links for 2009-11-16

Yet more PC Winterval lunacy from our mad local councils...

...erm, unless you visit the Dundee website where you'll find that not only are there plenty of Christmas events with Christmas in the title, The Times didn't even manage to get the name "Winter Light Night" correct.

"ONE in three children in Greater Manchester have given away personal details to strangers they met on the internet, the M.E.N. can reveal. A shocking survey also reveals that more than a quarter of boys and girls aged 11 to 15 have agreed to meet people they have chatted to online."

"These are painful times here. Not so long ago, the Observer looked threatened with closure as losses across both titles reached a frightening £100,000 a day. Mercifully, that threat has receded, but the price of survival is a high one."

"No matter whose statistics you accept, the conclusion is clear: given that the population is growing, the rate of deaths is declining significantly, even in the face of what is supposed to be the most serious Aids epidemic in the world. That, surely, is a big story. Why is it not front page news? For the same reason, I suspect, that most journalists uncritically accepted the obviously wrong death figure cited by the Ministry of Health last year. A surge in deaths fits neatly with the catastrophist vision of Aids in South Africa. A decline in deaths doesn’t. In short, good news is no news."

She'll get slaughtered for it in the comments, but for me Danielle hits the nail on the head in the long-running BBC HD bitrate saga: "Dutch research published last month highlights the extent to which views on picture quality are driven by expectation and emotion. On an HD TV, without an HD connection or receiver, some people will believe that they are watching HD pictures and believe they look substantially better than SD. I have no doubt that for those who believe the bitrate cut has killed picture quality, none of the changes to the encoders that we will make to address the problems which we know are there will make any difference, unless they go hand in hand with an announcement that we've upped the bitrate".

From the comments "lol @ her being an arsenal fan". Am I alone in thinking that until there is any understanding of who was at fault in this accident, the public identification here seems more likely to risk her being on the receiving end of abuse from Tottenham fans than actually serve any real news value?