SlashFilm.com brings us another look at Johnny Depp in Tim Burton’s remake of the television classic DARK SHADOWS.

There was a time when you said “Tim Burton is doing _______” and no matter how wacked out or crazy whatever filled in that blank was my response would have been “Wow. That’s going to be fantastic!”

Those days are long gone. Long gone.

My faith in Tim Burton came to a crashing halt in 2001 with the horrible Planet Of The Apes. There are plenty of stories as to why this film sucked so bad but I still have to lay the blame at Burton’s feet for this mess.

He followed that with the charming BIG FISH but followed that with the severely disappointing Charlie And The Chocolate Factory.

How in the hell could that film fail? If you had to pick a modern director to create the world of Willy Wonka who would you have chosen? Yes, you would have picked Burton. I sure as hell did but disappointed is my only feeling for that film.  It broke my heart.

How could Burton have missed?

After that disappointment burton momentarily redeemed himself with the amazing SWEENEY TODD. This was the Tim Burton we knew and loved. Sure he cast his Helena Bonham Carter in this (like every single other film he’d done since he hooked up with her on Apes) but it an amazing, demented and glorious film.  Burton was back… but not for long.

He screwed his believers again with the piece of shit that was Alice In Wonderland.

What a sell out. Crappy film in horrible 3D.

So, based on that you might be thinking Burton does one crap film and follows it with a good one. Right?

Here come DARK SHADOWS.

First there came this cast photo with a very odd looking Johnny Depp as Barnabas Collins in the background. Weird but not too scary.

10 years ago I would have been dancing in the streets about Burton doing a remake of the series and I had some limited hope— now comes a new picture (below) and all hopes are dashed.

Depp looks ridiculous.

Dark Shadows is going to be a PG-13 piece of campy crap.  I’ll say it again: Dark Shadows is going to be a PG-13 piece of campy crap.  Look at him, obviously they are going for laughs with this look. What a fucking shame.

The Tim Burton who made ED WOOD would not have made this horror. I can’t believe the Burton who made Sweeney Todd would have made this either.

Shed a tear now any of you who had hopes for Burton’s Dark Shadows, this photo of Depp as Barnabas Collins should put any hopes to rest.

Having said this: Yes, I could be wrong but look at this photo— it’s going to be a comedy. A watered down, PG-13 comedy with no atmosphere and will probably end up being post converted into 3D.

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photo: BBC

SHERLOCK fans rejoice, even more of Benedict Cumberbatch is coming to you.

Variety, Hollywood reporter and pretty much everyone has the news this morning that he has signed on to the second of the Star Trek films for Abrams playing a villan. Rumors up to a very short time ago had Benicio Del Toro signing on as the villan and a lot of those rumors were that he would be playing Khan.

Still no solid information on who Cumberbatch will be playing or even if it’s a human or alien villan for the crew of the Enterprise. The film is set for release on May 17, 2013.

He will join Doctor Who’s Noel Clarke as well as Alice Eve and Peter Weller who have already been cast

#Sherlock #StarTrek #BenedictCumberbatch

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Benedict Cumberbatch to play Star Trek II villain

The Star Trek baddie will be the British actor’s most high-profile role to date and JJ Abrams’ 3D film is set for release next year

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After a long wait SHERLOCK returned to the BBC New Year’s Day with a bang. As expected Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss have delivered again, and stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes and Martin Freeman as John Watson are fantastic.

First off the resolution of the cliffhanger facing Holmes and Watson against Morriarty at the pool and from there we delve deep into the “A Scandal in Belgravia” and are introduced to The Woman, Irene Adler.

In the classic stories Adler was a mystery and the only woman that ever caught the attention of Holmes, this version of Adler gets everyone’s attention.

Irene Adler is played to perfection by the lovely Lara Pulver.

I’m not going to get too deep into a review of the episode since it hasn’t aired in most other countries and isn’t due to for a while (In the US it won’t air till May 6 and continuing through May 20 on PBS) other then to say all fans of the original series will not be disappointed.

A plot point of the story is a very unusual text message alert that Irene puts on Sherlock’s phone. I’ve seen a lot of people ask about it and want it… so here it is.

Below is a link to the folder containing the iPhone Ringtone file (TheWoman.m4r) that if you have IOS 5 you will be able to set as an alert message for whomever you think worthy. I’ve also included an MP3 version for other phones. (TheWoman.mp3) Just right click or control-click the file of your choice and download it!

If you appreciate this I’d be most grateful if you’d click an ad (or two) on the site and visit one of our fine sponsors since I’ll have to pay for the bandwidth for this as well.

http://www.kbsez.com/SHRLCK

If there is another type of file you’d like, hit the CONTACT button at the top of the page and drop me a line and I’ll see what we can do.

I post this as a favor to fans, I mean no infringement on BBC properties, copyrighted material and if I am, please click the contact button at the top of the page and send me an email and I’ll pull it right away. Please link straight to this page, not to the file.

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Zooey Deschanel & Joseph Gordon Levitt Sing “What Are You Doing New Years Eve?”

Zooey says about the video:
I have known Joe Gordon-Levitt for going on 12 years. We first met in the summer of 2000 while doing a tiny movie called Manic, where we bonded over a mutual appreciation for Harry Nilsson and Nina Simone and I have been lucky enough to call him one of my dearest friends ever since. When we did 500 Days of Summer 8 years later, we spent every lunch hour dancing to Marvin Gaye in the hair and make up trailer; we had loads of fun. I hope to do a thousand more movies with him because he’s simply the best. But in the meantime, we made a little New Year’s duet for all of you! The original by Nancy Wilson. ENJOY!

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It’s my week to go back and start rewatching some shows I haven’t seen in a while but enjoyed and own the DVD’s of.

Tonight I watched the first two eps of THE DRESDEN FILES. They’re light episodes but I think they were meant to be light and intro the characters and concepts and save the FX budget for later in the season.

Based on the books by Jim Butcher it was a series that was made for the assh0les at the scifi channel. That meant that it would die before it’s time, just about the point where people were discovering it and just at the time that it was developing a great fan base who loved the show. (scifi channel are scum of the earth.) The DVD set is listed as “The Complete First Season” like there is a second season, there is not.

It’s about a wizard named Harry Dresden who works as a private investigator in Chicago. I hadn’t read the books when I first saw the series but have since read all of them and I have to say I liked Paul Blackthorne as Dresden and even liked some of the things they changed about the stories more in the show then in the books.

Valerie Cruz plays his friend and sometime boss Murphy (her first name is different from the books and Butcher’s comments on the reasoning are vague) and while she is quite different from the books, the heart of the character comes across and she’s great in the part.

One of the other highlights of the show is stage veteran Terrance Mann as “Bob”, Dresden’s ‘assistant’ (for lack of a better word). In the novels he is a spirit inhabiting a skull but for the series they needed to give him a body and face to interact with Dresden and it works very well especially with Mann playing up all the elements of Bob’s personality.

Plan on working my way through the eps of this and the amazing THE MIDDLEMAN over the next week or so and will add to it as I get further in.

You can pick it up for only $14 off Amazon on DVD these days. I’ll talk about the extras on the DVDs when I get around to them.

#Dresden #DresdenFiles #JimButcher

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Amazon.com: The Dresden Files – The Complete First Season: Paul Blackthorne, Valerie Cruz: Movies & TV

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This is just plain insane.

Gawker  pointed us to a story in the U.K. tabloid Sunday Sport about Percy Foster, a 35-year-old dwarf porn star “whose career was just beginning to catch fire. It was all because an observant production assistant on the set of Hi-Ho Hi-Ho, It’s Up Your Arse We Go had noticed how much Foster looked like celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay.”

Okay… it’s a claim to fame but it appears that tragedy has fallen on him:  The corpse of the 3′ 6″ performer has been discovered in a badger’s den, partially eaten.

The tragic story goes on to say:

According to Sunday Sport’s follow-up account, Foster was found “deep in an underground chamber by Ministry of Agriculture experts ahead of a planned badger-gassing programme near Tregaron, west Wales.” They write that “expert CSI teams had to use fingertip technology to remove his body from the six-foot-deep burrow.” (I have no idea what fingertip technology is, but I imagine it’s akin to one of those claw cranes you find in arcades and drugstores.)
Officials have not yet ruled out suicide, and adult film producer Dexter Yamunkeh’s comments — in which he intimates that Foster may have cracked under the pressures of being the world’s leading Gordon Ramsay-lookalike-sex-dwarf — certainly don’t invalidate the possibility

So a tragic, tragic end to the story of a possible porn superstar look-a-like to Gordon Ramsay. Maybe Ramsay could have hired him to follow him around like Mini Me.

Badgers… wow.

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Lindsay Lohan's Full Nude Playboy Spread Leaks Online — Playboy 'Freaking'

In a collectionof bad news for Playboy Lindsay Logan's layout for playboy has (not surprisingly) leaked onto the internet.

The other bad new is that all the things written about the photos have used the phrase "Heavily Photoshopped" and most people who've seen the photos remain unimpressed.

"HEAVILY PHOTOSHOPPED"

#Playboy #LindsayLohan #HeavilyPhotoshopped

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Lindsay Lohan's Full Nude Playboy Spread Leaks Online — Playboy 'Freaking' (Warning: NSFW) | The Wrap Media
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More details emerge about Joss Whedon’s MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING adaptation.

“Whedon, Maher, and Acker spilled the details of Much Ado’s development and production while speaking with Entertainment Weekly. If you’re a Whedon fan, it’s definitely worth heading over to their site to get the full story, but here are a few of the highlights:

*The film came out of Whedon’s famous Shakespeare readings, which he’s long hosted at his Santa Monica home with Hollywood friends playing the parts of various characters; Acker and Alexis Denisof, who play leads Beatrice and Benedick, had stepped into the roles during a previous reading.Whedon did Much Ado while taking a break after wrapping The Avengers.

*The whole thing came together in just one month, including 12 days of shooting — all at Whedon’s own house. Though it was “a ton of work,” he calls the experience “the best vacation I’ve ever taken.” “I’ve never been so well rested and so well fed as I have on this movie,” he said.

 

 

check out the article for more of the details.

#JossWhedon #Firefly #Buffy #MuchAdo #avengers

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Joss Whedon, Sean Maher, and Amy Acker Talk ‘Much Ado About Nothing’; First Photos Revealed | /Film

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It’s a HUGE book and a huge story. ABC did a 5 part mini-series of it and barely fit everything in (please, someone do a Special Edition of it and fix those horrific, cheap special effects at the end) and many fans didn’t think it did a great job of it.

How can you make this enormous story into a film?

Could the studio have the balls to do it ala Lord Of The Rings and do a three film version? Problem there would be that they would probably try and shoot it in the United States where the costs would be triple what LOTR cost since it was shot in New Zealand.

If they try and make it into a 3 hour single film it’s going to have to be chopped and three-quarters of the characters will have to go.

I’ve got a ton of faith in Affleck these days so I think he could do it right but the issue becomes: Will the studio let him.

( the one thing missing from this story is any details. It seems to be saying that the studio wants him but no word on if he has signed or given a verbal to proceed with the project. )

#StephenKing #TheStand #BenAffleck #MattDamon

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Ben Affleck Warner Bros Choice To Make ‘The Stand’

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#BadPlasticSurgery #Sad #fail

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I is important. Looky at me!!

Unbelievable…..

Some clown Senator from South Carolina is trying to push through some bill that would make it ILLEGAL to discuss abortion over the internet if you can believe that.

Check this:

Instead of focusing on job creation, congressional Republicans have spent their time passing socially conservative legislation like the “Let Women Die” bill that would allow hospitals that receive federal funds to deny women life-saving abortion procedures.

Now Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), one of the most die-hard anti-choice lawmakers, has jumped on the bandwagon by sneaking a radical anti-abortion amendment onto a completely unrelated piece of legislation. DeMint’s amendment would ban women and their doctors from discussing abortion over the Internet:

yeah, South Carolina— I’m sure all the children in the state are well fed, have more health coverage then they can use, have fantastic education with three teachers to every one student and employment is so plentiful that you’ve got to truck in people to work all the jobs from sixteen states away.

This guy needs to be voted out for wasting the time of the people and ignoring the needs of the people while playing up to the radical nut jobs he and other republicans are trying to befriend.

