To me NBC was a big fail when they did not even show the opening ceremonies live. I could care less about their site. Try going to cctv.com (China Central Television), because I am sure that there are going to be live broadcasts there, and from what I have seen, it isn't IE dependent.

I thought the opening ceromoneray (spelling!) was amazing.

you can bet your life the London 2012 olympic ceromonary (!) will be total crap in comparison. London the center of the creative world?! dont make me laff!

if you want to see the opening ceromony (ive been to the pub this evening), go to

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00cpf8p/

if your outside the UK, you may need to spoof your address or whatever

Keep trying...you're nearly there.

I had a good go at it though didnt I Brian!

I don't care too much about the Olympics in general, however this time got me excited as I wanted to see someone pass out from the smog during some major event, or maybe lots of people, like a cloud of smog coming into the arena and what kind of havoc that would cause during say a soccer game or athletics.

But, yes it does piss me off that you need M$ silverlight to watch the videos, and for no reason because the HD will not really show, and you probably need a very good connection. I don't see anything comprehensive no youtube either.

Except for the US vs USSR hockey game in 1980, I've lost interest in the Olympics after being cheated out in the basketball game where they kept turning back the clock until the outcome was what they wanted. It also isn't an amateur competition it was once supposed to be and they've expanded it to cover too many phony sports like beach volleyball and snow boarding.

Just a note about sopcast, that was mentioned in a previous post... I haven't watched any part of the current olympic games, and don't want to, but sopcast is a reasonable alternative to access otherwise unavailable broadcasts.

I use it to watch locally blacked-out, pay-per-view NHL games during hockey season. I just checked the sop-cast channel line up and there's lots of live feeds of olympic stuff available. I'm going to check them out later.

yeah, well I think alot of people find the actual games boring, I really dislike the rowing, I think its incredibly boring.

and whats the long jump all about?

some of these people dedicate their lives to practicing jumping over some sand, so that they can say they can jump further over sand than anyone else in the world, what an achievement!

you cant tell me that there is a following for the long jump, nobodys interested in that, apart from the few people who do it.

Ive always viewed athletes with suspicion. they're not normal. I used to know a few at school and they were extreamly odd people.

and who can forget (even if we desperatley wanted to), paula radcliffe stopping half way through the london marathon a few years ago, to take a dump AT THE SIDE OF THE ROAD, in full view of spectators and tv cameras.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/athletics/4454315.stm

Ive just been speaking to an old runner friend of mine, and he said when he used to run for the city, it was a 'normal occurance' to see runners going for a crap in peoples gardens, and at the side of the road! lol ???

I have heard that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation streams it in a Linux friendly format. Couldn't get it going, but I didn't try very hard. Since I have Gnash installed instead of Flash, I thought that might be my issue.

I wouldn't really classify these as phony sports. Have you done either? They take more talent and work than some of the existing sports in the Olympics and other competitions.

It's not just about jumping, it's the endurance and ability that is usually beyond human capabilities.

I can say I have no desire to watch it myself but if you really think about it, the current world record is 8.95 meters. Go measure that out and see how long of a distance it really is, you might be amazed that someone (a human) could run and jump that far of a distance.

well yeah ok Tricky, but its still boring.



and why is there a long jump AND a triple jump?

surely its the same thing, both involve jumping over sand, why does there need to be two seperate competitions for the same thing?

you could perhaps understand creating a new triple-jump competition if longjump was exciting, but its not.

Well simply put, some people find it exciting, others don't. Don't assume everyone is like you. I don't necessarily find it boring, I just have no desire to watch it myself. Soccer and Golf is boring to watch to me, but fun to play. It's called personal preferences.

How cool ! I missed that one. At least it was something out of the normal boring Olympic trials. I wonder if they aired it live, it sucks that I missed it :(

As for the rest, I dunno where you live, but that's f'n nasty, I've never seen anyone do that. In fact the only public bathroom activities I have witnessed was someone pissing near Notre Dame ... I hope the bastard is now cursed for wetting Holy ground.

Nothing wrong with using the restroom, perfectly natural process of the human body. If you're running to win, you just don't have time to go grab the newspaper or magazine, find a public restroom to park yourself down at to do your business. ;)