Found on Youtube, the machinima crew over at theleetworld (Smooth Few Films) have come up with a mini masterpiece telling the tale of the lives of two turrets at Aperture Science Enrichment Center.

You can find high-res version (including a HD version) of the video on the theleetworld website for download.

Tags: funny, portal, turret

Looking back through the delusionofgrandeur.co.uk server logs, I was impressed to discover that we have been visited by somebody using a Nintendo Wii games console.

The Opera web browser is available for the Nintendo Wii (for a small fee)

This comes after we were hit by a Sony Playstation 3 in November (we actually had another PS3 hit in December too).

Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like I can ‘collect all three’ because, as far as I know, there is no web-browser for the Microsoft Xbox 360.

Tags: nintendo wii, playstation 3, web browser, xbox 360

Okay, so I don’t really believe this to be an intentional dark conspiracy but the fact remains that the BBC did provably edit an interview between David Frost and Benazir Bhutto to remove a reference made by Bhutto to the murder of Osama Bin Laden by Omar Sheikh.

The original interview was broadcast in full on al Jazeera TV in November with the Bin Laden reference but when the interview was rebroadcast on the BBC, the reference was edited out rather crudely by the insertion of a still image of Frost to cover the audio join in Bhutto’s response.

A youtube user has uploaded both versions of the video (unfortunately, I can’t find one neatly edited together to demonstrate the cut quickly)

The original is first, the reference to the murder is just after the 6:00 minute mark:

In the next clip, we see the BBC’s edited version with the dodgey still of Frost turning up at 5:00 minutes

A Czech lecturer at the University of Glasgow enquired with the BBC about the apparent censorship*:

The video of David Frost’s interview with Bhutto on your website HERE contains a cut shortly after minute 5 where a still photograph of David Frost is inserted.

The uncensored version of the interview is available on YouTube and elsewhere.

In the cut out sequence, Bhutto says that bin Laden is dead.

Can you please advise who has cut out this sequence and what was the reason for this act of censorship?

You may be aware that among other places, this act of censorship is being energetically discussed on the discussion forum of Spiegel Online (in German).

Thank you very much

Dr Jan Culik
Senior Lecturer
University of Glasgow

The BBC sent back the following response.

The BBC has an agreement with al-Jazeera which enables both broadcasters to share certain news material including pictures and interviews. It was on this basis that we offered an extract of Sir David Frost’s interview with Benazir Bhutto to users of the BBC News website.

During the interview Ms Bhutto made an allegation that Osama Bin Laden had been murdered by Omar Sheikh. A claim which was unchallenged and so unexpected that it seemed most likely that she had mis-spoken.

Under time pressure the item producer responsible for publishing the video edited out the comment with the intention of avoiding confusion. On reflection this was clearly a mistake and should not have happened. There was no intention on our part to distort the meaning of the interview, and we will endeavour to replace the edited version currently available via the BBC News website with the original interview as broadcast by Al-Jazeera.

I would like to take the opportunity to apologise for what was an error of judgement and the confusion that this has caused.

Adam Batstone

Editor BBC News Website Audio Video

Which, to my mind is actually a pretty good explanation. Frost seemed to miss the reference (he looked pretty comatose in fact) so Bhutto was never challenged on the statement and she did not expand on it herself which suggests it was uttered as a statement of accepted fact. I’m actually surprised that al Jazeera didn’t make the same cut to avoid confusion too.

I believe she did not intend to name ‘Osama Bin Laden’, rather she intended to say “Omar Sheikh, the man who murdered Daniel Pearl“. Omar Sheikh was found guilty of the videotaped 2002 murder of the journalist. It’s possible that she just had Bin Laden on her mind at that moment in the interview and confused his name for Pearl’s without even realising the mistake.

The conspiracy theorists are very excited about this and of course, from their point of view, it really is golden. Now that Bhutto has been assasinated, it is impossible to ask her whether she actually intended to say ‘Osama Bin Laden’ or not.

Update: Steve Herrmann, the Editor of the BBC News Website has put his view forward too. I remain of the opinion that the whole hoo-ha was David Frost’s fault when he didn’t pick up on Benazir Bhutto’s mistake. If Frost had just asked her if she meant what she said (and I’m nearly certain now that she meant to say Daniel Pearl) the conspiracy nuts would still be bleating but wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.

*Please note, the letters quoted were ‘collected on the internet’, I’ve not found the primary source

Tags: bbc, benazir bhutto, censorship, conspiracy, daniel pearl, david frost, interview, omar sheikh, osama bin laden

And now for something completely different…

The by now famous Kajetokun has made and presented this fabulous fight-scene video on Youtube. The video features a long, tracking fight-scene from the 2005 Tony Jaa Thai action film “Tom Yum Goong”. The catch is that the audio has been entirely replaced for humorous effect with music and samples from video games.

The samples you hear are from Capcom vs SNK 2, Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolf, King of Fighters and Little Fighters 2.

The music is from Hokuto no Ken.

If anyone wants me, I’ll be out buying Tom Yum Goong on DVD

Tags: kajetokun, terry yum goong, the protector, tom yum goong, tony jaa

The BBC has finally pulled it’s finger out and made their iPlayer view-on-demand system work on Linux and Mac platforms. The iPlayer streaming service is now available via web-browser using the Adobe Flash plugin. The download service is not available as it has apparently still not been possible to port Verisign’s proprietary, DRM encumbered Kontiki software to other platforms.

Apparently, releasing a flash-based version will not be enough to appease the BBC Trust on cross-platform availability either.

The streaming iPlayer requires the latest flash version which is a minor version of Flash 9.x (9.0.115.0). The iPlayer will run with earlier flash 9.x versions but the full-screen mode is disabled. Apparently, users were formerly required to register before using iPlayer but when I went to try it, I was given direct access. The experience was somewhat underwhelming. The bitrate was obviously lower than required to maintain the quality and the frame rate felt like 15fps. That said, this is probably the best the BBC can do at the moment as services such as iPlayer require a huge amount of processing power and bandwidth due to the potential userbase.

The personal gripe that I had is probably more of a problem with the BBC in general rather than iPlayer itself. Despite the large iPlayer catalogue, there seems to be very little worth watching. I’m sure it appeals to the lowest common denominator (whoever he may be) but I’m left puzzled by what the modern BBC regard as ‘entertainment’.

Tags: bbc, flash, iplayer, kontiki, linux, mac osx

Here we have a couple of videos that have been doing the rounds recently courtesy of collegehumour.com

The premise is thus: What would meetings be like if they were conducted like forum threads?

Caution: May not be safe for work!

They’re packed full of all your favourite forum memes including the ubiquitous First Post! the always-welcomed LOLCat and total cost of pwnership.

Tags: collegehumour, video, what if meetings were like forums