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GOP Senator Pushes Radical Bill To Restrict Discussion Of Abortion Over The Internet

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Felicia and Kim Evey have really worked hard and have pushed the future of entertainment forward ahead of everyone else. (Have you seen Kim Evey’s insanely great  Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine Show?  Search it out!)

Online scripted programs (not reality shows or 1 minute YouTube vids) are the future and are going to put the traditional entertainment industry on the brink of extinction, and when it does we’re going to look back to The Guild and these ladies and their team as the people who made it happen.

I started off in the film & television industry when it was all film and 3/4 inch tape. Every second you let a camera run was money. I can’t recall what 16mm film stock was back in my day but now it’s like $50 for 100 feet of film. That’s about 2 minutes and 45 seconds of shooting. Not including developing and making a print from the negative. So if you were a budding filmmaker you had come up with a pile of cash just for film stock before you could even start shooting let alone finding/renting lighting, buying or renting a camera, a cast, a crew…. it was hard. Oh, then you’ve got to get equipment to edit on—-

Think on that… versus the Flip camera that I have in my jacket pocket right now that has an 8 GB SD card in it that can shoot HOURS of 1080p video.

Today we’ve got cameras that shoot video that is good enough for the Internet. Hell, you can shoot and edit a film on an iPhone these days. (although you can’t score it on a phone) You’ve got inexpensive video camera that shoot and transfer to the footage to every day computers on which you can edit, score, add special effects, titles and even convert to whatever format you want on.

ANYONE can make a film these days… anyone can make a ‘television’ show these days. I’m not saying everyone can make a show or film that people will like or that will be good… but that’s not the point.

Who will be the next The Guild ? Who will be the one to make the next HEROES that will be an online exclusive produced out of someone’s home office in Ohio?

I’m extremely disappointed in YouTube. It came out recently they were going to spend 100 million dollars on producing content… and then it appears they are going to spend that money with established Hollywood production houses and studios. Come on, Google. Set up a contest and get some people to send in pilots and find a couple of good ones and fund them for 10 episodes. What could it cost you? Probably cost the price of 2 episodes from the studios.

Now is the time. If you’ve ever wanted to make a film, create a TV show or do a 88 minute one woman show about the dog that lives next door that is really the reincarnation of Albert Einstein and whispers theoretical formulae to you through the fence… DO IT!!!

#feliciaday #kimevey #TheGuild #DragonAge #video #filmmakers

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Paste mPlayer

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iPhone 4S video compared to Canon 5D MK II
For budding moviemakers who want to shoot cinema-quality 1080p video, the Canon 5D Mark II digital SLR camera is a favorite. It’s a lot less expensive

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_"For many years now, the cast of “The Simpsons” has been trying to get Fox to agree that, like so many other people who’ve contributed significantly to the show’s success, we be allowed a tiny share of the billions of dollars in profits the show has earned. Fox has consistently refused to even consider the matter. Instead, it’s paid us salaries that, while ridiculous by any normal standard, pale in comparison to what the show’s profit participants have been taking home.

Now, as the show enters its twenty-third season, we are engaged in what will probably be our last contract"_

Now is he saying that they get NOTHING after the initial payment or just not a piece of the back end profits from the show. The former would imply they are not making residuals from the rebroadcast of the shows and the DVD and video sales of it.

How is that possible in this day and age when people from shows that did well in the 80's are living off the residuals from it?

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Reshared post from +Courtney Boyd Myers

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How Netflix royally screwed over an indie filmmaker
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I've had Vlingo installed on my phone for a while and think I've played with it a few times but not much… I think they previously charged for the ability to SMS and email from the app but now it's free.

I tried it out and was able to VERY easily send a few texts and an email.

I tried asking it to map to a location and it worked as well as a Google search too.

I think the company watched the iPhone 4S announcement and dropped the price to free for those of us who realized that the Siri integration in IOS5 wouldn't be showing up in any phones other then the 4S.

I was never overly impressed with what I could do with Siri, to me Dragon Dictate was FAR more usable to me since I could dictate and then SMS or email straight from the app.

One question I've got though is how Vlingo is going to monitize the app since they've gone free.

What do you think?

#iPhone #iphone4s #Siri #vlingo

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Today Amazon stepped up and made their Cloud Storage & Player service more competitive with unlimited storage and an iPad app. Is it enough?

It wasn’t long ago Amazon beat everyone to the punch with their online music storage / streaming service Amazon Cloud Drive along with the Amazon Cloud Player.

In a nutshell, Cloud Drive is a storage service offering just about anyone 5 GB of storage for free. Additional capacity was available at various rates (20 GB @ $20.00 and more at $1 per GB) but if you purchased any full MP3 album from Amazon you were automatically upgraded to the 20 GB level for a year.

Another great thing about this was that nothing you purchased through Amazon’s MP3 store counted toward your total storage although for everything else you had to spend the time and bandwidth to upload it.

The Amazon Cloud Player was a technology that allowed you to play back your collection on the Cloud service from just about any browser and even though your smart phone. There was no official iPhone support at first but it worked just fine through the browser.

After that announcement, Google made their move into the arena with Google Music Beta.

Another storage service that was free with an obscure limit of “20,000 songs” and again, you need to upload anything you want on the service for playback through a browser or apps that haven’t materialized yet but I’m sure Google will be bringing them out. The product is still in early Beta and the few reviews of it haven’t been terrible but haven’t been glowing either.

Apple all along has been known to be working on some sort of music storage and streaming service and at WWDC about a month ago they announced iCloud. A service meant to sync all aspects of your digital life to all your devices. Documents, video, music, pictures all automatically syncing amongst your devices and the iCloud service. All automatic, all free.

Part of this would be something called iTunes Match.

iTunes Match is a service that will allow you to mirror your iTunes library on iCloud which you will be able to access from any device you have registered with your Apple ID account for a $24.99 yearly fee.

Not so exciting? Wait for it: You will be able to mirror up to 25,000 tracks into iCloud and you won’t have to upload a thing (probably). Match will scan your iTunes and check then check in the massive iTunes Library. If a ‘match’ exists already, the service will add a 256Kbps, DRM-free iTunes version of that song into your iCloud storage no matter what quality version you have already. The other aspect of this is that iTunes Match doesn’t give a crap how that file got on your computer and into your iTunes. To put a fine point on this: No matter where it came from: ripped from CDs or illegally downloaded from the internet iTunes Match doesn’t care.

In the situations where iTunes doesn’t have a copy of that song in it’s catalog it will upload your copy for you to be able to access from any of your devices anywhere in the world with internet access.

Most everyone agrees that Apple was able to make the deals they needed with the record labels with the simple explanation of “Well, you aren’t making any money from the stuff that’s out there illegally, we’ll give you some money.”

With the iCloud / Match option you could feasibly save yourself weeks of uploading your collection. In all cases, the advantage is that suddenly you don’t have to worry about the size of your portable device as long as it can connect. You can now have 20,000 songs available to you anywhere at anytime.

BACK TO AMAZON’S ANNOUNCEMENT:

In a move to bring the attention back to them (although I don’t think anyone is paying attention to Google Music and iCloud is just getting rolling) they’ve announced Unlimited Music Storage for any level account and an optimized iPad app for their Cloud Player.

Here’s what their press release had to say:

Unlimited Space for Music

Now, for a limited time, Amazon customers who purchase a Cloud Drive storage plan will receive unlimited space for their MP3 and AAC (.m4a) music files. This offer is available for even the lowest price plan: $20/year for 20 GB of file storage plus unlimited space for music. Customers can visit (www.amazon.com/clouddrive/manage) to purchase a Cloud Drive storage plan and receive unlimited space for music.

Store all Amazon MP3 Purchases for Free

Customers can now store all of their Amazon MP3 purchases for free in Cloud Drive, including future MP3 purchases as well as all purchases made before the launch of Cloud Drive and Cloud Player. MP3s purchased from Amazon MP3 and stored in Amazon Cloud Drive will not count against a customer’s storage quota.

Cloud Player for Web on iPad

Also new, Cloud Player for Web on iPad. Cloud Player, combined with unlimited space for music in Cloud Drive, enables customers to play music stored in the cloud on any Android phone, Android tablet, Mac, PC, and now on their iPad. Cloud Player for Web has been optimized to offer customers streaming playback of their Cloud Drive music using the Safari browser for iPad. To access Cloud Player for iPad, customers simply open their Safari browser and visit (www.amazon.com/cloudplayer) to start listening to their music.

Storage for Music and More

All customers automatically start with 5 GB of free Cloud Drive storage to begin uploading their digital music library, and for a limited time, those who purchase any Cloud Drive storage plan will receive unlimited space for music at no additional cost. In addition to unlimited space for music, Cloud Drive allows customers to upload and store all kinds of digital files, including photos, videos and documents which are stored securely and available via web browser on any computer. Customers who qualified for 20 GB of free storage from earlier promotions will receive the unlimited space for music at no additional cost.

Is it enough to bring the attention back to Amazon’s Cloud? The Player is nice enough and it’s a bonus for buying MP3′s through them but that’s about it.  The storage space sounds good but how will it work for me? How will I use it to back things up or will I just dump things up there from time to time ‘just in case’.

The beauty to me of iCloud is that it’s an integrated service. Across all your devices, across your windows or mac computers and into the cloud it will sync your life and give you storage. It should be automatic and that’s the beauty of it.

Having music storage and a good streaming player is great from Amazon but it’s not enough to compete toe-to-toe on the storage angle but we’ll see what Amazon adds into the mix next.  They did give their Prime Members full access to their streaming TV and Movie Service so they could do something more with storage.

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Bloomberg is reporting that ahead of the finalizing of the deal with Microsoft worth 8.5 Billion dollars Skype is firing some “senior executives” so they can avoid larger payouts to these execs as a result of the purchase.

The story says that because of when they are let go their stock options will be worth MUCH less.

Love this quote:

“As part of a recent internal shift, Skype has made some management changes,” said Brian O’Shaughnessy, a Skype spokesman.

Check out the whole story over at Bloomberg.

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I’ve said it MANY TIMES: I think “Miracle Day” is a stupid name. The original name for this season of Torchwood was originally called “The New World” which many people thought refered to the storyline but also to the fact that now Torchwood was now mostly set in North America and being co-produced by an American cable network, STARZ.

From the trailer you get the basic idea of the story and some of the characters. Here’s the extended trailer :

Below you can find Screencaps for the trailer, you can click on any one of them to enlarge it. BE SURE and check out the ones with Gwen firing the gun out the window!! The look on her baby’s face is priceless!

TORCHWOOD Season 4 stars John Barrowman as Captain Jack Harkness, Eve Myles as Gwen Cooper and Kai Owen returns as Gwen’s husband Rhys Williams. Tom Price returns as Sergeant Andy and as near as I can tell that’s it for returning actors to the show.

Mekhi Phifer stars as Rex Matheson, Alexa Havins is Esther Drummond, Arlene Tur is Dr. Vera Juarez, Bill Pullman as the killer Oswald Danes and Lauren Ambrose as Jilly Kitzinger.

Recently it’s been announced that perienial scifi show actor John de Lancie was added to the cast but no detail on who he plays. I’m guessing he’ll be playing the same guy he’s played in most of the other shows he’s guested on in the past 10 years who will all be variations on the Q character.

Also in the cast are Wayne Knight, Ernie Hudson and C. Thomas Howell.

And just announced in the cast recently are Nana Visitor, Frances Fisher and the amazing Mare Winningham.

The show will be written by creator Russell T Davies along with Doris Egan, Jane Espenson, John Shiban, Ryan Scott and John Fay.

The episode titles have just come out and nothing spoilerish in them so here they are:

1. The New World
2. Rendition
3. Dead of Night
4. Escape to L.A.
5. The Categories Of Life
6. The Middle Men
7. Immortal Sins
8. End Of The Road
9. The Gathering
10. The Blood Line

The show starts airing in the US on the STARZ channel July 8, 2011 and will air for the next ten weeks on STARZ Friday nights at 10:00 PM. There hasn’t been any announcement from the BBC giving an official start date and time but hopefully BBC1 will air it same day as in the US.

