I tell you which ads and there are two of them, I am not buying. Those two "I can't touch anything unless I clean my hands with anti germs gel", ie excessive compulsive endorsing crap. Man those thing just shit me no end. I just find the whole concept somewhat unethical.

Just saw a torrent for Californication too - the new David Duchovny show. Do the Chilli Peppers get any money for the title or has it been around since before their album?

Arrrggh, Bigpond!

They have done the same thing to me... it seems like I've been throttled to below dial-up speeds for the whole of the last month. Frequently web pages don't even load at all.

I don't know what's going on. It used to be that I just got throttled near the end of the month, after I had done heaps of downloading, and the throttling wasn't too bad. This month, I've downloaded a lot less than usual, and I seem to have been throttled for the past 4 weeks solid.

I am reaching the end of my patience... but I don't really have any faith that other ISPs won't pull the same shit. Take the example of Dodo that you gave in the podcast. I'm worried that I'd be jumping out of a bucket of shit into a bucket of shit with little bits of corn in it.

I've been on Telstra broadband since the days when Telstra was the only broadband provider. Those crazy days when we got free, unlimited peer-to-peer transfer between Bigpond Cable users. God, that was awesome. Hell, before that we even had Public Access Internet if anyone even remembers what that was. Things have been going downhill on the interwebs ever since it started becoming a mainstream thing.

Anyway, I wonder if anyone can shed light on what's going on with Telstra Broadband, whether this is a once-off issue, or whether they plan to keep screwing us around.

I, too, was on BogPong from the outset, paying out to have the plan that gave unlimited traffic, within AUP which was vague at best. Then they changed the terms of what I'd signed up for, slapping a DL limit and charging 19c/MB in excess - the first month they did that I copped an extra $120 charge on my bill. That was the beginning of the end of my patience with Telstra - and I'd been very patient, in full knowledge that it was Telstra that was blocking the rollout of DSL broadband because they'd been late getting in on ISDN and didn't want to provide an alternative until that infrastructure had paid for itself.

DO NOT EVER go Dodo. From way back in the dialup days, user reports have been that they overload their service which meant they had more users than modem connections. That meant when everyone got home and tried to login to check their email, it'd take forever to get a line that wasn't engaged.

I've been with iiNet for the past couple of years, after escaping the tentacles of Telstra, which has been good apart from the time when there was an issue at the exchange and iiNet had to rely on a Telstra tech to go out and plug my port back in - or whatever they did. The plans have done nothing but improve in that time with higher DL limits and increased time counted as offpeak.

I haven't really been paying much attention but TPG seem to have had good reports and you might want to check out the offerings from Soul. I was going to mention Optus too but have just read that their new plans are counting uploads as well as downloads to the monthly limits.

You can get more info from the Whirlpool site - whirlpool.net.au

Internode is good apparently. I would stay away from large phone companies. Although I am with iPrimus and if you can haggle a good deal they are fairly decent.

Josh,

You and I are VERY different my friend. I hate The Wire and The Shield, both bore me to tears (although I hate 99.999% of American drama)

I love Family Guy (as well as Simpsons, South Park and King of the Hill). Although American Dad is pure crap.

I apologise for my previous post. I referred to "Dodo" when I should have said "Dildo".

I finally got around to looking at Whirlpool.net, and discovered why I am having this capped usage issue. Hopefully the problem should go away tomorrow.

Mike - American Dad improved in later episodes. I like Roger the alien.

By the way, Brett, how does the granola taste?

Hey Mike - What dramas do you like?

'American Drama' is a pretty broad term. I never really got into The Shield, but I can see why people like it and The Wire Season One was exceptional - neither of them would come to mind though if I was to think of typical American drama.

I like Australian dramas personally, Blue Heelers and just tonight watched All Saints for the first time since early Georgie Parker episodes and its actually decent these days. They may not be edgy and gritty but neither am I!

@David - I have only seen up to 'Stan in Arabia' episodes so I do admit not seeing later episodes. So maybe they did, all I know is the first season (from what FOX8 showed so far is terrible).

Thats interesting Mike. While I can see the appeal of The Wire and The Shield I can appreciate why they might not be to people's tastes as well.

We may have something more to your liking in next week's Golden Age of Television...

I agree that American Dad is not great, and some episodes are awful. But I keep watching just for Roger's dress-ups, wigs, and alcoholism. I'm a total sucker for animated comedy, though.

Speaking of animated comedy, has anybody seen Lil' Bush?

It's a strange show. I wasn't expecting much, but the voice acting of whoever plays Lil' George is awesome. There are a bunch of words that I can't hear without thinking of Bush now. Awesome is one of them.

If you don't watch any other bits of Lil' Bush, you simply must see the bit where he's looking up words in the dictionary and reads out:

Aardvaark
Abacus
Academy

My girlfriend laughs herself silly at the show, which is surprising, as she generally can't stand animated comedy. I find it mildly amusing, with the exception of Lil' George's voice, which is truly hilarious.

As for Golden Age of Television, how about you feature Futurama sometime?

Hey David - you may want to check the Golden Age Of Television archives. Somewhere around ep 90.

I was browsing through Facebook and came across this little nugget:

so aaron [Sorkin] just signed on to write the musical version of yoshimi battles the pink robots. i hope he starts doing coke again.

