Slashdot Mirror

"I regularly disagree with a lot of what I see on the BBC - particularly (I'm adult enough to admit) when it conflicts with my worldview or preconceptions. However, whenever I've gone away and read up on a point that's annoyed me (even just to convince myself "I was right"), I've almost always found that either I was wrong, or at least that the "true" case was more evenly-balanced than my previous opinion was."

You have hit the nail on the head, the BBC is regularly accused of bias from ALL sides of politics but is rarely shown to be factually incorrect. Many a politician has tried to stack the BBC's management in an effort to pull them "into line" and have invariably failed. Here in Australia we have two stations that are modeled on the BBC, they are SBS and ABC.

I figure any news outlet that can manage to upset all sides of politics is a valuable source of both information and opposing opinions.

BTW: The reason Fox news has no substance is that it will only present dissenting views for the purposes of ridicule and is often factually deficient. But to be fair and balanced to Rupert, he freely admits to using his media outlets to push his personal worldview.

Um, China and other nations (not "Western Liberal Democracies (sic)") are the only ones that have a need for Freenet?

http://news.sbs.com.au/dateline/index.php?page=tra nscript&dte=2005-06-22&headlineid=981

What Australians put up with lately. No, it's not "communist literature." It's about illegal war-mongering and the distortion of intelligence to justify the whole Iraq thing.

The government's PSYOP crews have done a spectacular job brainwashing sheep as well as slashbots that "if you've got nothing to hide then you don't need Freenet" and "if you like Freenet, you're a child pr0n consumer" or whatever. Good work, dickheads.

We need actually have a need for Freenet _now_, and it doesn't involve hiding our stashes of kiddy pr0n or terrorist plots.

This is typical of the current government's attitude to privacy and telecommunications. The Telecommunications Act already allows for seizure of computers and other equipment when it is 'connected with' offences under the Spam Act, for example. There is also evidence that the government has been confiscating and destroying personal computers without a warrant when they contain 'sensitive' information.

All of this is part of a broader lack of accountability, due process and transparency that is becoming part of the culture of Australian lawmaking. There is a good article on the subject here.

For those from more sensible countries, supposedly democratic Australia currently has the following features:

1. One party entirely in control of both houses of parliament
2. No bill of rights, either legislative or constitutional
3. Legislation allowing for the arrest, detention, and interrogation without charge of persons not suspected of any offence if they may have information that is somehow relevant to a suspected terrorist offence; the onus of proof is reversed so that the person being interrogated must prove that they do NOT have any such information.
4. One of the highest rates of phone tapping in the world
5. Unelected bureacrats empowered to spy on Australians with no parliamentary oversight to speak of
6. Several semi-secret US intelligence bases operating on our soil
7. New crimes of sedition for exercising free speech in a manner that encourages the overthrow of the government
8. Troops in Iraq despite over 80% of the population opposing our involvement before the war
At the moment we also have an extremely disturbing rise in racial and religious intolerance, which in my opinion is in no small part attributable to the federal government's policies and fearmongering on those issues. But of course, this doesn't stop us selling weapons-grade uranium to China because they weeeeally promise to use it for civilian purposes only.

Lets face it we are not really known for our well balanced view of foreigners or their culture.

In an interview with Reuters, [the Frankfurt chief of security] said that there would be special attention given to English fans but that communicators trying to ease tension would speak to them in German.

"Many of them will understand German, right?" he said.

What were they doing with bin laden? Winning his "heart and mind" http://news.sbs.com.au/dateline/index.php?page=arc hive&daysum=2006-02-15#

Junkie dogs chasing a high.

In Communist China M$ software makes your family disappear.

SBS TV Australia has an interesting interview "Inside the Lao Gai" labour camps.

http://news.sbs.com.au/dateline/index.php?page=arc hive&daysum=2005-10-05

"16 or more hours a day of hard labour, and often in toxic conditions with no protection and starvation is used as a tool for control."

Also ppl may want to read up on Harry Wu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Wu

After spending a week in Melbourne, I found myself scouring the net back in San Francisco for episodes of John Safran vs. God -- probably the best television I've ever seen, although it doesn't have much of a chance of ever playing in Bush's America.

And yes, I bought the DVD (AFTER watching everything on BT; the quality was better, and I wanted to support John), even though I had to ship it overseas. So did a friend I introduced to it.

Why people think such crap rates is beyond me, those flicks have scripts designed for kids... ...or adults with a mental age of 12. The list doesn't include popular chick flicks so why it includes popular kiddies flicks is beyond me.