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Rumors were abounding for the last few days but it turns out to be true: Microsoft will purchase, for cash, Skype and pay $8.5 BILLION for it. Sites like GigaOM confirmed the deal and the details.

The first thought I have about this is “They’ll ruin it as fast as possible. Where are people going to go?”

The answer has to be Google Talk.

The folks at Google must be having a MASSIVE party over this announcement. They could not have asked for a nicer thing to happen to Skype and Google Talk.

No word on when the sale will be final but I expect Steve Balmer to show up personally to start making changes to the Skype code to make sure it is screwed up to the high quality we expect of Microsoft.

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Again, Warner Brothers seems to be behind the ball on promoting GREEN LANTERN.

First off they release a sub-standard trailer that really did nothing to make the film look like the ‘Must See’ comic book film of 2011.

They finally get something out there when they get the footage out for Wondercon (which we covered over here:   Green Lantern Wondercon Footage Released ) and it knocked it out of the park but I, and many other people, asked if it was too little too late. Between the trailer and that footage THOR and CAPTAIN AMERICA both got out fantastic trailers out and really generated some excitement.

Now we go to trailer number 2 for GL and everyone expects it to be attached to THOR this weekend so hopefully a lot of people will get to see it on the big screen and make a judgement of it.

The film is due in the theaters on June 17th release and see what director Martin Campbell has in store for us.  The film stars Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively, Peter Sarsgaard and Mark Strong.

Here you go (unfortunately it’s through Yahoo and that means flash so at the moment I don’t have an iPhone iPad friendly version, sorry.) :

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Sad news came through the net over the weekend, classic character actor William Cambell passed away at the age of 87.

Campbell to most people was known for his work on STAR TREK in the classic episodes “The Squire of Gothos” from season one and season two returned to the show in “The Trouble With Tribbles” as the badass Klingon Koloth.

But Campbell appeared in over 80 films and television projects including an Elvis flick, Love Me Tender. I don’t think Campbell really fought Elvis in the film but that would have been cool. He also appeared in the classic horror film Dementia 13 directed by Francis Ford Coppola in 1963.

Strangely enough Campbell became well known as the husband of actress Judith Exner (his first wife) a woman who later admited to an affair with then president John F. Kennedy and that she set up meetings between him and and Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana, who also was her lover.

Campbell was extremely popular on the Star Trek convention circuit as a great guest and kind to the fans. He used that poplularity as a great fund raiser for the Motion Picture & Television Fund and passed away at their hospital in Woodland Hills.

On the MPTV FUND website mentions that William is survived by his wife Tereza and In lieu of flowers, the family has requested that donations be made to the Motion Picture & Television Fund. Here’s a link:

https://www.mptvfund.org/memorial-gift

Pass on, Brother.

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Not long ago there was a rumor going around that Amazon would soon start offering FREE Kindles to their Prime program customers. I didn’t think it was likely to be free but it’s not a bad idea. If Amazon looked through their databases and picked out  their very best customers and gave them a free Kindle to boost ebook sales it would make a lot of sense. Considering that Amazon probably makes very little or absolutely no profit on each Kindle a mass give away program would be very unlikely and wouldn’t make a ton of sense.

Well, Amazon did something a few days ago to bring down the price of Kindle and something I’m sure they were hoping would boost the number of units out there and boost ebook sales. Too bad they didn’t do it right.
Amazon will start selling an Ad-Supported unit.

Their website says:

Special offers and sponsored screensavers display on the Kindle screensaver and on the bottom of the home screen—they don’t interrupt reading.

Okay, ads to support a lower cost unit which would drive more sales to people who weren’t ready to jump into the price point and thereby drive more ebook sales. Sounds like a good move, right?

How much of a massive discount are you going to give me to be a captive audience to your ad sales program? $100?

Hold on to your hats: $25.00

I kid you not: TWENTY-FIVE DOLLARS. That’s it. Yes indeed, a massive discount from $139.00 to $114.00!

Okay, okay. Twenty-five bucks is twenty-five bucks but it’s not going to drive a massive number of people to buy a Kindle and it’s not going to create demand like someone obviously thinks it might.

If I was going to buy a Kindle I’d pay the extra $25.00 and get it without ads.

I like the Kindle device, I’m a huge fan of e-ink and Amazon has done all of us a massive favor in supporting it. I have a lot of friends who LOVE it. My issue with the Kindle device is that it’s a (as the great Alton Brown would say) ‘Uni-Tasker’.  Read ebooks, PDFs and listen to Audiobooks. If I’m going to drop money on a reader I’m going to look the Color Nook for which Barnes & Nobel have already said they are going to allow apps onto or go for the big boy, an iPad.

Ads on your Kindle for $25.00 isn’t going to drive sales that much, it’s not going to do the massive adoption curve they want and it’s not worth it. This is a massive fail for Amazon.

Why do it? Is this a testbed to see how people react to the idea and then do a much more intrusive Ad-supported unit for a higher discount? Maybe.

For now this idea is a failure in my eyes. Amazon should have thought a bit longer on this idea.

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You may or may not have heard about the breech at a company called Epsilon. “So what…” You think. You haven’t done business or given your credit card number to them.

Not so fast, kids.

Epsilon handles email services for 2500 of the biggest companies out there and I’ll bet you a dollar you’ve done business with one of them.

Citi Corp? 1-800-Flowers? Brookstone? Best Buy? Walgreens? Home Shopping Network? How about people like JPMorgan Chase? Kroger? Verizon? TIA-CREF? Target?

( You can see the whole list and additional coverage over at SECURITYWEEK )

From what can be told, it appears that no financial or sensitive information has been stolen, just names and email addresses. The company appears to be keeping all their comments and information vague at the moment but the big question for most people is: What does this mean for me?

Well, you are very likely to get some emails from companies like the listed ones telling  you that Epsilon lost your name and email address to some bad people and apologizing for that and telling you that they are still your buddy and still want your money and business.

The other thing that you’ll be getting is:SPAM, baby, SPAM. LOTS and LOTS and LOTS of it.

I’ve already seen a dramatic uptick in the amount of spam I’m getting and I’m sure it will only get worse.

Replica Watches? Fake Viagra? Shipping notifications for packages you didn’t know were coming? Emails pleading for your help to get millions of dollars out of some bank holding it hostage and only you can help free it and cash in!

On top of the usual ton of crap you’re going to start getting crafty spam. You may get an email from a company you’ve actually done business with, maybe your bank, and they’ll tell you that your account is in danger. Maybe the email will tell you to go and change your email address because your account has been compromised. It’s going to be an email trying to get you to click a link in that email so they can get the real information they want: usernames, passwords and access to  you.

Some good, basic tips on ANY email you get:

If it’s obviously spam: DON’T OPEN IT. Don’t.  When you open a spam email it will likely load an image in the email and the spammers can get confirmation that you’re a real person and a real email address so they can sell on your email address as a good one or target you for more spam.

If you get an unexpected email from some company about your account, don’t click the link in the email. Open a browser (hopefully a secure browser like Firefox, Safari or Chrome ) and type in the address of the main site for the company (like www.citi.com ) and go to the site that way. Links might look like they’ll take you to that address but that’s easy to fake.

The best advice is to not be stupid. Think before you click. Think before you give away information. If you suspect you’ve been comprimised change your password immediately and even contact the site. Most sites have policies and proceedures in place to help you and protect you.

Send this info on to people you know who might not be aware of this story and hopefully this will be painless as possible.

Ooo! A Rolex for $10.00 ? Cool, where’s my credit card?!

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This weekend at WONDERCON the producers let loose some amazing footage from the upcoming GREEN LANTERN film starring Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively, Peter Sarsgaard and Mark Strong. Considering how poor the first trailer was after the initial viewing all I can say is: It’s about freakin’ time!

I’ve embedded the video that has been posted over at APPLE.COM’s Trailer Page for Green Lantern:

(sorry for this not being iPhone and iPad compatible but click the link above and that will work for you)

This is what should have been released as the first trailer. Since that trailer came out the THOR trailer and the CAPTAIN AMERICA trailer have come out and both was insanely greater and better then the GL one. Hopefully this release of footage marks the full-court press by Warner Brothers and the producers to undo that damage and promote the living hell out of the film.

(CLICK ON ANY OF THESE IMAGES TO ENLARGE)

Will it live up to this footage? Can it compete with THOR and CAPTAIN AMERICA and the biggest question of them all: Will the 3D conversion suck? We’ll see.

Green Lantern opens in the states on June 17th and is Directed my the great Martin Campbell and stars Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively, Peter Sarsgaard, Mark Strong, Jay O. Sanders, Temuera Morrison, Taika Waititi, Jon Tenney, Angela Bassett and Tim Robbins.

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it’s amazing that they are doing this since before we had to wait months if not a whole year to see episodes that had already aired in the UK… unless of course you had a kind uncle with an internet connection and an ability to download the episodes for you so you didn’t have to wait. We’re guessing that BBCA has decided that they’ll get a lot higher ratings if they get things sooner then waiting and everyone agrees with them. Of course, the episodes you’ll see on BBC America will be edited and will have commercials in them— I wonder if they can work around that too?

Here it is, the official full-length promo for DOCTOR WHO SERIES SIX Starring Matt Smith, Karen Gillan, Arthur Darvill and Alex Kingston!  (and after that a bunch of high-res screenshots from the promo for your enjoyment!

And here are the promised screen shots from the promo (CLICK ON ANY TO ENLARGE) :

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Amy Adams - Photo Courtesy Warner Bros.

One of my fears for this Superman has been who would get cast as Lois Lane. After the mis-casting of Kate Bosworth in Brian Singer’s SUPERMAN RETURNS it’s a role that should not be underestimated and can make or break the story.

Adams has shown herself to be a phenominal actress capable of carrying off a variety of roles in both comedies and dramas along with a different look for each of them. It’s a great pick.

This announcement (I caught it on the LA TIMES site )This on top of the recent announcements of Diane Lane as Martha Kent and the blockbuster announcement of Kevin Costner as Jonathan Kent have this project on one hell of a roll.

Other names that have surfaced in regards to the role included Kristen Stewart, Malin Akerman (who Synder worked with on WATCHMEN), Olivia Wilde, Rachel McAdams and Jessica Biel among others.

A lot of people still haven’t gotten to know Henry Cavill, who outside of the Showtime drama “The Tudors,” isn’t well known to film or television viewers. Actually, I saw a post that even suggested that Cavill was one of the finalists for the role that eventually went to Brandon Routh in Singer’s version. I think that is going to change as things ramp up and Zack Snyder starts talking more about the project and the people in it.

Next up for announcements: Villan or Villans. Rumors are going around town that the amazing Viggo Mortensen is circling this project.

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Over at SLASHFILM.COM they report that Todd Phillips, Director of HANGOVER and the upcoming HANGOVER II was at SXSW and in a panel interview brought up the subject of ‘Unrated’ editions of films that come out on DVD and Blu Ray. I’ve bought a couple of unrated versions of films I had seen and honestly it didn’t add to the film and in one case I specifically remember thinking it hurt the film by dragging out scenes that should have been shorter.

Make no mistake, and this is a point that Phillips brings up himself, Unrated versions of films ARE NOT Director’s Cuts of a film and it appears they are against the rules of the Director’s Guild of America. They are bullshit versions of the films done by the studios to cash in on films. Everyone knows this but nobody wants to bite the studio hand.

In his interview at the panel interview with Movieline’s Elvis Mitchell , Phillips says straight out

“That’s something I have to take up with the DGA,” Phillips told a near-capacity audience at the Austin Convention Center. “Warner Bros., they’ll make your movie; your movie does well, and they want to create an unrated version, which is entirely against DGA rules because it’s not your cut. And they can’t call it the ‘Director’s Cut’ — they’ll call it ‘Unrated’ or some ridiculous term. Really all it is, is about seven minutes of footage that you cut out of the movie for a reason.”

The Question is: will Phillips pursue this issue with the DGA? Will another director step up and call the studios out on this with the DGA? *cough*Judd Apatow*cough* ? I have to doubt it at this point, since every DVD sold is coin in their pockets and so many directors are just hoping to get their next project green-lit so they’ll let it slide.

