Hiro Protagonist

Nice list. How did you get your list in that format? Is that a custom setting that you've done yourself?

Season 1 is available in the US on Blue-Ray. It's called Chris Ryan's Strike Back. The current pricing is ridiculous (48$ on Amazon). Although the discs are supposed to be all region compatable, they are 1080i/50 which won't play on all players. Interesting. Because according to this article, Cinemax is to air original UK 'Strike Back' season as 'Strike Back: Origins'. So the first season is on DVD under Chris Ryan's Strike Back but will be called Stike Back: Origins on TV in the U.S. But yeah. For anyone who is interested in watching this awesome show, watch the UK 1st season first. Not the American 1st season which is really the second season.

I'm wondering what sort of countries you're talking about that don't have freedom of the press, yet have Western newspapers at their newstands.

Elysium. enjoyed it. 7.5/10 Pacific Rim. Another movie I enjoyed. 7/10 Killing Season. ugh. What were Robert De Niro and John Travolta thinking? 4/10 The Colony. Not a great movie, but didn't mind it. Seemed to take stuff from other movies like 28 days later and more so 30 days of night. 6/10

Have been watching Strike Back over the last week or so and halfway through Season 3 at the moment. Awesome show. Interestingly, this series started at Season 2 in the U.S. and is referred to as Season 1 in America. Mainly because Cinemax didn't have the rights to the original Season 1 at the time. And Season 1 will be titled Strike Back: Origins when it eventually airs in the U.S. I'd suggest starting at the original Season 1 (as per imdb) because the start of Season 2 has a huge spoiler for the main character from Season 1.

Four-day siege or four-day shopping spree? http://www.smh.com.au/world/kenyan-mall-looting-blamed-on-soldiers-20131004-2uymp.html More and more Kenyans believe those soldiers methodically cleaned out the mall, and that the barrages of gunfire ringing out for days were being directed not at the last of the militants but at safes and padlocks to blast them open. Some business leaders even question whether the Kenyan army deliberately prolonged the crisis by saying shooters were still in the building when they were actually dead, to give themselves extra time to steal. Laptops, smart phones, Swiss watches, cameras, underwear, perfume and stereo speakers were all carried out of the mall, which was supposed to be tightly guarded by the military A clean-up crew at one restaurant said that when the soldiers allowed them back in on Monday, the crew found hundreds of bottles of gin, brandy, rum, vodka and beer sitting on the bar. It looked like the scene of a fraternity party Parking machines and cash registers were pried open and emptied. A huge, mounted flat-screen television had been lifted off the wall. Doors were wrenched open, and in several stores that showed no obvious signs of having been caught up in the fighting, display cases were ransacked. Witness accounts have not suggested that the attackers broke into safes or stole anything of value. The mall’s surveillance cameras may have captured some of the looting, but Kenyan intelligence agents have taken the footage.

First season is a bit of a train wreck. Second season seems to be better.

Even if it's $76, it's still more than what patients in other countries pay. And your link seems to confirm this. It's a case of Americans will pay for it and pass it on. There doesn't seem to be any checks and Pharmaceutical companies are charging as much as they can. Whereas other countries will have their Government step in and it can be a win for Governments as well. For example: Price of cholesterol medicine atorvastatin and other drugs set to fall http://www.news.com.au/national-news/price-of-cholesterol-medicine-atorvastatin-and-other-drugs-set-to-fall/story-fncynjr2-1226700922443 More can obviously be done and is underway by our Government, as we pay more for some drugs than the UK as shown in the article.

That's ridiculous what you're paying. Here in Australia, we have medicare which is free. Go see a doctor, free. Go to a public hospital, free. Technically, it's not free as all tax payers pay a small percentage of their wage to medicare. Quite a lot of doctors still do medicare. You can elect to have private health insurance and get a tax break. So for me, I pay $600 a year ($50 a month) for basic health insurance which I don't use just to get out of paying approx $1300 every year (in my case) to the Government for medicare. All people who have private health insurance can have medicare at the same time, which is why I don't use private hospitals as the public hospitals are free.

No idea about legit. But I did watch the entire 5 seasons over the last two weeks. On a side note: Australia continues their convict ways.

The character of Walter White was written so well that he's sort of an anti-hero and a lot of people feel sympathy for him. And a lot of people still believe he was doing this for his family when he was doing it for himself. Everything that happened to Walt he brought on himself, except for the cancer. He could have accepted the money at the start from Elliot and Gretchen and be with his family. I believe most people in the real world would do this to be with their family until the cancer takes them. Instead, he chose to go down a life of crime, destroying lives and killing people. And viewers are happy with this. It was well written so you go along with the ride. And a lot of fans have hatred and take it out on characters like Skyler. What's even worse is there are Facebook hate pages of Skyler and the actress Anna Gunn has had threats. Simply Weird.

Not so much weird. But quite interesting. Seeing families at supermarkets like a family of four shopping for groceries (loads of sugary / processed junk in the trolley) and two early teenage kids, who were both exceedingly obese (dad & mum weren't far behind), reminded me of this this very interesting article in Australia regarding the complex issue "is obesity a form of child abuse?" Is this child abuse? The courts think so. http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/is-this-child-abuse-the-courts-think-so-20120711-21wdb.html VICTORIAN welfare authorities have begun using extreme obesity as a reason to support children being separated from their parents. One case involved a pre-teenage boy who weighed 110 kilograms (242.5 lbs) and the other a teenage girl whose waist circumference of 169 centimetres (5 feet 6.5 inches) was greater than her height.