Then there's SPR, critics & monday morning halfbacks love it for it's 'realism', but anyone in the know knows it's anything but - it has the surrendering German with a skinhead haircut to make him unsympathetic (a old Hollywood trick) when German soldiers in WWII rarely had their skulls sheared - if anything they had short back 'n sides with long stylised front hair (I had a old family friend who was in the British army, although he was a Vienese Jew, & he took heaps of photos during the war, & of all the surrendering German soldiers, circa 44 & 45, the most common hair style was a long wave of hair at the front & top brushed to the side so it hung over the shorn stuble arround the ears & behind). Also Mustangs were not used by the Americans for tank busting duties on the Western front (although they were used like that on the Med), in reality it would've been a Thunderbolt or even more likely a RAF Typhoon (the primary tank buster at Normandy), but we all know Speilburg couldn't have a British plane saving the day, or a American one that's grossly fat & ugly.

& how such a list could have nothing by Akira Kurosawa, Krzysztof Kieslowski or fail to include one or both of Sergio Leones' Once Apon a Time masterpieces is beyond me. The relatively recent Paramount DVD Special Collectors Edition release of Once Apon a Time in the West has to be one of the truely great collectors DVDs of all time. It also failed to list the Citizen Kane Special Edition DVD, one of the great all time collectors DVDs for cinema lovers. Another great true cinema DVD collectable they failed to list was Martin Scorsese's tribute to Italian cinema DVD, a 4 hour tribute to the greatest of Rossellini, De Sica, Fellini, Visconti & Antonioni, etc. The DVD was recently reviewed by the SBS Movie Show. Other truely great DVDs include Krzysztof Kieslowski's Decalogue Box Set & Kieslowski's 3 Colours Trilogy.

Another truely great 'must have' is the History of Cinema 12 DVD box set, which includes such gems as Buster Keaton's The General, Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin & Fritz Lang's Metropolis amongst Lon Chaney's & DW Griffith's greats. Of course one mustn't fail to include the Complete Ealing Studio Comedies Box Set which includes such classic Ealing comedies as The Lavender Hill Mob, Kind Hearts & Coronets (in which Alec Guinness plays 8 parts) & The Lady Killers.

Really Ugo's top 50 DVD List reminds me of all those people who have never travelled abroad yet go arround proclaiming that their country is the best country in the world to live, because it seems to be put together by someone who experiance of cinema seems to be limited to the summer blockbusters & alsorans of the last decade or so, & that's about it.

Personally, I like the Sin City from this one better. You like? Then you can read about John Safran further here. I know rm sucks, google up 'Real Alternative' if you loath the RealOne player.

Dear U.S.

Sorry, we're too preoccupied with renovating our investment properties, building "McMansions" for ourselves, parking 4WDs (aka SUVs) in their supersized driveways and using them to haul home the bigscreen TVs we're purchasing on credit to help fill those nice big houses.

Why should I worry about this "copyright" thing? Is it going to increase interest rates, or something?

Aspirationally yours,

A model Howard-era Australian

Come to Australia - here we get Kommissar Rex on SBS in German, with English subtitles. You'll feel right at home.

On the plus side, plenty of Americans can't tell the different between our two countries, and at least you'll be able to point when telling them where to find kangaroos...

to non-aus (with exception to kiwis and other antipodeans) this comment reflects reality for a number of reasons.

Firstly for any scientific or technical work one of ways to get any recognition back home is to work overseas in a foreign company. It is a dilemma that faces many in country where business is timid clubby and insular and mono cultural. It is also a chance to get some $$$ in a country where pay for workers relatively to business exe s is pretty poor. Flame away ...

Pria Viswalingam did a great doco, 'She'll be right boss' highlighting this problem.

highlighting another problem(s) that exist - complete apathy in recognising the skills these people typically bring back (inside knowledge) and lack of interest by the business and political heads of the need to build a environment suitable for success.

Global markets will smash australian business that fail to adapt to the upcoming competitors. So new blood, tempered with international experience is *needed* back into aus.

In response or perhaps just confirmation of Russia's fears, there's the 'new weapons system' http://www9.sbs.com.au/theworldnews/region.php?id= 99166&region=3 the Russians talk about. Only talk? What if it's not? Russia sure thinks we're trying to nullify their nuclear position...

So the nasty times this station comes from could return... Not a nice thought..

Your reply: "Et al" in this case must mean "and numerous other intelligence servies around the world, and the United Nations."