If the studios really want to do this, pony up some cash for the director who wants to have a “Director’s Unrated Cut” of a film and have at it.  Hopefully someone will ask Kevin Smith what he thinks of this and we can be sure he’ll let loose on it. Having heard him speak about the process of MPAA review of “Zack And Miri Make A Porno” right around the release of the film I have the feeling that he got into the theatres what he wanted to get into the theatres but I wasn’t blown away by the film so I never read more about it. As of right now, there’s no ‘unrated’ version of that film on Amazon.

DGA President Michael Apted, What do you think of this?

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Last week I reported on Amazon announcing their Amazon Prime members would have free access to their Amazon Instant Video service but somehow I missed a story that had come out a week or two before that.

TECHCRUNCH reported a while back that they had a source claiming that Amazon wants to give a free Kindle to all Prime members.

A lot of people have taken a crack at this story for being fanciful but at the same time there have been many, many people who have called for Amazon to do just this to lock people into the Kindle and skyrocket sales of e-books.

Right now the price point on the Amazon Kindle is $139 for the WiFi unit and $189 for the 3G+WiFi edition and a lot of people feel that Amazon is actually losing money on the hardware makes this give away story harder to believe.

At the WSJ Blog DIGITS, Dan Gallagher said:

… it looks likely that Amazon makes little to no money on the device itself. A study by market-research firm iSuppli last year estimated the total cost of materials for the 3G Kindle at $155.56 – about $33 less than the $189 selling price for the device. Since iSuppli’s estimates do not include the cost of software, licensing, royalties, manufacturing expenses (Amazon outsources production of the Kindle) and a cut for the wireless carriers, analysts suspect Amazon likely sells the Kindle at a slight loss.

Selling the unit at a loss is one thing but giving it away would be a VERY bold move. Would it work? I think it could help but I doubt giving every Prime member who pays $79 for free shipping and streaming TV and Movie access a $200 ebook reader would add up VERY quickly to the bottom line.

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To no one’s surprise, Amazon.com has announced a series of improvements to it’s Prime Service (which till now gave you free 2-day shipping on anything in exchange for an annual fee of $79) that now is offering over 5,000 TV shows and movies streamed to Prime members for free.

 
The service will function out to Macs and PCs and the set-top boxes that have access to Amazon Instant streaming services already. Right now it’s limited to Roku and Google TV boxes (as if the few people who bought them haven’t already returned them), some Sony, Panasonic, Samsung equipment and Tivo players.

As expected, the selection isn’t super fantastic but there are over 2000 movies, only some are available in HD and unfortunately it’s a flash-based playback but it’s free to those of us that already pay for Prime.

Film Selections that caught my eye out of the first 300-400 were:

Television selections were interesting as well with over 450 choices and a lot of stuff for genre fans:

With movies and television shows it’s makes more then 3000 things to watch and since you’re probably already paying for the service already it’s a great deal—- now if there was just a way to get it onto a television screen to watch them.

All in all, it’s a nice freebie for people who are already members and perhaps for Amazon a way to test the waters with the Prime members to see how they would like and use it and perhaps the first step towards a monthly subscription service to try and lure Netflix customers away.

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Flickr/Peter Gorman.

All hell has broken out in Wisconsin and most people aren’t sure what is going on. Republican Governor Scott Walker’s got a plan up the republican’s sleeves, an anti-union “budget repair bill” he is spinning as the salvation of the state and the universe.

Protesters have started flooding into the state to stand on both sides and uber-super wealthy Koch brothers have been paying to bus in as many TeaParty members as they can to make this about something other then an attempt to squash unions and union rights in Wisconsin and from there the rest of the country.

MOTHER JONES has an excellent page explaining what is going on and detailing the story, the players and what the real reasons behind all of it really are.

It’s a must read. There’s a ton of misinformation going on about all this and it’s only going to get worse.

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As before there is something I really just don’t like about this costume. This picture makes it looks less rubbery but still— not crazy about it at all.

A lot of people noticed the metal at the wrists on the previously released photo of Garfield in the costume and in this photo they are very obvious and very upfront. I totally understood Sam Raimi’s decision to make the webspinning ‘organic’ in his films not the least of which reasons was the technological stretch it would be for a teenage boy to develop such a thing as the webshooters as shown in the comics. How will they deal with that in this new version?

The film is now shooting in (what should be no surprise in this day and age) 3D and at least they are shooting in 3D rather then converting later although I have no idea which of the 3D technologies they are using. The film is due into the theatres on July 3, 2012 and will star Andrew Garfield (Peter Parker / Spiderman), Emma Stone (Gwen Stacy), Rhys Ifans (Curt Conners / The Lizard), Denis Leary (George Stacy), Campbell Scott (as Peter’s Father), Irrfan Khan (?), Martin Sheen (Uncle Ben), and Sally Field (as the Icon Immortal Aunt May)

I’m sure more and more set photos will leak out, more details of the film and the story will leak out and comments will be made galore. I’m not impressed with the suit so far but I did enjoy Marc Webb’s (500)Days Of Summer although I really don’t know if that is enough to qualify for a major, major action film of this level.

The life or death of this film will be how they handle The Lizard. If it’s totally CGI, the film is dead, dead, dead— hopefully he learned from Sam Raimi and how he handled Doc Ock from SPIDERMAN 2. The mix of practical and CGI was excellent and sold the arms and the character totally.

Speaking of Raimi, I can hope that Webb also learned from him and the horrific, absolute shite that Spiderman 3 ended up being. Terrible, horible film that if Venom (the absolutely stupidest Spiderman villan of all time!) had not been in it and they spent the time developing The Sandman and Harry’s evolution into the next Goblin it would have been INCREDIBLE.

As it is, Spiderman 3 is crap and Sam Raimi and Sony owes each and every person that sat through it an apology, a refund and a coupon for a free dinner at their favorite restaurant and a bottle of Listerine to wash the taste of that film out of their mouth and to burn it out of their eyes.

We’ll see.

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Photo Courtesy of Sony Pictures - Click for Larger Version

In this photo it looks like Parker has been torn up a bit and we can assume that’s from The Lizard who will be played by Rhys Ifans (although many people anticipate he’ll be CGI once he transforms).

All in all, I’m also severely unimpressed by the costume. It looks rubber. Yeah, in the comics it was supposed the Peter Parker made his own costume and we looked past that for the Sam Raimi version of the costume and I guess we’ll have to do the same for this one too.

What do you all think?

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Happy Halloween and in case you’ve been living under a rock for the past couple of months you should know that tonight is the premiere of AMC’s newest series: THE WALKING DEAD.

Here’s what you need to know:  FRANK DARABONT wrote and directed it.

That’s it. You should watch it for no other reason then that.

Want more?  Zombies.

Come on, who doesn’t love a good Zombie movie?

The buzz has been amazing on this and the advance word and reviews glowing. My faith is with Darabont and I’ve got to say I’m anxious to see how far AMC will be willing to push the envelope with this series.

Check it out tonight at 10pm and leave some comments to let me know what you thought of it!

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(SHIVER)

I had seen some drawings over the years but this is beyond any level of bad and horrific then I’ve ever imagined.

In 1998 Tim Burton was signed to direct the next Superman film back before people used the term “Reboot” as much as they do now but that’s what it was going to be. It was to be called “SUPERMAN LIVES” and was going to be something along the lines of the major comic book event of the day where Superman dies but not really but sort of dies but still comes back to sell more comics and it’s all like nothing ever happened.

Burton signed a hefty “pay or play” contract (a deal that pays off whether the film gets made or not) and in a strange move signed Nicholas Cage to star. Most people scratched their heads at the time but this being pre-Planet Of The Apes Burton we trusted he knew what he was doing and it would be great.

A few sketches and leaks about what they were going to do with the costume came out but not a lot so we weren’t too worried.

Burton got things rolling and it even got to the point of picking Pittsburgh as the shooting location to double for Metropolis.. and it all fell apart.

The story I heard was something like some studio exec saw pictures of Cage in costume and freaked out pulling the plug on the film.  In hind-sight and looking at the rest of this post I’m starting to think that might be true.

Fast foward and even in all this time all the details of the film that never was didn’t come out, till now.

Steve Johnson, special effects and make-up artists on many films including Spiderman 2,  Blade 2, Lord of Illusions and going as far back to having worked on The Fog, just let loose with the motherload of photos. Costume test shots from the aborted Superman Lives.

I love the expression on the face of the dude in the picture at the top of this post, he knows how history is going to look back at this, doesn’t he? LOL!!!

Please don’t blame me for any loss of sanity or sleep from viewing these pictures but you can see them all over at Steve’s Facebook page:

STEVE JOHNSON’S FACEBOOK PAGE LINK

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The LA Times just published and interview with Director and Genius Christopher Nolan in which he let’s loose with the title of his third Batman film “The Dark Knight Rises”.

He mentions his desire to carry on the look and feel of Dark Knight and for that reason he wants to shoot the film in the IMAX format and not make a 3D film. Yes, he has bucked the trend of every damn studio out there and will release a major blockbuster without the unnecessary 3D.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved the 3D work James Cameron did with AVATAR because it added to the film, it wasn’t the reason the film was made and it wasn’t an afterthought as a way to jack up ticket prices or con people into the theaters.

Everyone knows this will be a major release and hopefully this will allow some directors to say ‘No” to the notion of 3D for films that don’t need it and won’t be served by it.

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The Syfi channel announced that they had given the go-ahead to a pilot for what would be another prequel to the Battlestar Galactica series that they pissed on throughout it’s entire run called “Blood & Chrome”.

In no surprise it’s described as being more focused on “action” and will feature a young incarnation of William Adama who was played throughout the series by Edward James Olmos.

The series will be headed up by Executive Producer David Eick and it looks like Ronald Moore will have nothing to do with the show.

The press release spews crap like all of SyFi’s do but here’s the gist:

Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome takes place in the 10th year of the first Cylon war. As the battle between humans and their creation, a sentient robotic race, rages across the 12 colonial worlds, a brash rookie viper pilot enters the fray. Ensign William Adama, barely in his 20′s and a recent Academy graduate, finds himself assigned to the newest battlestar in the Colonial fleet’ the Galactica. The talented but hot-headed risk-taker soon finds himself leading a dangerous top secret mission that, if successful, will turn the tide of the decade long war in favor of the desperate fleet.

Oh, and in case you didn’t see it in the press release… BECAUSE IT WASN’T THERE! SyFi is cancelling the other BSG prequel CAPRICA.  There you go, loyal viewers. Send your thanks and letters of joy to the network. You know they love you and respect their core audience and shows, right?

Take that kick to the teeth, fans and keep coming back for more!

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In a totally unsurprising move since they started offering free Wi-Fi at their locations Starbucks has moved to bringing their own content into that network of users while offering them things like free access to The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and USA Today.  Starbucks is creating six channels packed with content: News, Entertainment, Wellness, Business and Careers, My Neighborhood and the customer-personalized Starbucks channel.

Mashable quotes Starbucks’s Vice President of Digital Ventures Adam Brotman as describing SDN  “The vision,” he says, “is for Starbucks Digital Network to be a digital version of the community cork board that’s in all of our stores.”

Since a majority of users log into the Starbucks Wi-Fi using mobile devices they’ve done a lot of work making sure the mobile experience is up to par as well.

The interesting element of this story comes in as Mashable points out who is really doing the heavy lifting for this project: YAHOO.  Yahoo is providing not only the technology and the hosting for the network but also providing the search. This has to be a huge boost for Yahoo.

For a lot of users of Starbuck’s Wi-Fi they won’t even notice it since other then finding the “Click to agree to terms” button and getting past that screen to hit the ‘net not a lot of people pay attention to the Starbucks homepage.

All in all, it’s content and something to offer their customers and the leeches who snitch the Wi-Fi without buying anything and in amongst it all I’m sure there are plenty of opportunities to buy coffee and the latest offering from Kenny G.

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Well, in a move that really isn’t a surprise Microsoft released an ad attacking Open Office, the Open-Source office suite of programs that is FREE. Free as in “Microsoft Doesn’t Make Money From It” and open-source as in “We Actually Are Trying To Make The Product Better With Each Version Not Just Add Shit On Top Of The Last Version Which Was Already Bloated”.

PCWORLD covers the ad bringing it to my attention and it’s worth watching for a good laugh.

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By going to www.TronNight2010.com on Tuesday October 12th starting at 1PM est you can enter to win tickets for a local IMAX theater to see the preview on October 28th.

