Exactly, it's his own fault he's dead but he knew that might be the case when he set off and so did the other divers.
He wanted the rewards of successfully recovering a body from that depth more than he worried about dying in the attempt and that's a perfectly rational judgement, it is people like this who push boundaries and it's good that they do.
The problem with programs like this is that it's likely create the same effect the reporting on MMR Vaccinations did. In that case despite massed ranks of scientific and medical studies and scientists saying there was no danger from MMR vaccinations a large number of people chose to believe that either there was a danger or there could be well be a danger based on reports in the media.
The trouble is that it's impossible to prove absolutely that wireless emissions are 100% safe and any good scientist if pressed will agree with that. A lot of people then choose to think that this must indicate there is a real danger and believe the shrieked warnings of people who think they have some disease absolutely caused by their wireless router. Pointing out that there is no evidence of wireless emissions being harmful is a wasted excercise on these people who only seem to be able to think in black and white
"No evidence yet !" they wail "But you wont tell me it's 100% safe either ! Destroy all wireless !"
What's often missing is a sense of perspective, cars are extremely dangerous and kill hundreds of thousands people a year throughout the world but most people are perfectly happy to drive them or walk in the vicinity of them.
I think the difference might be that people can easily see the dangers posed by cars themselves whereas there is no visible evidence of MMR vaccines or phone masts killing people so people have no way of easily assesing the threat and instead have to rely on people telling them things they don't really understand.
Obviously we can't do anything about people choosing not to buy wireless routers for use in their own homes because of a fear of the perceived risks they pose but we should be able to stop these people stopping the use of these things in society in general, e.g. in schools where we should use proper standards of evidence for assessing threat levels and not allow even a majority of parents to make changes unless they can present proper evidence for their beliefs.
No, the radio stations in the UK are split between the BBC and it's various national and local stations and fairly large commercial stations which again operate both locally and nationally and there are often pirate radio stations in and around large cities.
Some of the commercial stations cater to a particular type of music but mostly they have chart hits on constant rotation and are so horribly subservient to their advertising they are not worth listening to.
The local BBC stations are more for local news and chat and of the national ones only Radio 1 and Radio 2 concentrate on music. Unfortunately apart from a few evening shows both of these, but Radio 1 in particular, just rotate the same crap in a sort of horrid perpetual motion with an occasional "oldie" thrown in from time to time.
Yes, the RIAA clearly have no idea that Clear Channel have a lot of lawyers. Why, I expect they don't even know who Clear Channel are. I expect they're simply doing this for the sheer hell of it, who needs research ?
You should mail them right away and let them know what a big mistake they're about to make. I'm sure they will be *very* pleased.
Nice idea in theory but in practice I just don't think it will work like that. Here in the UK Radio Stations already pay the record companies for what they play and you will find that most of them do exactly what you describe above, i.e play the same crap the labels spoon feed them over and over again.
There are maybe a couple of hours each week when it possible to hear some decent music on the radio here but other than that you may as well forget it.
The US also make loads of good TV the like of which don't tend to get made by the BBC and other British companies. Examples include Battlestar Galactica, The Sopranos, Deadwood and Lost. Basically drama serials and also a lot of comedies.
The last really good British comedy I remember was Spaced and that wasn't on the BBC, although Romans Empire on at the moment is also pretty good and that is on the BBC. The closest thing we get to that are historic mini series and Dr Who, the first of which are usually pretty boring and don't last very long and Dr Who which is let down by the ( lack of ) an overall plot and the characters in it.
I think the embarrasment comes from the fact that the situation was handled incompetently.
Incompetently because the report writer doesn't appear to have a clue why the attacks in that province are decreasing which tends to suggest that the administration has no clear idea what is actually driving the attacks or why they're happening. It's possible that it's just the report writer who's in the dark about this but the complete lack of success in dealing with terrorism and insurgency in Iraq since then leads me to believe the problem was more widespread.
If you don't have the correct information or don't understand the situation on the ground then it's very hard to form any effective plan for reaching your goals which is what appears to have happened with Iraq. Given what we were told about how the war was to be fought beforehand and how everything was in place to address the aftermath I would say the handling of the situation which has led to the position we are in now speaks of great incompetence.