Actually, no. I meant the Bush administration shills who trumpeted that "we know where the weapons are." Again, not true. The case was overstated, and no WMD have been found.

"Before the war, the U.S. intelligence community told the president, as well as the Congress and the public, that Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and if left unchecked, probably would have a nuclear weapon this decade," Roberts said during the press conference. "Well, today we know these assessments were wrong."

Sure Saddam wanted WMD, but there was no way he could produce them within a decade after sanctions were lifted. I would appreciate more facts from you before taking your argument seriously.

I wrote: Bush et al said (or strongly implied repeatedly) that Iraq had significant connections to Al Qaeda

Your reply: They did have significant connections (friends in common). They just weren't working directly together. Perhaps you should look at the findings of the 9/11 Commission a little more closely yourself.

As for the "connections to Al-Qaeda" claim, the 9/11 Commission (bi-partisan), said:

The Sept. 11 commission's final report cites al-Qaida contacts with Iran and Iraq but does not conclude either of the "axis of evil" countries developed a close working relationship with the terror network. [Bin Laden explored a possible alliance with Iraq in early 1990s] However, the report says, former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein never had an Islamist agenda, and bin Laden had been sponsoring anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan. A collaborative relationship never developed, the report found.

Please, explain how Iraq & Al-Qaeda worked together, and be sure to use facts from reliable sources. Rush Limbaugh and Drudge do not count.

Your sig said: Iraq war justified

I took a look, and wow, you really found text in there that does not exist. I did find nice quotes like these:

The former Regime had no formal written strategy or plan for the revival of WMD after sanctions

Saddam wanted to recreate Iraq's WMD capability- which was essentially destroyed in 1991- after sancions were removed and Iraq's economy stabilized.

Saddam aspired to develop a nuclear capability.

Please let me know how this "proves" the war was justified. It admits Saddam did not have the WMD that Bush claimed, and that sanctions had to be lifted and Iraq's economy normalized before WMD could be developed. FYI, that doesn't happen overnight.

No matter how much wild conjecture gets repeated, facts are stronger.

Agreed, news.com.au unwittingly dropped the last paragraph of the original story from World News:

The equation has seven steps to forecasting a potential Murphy's Law moment, so you can work out which factors you need to change to avoid it:

1. Rate the urgency, importance and complexity on a scale of one to nine and add the three figures together.
2. Rate from one to nine how skilled you are at the task, then subtract this from 10.
3. Multiply answers to 1 and 2 and divide by 20.
4. Rate from one to nine how frequently you perform the task and divide this by 10.
5. Rate the sine (or sin) of your answer to step 4 and subtract this from 1.
6. Divide 1 by your answer to step 5.
7. Multiply your answer to step 3 by 0.7 and multiply this by your answer to step 6, and that's your Murphy's Law rating.

The closer to 10 it is, the higher your risk of falling victim.

My bad, the news.com.au story dropped the last paragraph of the original story:

The equation has seven steps to forecasting a potential Murphy's Law moment, so you can work out which factors you need to change to avoid it:

1. Rate the urgency, importance and complexity on a scale of one to nine and add the three figures together.
2. Rate from one to nine how skilled you are at the task, then subtract this from 10.
3. Multiply answers to 1 and 2 and divide by 20.
4. Rate from one to nine how frequently you perform the task and divide this by 10.
5. Rate the sine (or sin) of your answer to step 4 and subtract this from 1.
6. Divide 1 by your answer to step 5.
7. Multiply your answer to step 3 by 0.7 and multiply this by your answer to step 6, and that's your Murphy's Law rating.

The closer to 10 it is, the higher your risk of falling victim.

That's what's being calculated. I should have provided the SBS link instead.

Sheesh, what is up with Australia?

It is called a "Conservative Government". The ratings system for games is outdated, based on the assumption that games are for kids (hence the highest classification is 15+), but there is no way that a Conservative Government would fix this, because they would be worried about newspaper headlines like "Government allows kids to play porno games". They have also done everything they can to stack the Office of Film and Literature Classification (which also rates games) with conservative cronies.

The Government has also realized that since computer games and the Internet are seen as "scary new-fangled technology" by many older and more technophobic Australians, that they can use them as a ploy to gain support. So, they are constantly announcing plans to "keep the kids safe from the evils of the Internet and computer games". This is definately a vote-winner, because given that Australia's population is skewed towards the older demographic, there will be a lot more people pleased by this policy than upset. Censorship is also an effective bargaining chip when trying to get ultra-conservtive independent politicians to help pass legislation.