I said a while back that if they were smart they would do this and they have.  It’s a very smart move for Disney… now if they would only take the ‘Disney’ name off it so people would take it more seriously.

There are not a lot of details on the site but I’m sure they’ll start coming. At the site you can see a list of  (unclickable at the moment) locations around the world :

And some international listings as well:

CANADA

MONTREAL

OTTAWA

TORONTO

VANCOUVER

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This story caught my eye.

There are plans afoot by the military arm of the US Department of Agriculture  to ‘bomb’ the Guam’s rainforests with dead frozen mice laced with acetaminophen.

Before the conspiracy theorists get started too fast it’s not a plot against the locals or to trick the aliens that live in those rainforests but it is an attempt to control the Brown Tree Snake, an amazingly invasive species which has ravaged local wildlife, and pissed off the locals since arriving to the island sometime in the 1940s.

Not only have these snakes been knocking off tons of the native birds but have driven six of them into extinction but they have also been wacking the power grid. The article doesn’t specify how but it seems these snakes are costing the government in the range of $1-4 million dollars in direct damages and lost productivity per yer because of snaked-caused power outages, which occur at a rate of roughly one every three days.

The idea is to dose up these dead mice, drop them onto the rain forest canapees using a parachute / streamer attached to cardboard on which the mouse is affixed via glue. The snakes eat them and get OD’ed with acetaminophen. This contraption is meant to catch in the tree tops to keep the dosed up mice from getting to forest floors where it might kill off local critters like crabs and lizards.

One can only hope that someone involved in all this takes some video and posts it on YouTube!

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According to TechCrunch and MacRumors.com Apple has given it’s approval for the Official Google Voice application to come to the iPhone. There’s nothing official but they seem pretty confident of this.

The Google Voice app was submitted originally to Apple back in mid-2009 but was rejected for the dreaded “duplicating features that come with the iPhone” reasoning. After the rejection came down the issue became the subject of an FCC investigation regarding Apple’s App approval process. Many people point to this investigation as the reason for Apple’s publishing of new review guidelines which they hope will streamline the approval process.

The changes are pretty straight forward and have allowed numerous apps to finally see approval such as GV MOBILE + (Which we reported a bit ago and have been happily using for accessing Google Voice from my iPhone). Apple has approved that one and at least one other 3rd party Google Voice app, and according to the rumor mill the official one is not far behind. Said rumor folks are reporting that Google is holding back the release so they have time to update what was likely the original app that was resubmitted and revamp it with support the latest IOS changes including multitasking. How long that takes and then the re-approval timing is anyone’s guess.

This could be huge news for all of us. If developers feel they have a solid understanding of what the approval process includes and what to expect from it there are a lot of companies and small devs that will feel it’s worth their time and investment to create the next generation of iPhone apps.

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A while ago Apple decided that Google Voice Apps were not appropriate for iPhone users for some reason (the official reasoning was something along the lines of “Duplicates Features already present” or something like that) and one of the casualties of that was an app that had a tone of buzz around it GV MOBILE.

The developer tried to get back into the store but realized it wasn’t happening so he gave up and released the app for the jailbreak community and tried selling it through the Cydia store. I gather he did pretty good over there and most people thought that this would be the end of the hope of ever seeing this app back on the App Store.

BUT WAIT… recently Apple updated their policies for developers and have started being more open about the approval process for apps. The developer, Sean Kovacs, looked this over and thought he would try again. Long story short: He re-submitted GV Mobile and the sucker got approved. He did have to change the name to GV MOBILE+ but it’s still the same great Google Voice application.

Sean started letting people know it was going to be soon on his site and on Twitter and we waited… but it did appear and most of us bought it right away in the fear of Apple changing their minds but so far they haven’t and GV Mobile rocks!

( App Store Link for GV Mobile+ )

It’s simple to use, allows you to set up multiple accounts, easy to work with your messages, easy to check your accounts and get all the Google Voice yumminess on your iPhone including being able to make calls through Google Voice when you are on wireless.

Yes, it needs some improvements including Push but Sean swears it’s coming and he’s already submitted an update to fix an issue with pre 3.2 IOS iPhones.

Hopefully this app only gets better and better but for me, it’s already paid for itself in the ease of use.

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Dr. Cyrus and his Assistant will investigate 'dem der UFO thingees

Billy Ray Cyrus will star in a show called “UFO: Unbelievably Freakin’ Obvious ”  with his freak-show child. No, not Miley it’s another one called Trace who makes any parent who ever complained about Hannah Montana thank the gods for that show.

It’s (and here’s the shock) a reality show in which “conspiracy theories involving unexplained activity and paranormal phenomena are investigated” by Cyrus and said freak-show child.

Variety spilled the beans on this winner and here’s a thoughtful and intelligence provoking quote from Dr. Cyrus:

“The existence of paranormal phenomena is something I’ve always wanted to explore further,” Cyrus said. “Getting the opportunity to take this adventure with my son, who has always had a keen interest in this area, is a dream come true. I hope this series can shine a light on some of the activities we have questioned, and the mysteries that have long inspired us.”

Keen interest in the area… and tattoo parlors. One wonders if he’s ever tried the pick up line  ”Hey, I’m Hannah Montana’s brother…” at some mall.

To complete the kick the groin of any of the core-audience of the SyFi channel, here’s a quote from some clown at the network:

Said Mark Stern, exec VP of original programming for Syfy: “Allegations of cover-up and conspiracy around unexplained phenomena has inspired heated debate for decades, and it will be interesting to see what truth Billy Ray and Trace may discover.”

Yeah, debate… you betcha and boy did they pick the right guy for this—

I’m sorry, BILLY RAY FRAKIN’ CYRUS ???  Who the hell green-lit this show??

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Four years ago today the world lost a true character, Steve “The Crocodile Hunter” Irwin.
Most people who had ever seen the vast assortment of shows that Steve did probably weren’t surpised to hear that Steve had been killed while filming his show but I for one was stunned when the news came that it wasn’t some monster crocodile or some prehistoric australian beast that tore him apart while he was examining it. Steve was killed by a Stingray of all things.

Here’s a guy who’s entire life was sticking his hand into the mouths of critters and wrestling crocs, snakes and all manner of animals down for their own good and he was killed by a freakin’ stingray??

People go swimming with Stingrays at tropical resorts, right? How the hell could it kill someone?

We found out later that stingrays have but one defense and it’s a barb on their they are able to rise. The story is that Steve was in the water and swam up to the creature and through a massive collection of circumstances landed on the stingray and the barb pierced Steve’s chest and heart killing him. Everyone who knew stingrays called it a “one-in-a-million” accident.

Steve Irwin left behind his wife Terri, Daughter Bindi and son Bob… and the whole world.

Many people saw Irwin as this funny Aussie who would wrestle crocs and throw out his trademark “Criky!” and “Ain’t she a beauty!” when talking about critters but what most people didn’t know was how well educated Irwin was. To the people who knew and worked with Irwin his passion and work for studying and preserving the lives and habitats of wild animals knew no bounds.

Steve founded the Steve Irwin Conservation Foundation, which was later renamed Wildlife Warriors Worldwide, and became an independent charity. You can click on that link or the logo to go to the site and get more information and make a donation.

Here’s a few links about Steve for you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_irwin

http://www.crocodilehunter.com/

Steve Irwin: Death of a Crocodile Hunter – TIME MAGAZINE

The world is a much quieter and sadder place without Steve but he still reaches out and throws a “Criky!” at us from time to time through reruns of his show and even his daughter’s show “Bindi The Jungle Girl”.

We miss you, Steve and so do all the critters.

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First that is obvious from this form-factor to me: no hard drive, little or no storage and it’s all about streaming. This 100 percent streaming model is supported by computers running iTunes or by iOS devices (iPhones, iPods or iPads) which can use the newly announced “AirPlay” technology (part of the iOS 4.2 update coming later in the year) to do things like start watching a film on your iPad and finish it seamlessly on your Apple TV.

Yes, the days of syncing are over for this device, it’s a rental kind of world for the new Apple TV. HD First-Run films can be rented for $4.99 (somewhat less then most on-demand rentals I see) and the big announcement was the much rumored 99 cent rentals of TV shows.

Great news followed by the not so great news that the only networks on-board with this are ABC and FOX. Jobs seemed unfazed by this and made the comment “We think the rest of the studios will see the light and get on board pretty fast…”

In an interested note on this, Amazon did a little price change work on their Video On Demand service and now offers 99 cent purchases of shows from ABC and FOX (including GLEE, BONES and DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES) but they also offer shows from the BBC (DR WHO season 5).” The Amazon VOD service is a streaming technology that is compatible with Mac or PC and various set-top boxes, but (in an obvious strike) videos can only be downloaded to a Windows based computers and “cannot be transferred to iPods.”

This is phenomenal news for the consumers. I’m hoping that in the next few days others will take Amazon’s lead and step up with price drops and more options for customers.

We covered the stupidity of paying for Hulu Plus when you could watch about 90 percent of the shows available on it for free through Hulu.com when in both cases you have to sit through commercials. Will Hulu get a kick to the head by this and start offering a better service?

Well, they better because the new Apple TV also offers access to Netflix streaming. Yeah, take that Hulu and Roku. You’ll still get access to YouTube videos, and photos from Flickr as well as being able to stream straight from your Mac or PC.

The new Apple TV will be available around the end of September but pre-orders are being taken now.

I’m sure there are a lot of people at Google looking over this announcement and looking at the response to it and calculating changes to the Google TV offering coming later in the year but I don’t think they stand much of a chance against the Apple advertising and marketing juggernaut unless they can pull some major coup with exclusive content and the way the networks are running scared that’s not likely.

Why am I so big on this? Because it will spur the competitors.  Already Amazon has dropped prices on their TV shows (although they don’t want you to be able to watch them the way you want to yet but maybe that will change too) and hopefully this will make Google TV an even more exciting offering when it materializes. Roku and Boxie have already responded with statements and hopefully they’ll follow that up with more options and offers.

The entertainment industries need to realize that people want to watch their shows and films and content when, where and how they want to watch them on whatever device or devices they choose. Apple will make the average person realize they have options and hopefully create the compitition to give us the options and pricing we deserve.

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The no contract service will be pre-pay and you can have the option of using a Ovation USB dongle (about US$80.00) or using the Novatel MiFi 2200 unit for about US$150.00.

Yeah, you can get a MiFi unit under this deal.

This is easily $20 under what the other carriers are charging and most of them have a cap of 5 GB on usage with some hard-core charges for going over it.

In a bizarre bit of timing, Verizon announced this week that they are offering a new no contract, pre-paid data plan: $80 per month with a 5 GB cap. Verizon and AT&T’s other offerings in the pre-paid wireless broadband arena are equally anemic: a daily plan for $15 with a cap at 100 MB usage cap, a weekly plan for $30 with a cap at 300 MB, and a $50 monthly plan with a 1 GB cap.

This is probably a pretty bold move for Virgin but they probably see this as a chance to build their market-share in the US and introduce people to their service.

Unfortunately just as the service was about to launch a “computer glitch” (as Virgin put it) has held up the launch for a few more days.

One of the biggest questions will come from people like me: I already own a Novatel 2200 that I bought outright and use under a month to month plan with Verizon. Will we be able to jump in with this deal or will it only be for people who buy their unit from Virgin? I called VM’s customer service department Friday night and the young lady I spoke with didn’t quite understand what I was asking and checked with someone else then told me that no, I would not be able to use the Verizon Novatel 2200. She didn’t sound totally sure of what she was saying so I figure I’ll call back Monday morning.

Another question for the future of this deal will be the age-old question of “How unlimited is unlimited?” We’ve seen it many times before that wireless company’s definition of unlimited can be a little flexible in their own favor.

The other question in this whole thing is the Sprint coverage in your area. There are plenty of areas where the service from Sprint is less then fantastic. Will the 3G Mobile Broadband live up to the Verizon Mifi service?

If the Sprint service holds up, this is the deal for a LOT of people and will have a lot of people jumping over to Virgin Mobile. If that happens I’d bet that Verizon will make some sort of deal available but for a lot of people who have signed into 2-year agreements it won’t do them much good.