This is exactly what I was wondering, I remember the Transformers from when I was around 12 or something and it was rubbish then. I don't imagine making a film about it will make it any less rubbish.
I'm old enough to remember the original cartoon and young though I may have been I could still see marketing driven drivel when I saw it. Seriously it was a rubbish cartoon designed to make people buy the toys.
You obviously don't live in the UK and have no experience at all of what the IRA were up to and how they operated, had the IRA had nerve gas or nukes there is little doubt in my mind they'd have been just as likely to use them as any Islamist group.
The IRA were more than happy to kill civilians, basically on the grounds they were English. I live in Birmingham and we all still remember the Birmingham pub bombings here so please don't try to tell me that the IRA are not a terrorist organisation or that they didn't pose more of a threat to me than the Islamic terrorists do.
Someone above has already posted some stats about the IRAs activities but please feel free to google for more information yourself.
I don't think they would, people generally think stuff always happens to other people and not themselves, free love in the swinging 60's for example always happened to other people as does cancer in smokers, death by falling great distances in parachutists etc etc
I agree, this puzzles me too. I remember when the IRA were in full swing, every so often we'd see a bombing or something on the news, there were posters in swimming baths warning you about bombs and there was a lack of rubbish bins in stations and that was it. I don't remember us needing half the special measures we seem to require now despite the fact on their record alone the IRA were far far more of a threat to the UK than Al-Quaeda are or likely will ever be.
Exactly, why should ordinary people have these hassles foisted on them because someone else thinks they are special and requires ridiculous levels of security. If he wants to talk to anyone in Australia he can either use the phone or turn up like anyone else without the need for huge motorcades, helicopters and the like.
I don't know how he travels about in the US but I'm sure that Sydney isn't inherently any more dangerous than Washington ( how many terrorist attacks have there been in Australia ? ) so if you ask me all these ridiculous measures are more to do with him emphasising his own importance and the fact places he visits are willing to accede to his demands.
Well I shouldn't imagine there will be many people lining the route waving to him and throwing garlands of flowers ( apart from maybe members of the government waiting to lick his boots ) so it will just be the normal people going about there jobs which this will interfere with.
I don't see why he should need all this security though, even if the worst does happen and someone blows him sky high it's not like he's even remotely irreplacable and someone else can take over his job a couple of hours later without anything disasterous occuring.
You could say this would be a major coup for whatever terrorist organisation pulls it off but it wouldn't be if you didn't let it and just shrugged your shoulders "So, you killed the president. So what ? Someone else is doing his job now". This is beside the fact that were I terrorist looking for some good publicity for myself to help my recruitment drive killing Bush is probably the last thing I'd do considering all the good things he's done for me already.
No it wouldn't, 300 criminals at large in society would cause a lof of problems for a lot of people whereas 3 innocent men in prison might set a good example for the criminals and could possibly help with educating inmates or similar good works.
we walk through a number of exemplary patents and go as deep as they want us to go. Our experience has been every time we've done that, it doesn't take companies a long time to figure out that there is an issue here.
I don't doubt this is the way business is done, I mean we only need to look at SCO who had similar success when they walked companies through the millions of lines of code they owned, a lot of those companies - not to mention industy experts and the press could clearly see there was a real issue there.
Even if you are an atheist, others must be allowed to believe in a higher being without ridicule
I definitely agree people can believe in what they like however I strongly disagree that what people believe in should be exempt from ridicule. The fact is that your belief is your belief, it's not my belief but I may well have opinions about the belief which may include me thinking that it's ridiculous, dangerous, ill advised, brilliant, moronic or whatever. I have every right to express my opinions about your belief and if I choose to ridicule it then I have every right to do that too.
As a general rule I think it's impolite and rude to go around ridiculing everything anyone has told me they believe in so if you met me and said you were a Christian I probably wouldn't burst out laughing or tell you what I thought of beliefs in Christianity.
However when someones beliefs lead them to say or do things which I don't like then I feel perfectly within my rights and perfectly comfortable with explaining exactly what I think and often using the medium of ridicule to get my point across can be effective.