The contrast comes in TV and radio. Any attempts to censor them would be met by outrage, because they are not a niche market like computer games. So, while the Government is trying to save us all from being morally corrupted by computers, prime-time TV and radio regularly feature profanity. Australia's TV censorship is self-regulated by the industry, so you will regularly hear "fuck" and "shit" on prime-time free-to-air TV chat shows, and all day on certain radio stations. Music is played uncensored on the Government-funded Triple J youth radio network, and radio hosts will regularly swear their heads off and frankly discuss sexual matters. The partly Government-funded SBS free-to-air TV network regularly features shows that could only be described as "European soft-core porn".

So, it is not that we are a country of prudes or anything like that, it is simply the case that computer games and the Internet have gained in popularity, and hence caught the eyes of regulators and lawmakers, while we have been suffering under a conservative Govenment.

Hopefully they will be voted out in tomorrow's elections, but that seems unlikely based on present polling.

Do not forget Pavel Klushantsev . No science fiction list is complete without Planeta Bur or Road to the Stars .

I had the pleasure of watching The Star Dreamer (documentary on Pavel, making science fiction films before in the soviet union) on australian sbs this year. If you can view this documentary or catch a copy of Planet of Storms or Planeta Bur you will be amazed at the Kubric like quality he acheives .... 15 years before Kubric!.

I've had crazy idea for a while. One of those "if I ruled the world" ideas. And it is this: Ban advertising from any news, current affairs, or similar TV program. Allowing ads during the news only encourages the TV stations to jazz it up to get higher ratings and thus ad revenue. It is very important in any democracy for the general populace to be well informed about current issues. When the media jazz-up unimportant issues, or worse - the politicians are allowed to drag the public focus onto unimportant issues - then we just get grand-standing and stupid politicians get elected.

• The "coming up next..." bits are to keep you from changing channel during an ad break.
• Stories are simplified and dumbed down into good/evil binary issues. Nothing is ever a matter of perspective. There's always a "bad guy".
• Stories are also blown out of proportion. Direct danger to the viewers is emphasized (see Bowling for Columbine).
• Foreign stories are neglected unless they have local relevance (this is seen here in Australia too, not just USA).

Here in Oz I absolutely adore SBS World News. SBS is a special government-funded TV station focusing on immigrant and foreign issues. It has great foreign movies and interesting programs. So the news doesn't just focus on local stuff. It has the people and resources (like an army of translaters and subtitlers) to cover world news very well. They're also the second Oz TV station with Olympic coverage which is less Australia-centric than Seven. SBS does have ads, but only between programs. And they seem to have much higher standards when it comes to the ads. Unfortunately, Microsoft's annoyingly pretentious "let us unlock your hidden potential" ads somehow got through :(

I've had crazy idea for a while. One of those "if I ruled the world" ideas. And it is this: Ban advertising from any news, current affairs, or similar TV program. Allowing ads during the news only encourages the TV stations to jazz it up to get higher ratings and thus ad revenue. It is very important in any democracy for the general populace to be well informed about current issues. When the media jazz-up unimportant issues, or worse - the politicians are allowed to drag the public focus onto unimportant issues - then we just get grand-standing and stupid politicians get elected.

• The "coming up next..." bits are to keep you from changing channel during an ad break.
• Stories are simplified and dumbed down into good/evil binary issues. Nothing is ever a matter of perspective. There's always a "bad guy".
• Stories are also blown out of proportion. Direct danger to the viewers is emphasized (see Bowling for Columbine).
• Foreign stories are neglected unless they have local relevance (this is seen here in Australia too, not just USA).

Here in Oz I absolutely adore SBS World News. SBS is a special government-funded TV station focusing on immigrant and foreign issues. It has great foreign movies and interesting programs. So the news doesn't just focus on local stuff. It has the people and resources (like an army of translaters and subtitlers) to cover world news very well. They're also the second Oz TV station with Olympic coverage which is less Australia-centric than Seven. SBS does have ads, but only between programs. And they seem to have much higher standards when it comes to the ads. Unfortunately, Microsoft's annoyingly pretentious "let us unlock your hidden potential" ads somehow got through :(

• the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) - government-owned, considered to be left-leaning regardless of whoever is in power, but probably more central than left. Programming consists of everything from mainly British shows to innovative local productions - which usually never achieve popularity until they are head-hunted / ripped off and mangled by one of the 3 commercial stations. Ad-less (well, internal ads only, between programs)
  
• SBS (Special Broadcasting Service) - known as "Sex Before Sleep" by people who think the word "knickers" is rude and funny. Nominally a "multicultural" station (in the best sense of the word), plays everything from PBS news and documentaries, through comedy (South Park, Daily Show, etc), anime, non-mainstream sport (soccer, Tour de France, etc), to "European" movies ;-) Semi-commercial - government sponsored, but with commercial advertising between programs.
  