Breaking Bad. Late comer to this series and watched all the seasons in the last two weeks. Great finale that wraps everything up. Started watching some recurring and new shows: The Blacklist. The Spader character reminds me of Hannibal Lector. Enjoyed the first episode and really looking forward to how the season plays out. Revolution. The Train wreck of a show continues. Watching to see how much of their stupidity can get them into trouble. Hostages. Not sure how this will work for multiple seasons. Hoping it'll wrap it all up before it gets cancelled. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. I thought the show was okay. Seems to be going down the Smallville route with monster of the week episodes. I hope there's a story arc for this season. I don't get the fuss over the hover car which seems to be making the rounds on forums. It's a superhero TV show and a flying car is making a fuss, but everything else that is impossible is ok? :/

Great Stuff. Yep and I used Netscape all the time back then. I have to wonder when I joined the BIS forums. Must have been around 1999 or 2000.

I remember the Lord Jim debacle and I'm sure I have screen shots on an old computer. And yeah, the colour scheme of IPLY forums was truly horrible. That was Damien Folletto. After BIS, he was involved in a post-apocalyptic game called The Fall: Last Days of Gaia. Not sure where he is now.

After Earth. Just saw this now and can see why this movie has bad reviews. I'm glad I didn't spend any money watching this. 2/10.

Started watching Breaking Bad from Sunday and already finished Season 2. Awesome show. Should be up to the current episodes by next week.

Star Trek Into Darkness. The whole Enterprise being under water didn't make any sense. And Spock was an emotional rollercoaster. Overall it was ok. 5/10.

Even the chinese that's spoken in the show has been criticised and many debates over it. There's a mix of mandarin and cantonese. The usual 'Hollywood tried but not getting it' versus 'oh, but Joss never actually said this in a recorded format so it isn't'... to the speculative 'who knows what's happened to the language in the future'. The chinese in the show never bothered me. As someone who has taken courses in mandarin and know how hard it is to pronounce the words correctly, I believe it came down to recording the Chinese for the actors to listen and parrot, but even then it's hard for people used to western languages to correctly pronounce the words with the correct pitch. After many years of practice, I still can't pronounce some words in Mandarin properly. I sometimes wonder how Firefly would fare if it was released today as a new show if it didn't exist. I agree with Nonek that it would be a hard sell. I've noticed a lot of cynicism and nitpicking with good shows on internet forums. I doubt Firely would have escaped all the erroneous nitpicking as other shows get today. Perhaps we live in an age of cynicism.

I remember when Dark Angel was cancelled and a lot of viewers weren't happy about that and was replaced with Firefly. And with Firefly, I didn't get all the we have this technology with space ships but still use basic guns and bullets. It seemed a bit mixed up at the time with the wild west in space. I gave up after a couple of episodes and it was cancelled soon after. It was only when it became popular on the internet, released on DVD that I went back to watch to find out what the bid deal was. And found that it was quite good. It feels as if people have jumped on the firefly internet bandwagon but if they watched it when it aired, they probably would have given it one or two episodes and gave up. Much like the same with other shows that have been cancelled early and now have a following. And then the movie came out and it bombed at the box office. This was supposedly going to be a huge movie from the internet reaction from the show. Quite the opposite in fact. http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=serenity.htm Production Budget - $39 Million Worldwide Box Office $38.8 million Yep, even the worldwide totals couldn't even get above the production budget. I was one of the very few people that went to the cinema and supported this. It seems most of the movie going public didn't. So I really have to wonder how popular Firefly is. It doesn't seem to be popular with mainstream audiences.

Now You See Me. Great magic heist movie. Really enjoyed it.

I hear you Sargy. I've missed quite a few people especially from the BIS boards as well. I've always wondered what's happened to all those guys that frequented the BIS Boards, the different sub-forums. Too many names to mention but I do remember nearly all of them and a lot of what they posted. A lot of friends back then even though we may not have known it at the time. And after a few years of not seeing them, you then realise how much of an impact they had on your life. You realise they were friends and not just random people on an internet forum. Those who have left probably don't realise the impact they've had on us, but we do remember them. I remember them. And with great fondness, the memories and the sadness of people who have passed away. There were ups and downs as standard with a community, but there wasn't one person on the BIS boards that I didn't like. It may come as a surprise but I actually liked everyone that I came in contact and those I didn't have contact with. There was a lot of people who I didn't talk to, but I still have good memories of them and reading some of their posts. A lot of people, friends and memories, all good which is a rare thing.

Pretty much sums up what Gromnir is saying. Also, some things that Josh Sawyer likes in a pnp game may not translate into a crpg, despite wanting to put it into the game. While it might be more realistic, some things just aren't fun in a crpg. We've seen that with item durability being taken out. And it really comes down to is the game fun to play? Yes/No. You only have to look at IWD 2 to notice some glaring things that frustrates players. Battle Squares, Fell Woods, lack of any useful or good loot in most of the game for your characters, some of the FedEx quests, a lot of the mini-boss fights only drop gold and gems and no armour/weapons, ... and so on. While there's a lot of good stuff in IWD 2, there's some real let downs as well. What comes across as a good game overall, could have been a fantastic game.

Some good news. Australian doctors have saved the life of a woman who was clinically dead for 42 minutes. http://au.news.yahoo.com/vic/latest/a/-/newshome/18558756/doctors-bring-vic-woman-back-from-dead/

Olympus has Fallen. Enjoyed the action, especially at the start. Was thinking how they were going to take the White house and quite impressed with all the action. 7/10 Oblivion. Another movie I liked and was wondering where it was all going until it hit the middle of the movie and I was like, oh yeah, now it makes sense. I could see how this was a graphic novel even though it wasn't publiched. 7/10