This is the case with scientology, the things they do annoy me and offend my sense of fair play so any scientologist I meet which supports those things is going to have put up with me trying to ridicule them and pointing out how silly they are.
I posted the article and it's in YRO simply because I thought people might be interested and I couldn't see any category for "Ridiculing Ridiculous Organisations".
It might, very tenuously, be about YRO because you too could find yourself the victim of a scientology attack video on YouTube which you might feel abused your rights when you went on-line to view it.
Yes, I'm finding this very amusing. Not only have the BBC included this constantly on News 24 they have also had a 5 minute section on the One O Clock news and no doubt there will be longer sections on the Six and Ten O Clock news as well. Their coverage now is taking the line that scientology is a suspicious cult determined to stifle any criticism who have driven one of their journalists too far through harassing him and to find out more about the shady practices scientologists indulge in you can watch the whole thing at 8:30 on Panorama.
None of this is good publicity for Scientology and they are really taking a beating at the moment at the hands of the BBC which is probably not what they were intending to happen. My hope is that the scientologists don't let it lie and step up their campaign against the BBC so it can involve people like Jeremy Paxman to fight the good fight and direct the ridicule where it will do most good.
They have now tagged the video of John Sweeney losing his temper as "Panorama reporters fury caught on tape" which is in no way apologetic and recognising that the reporter was furious about something rather than simply losing his temper.
I promised to do my duty to god and the queen, and obey the cub scout law but I believe it's down to me to decide what that duty is rather than blind alliegance. I've always assumed it's in case the queen is ever in need of a really practical knot or only has one match left and needs to start a fire in order to safeguard the future of her subjects.
Oh dear, someone should tell all these disappointed yet talented actors, writer, whatevers in the UK about all the other independant production companies and the other channels available to them.
I don't think the BBC's output is perfect, there are some good things and some bad things which is pretty much inevitable given the audience they are catering to. However on balance the ouput is very good and to say the BBC is anti semitic is absolute and total nonsense.
Slashdot Mirror
So you is saying you think kids should get caned aiii ?
I don't doubt it, know your enemy and all that !
Exactly, it's his own fault he's dead but he knew that might be the case when he set off and so did the other divers.
He wanted the rewards of successfully recovering a body from that depth more than he worried about dying in the attempt and that's a perfectly rational judgement, it is people like this who push boundaries and it's good that they do.
It's impossible to say that anything is 100% safe but you can say there is no evidence that something is harmful ( assuming is there is no evidence ).
Er, what ? This doesn't make any sense to me.
I think over reaction is a bad thing but I'm not sure what you're asking me to stop ? Do you think I'm over reacting to something and if so what ?
The problem with programs like this is that it's likely create the same effect the reporting on MMR Vaccinations did. In that case despite massed ranks of scientific and medical studies and scientists saying there was no danger from MMR vaccinations a large number of people chose to believe that either there was a danger or there could be well be a danger based on reports in the media.
The trouble is that it's impossible to prove absolutely that wireless emissions are 100% safe and any good scientist if pressed will agree with that. A lot of people then choose to think that this must indicate there is a real danger and believe the shrieked warnings of people who think they have some disease absolutely caused by their wireless router. Pointing out that there is no evidence of wireless emissions being harmful is a wasted excercise on these people who only seem to be able to think in black and white
"No evidence yet !" they wail "But you wont tell me it's 100% safe either ! Destroy all wireless !"
What's often missing is a sense of perspective, cars are extremely dangerous and kill hundreds of thousands people a year throughout the world but most people are perfectly happy to drive them or walk in the vicinity of them.
I think the difference might be that people can easily see the dangers posed by cars themselves whereas there is no visible evidence of MMR vaccines or phone masts killing people so people have no way of easily assesing the threat and instead have to rely on people telling them things they don't really understand.
Obviously we can't do anything about people choosing not to buy wireless routers for use in their own homes because of a fear of the perceived risks they pose but we should be able to stop these people stopping the use of these things in society in general, e.g. in schools where we should use proper standards of evidence for assessing threat levels and not allow even a majority of parents to make changes unless they can present proper evidence for their beliefs.