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Over at Video Nuze they are reporting on a study done by research firm One Touch Intelligence that points out that of the twenty-eight thousand plus television episodes on Hulu Plus, less then eighteen percent couldn’t be seen for absolutely free on Hulu.com.

One thing that Video Nuze does point out is that the subscription service is less then two months old but still it doesn’t make up for the fact that not only are people paying for the service but on top of that they STILL have to sit through commercials.

Yeah, every review of the service you can find points out that even though you are paying there are still commercial breaks.

Huh?  You get to pay, you get to sit through commercials and then you find out that most of what is available to you could be seen for free with commercials.

Then there is the question of incrimental episodes of the series available on the service.  For the most part it’s a pretty poor collection especially when compared the major competitor of Hulu Plus: Netflix.

Hulu has some deep pockets but the issues that face them today are mostly trying to get the networks and content owners to free up the content to them in a timely manner and hopefully working out some exclusive deals to try and combat Netflix and the up and coming new version of Apple’s AppleTV (whatever it might be called).

Netflix has the jump on them and it doesn’t look like they are going to slow down and the bottom line difference is that when you pay for Netflix you don’t get commercials.

Can Hulu Plus come out ahead? Do you use the service or Netflix? Let me know in the comments section!

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Let this be said here too: this is the death knell of Buzz.

When someone like Leo Laporte has this happen: someone who is so insanely connected to the internet and who’s fan-base is 99% exclusively made up up people who probably know the latest tech, the latest tools and the latest communication mediums it means that this service is dead.

To Leo, all social media is dead to him and he’s realized he’s ignored his blog for it and he swears that time is over. How many people can you really “follow” and actually notice what the majority of them are saying? As Leo says it “I was shouting into a vast echo chamber where no one could hear me because they were too busy shouting themselves.” That’s one of the key problems of the assorted “social media” platforms… but Buzz has more to blame for its demise then that.  It’s a Google technology.

Buzz is dead to Leo and I think it will be the next poorly executed, or at least very poorly explained, technology from Google to die.

What is going on with Google? Buzz and Wave are fantastic technologies but no one seems to be using them… not even the people who are prime first adopters of technology.

Why can’t Google gain the ability to explain and make these tools compelling ? They’ve got more money then god, hire a bunch of people and straighten this problem out.

Stop making back room deals with Verizon and start getting things straight inside your own house.

Everyone knows Google is working on a “social media” project. Some sort of competitor for Facebook.  How the hell do you hope to sell that to the general Facebook loving masses around the world? Google doesn’t seem to be able to explain new and innovative things to the common person.

Will the social media thing from Google (“Google Me”) be fantastic?  You bet your ass it will be. I’ll bet you money right now that elements of Wave and Buzz will be front and center in it and it will be done in a way that will blow the doors off Facebook… but will anyone use it?  Will Google be able to explain it to Mom and Pop Citizen in Podunk, Idaho?

Look at the job they did with Wave and Buzz and you tell me.

Yeah, exactly.

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Yes, I was shocked and worried about this too considering that I use the Internet every day. Was it going to explode in my face? Perhaps I didn’t understand what Dr. Mellencamp meant by this announcement.

“I think the Internet is the most dangerous thing invented since the atomic bomb,” he said. “It’s destroyed the music business. It’s going to destroy the movie business.”

Hmmmm— The internet destroyed the music industry? So it wasn’t the closed minded, Luddite attitudes of the music industry to technological advancements and the way that people want to consume their music? Oooookay.

He continued his lecture by deriding the quality of MP3 music and announced that Rock and Roll was going to be dead sooner then later anyway:

“After a few generations, it’s gone,” he said. “Rock ‘n’ roll — as important as we think it is, and as big as it was, and as much money as people made on it, and as proud as I am to say that I was part of it — at the end of the day, they’re gonna say: ‘Yeah, there was this band called the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones, and this guy named Bob Dylan…’

“And the rest of us? We’re just gonna be footnotes. And I think that that’s OK. I’m happy to have spent my life doing what I wanted to do, playing music, make something out of life, but forgetting about the idea of legacy.”

Unfortunately Robert Oppenheimer, lead singer and front man for the 1940′s group The Manhattan Project was unavailable for comment on this pronouncement and shock to the scientific and rock and roll communities.

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The issues range from Interface usability, lack of killer apps within Wave, lack of support for existing messaging protocols, lack of a hook to pull them away from the tools they were using currently and a number of other things.

As I said, if this group of people weren’t using it, then what hope did Google have in getting the average person off the ‘net to jump in and Wave? The death of Wave is the answer to that.

But I still think that the heart of Wave will be transplanted and we will see it’s technology again. Perhaps in GMail, perhaps in Docs and very likely I think in the coming Google Me (or whatever their social networking “facebook killer” will be called.)

Check out the article here: Google Wave: why we didn’t use it

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Yeah, Lucas is sticking it to the fans once again but at least Dave Itzkoff from the New York Times wasted his breath and effort and asked him about what version it would be and he gave this answer:

Perhaps bracing for the reactions of fans who decried some of the changes made to the special-edition films – like, say, an exchange of gunfire between Han Solo and a certain green-skinned bounty hunter – Mr. Lucas said that to release the original versions of these films on Blu-ray was “kind of an oxymoron because the quality of the original is not very good.”

“You have to go through and do a whole restoration on it, and you have to do that digitally,” he added. “It’s a very, very expensive process to do it. So when we did the transfer to digital, we only transferred really the upgraded version.”

Okay, how much money did they make off those pieces of shit the Star Wars Prequels???

I’m sorry, “It’s very expensive…”  Like Lucas didn’t make enough in the last fiscal year just off  toy licenses that he couldn’t finance it out of his own checkbook???

This is the lamest of all excuses Lucas could come up with.  Do you not know that restoring the original would sell MILLIONS of copies of the disks world wide… not only Blu-Ray but standard DVDs. Then on top of making another pile of money he would actually please the fans.

I bet you any amount of money the people at Criterion would LOVE to get their hands on the original theatrical releases and get in on some of that Star Wars money and do a freakin’ amazing job restoring the films without screwing them up.   License the originals to them and let them foot the bill, George!  If you’re too poor to do it yourself I’m sure there are a hundred companies that would stand in line for a week to get a shot at this project!

Oh, but he doesn’t want to do that. He’s still pissed no one liked Jar Jar and his crappy prequel movies. Revenge is sweet on fans he knows will still put money in his pockets despite treating them like dirt.

Does anyone believe this bullshit reason he gives? Seriously, does anyone????

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Like many people I was waiting for the third episode of this season’s THE GUILD to come out and I went over to the BING Video search page and made a simple request The Guild and a bunch of stuff came up including season 3 episodes so I refined my search.

The Guild “Season 4”.

You’d think it would return the season 4 episodes on top of that request… you’d think.

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It’s been everywhere and everyone is reporting on Verizon and Google teaming up to put their self-interested spin on Net Neutrality and most people’s opinion is that the public is going to get totally screwed.

The first step toward understanding what they have in mind in their proposal is understanding what Net Neutrality is.

As I understand it and most of the stuff I’ve read agrees that the prime principle of Net Neutrality is that all internet traffic is treated the same and all providers must legally treat it that way. Sounds good. Most people probably assume this is how things are today.

That means traffic coming from Google, Yahoo, MSN, YouTube and every other site gets the same treatment. No one can buy fast lane treatment. No one can pay for serving up faster access to their content. It would be against the law for anyone to do that and there would probably be some sort of punishment for doing so.

That’s the idea but it comes with a nasty possibility:

The Government would be involved in it. When politicians are involved, corruption must follow. You’ve got every wack-job group that would love to put an end to open and easy access to everything from Catholicism to “filthy language” and to Porn (with a Capital P) out there that would be threatening, paying-off and lobbying their favorite crooked politician for excemptions for this and that to the laws… and getting them.

The EFF puts it a little nicer in their review of the proposal by Google and Verizon:

The worst case scenario would be that, in allowing the FCC to regulate the Internet, we open the door for big business, Hollywood and the indecency police to exert even more influence on the Net than they do now.

Back to the news at hand: what Google and Verizon have hashed together appears to be kinda like that… except for wireless internet users and things that some people might not like.

Both Google and Verizon have vehemently denied reports circulating last week that their plan was for them to join forces and offer prioritized speed for a price.

What they are saying their plan is now is to honor the spirit of Net Neutrality with the very specific exception of one or two things including Wireless Access.

Sounds okay, right? Just Wireless.  Well, if all we ever do for the foreseeable future is hardwire plug into our internet access that sounds good but it’s not going to stay that way. 3G is wireless. 4G is wireless and WiMAX is on its way.

How many people have already done away with their land lines for cell phones? It’s not today to be thinking about and comparing these ideas to, it’s next year and the the two years after that.

The EFF stepped up and have done another great service for us and done an excellent review of Verizon and Google’s Net Neutrality Proposal.  In it they hit the good points and the bad points of what it’s all about.

Good Point:   Limited FCC Jurisdiction — (see above about governement involvement in anything)

Interesting Point: Standard-Setting Bodies

Not So Good Point: Reasonable Network management, Additional Online Services (‘reasonable network management… such as all the BitTorrent speed throttling that Comcast did or perhaps just limited people’s access speeds because they use ‘too much’ bandwidth)

Bad Point: “Lawful” Content and Wireless Exclusions  - EFF calls this “FAIL”.
“Lawful” that means that anyone with a lawyer can threaten ISPs and access providers with ‘copyright’ infringement.

Hey! Why aren't you donating to the EFF? Click the damn button!

I’m not going to rehash the whole report here, if you’ve made it this far in this post you are obviously interested and hopefully concerned and I encourage you to check out the EFF report.

You can also check out my current favorite title for a story on this from Wired. Com:

Why Google Became A Carrier-Humping, Net Neutrality Surrender Monkey (UPDATED)

Google appears to have already back-tracked on a number of things in this story and I’m sure it’s all FAR FROM OVER. I’m sure it will get more interesting before it’s all done and the checks are signed.

The thought that keeps coming back to me is to encourage all of you to do one thing: Donate to the EFF. They’re the ones who are keeping an eye on crap like this. They are the ones who fight for us.

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There have been a lot of variations on the Doctor Who theme over the years but this is one of the very best I’ve ever heard.  I first heard this at the end of The Doctor Who Podcast and tracked it down.

The group is called Manta and they describe themselves as a “World Music Trio” and not surprisingly they have attracted a lot of attention with this performance which was featured on the Australian music quiz show “Spicks and Specks”.

Check it out and let me know what you think in the comments!

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A few days ago Google announced that they were discontinuing Google Wave, a project and technology they announced and launched what seems like just a few months ago.

Google introduced Wave, “its real-time communication and collaboration platform”, as an “email killer” and arguably most people were confused by the product and Google’s explanation of it.

It took other people to explain it. Other people like Gina Trapani, one of the founders of LifeHacker and software developer, who was able to explain Wave and get people excited about the possibilities of it. In fact, she got herself so excited that she wrote a book about Wave. A DAMN GOOD book that really broke Wave wide open and showed what this new technology could do.

You can read and purchase Gina’s book off her site for the book THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO GOOGLE WAVE. Please check this out. Gina not only is selling her book but she’s giving it away on her site. Matter of fact, the book was available from the site as she wrote it. She is one of the true innovators of publishing and how publishing needs to be done in the coming decades. It was exciting to see the progression and I hope that she doesn’t get discouraged by Google and goes on and does it again. We need thought-leaders bringing things like publishing into the 21st century.

Back to what Wave is and was:

In so many ways Wave is the collaboration tool that so many people need and in that arena it is an “email killer”. With it gone are the days of emails with 15 recipients and 15 different threads of thought going on. Wave allowed people to truly collaborate, look back at that collaboration and work together in real-time.

In the day to day world of most of our lives… it was not an “email killer” and calling it that just confused the hell out of people.

Google’s message from day one wasn’t anything that the average person could grasp, grab on to or get excited about. I didn’t get it till I read Gina’s book and then I got excited but when I tried to explain it to many people they didn’t know how it would fit into their lives. Gina’s reaction to the news has been “it was ahead of its time”. I agree and like its namesake, the television series FIREFLY, it was not given the chance to grow and get people to know it well enough.