• 7, 9, & 10 - the 3 commercial channels. One's tied up with AOL, another's tied up with Microsoft / MSN, and the other one has no money so runs "The Simpsons" on a mobius loop interspersed with "Big Brother", "Australian Idol", and even less-successful local reality TV. All run as many programs as they can fit in between the ads...
  

If you're actually scared of that, you should probably live in fear of terrorists raiding your fridge.

Ahh in Australia our government is prepared for that, we got special Fridge Magnets

Why place sanctions upon and then invade a country like Australia when you can muscle in on its local laws and markets with empty bribes to a bunch of greedy farmers with grosse over-representation?

You're an ignorant toss. If you are from the U.S.A., if you think our farmers have any sort of lobbying power or greed that even begins to approach anything like your "farming lobby" at all, you are sorely mistaken.

Unlike SOME farming operations, Australian farming business carries it's own weight.

And even if it didn't, it doesn't use politics to get away with it.

An old but insightful dateline segment.

Even Iran's vice-president has a daily blog on a popular site with 'musings about politics and life.'

Here's a little bit I copied from his site:

22-02-2004: meetings is teh sux0rs
HEY, sup all??? jus got back from a informasional meating on how were totally kicking the liberals's @$$ in teh polls this year!!!!1 those losers are such morons! to bad the voter turnout was bad! Dude u guys need 2 go out and vote so i can be your leader next year wouldnt that be gr8???
All so, there was this totally hot reporter there who kept talking 2 me asking questions and $h!t. She was totaly n 2 me and i was gonna get her # but those loser body guards said i had to go to another meeting. gawd, what pr!cks!!!
anyway, i gotta go sighn sum papers, ttyl.

(Glad he's not one of the leaders of my country)

David Suzuki's series The Nature Of Things had a really interesting programme on biomimicry in which Janine Benyus was one of the main people interviewed.

Parenthetically: there was a period in my life when I used to end up virtually every weekend watching daytime television while nursing the most horrible and well-deserved hang-overs. For some reason, Swedish TV chose to broadcast most of its David Suzuki shows during those hours. When hung-over, there is something oddly soothing about Suzuki's science-lite; by its sheer optimism and faith it can almost, almost make you believe that there is a light and a life at the end of the hung-over tunnel.

Yep, I won't see a movie until I find out what David Stratton from the Movie Show thinks about it.

Set up your network using this topology -note that your computers are in bottom-center, with firewall between you and your attackers. To control it all, get a command center inside a facility like this. Of course, you'll need physical security; try using a giant robot. Make sure your pilot isn't a total wuss, though. Oh, and make sure you have large cooling units filled with these.

An issue that is rarely highlighted in these discussions is the psychological and emotional development of the game user.

As a well balance, happy, and stable adult (honest), I think most people would agree that there is very little danger that my psyche will be irreperably damaged by playing violent and immersive games.

However, years ago in the days of the original Doom my little brother (around 6 at the time) would sneak into my room and play Doom if I had left it running. With the unique perspective of a self-absorbed teenager, I assumed it would have as little effect on him as it would on myself.

Imagine my surprise when he was sent home from school for threatening another child that he would "...chainsaw him in half...".

A realistic threat? Perhaps not. But it was certainly a potent reminder that the power of all media; be it TV, print or computer based; lies not in the medium, but in the minds of the consumers.

I strenuously object to anyone who dares suggest that I am so impressionable that I should allow someone else to vet my viewing for me (and kudos to those Australians like Margaret Pomeranz of SBS Television who risked arrest in Sydney this week: fighting censorship of the film Ken Park).

And so the conclusion. Games do not a killer make.

Please, let us all use a modicum of common sense and avoid the usual media hyperbole.

P.S. And help support Ken Park - even if it is not a movie that you want to watch, defend your right to choose!

Q.

Funnily enough, there *was* an Apple-related company at one point in the past called Snapple. They were a group of independant Australian Apple resellers who joined together for the "synergies".

Unfortuantely for them, they hadnt really thought it through and they went broke. On the plus side, there's a really interesting documentary running around on the short life of Snapple. You might be able to source it from ABC or sbs

sbs dateline video of the shi'ite story from sbs... I guess since this is current affairs it will be here for a little while and then they'll move onto something else scary.

