On Tue, 10 Jan 2006 11:58:28 -0500, Lee Bell <[log in to unmask]> 
wrote:

>> But how did YOU know that it's "more likely"?
>
>I know because I was there, at the airport, seeing which bags were hit and
>which were not.  I worked at Miami International Airport which has enough
>dive travel to experience a noticable level of dive equipment theft.  At
>least once, I witnessed, and reported the actual  theft.

Wow!  You saw which bags were hit, and you reported ONCE, in your
life time that you witnessed a theft?   You have ZERO credibility,
DING-DONG.


>> And how do YOU know so much about Atlanta's dive equipment
>> market?
>
>Perhaps because Atlanta was my headquarter's city for about 15 years.
>Perhaps because I've spent more total time in the Atlanta area than you
>have?
>
>> It probably has MORE shops, and sell MORE dive equipment than your Fort
>> Lauderdale, which is certainly
>> not the hottest market in anything, but is only working toward it in the
>> cruise ship business because there is
>> nothing else there.
>
>Probably?  You're big conclusion is "probably"?

Unlike DING DONG, when I make a statement without 100% certainty
but with extremely high probability, I say "probably".

DING DONG, on the other Bell, makes unsubstantiated and 
unsupported speculations as if they were facts.


>>>Good point.  It is also true that locking luggage has never been a
>>>particularly good deterrent.
>
>> How do you know THAT?  For the hard case containers of
>> expensive dive camera equipments, whether you mark it
>> loudly as SCUBA or not, a thief will recognize it.  A
>> heavy duty lock is certainly a deterrent for those pieces.
>
>See above.
>Which is why I locked and insured my camera case.

What does that have to do which locks are used?


>> Have you not heard of padlocks people buy for their
>> luggage even though there are those built-in locks
>> and keys that are easily opened or broken into?
>
>Heard of them, yes.  Seen many of them, no.  Since we're on the subject,
>what kind of lock protects your soft sided luggage?

You haven't done much dive travel and you haven't seen many
camera equipment cases with locks have you?

I already said I DON'T put locks on my soft sided luggage.


Hey, you snipped the statement about LACK of commonsense
was what you self=demonstrated.

>> That's for sure, and you've given a self-demonstration of
>> your assertion.
>

>> That's your conclusion from your faulty premise.  Empirical
>> evidence showed that more luggage are lost/stolen because of
>> mis-identity of the luggage, as well as the difficult in
>> spotting a thief carrying a non-discript piece of luggage.
>
>We're not talking about lost, are we?

When a piece of luggage is LOST, you mean you can tell from 
that fact that it's not stolen?

Wow, DING-DONG, your logic (or lack thereof) is even more
scary than I had thought.   I know, you are saying if a 
bag is stolen, the thief will leave a note, sort of like
the Zorro movies you have seen, saying HE was the thief 
who stole it so that the one with the lost luggage wouldn't
have to guess if it was taken by mistake and got lost in 
the shuffle.


>> In any event while it is true that stolen luggage in airports
>> are rare events -- any claim that one way is more likely
>> than another is at best an unsubstantiated speculation . . .
>
>You mean like the claim you made in your preceeding paragraph?
>
>Lee

How many times have you heard an announcement at airports 
warning scuba divers NOT to mark their bags, versus the number
of time passengers are WARNED to check the tags of their
bags carefully so that they don't pick up someone else's?

How would YOU know?   

-- Bob.