No, the radio stations in the UK are split between the BBC and it's various national and local stations and fairly large commercial stations which again operate both locally and nationally and there are often pirate radio stations in and around large cities.
Some of the commercial stations cater to a particular type of music but mostly they have chart hits on constant rotation and are so horribly subservient to their advertising they are not worth listening to.
The local BBC stations are more for local news and chat and of the national ones only Radio 1 and Radio 2 concentrate on music. Unfortunately apart from a few evening shows both of these, but Radio 1 in particular, just rotate the same crap in a sort of horrid perpetual motion with an occasional "oldie" thrown in from time to time.
Yes, the RIAA clearly have no idea that Clear Channel have a lot of lawyers. Why, I expect they don't even know who Clear Channel are. I expect they're simply doing this for the sheer hell of it, who needs research ?
You should mail them right away and let them know what a big mistake they're about to make. I'm sure they will be *very* pleased.
Nice idea in theory but in practice I just don't think it will work like that. Here in the UK Radio Stations already pay the record companies for what they play and you will find that most of them do exactly what you describe above, i.e play the same crap the labels spoon feed them over and over again.
There are maybe a couple of hours each week when it possible to hear some decent music on the radio here but other than that you may as well forget it.
The US also make loads of good TV the like of which don't tend to get made by the BBC and other British companies. Examples include Battlestar Galactica, The Sopranos, Deadwood and Lost. Basically drama serials and also a lot of comedies.
The last really good British comedy I remember was Spaced and that wasn't on the BBC, although Romans Empire on at the moment is also pretty good and that is on the BBC. The closest thing we get to that are historic mini series and Dr Who, the first of which are usually pretty boring and don't last very long and Dr Who which is let down by the ( lack of ) an overall plot and the characters in it.
I think the embarrasment comes from the fact that the situation was handled incompetently.
Incompetently because the report writer doesn't appear to have a clue why the attacks in that province are decreasing which tends to suggest that the administration has no clear idea what is actually driving the attacks or why they're happening. It's possible that it's just the report writer who's in the dark about this but the complete lack of success in dealing with terrorism and insurgency in Iraq since then leads me to believe the problem was more widespread.
If you don't have the correct information or don't understand the situation on the ground then it's very hard to form any effective plan for reaching your goals which is what appears to have happened with Iraq. Given what we were told about how the war was to be fought beforehand and how everything was in place to address the aftermath I would say the handling of the situation which has led to the position we are in now speaks of great incompetence.
This is exactly what I was wondering, I remember the Transformers from when I was around 12 or something and it was rubbish then. I don't imagine making a film about it will make it any less rubbish.
I'm old enough to remember the original cartoon and young though I may have been I could still see marketing driven drivel when I saw it. Seriously it was a rubbish cartoon designed to make people buy the toys.
You obviously don't live in the UK and have no experience at all of what the IRA were up to and how they operated, had the IRA had nerve gas or nukes there is little doubt in my mind they'd have been just as likely to use them as any Islamist group.
The IRA were more than happy to kill civilians, basically on the grounds they were English. I live in Birmingham and we all still remember the Birmingham pub bombings here so please don't try to tell me that the IRA are not a terrorist organisation or that they didn't pose more of a threat to me than the Islamic terrorists do.
Someone above has already posted some stats about the IRAs activities but please feel free to google for more information yourself.
I don't think they would, people generally think stuff always happens to other people and not themselves, free love in the swinging 60's for example always happened to other people as does cancer in smokers, death by falling great distances in parachutists etc etc
I agree, this puzzles me too. I remember when the IRA were in full swing, every so often we'd see a bombing or something on the news, there were posters in swimming baths warning you about bombs and there was a lack of rubbish bins in stations and that was it. I don't remember us needing half the special measures we seem to require now despite the fact on their record alone the IRA were far far more of a threat to the UK than Al-Quaeda are or likely will ever be.
Exactly, why should ordinary people have these hassles foisted on them because someone else thinks they are special and requires ridiculous levels of security. If he wants to talk to anyone in Australia he can either use the phone or turn up like anyone else without the need for huge motorcades, helicopters and the like.