Yes that's the one. They just reported it on our SBS TV too. And they reported a lot of disturbing stuff about Shi'ites and Kurdistan, ie the uprising that the USA is calling for now, is most likely to come from these people and yet USA doesn't want them to take over from Saddam at all. Interestingly in the marches/ceremonies there were massive numbers of women in black headscarves with no sign of their chaperone uncles or brothers, just hundreds and hundreds of women.

I remember being upset about the invasion of Afghanistan around 1980, but completely not interested in Iran and Iraq fighting each other or what weapons they are using.

When are the War Analysts going to tell us why Saddam has not used any of his weapons of mass destruction yet? I'd pay closer attention if I thought anyone was telling the truth.

I have difficulty understanding how the idea of interrupting programs at all was ever thought to be acceptable. In Australia, the public broadcaster has no ads, and the next best thing is limited by its charter to five minutes' ads per hour, strictly between programs. These channels are my staples, and I find the commercial networks totally infuriating as they are. (Channel Nine is doing more and more scrolly-ads on top of prime time shows now, too...)

The SBS World Guide is pretty good.

It's a service of the Australian SBS broadcasting network, a multi-ethnic/cultural/language & world news network. Its owned by the Australian govt & is a sister network to the ABC, Australia's equilivent to the BBC.

Just a reminder for all the Australian SW fans.
Tonight (Tuesday 7th 2001) is the night that the census is being held. There has been an email circulating regarding the religion entry. If anyone saw Going Home last night there were a couple of good reasons for listing your religion as "Jedi". I heard that if there is enough Jedi converts in the country then it becomes a recognized religion. Can anyone confirm this? The results will be interesting.

May the force be with you.

In Australia, I watch everything on the ABC and SBS (which recently won an international multicultural exposure award.

Sadly, the commercial stations do have The Sopranos, and Voyager & DS9, so I tape these (it's analogue I know, but hey).

But The Bill (greatest show in the world) in on the ABC ( :

And dammit we're just talking about 70 minutes of fun

What the hell is it with movies in the last decade or so? I don't recall any movies before about 1990 that were less than 90 minutes long, some older film were epics which had to be viewed over more than 1 evening. Now it seems rare to find a movie over 90 minutes long, and that seems to consist mainly of visual effects and inane taglines.

This is obviously a plot by the RIAA to squeeze more money out of the cinemas. One or two extra sessions per day amounts to many millions of dollars in their pockets. When I pay my 12$ or so I expect to be entertained for a while by a good story, not fed a few tidbits of action and left wondering where the sequel is going to be tacked on to the half-baked plot.

I realise the quality of a movie is not necessarily proportional to its length, but there is a reason movies are a bit longer than TV show episodes. They're meant to have a bit more depth and meaning, and be a self-contained story. This doesn't necessarily apply to shreck as its a kids movie, but I would think most parent would appreciate a movie holding their young ones interest for a bit longer.

As for the advances in computer animation, I'm sorry Taco but I just don't give a shit. Think of animated movies I have seen I quickly realise that the quality of their animation mattered very little. The three most important components of a movie are premise, people and plot. Get these right and no-one will even talk about how realistic the movie is.

Well, now that this has turned into the common rant about the movie industry, I guess I should say that there are many recent movies which I thought where really great. Invariably these were not hyped at the box office, weren't popular and weren't made by major hollywood studios. Many of them weren't even shown at cinemas in my area, I had to track them down on video or wait for a TV station to show them. So to all those people who agree with what I've written above, please ignore the blithering of the advertisements and entertainment shows, find some good movie reviews (in Oz I recommend SBS's The Movie Show) and I'm sure you can find something to watch that is worthwhile.

by a project called The Human Instrumentality Project. They made giant robots which function through a cerebral-nerve link with their operators. The pilots connect through the A10 neuron system of the brain. They can connect through their plug suits and the medium of liquid known as LCL.

Why you guys rolling on the floor?

by a project called The Human Instrumentality Project. They made giant robots which function through a cerebral-nerve link with their operators. The pilots connect through the A10 neuron system of the brain. They can connect through their plug suits and the medium of liquid known as LCL.

Why you guys rolling on the floor?

by a project called The Human Instrumentality Project. They made giant robots which function through a cerebral-nerve link with their operators. The pilots connect through the A10 neuron system of the brain. They can connect through their plug suits and the medium of liquid known as LCL.

Why you guys rolling on the floor?