in the first place.

One more point about electronic books; they seem to be the future, but that doesn't mean printed versions will die away immediately, if at all. I used to work for Cambridge University Press, proof reading their electronic books; the process of scanning and processing electronic books, particularly very old texts, resulted in a lot of errors creeping in. We were told that the Press was cutting back on its
printing processes, and closing its warehouse down, the staff who work there being told that they would work at DHL many many miles away (they were not happy at this news!). The business objective was not to print, stockpile and distribute books, but to adopt a "print on demand" model. The electronic book market has grown so much that it seems to have dominated the business models of the future.

...that didn't quite work, click here

look here

These guys

Try this

I know you probably know this, but James Cameron is investing a lot of money to have Titanic converted to 3D. I wish he'd spend the money fixing the huge list of mistakes instead.

...if you want *grin*

I look upon most groups with a mixture of suspicion and humour. None of them seem to realise that magnetic fields are a vector quantity, so if you point the EMF meter one way, and then another, of course it'll be different! And many groups use EMFs meters designed for use in detecting domestic power cables! Then there's EVP (electronic voice phenomena), the way that disembodied spirits imprint their "voices" on tape and disks without anyone noticing at the time. I've heard only a few that are somewhat convincing. Most are shrouded in a sea of fog and hiss, some you have to adjust the speed, introduce filters, play backwards....if you have to go to that much trouble, chances are there was nothing of any interest there in the first place!

I've written up some of my thoughts on ghosts on my website; everything from experiences on ghost hunts, to the scientific evidence for ghosts (there isn't much!), to a presentation I gave at the London "Skeptics in the pub" about 5 or 6 years ago. Have a look at this page. Pleasant dreams ;-)

The politics behind the Chroma Dot story is intriguing and in some places unpleasant. The instigator of the team was James Insell, and a method was created to perform the chroma dot extraction by a man named Richard Russell. Insell became a bit proprietorial over it all, and he and Russell parted ways, and now Russell it doing it alone. The original Colour extraction blog is here but they don't seem to have made any huge advances since Russell left. There is some more info, plus a link to Russell's own work (including software download) on my own Dr.Who webpage here

Looks like won't be on iBooks any time soon. Thank God for Kindle :-)

I've written many articles and essays on the Titanic (and one book) - have a look here if you're interested. Even if you're not, take a look. As for the 2010 expedition (more of a media circus than a proper scientific expedition IMHO), click on my bouquets and brickbats for my thoughts on the matter. The links in my sig, and the musings are near the top of the page.

Perhaps those malicious pests at Allen and Overy will stop hassling me about my article, Long live the Streisand effect.

Oh, and heres my book if you want a copy!

Where's the e-book you mentioned? Also, which sites did you put the e-book on?

Oh, and heres my book if you want a copy!

Science geek he may be, but history buff he's not

He should have thought about fixing some of the massive goofs in Titanic first!

When you said Missing Episodes, I thought you meant these http://www.paullee.com/drwho/

Fictional Predictions? Like these: http://www.paullee.com/ghosts/bookofpredictions.html

Perhaps we'll get a repeat of the Titanic disaster?

...is here

I find the "contact us" facility on some ISPs to be totally lacking, especially if you want to complain about one of their customers abusing their service. I had course to complain to swbell/AT and T about a venonomous message recently and not only did it take ages to find a complaint address, but I never got a reply back. (Also, the police and FBI have been useless too)....

The heading of this news story makes it sound as if the Jack Benny episodes were about to be disposed of, whereas this is not the case. They are being preserved and stored, albeit not "preserved" in a digital sense. The comments made by Film Preservationist are an important commentary on this case. As for other TV luminaries being unable to view their own creations, there are precedents on this side of the pond. Peter Cook, I read, wanted to see some of his earlier BBC series but wasn't allowed. Later he found out they had been wiped, and I get the feeling that this was after his request as he offered to pay for copies. The same applies to another celebrity (Sandy Shaw?) who wanted copies of her shows, which were wiped pretty damn quick after her request. I've been following the hunt for missing TV for some time, and a write-up is here.

...I updated my own stats a week ago

I used to work for a company that didn't believe in commenting code...took ages to reverse engineer the code...

They're displayed here

......and even hassled a benefactor in Australia to take down his mirror

There seems to be some anecdotal evidence that CO exposure may affect the senses to such an extent that people experience "spooky" or ghostly behaviour. Certainly, this occurred when one family was exposed, and their spooky hallucinations ceased when CO poisoning was diagnosed, and the source removed. There a little more here

Oh yes, and my book is still available :-)

I know Dr Wheeler; at one point he was reported as researching the weather and ice patterns leading up to the Titanic's sinking. Nothing came of this, and I did a study myself.