[UPDATE:] You can read Gina Trapani’s answers to questions about the cancelation of Wave over at her site www.SmarterWare.org

Admittedly I didn’t have an immediate need for Wave but in the last month I had found a good one— yeah, just in time. Google has said they will keep the project active “till the end of the year” and from what I gather have made most of it available so people can run their own Wave servers. Of course, a lot of people expect to see the Wave technology intergrated into other Google products like GMail and perhaps the mysterious facebook challenger “Google Me” project. (yeah, it’s going to happen. Have no doubt about it)

This makes the second technology from within the halls of Google to not take off the way they wanted it to, the other is BUZZ.

SO many people have never heard of Buzz and those that have and have seen the Buzz logos on blogs and sites mostly don’t know what the hell it’s about. Do you?

Seriously, how many people do you know who actively use Buzz? I admit I’ve been meaning to get into Buzz for a while now– and haven’t and still don’t fully understand what the deal is.

Why is the Google machine so bad at explaining things to the average user? How could they do better? And where will the Wave technology end up? Gmail? The oncoming Google Me? Both places would be a fantastic usage for this and we can only hope for it ending up in a lot of Google’s products and that someone is there to explain to us how much better our life is going to be because of it.

“Everything’s shiny, Cap’n. Not to fret!”

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You can see more of The Guild over at the official site: www.WatchTheGuild.com

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I saw this covered on a few sites but it appears to have originated over at New York Magazine’s VULTURE.

On that site they seem to think that this is due to the fact that Cruise isn’t the box-office guaranteed cash-cow that he once was but it might also have to do with the report that over half the budget is being ponied up by a single individual.

Either way, it’s great news! Why the hell Hollywood pays “stars” these 20-30 million dollar up-front payments on top of gross profit participation is anyone’s guess. It does nothing but bloat the already over bloated budgets that films are produced for these days.

Everyone knows the insanity of Hollywood Accounting is one of my favorite rants (I covered the fact that Warner Brothers still says Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix didn’t make a profit here) and if they made films for less there wouldn’t be any reason for wacky account practices, the profit would be obvious— oh, but maybe that’s the point. Maybe the studios don’t want to do that, it would make it hard to hide profits from loans to themselves,  paying another part of the same company to do work and making licensing deals to other divisions at bargain prices.

Every time a “lower budget” film comes out and becomes a huge hit I have a moment of hope that the studios will look at it and say “Hey, let’s make 10 films for $10 million rather then one for $100 million!” but it never happens.

Look at the smash hit of 2009: DISTRICT 9.  It was made for $30 million dollars.

In it’s opening weekend in the US it made $37 million and went on to make $211 million dollars in worldwide box office.

Add to that DVD, Video, Television licensing, Pay-Per-View, Cable Licensing, etc and who knows where that number ends up but I’d say you could easily add another 30 mil on top of that number if not today then at least in the next year or so.

Yes, I know that 30 mil was just the production budget and the studio probably spent another 30 on advertising and marketing— but that’s still only $60 million dollars.  It made over $115 million dollars just in US Domestic box-office.

What’s Jim Carrey or Wil Farrell’s up-front asking price these days to make bombs.. er… movies? (in all fairness, Jim Carrey reportedly did waive his up-front fee for the film Yes Men and according to Vulture made a cool 30 mil off it. 30 Million?? I have to admit being stunned that the film made $98 million in domestic boxoffice.)

Badly photoshop'd logo for MI:IV

Why isn’t Cruise putting up the money if he’s so hot to do the film and so sure it will make a profit?

They say the budget is set for around $135 Million Dollars, you saying that Cruise doesn’t have 68 mil sitting in a bank somewhere? Well, maybe not—- but at least 20 or 30.

He’s taking his “reduced” salary on this film, but why isn’t he doing it for nothing and taking his money off the back-end?  Does he really need the salary to live on? Hell, he could live on Katie’s money for a while if she has any left.

What is getting lost in all this is the fact that BRAD BIRD (the incredible two-time Oscar-winning creator behind Pixar’s The Incredibles and Ratatouille) is directing and for that reason alone it is fantastic news that this film is being made.

The next time one of these “stars” does a film and it bombs I would love it if someone would ask them in an interview “Do you feel guilty taking money for making such a piece of shit?”

Hell, let someone starting asking that of Will Farrell about the last ___ movies he’s made.  Take a vacation Will, write your own damn movie and finance it yourself. You can’t do any worse then you’ve been doing lately.

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The Telegraph out of the UK is reporting a story made public through the release of thousands of pages of declassified files on UFOs by the UK National Archives recently.

The encounter in question involved a reconnaissance plane which was returning from a mission over occupied Europe when it happened.

The story apparently goes that during their flight along the English coast, possibly near Cumbria, their aircraft was approached and followed by a metallic UFO.

Photographs of the object were taken by the aircraft crew and in their description they stated that it had “hovered noiselessly” near the plane while following them.

Later on while meeting with General Dwight Eisenhower, the commander of Allied Forces, they had discussions about the unexplained incident and both men were claimed to have become extremely disturbed by the incident.

At the time of the meeting a weapons expert disregarded the suggestions that the object was a missile with the statement that it was  ”totally beyond any imagined capabilities of the time”.

Another attendee of the meeting raised the possibility of a UFO, at which point Churchill ordered the report classified for at least 50 years  to stop “panic” spreading.

How the incident even came out is  interesting: It seems that one of Churchill’s personal guards overheard all this and in later years recounted the story to his family. His grandson wrote to the Ministry Of Defense requesting information confirming the events of the story. He had learned of it from his mother who had was told by her father on his deathbed of the events.

The grandson, now a physicist, wrote in one letter

“There was a general inability for either side to match a plausible account to these observations, and this caused a high degree of concern,”

“Mr Churchill is reported to have made a declaration to the effect of the following: ‘This event should be immediately classified since it would create mass panic among the general population and destroy one’s belief in the Church’.”

The MOD’s response basically was that there was no evidence around this since “UFO files before 1967 were destroyed after five years” due to insufficient public interest.

It is well documented that Churchill had a lot of interest in UFO’s to such an extent that he had requested in 1952 a briefing from the MOD on “Flying Saucers”.

The article concludes with a quote from Dr David Clarke, author of The UFO files and Senior Lecturer in Journalism at Sheffield Hallam University. He says that the

“fascinating” files showed the level of concern about such “bizarre incidents” during the war.

“It does tie in with what we already know as you have to remember that this was also long before the phrase UFO was created,” he said.

“I suspect there is an element of truth to the statement.”

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It was real.

I looked around and found it posted at TV By The Numbers and no matter how you can’t believe it, believe it.

Now, I don’t put anything past the network that for years and years has been pissing on its fanbase by killing good shows and replacing them with absolute crap. The list of fantastic dead shows is like a graveyard but that is another post… a very long post about the crimes against their fanbase.  Today we talk about future crimes— and you won’t believe them.

I can’t even bring myself to comment on such a crappy looking group of shows that includes a rip off of the Bruce Campbell film “My Name Is Bruce” starring Kevin Sorbo (Who, by the way, is a really funny and nice dude in person but this show description says “shitty rip-off”).

Except for SHERWOOD. If for no other reason then Amanda Tapping is attached in some way to the show it will be good.

Oh, and why are the majority of these “half hour single camera” shows?  Half hour?  Oh, I’m sorry— that’s so they can fit in more episodes of GHOST HUNTERS.

Here’s the press release, have at it with the comments:

SYFY’S ROBUST SCRIPTED DEVELOPMENT SLATE FEATURES PROJECTS FROM KEVIN SORBO, LEE MAJORS, SANCTUARY CREATIVE TEAM AND UNIVERSAL CABLE PRODUCTIONS

Los Angeles, California – July 30, 2010 – Building upon solid ratings and critical acclaim for returning hits Warehouse 13 and Eureka, and newcomer Haven, Syfy today announced a rich development slate of seven scripted projects featuring television icons Lee Majors and Kevin Sorbo; the Sanctuary creative team of Damian Kindler, Martin Wood and Amanda Tapping; a swashbuckling space opera and an alien version of The Office from Universal Cable Productions plus a single camera 1/2-hour about fighting zombies and a dramedy featuring supernatural villains.

In making the announcement, Mark Stern, Executive Vice President, Programming, Syfy, and Co-Head, Original Content, Universal Cable Productions, said: “One of our key agendas is to continue the extraordinary growth and momentum of our popular dramas. Through partnerships with these formidable talents, in front of and behind the camera, we hope to expand our powerful brand by offering our viewers an imaginative next generation of programming.”

BALL & CHAIN

After months of emotional tumult, Edgar and Mallory call their relationship quits. As they say their final goodbyes, the ex-lovers are nearly hit by a meteorite that, it turns out, imbues them with extraordinary powers. Unfortunately, the powers only work when they are in close proximity to each other. Though the last thing they want to do is stay together, they’ll need to try if they hope to overcome the newly arrived other-worldly forces that threaten to destroy them and anyone else who gets in the way.

Executive Producers: Bob Cooper and J.J. Jamieson for Landscape Entertainment

Executive Producer/Writer: Andrew Miller

Studios: A Universal Cable Productions/Fremantle Media co-production

ME AND LEE

In this 1/2-hour single-camera series, a down-on-his-luck 20-something undergoes back surgery, only to find that the procedure did not go well. Enter Lee Majors, who claims he has the perfect solution. He entices the young man into his ultra high-tech lab and makes him bionic. Now intrinsically bound together, Majors tries helping his new partner get his life back on track.

Executive Producers/Writers: Matthew Salzberg and Jenji Kohan

Executive Producer: Steven Pearl

Studio: Lionsgate

ORION

National Treasure meets Firefly in this swashbuckling space opera about an adventurous female relic hunter and her team as they hunt down — and sometimes steal — valuable and powerful objects to sell on the black market, all while staying one step ahead of the bounty hunters hot on their heels.

Co-Executive Producers/Writers: Dirk Blackman & Howard McCain

Co-Executive Producers: George Krstic & Ryuhei Kitamura

Supervising Producer: F.J. Desanto

Studio: Universal Cable Productions

SHERWOOD

In this “Robin Hood” story for the 23rd century, a young man of privilege teams up with a misfit spaceship crew to right the wrongs of his family.

Writer: Damian Kindler

Executive Producers: Damian Kindler, Martin Wood, and Amanda Tapping for

My Plastic Badgers Productions

LEGENDARY

A 1/2-hour single-camera series in which Kevin Sorbo plays an exaggerated version of himself… a former syndicated television series star. When a fan approaches Sorbo to enlist his skills in combating the underworld mythological creatures that threaten to destroy Los Angeles, an unlikely partnership is formed. Together, they use their intimate knowledge of the myths of Hercules to defeat a myriad of beasts.

Executive Producer: David Eick

Supervising Producers/Writers: Adam Karp & Royal McGraw

Producer: Kevin Sorbo

Studio: Universal Cable Productions

HUMAN RELATIONS

The Office meets Men in Black in this project featuring an office Temp who slowly discovers that his off-kilter and odd-ball bosses at the strange hi-tech “ad agency” where he works are really aliens working on a plan to destroy the Earth.

Co-Executive Producer/Writer: Scott Prendergast

Executive Producers: Michael Rotenberg and Tom Lassally for 3 Arts

Executive Producers: John Altschuler and Dave Krinsky for Ternion

Studio: Universal Cable Productions

ZEROS

In this 1/2-hour single-camera satire, when the zombie population of Marshall City overcomes the 30-foot barrier separating the infected people from the rest of the city, the Zombie Extermination and Removal Operations company (the Zeros) are called in to keep the peace. When they can get out of their own way long enough to focus on a case, they are pretty effective with very unorthodox methods.

Executive Producers: David Kenin and Steve Brenner

Co-Executive Producers: Chris Provost & Dave Hales

Syfy is a media destination for imagination-based entertainment. With year round acclaimed original series, events, blockbuster movies, classic science fiction and fantasy programming, a dynamic Web site (www.Syfy.com), and a portfolio of adjacent business (Syfy Ventures), Syfy is a passport to limitless possibilities. Originally launched in 1992 as SCI FI Channel, and currently in more than 96 million homes, Syfy is a network of NBC Universal, one of the world’s leading media and entertainment companies. (Syfy. Imagine greater.