I don't know how he travels about in the US but I'm sure that Sydney isn't inherently any more dangerous than Washington ( how many terrorist attacks have there been in Australia ? ) so if you ask me all these ridiculous measures are more to do with him emphasising his own importance and the fact places he visits are willing to accede to his demands.
Well I shouldn't imagine there will be many people lining the route waving to him and throwing garlands of flowers ( apart from maybe members of the government waiting to lick his boots ) so it will just be the normal people going about there jobs which this will interfere with.
I don't see why he should need all this security though, even if the worst does happen and someone blows him sky high it's not like he's even remotely irreplacable and someone else can take over his job a couple of hours later without anything disasterous occuring.
You could say this would be a major coup for whatever terrorist organisation pulls it off but it wouldn't be if you didn't let it and just shrugged your shoulders "So, you killed the president. So what ? Someone else is doing his job now". This is beside the fact that were I terrorist looking for some good publicity for myself to help my recruitment drive killing Bush is probably the last thing I'd do considering all the good things he's done for me already.
No it wouldn't, 300 criminals at large in society would cause a lof of problems for a lot of people whereas 3 innocent men in prison might set a good example for the criminals and could possibly help with educating inmates or similar good works.
I don't doubt this is the way business is done, I mean we only need to look at SCO who had similar success when they walked companies through the millions of lines of code they owned, a lot of those companies - not to mention industy experts and the press could clearly see there was a real issue there.
The sassenachs didnae ken the Claymore forbye we stickit thro' their gizzards.
I definitely agree people can believe in what they like however I strongly disagree that what people believe in should be exempt from ridicule. The fact is that your belief is your belief, it's not my belief but I may well have opinions about the belief which may include me thinking that it's ridiculous, dangerous, ill advised, brilliant, moronic or whatever. I have every right to express my opinions about your belief and if I choose to ridicule it then I have every right to do that too.
As a general rule I think it's impolite and rude to go around ridiculing everything anyone has told me they believe in so if you met me and said you were a Christian I probably wouldn't burst out laughing or tell you what I thought of beliefs in Christianity.
However when someones beliefs lead them to say or do things which I don't like then I feel perfectly within my rights and perfectly comfortable with explaining exactly what I think and often using the medium of ridicule to get my point across can be effective.
This is the case with scientology, the things they do annoy me and offend my sense of fair play so any scientologist I meet which supports those things is going to have put up with me trying to ridicule them and pointing out how silly they are.
I posted the article and it's in YRO simply because I thought people might be interested and I couldn't see any category for "Ridiculing Ridiculous Organisations".
It might, very tenuously, be about YRO because you too could find yourself the victim of a scientology attack video on YouTube which you might feel abused your rights when you went on-line to view it.
Yes, I'm finding this very amusing. Not only have the BBC included this constantly on News 24 they have also had a 5 minute section on the One O Clock news and no doubt there will be longer sections on the Six and Ten O Clock news as well. Their coverage now is taking the line that scientology is a suspicious cult determined to stifle any criticism who have driven one of their journalists too far through harassing him and to find out more about the shady practices scientologists indulge in you can watch the whole thing at 8:30 on Panorama.
None of this is good publicity for Scientology and they are really taking a beating at the moment at the hands of the BBC which is probably not what they were intending to happen. My hope is that the scientologists don't let it lie and step up their campaign against the BBC so it can involve people like Jeremy Paxman to fight the good fight and direct the ridicule where it will do most good.
They have now tagged the video of John Sweeney losing his temper as "Panorama reporters fury caught on tape" which is in no way apologetic and recognising that the reporter was furious about something rather than simply losing his temper.
I promised to do my duty to god and the queen, and obey the cub scout law but I believe it's down to me to decide what that duty is rather than blind alliegance. I've always assumed it's in case the queen is ever in need of a really practical knot or only has one match left and needs to start a fire in order to safeguard the future of her subjects.
Oh dear, someone should tell all these disappointed yet talented actors, writer, whatevers in the UK about all the other independant production companies and the other channels available to them.
I don't think the BBC's output is perfect, there are some good things and some bad things which is pretty much inevitable given the audience they are catering to. However on balance the ouput is very good and to say the BBC is anti semitic is absolute and total nonsense.