On the couple of occasions I've watched it, I've found The Shield to be, well, a bit blokey. That's not to say that I'm into chick tv, far from it - two of my all-time favourite shows are Oz and The Sopranos. Maybe it's Michael Chiklis...

On the other hand, The Wire is an excellent pick for GAT - speaking of tv for grown-ups, has anyone seen Five Days?

Josh, I would've been with you re 'orientated' a couple of years ago, but I now reckon it falls into the evolution of language - they're interchangeable. Never thought I'd ever say this, but the Style Guide is wrong and 'orientated' is cumbersome.

Which style guide recommends "orientated"? That word is so wrong that I don't think it's even a real word.

According to Josh, it's the Australian style guide... I assume he means the Wiley Style Manual. It is most certainly a real word and is listed as a synonym for 'oriented' in any good dictionary.

Don't you just love how the words take over from the pictures? *grin*

Josh has very little idea when it comes to grammar.........


Catbrian - Five Days was the abduction HBO/BBC co-production, yes? It sounded very interesting and I wanted to see it but the opportunity never presented itself.

Yes, Ross - that's the one. When originally screened in the UK, the eps were a fortnight apart and time passes between each ep. The period of time that passed in the story between each ep varied - one was 2 months, I think - so you had to stay on your toes to follow the story properly. No hand-holding, no re-capping, as I recall.

It's been a while since I've seen it, but I'm interested in seeing it again - I'm sure it's available via pipes somewhere... I'll fling a copy to anyone who's interested when I get hold of it.

Catbrain + Ross: Stop talking about Five Days!!! (Please). I have only watched 3 of the 5 episodes and I don't want to learn how it ends on Boxcutters ;-)

The series does re-cap, by the way. At least on the version I'm watching.

You can stop searching, Catbrain.

Some people are talking isp's so I thought I'd chime in.
I'm with tpg and last week moved to their new 150gb for $69 adsl2+ plan.
It. Is. Awesome. 40gb between 7am and 1am (fine I was on 50gb for $89) and 110gb between 1am and 7am.

I tell you bitmetv, utorrent 1.6 scheduling and this plan and I'm in tv heaven.

Eps of 45min shows like house download in around 4 minutes.

Sure I'm close to the exchange but even so I have never had an issue with tpg.

So anyone looking for a change from bigpond or whatever, if you can get adsl2+ this is the plan for you!

and no I don't work for any isp :)

"Oriented" v "orientated" is an interesting one, and probably is in some flux here in Australia.

When you are in new surroundings, do you "orient" yourself or do you "orientate" yourself?

Is the confusion partly because "orienteering" and "orientation" are both nouns (although with very different meanings)?

When you become confused as to your location, are you "disoriented" or "disorientated"?

What about when you deliberately cause someone else to become lost in this way. Have you "disoriented" them or "disorientated" them?

It's all very interesting.

Hey, Rob - you ought to know better... Boxcutters is a spoiler-free zone!

As you've already got Five Days, can you fling a copy my way? *bats eyelashes*

You "orient" yourself in new surroundings if you're facing east. *grin*

I've just discovered that "dis/orient" pre-dates "dis/orientate". And on it goes...

No worries, Catbrain. Hypothetically (of course) I could leave such a thing in a plain brown paper bag at Boxcutters HQ, addressed to Ms C. Brain or similar.

Allegedly.

I tell you, I've really been enjoying the new James Nesbitt vehicle "Jekyll" (BBC One). I think it's a 6-parter. He really gets to play deliciously with the Mr Hyde character. The show has it's flaws but Nesbitt mincing around menacingly as Hyde is absolute gold.

Another that shows great promise is Mad Men, which has just started on AMC. It's set in the world of 1950s Madison Ave advertising execs and is written by Matthew Weiner who co-wrote and exec produced The Sopranos. I've seen the first episode and I think it has potential to do good things.

Yes, I am looking forward to Mad Men. Haven't heard of Jekyll.

I'd love a copy of Five Days too if that is a possibility.

Hi Boxcutters,

Love the show. Have heard some of you on radio when you were involved with Film Buffs Forecast (been a listener of that great program for over 15 years and everyone listening to Boxcutters should listen to Film Buffs Podcast if you want to keep aprised of film culture).

I particularly like The Golden Age of Television. Maybe you could leave a list of all the entries on the website.

A friend of mine leant me The Shield on DVD and I am hooked. It is amazing tv, given the interesting characters and morally complex storylines. I am yet to watch The Wire on DVD. Looking forward to it as was a fan of Homicide: Life on the Streets.

Its great that tv series recently (especially from the USA) are plotted like novels with long and involving story arcs. However, I think Babylon 5, which aired in the mid to late 90's, was one of the first shows that was plotted like a novel, with a definite beginning, middle and end. The series, had a saga or epic tone to it.
Some episodes gave forshadowing of events and plot lines that did not pay off until many episodes later. Episodes of this series made references to historical and political events and to genre fiction and film. Although, the series would not have mass appeal as it is science fiction, I think it was a forerunner to the more intrictaely plotted and morally complex tv drama that we are so used to seeing now.

That's interesting about Babylon 5 Mathew. Can't say I ever got into it though, but it sounds well written.

The plan is to list the whole Golden Age of Television shows once we've finished - probably the week after next - along with our individual lists and then get everyone to tell us what they think, what they hate, what we left out, etc etc.