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Anthony Hopkins and Chris Hemsworth in THOR - courtesy Marvel Entertainment

it won’t last out there in the wild for long so jump on this fast.  CHECK IT OUT NOW!!

Someone recorded the THOR trailer that was shown at San Diego Comic Con over the weekend and Trailer Addict has been ballsy enough to put it up on the internet.

The quality is actually much better then I expected it to be and it’s a freakin’ GREAT trailer!   This is going to put asses in the theater seats next summer, baby!

The film is directed by Kenneth Branagh and stars Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman and Kat Dennings

BUT please don’t forget the horrific news about this film: It will be converted to 3-D.  There is a hope that they will change their minds but unfortunately they probably won’t.

It’s only in Flash but it’s worth getting to a desktop to check it out but do it fast!

[UPDATE] Within an hour of me posting this link, the video was taken down by Trailer Addiction at the request of someone— sorry. I know not a lot of you got a chance to see it but to make it up for you, someone sent me some screen caps that they took. The quality ain’t great but what do you expect when the video wasn’t good to start with and then it was compressed into Flash.

Please note: I am putting this up as a service to the readers and to advertise the film and promote it. Any copyright infringement is not intended.

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Fortune has declared the 3-D film craze “already dying” and in the hands of Hollywood it deserves to. We get a 3-D masterpiece in James Cameron’s AVATAR last year. A film conceived from the ground up to be shot and projected in 3-D and everyone in Hollywood tries to jump on the bandwagon. The problem is that they aren’t James Cameron and they are trying to shoehorn films into 3D that never should be there or (in their greatest crime against film) convert 2-D films into 3-D.

Roger Ebert published a piece in Newsweek in May of 2010 called “Why I hate 3-D (And You Should Too)” in which he calls “Hollywood’s current crazy stampede toward it” suicidal and that “It adds nothing essential to the moviegoing experience.”

He goes on to mention that he thinks the craze is a way to sell much more expensive projection systems and add an extra $4 to $7 to the ticket price. That last part is probably more right then anything.

Last year at an exhibitor “3D Summit” it was reported that Dreamworks head Jeffrey Katzenberg told the exhibitors there that they could (sarcastically paraphrasing) Slap another five bucks on top of the ticket price for 3D, they’ll pay it. There is no resistance.

The Variety article quotes him in follow up to that statement saying:

“I find it curious how slow the live-action business has been in jumping on this opportunity,” said the DreamWorks Animation topper, a longtime evangelist for the stereoscopic 3D (S3D) format. “In a business where margins are sinking like a stone in water, suddenly something comes along that for a small incremental investment you create huge incremental income possibilities for you. Why every studio isn’t out making three, four, five 3D movies is inexplicable.”

This is the usual Hollywood thinking that is keeping the theaters full of remakes of old television shows, sequels to films that never should have sequels and films that were never meant to be in 3-D converted to 3-D to cash in.

Look at the mess that Last Airbender was. (we covered the fact that Last Airbender is the worst reviewed film of 2010 so far) and most people seem to be saying that the film wasn’t good to start with but the poor 3-D conversion didn’t do it any favors.

3-D conversion is the kiss of death as well it should be. Every single film that has come out that had been converted to 3-D has been savaged for the quality of the 3-D. It’s not going to work.

Is 3-D dead? Well, if they keep letting people make insane decisions like converting the remake of GREEN HORNET into 3-D it sure as hell is. (come on, who green lit a Green Hornet film starring Seth Rogan? Huh? Just burn your money on the front lawn of the studio and save your kharma, baby.)

BUT there is hope. The hope of 3-D is in films like TRON LEGACY, which from everything I’ve heard and read was conceived and shot from day one in 3-D. If you haven’t seen the trailer, check it out here: TRON LEGACY – TRAILER #2

If you make a film in 3-D that isn’t some attempt to cash in but to use the technology to enhance and be part of the film experience (as Cameron’s AVATAR did) it could be fantastic for the audience. If you do stupid crap like throw things at the screen in badly converted 3-D people will only fall for it once and there goes 3-D.

A great, and hope-inspiring, ending to the Fortune article tells that the american film goers are starting to reject the craze:

Most interesting, according to Greenfield, is that in some cases movies with a wider release on 3-D screens are doing worse in terms of 3-D revenue than those that had more limited 3-D screen penetration. Shrek Forever After, for instance, brought in a smaller percentage of revenue from 3-D screens than How to Train a Dragon, despite being released on about 200 more 3-D screens. A “greater percentage of consumers simply opted to see the film in 2-D,” he wrote in a May post on BTIG’s blog, adding: “The last thing the industry needs is consumers starting to believe that 3-D is simply ‘not worth it.’”

“believe that 3-D is simply ‘not worth it’”? Perhaps it’s a case of the films themselves not being worth but as long as Hollywood is doing ridiculous things like converting Green Hornet to 3-D I can’t see how people won’t think it is just not worth it.

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Thanks to massive pollution only half of the standing water in all of China is considered drinkable. They tested the water and there was some bad news and good news: only 49.5 percent of the water was fit for drinking and bathing but that was up from 48 percent last year. (note that these are standards set by the Chinese government so who the hell knows what this really means compared to other countries water standards).

They note that they have six stages of water cleanliness. The first three stages are considered “safe” for drinking and bathing. That’s where that 49.5 falls in.

Another 26 percent falls into category 4 and 5 which means it’s only fit for use in manufacturing and agriculture. The other 24 percent falls into category 6: UNFIT FOR ANY USE.

Nice, huh?

Again, who the hell knows exactly where these standards are actually enforced or what corners are cut in the consideration of the testing. China has long allowed manufacturing plants to dump anything they want into the public waters and have looked the other way while their agriculture industries use pesticides, toxic chemicals and fertilizer like water.

These are some of the reasons I’m so concerned about where food comes from. I haven’t been able to find a specific statistic or anyone who is actually doing the testing but I would be willing to bet that the food coming out of China is 20-50 percent higher in pesticide resedue and toxic chemicals then any food on earth.

I spoke with a fellow who’s company was importing a food product from China and they had made a private arrangement with the farmers not to use pesticides or toxic chemicals and fertilizers on the plants. To assure this they tested the food for residue once in china and then again at their plant in the United States.

I asked him why they didn’t have an organic certification with all this effort and he laughed. He said that they only thing an organic certification from the Chinese Government means is that your check cleared and you made a high enough cash payment to the right guy. That’s it.

When looking around at foods in the store I’ve started to be thankful for the Country Of Origin laws that the USDA have passed. But it’s not all great and fantastic. Here’s what the USDA says is covered in this:

Food products, (covered commodities) contained in the law include muscle cut and ground meats: beef, veal, pork, lamb, goat, and chicken; wild and farm-raised fish and shellfish; fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables; peanuts, pecans, and macadamia nuts; and ginseng. Regulations for fish and shellfish covered commodities (7 CFR Part 60) became effective in 2005.

That leaves a lot of stuff out— as many pet owners can tell you with the recent contamination of components of pet food coming from China where they are cutting corners on quality and what screw ups they were making in what they are manufacturing.

Back in 2007 around North America, Europe and South Africa owners started reporting renal failure in pets. This was traced back to a contamination of the wheat gluten sold to the pet food manufactures from a company in China.  Contaminated with… melamine.

What is melamine? Oh, it’s something you’d really enjoy having in your food. Wikipedia describes it like this:

Melamine is described as being “Harmful if swallowed, inhaled or absorbed through the skin. Chronic exposure may cause cancer or reproductive damage. Eye, skin and respiratory irritant.” However, the short-term lethal dose is on a par with common table salt with an LD of more than 3 grams per kilogram of bodyweight

I’m not a doctor or a chemist, nor do I play one on TV, so the rest of the article talks about the debate over the amount a person could take in and all that. You can see the Wikipedia Article On Melamin over there to find out some details if you are interested.

Oh, by the way it wasn’t just pet food: in 2008 chinese milk and infant formula was contaminated with melamin.

What’s the point?  China is exporting food products around the world. They are doing so with plants that are drinking polluted water, probably saturated in pesticides and chemicals and animals that are eating that same level of pollution and passing it along in their meat.

The latest number I could find was from 2008 and at that point the Congressional Research Service said in their report on “Food and Agricultural Imports from China”: (click that to read the PDF report)

China is now the third largest source of U.S. agricultural and seafood imports.

That was about 3 years ago and I can’t see that it’s gone down.

We know that the USDA hardly has time to monitor the food being grown and raised in this country and most people are of the opinion that China doesn’t give a crap so who’s looking out for the food we’re eating?

Fresh and frozen vegetables and meat and nuts is all okay to label so we can avoid chinese products but I have to wonder these days where the “store brand” food is being made. Where is that really, really cheap box of cereal you just bought at WalMart or Target come from? For that matter, where’s the assurance that box of _______ you buy wasn’t outsourced to some chinese factory?

Where is it grown and manufactured and who the hell is paying attention to what’s in the components?

We need to have that information and if the manufacturers are smart they’ll start putting it on packaging and labels…. unless they have a reason not to want to do it.  Which is my way of saying “oh yeah, what do you have to hide?” even to companies that don’t have anything to hide but need to come forth, give their customers the information and I guarantee you it will result in bigger sales and long term loyalty.

So think about this the next time you are shopping for food and maybe touch base with some companies with the question: Where was this made? What’s in it? and we’ll see which company has the balls to answer.

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Well, the people behind The Guild have done it again.

Last year the online series THE GUILD (check out last season at WatchTheGuild.com ) exploded with their first music video “Do You Want To Date My Avatar” and this year they are doing it again… Bollywood Style.

Felicia Day and cast pulled out all the stops this year and produced “GAME ON” in which Zaboo tries to convince Codex to resume game play by transporting her into a wild, Bollywood music video.

They premiered the video at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con. The reception was as Felicia puts it on her blog: “Suffice it to say, there was a very warm reception to the video!” which I’m sure is a massive understatement of the fan’s reactions.

What more could you want? Music? The Guild? Felicia Day not only sings again but dances too!

Check it out below on the Bing Video Site ! (sorry to anyone visiting on an iPhone or iPad or who don’t want to use Flash – even going straight to the Bing Video site won’t help. When it’s posted to YouTube I’ll use that link)

(as an added bonus I’ve added a video interview with Felicia after the music video )

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Hmmm... where's Hermione ?

Police are reporting that a man was placed under arrest at San Diego Comic-Con on saturday after getting into a fight with a “friend” while waiting for panel for the film PAUL.

It seems the argument was over one of them sitting too close to the other.

This resulted in the one attendee to “stab” the other attendee with a pen in the face resulting in a scratch on the face of the one man and the other getting arrested.

The cool rumors began immediately on the internet. One reported that the man was seen wearing a Harry Potter shirt “covered in blood” but the police called this inaccurate except for the Harry Potter T-shirt.

The panel for Paul was delayed but Simon Pegg and Nick Frost were not hurt or bled on in the incident.

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Michael Dell before he and the company became $104 million lighter

In the last couple of days the US Security and Exchange Commission took Michael Dell and his company to the proverbial woodshed for a little beating over their deal with Intel to lock in exclusivity on the chips they use in their computers.

It comes as no surprise to anyone that Intel made a deal with Dell to only use Intel chips and to snub AMD’s chips. It appears that Intel gave rebates to Dell for the chips to solidify the deal and it appears all sides were happy.

Whoops.  Well, as I understand it what Dell did to get into hot water with the SEC was a little bookkeeping slight of hand with those rebates: Dell claimed those rebates as income.  Tsk. Tsk.

Here comes the fun part:  These exclusivity payments accounted for 10% of Dell’s operating income in 2003 and then went up to 38% in 2006, then to a whopping 76% in the first fiscal quarter of 2007.  Yeah, 76 per cent.

So when Dell was touting how great business was to all its investors and the industry… it wasn’t.

Cut to 2010. It appears that the SEC has worked a settlement deal with Michael Dell that will personally cost him 4 Million dollars and he gets to avoid some jail time.

His company doesn’t come out so well. Their settlement came to the price tag of 100 million dollars.

As I said, I think this sort of deal between Intel and Dell is no surprise to anyone. Especially when you look at the kinds of deals computer makers have made in the past.

Till fairly recently you could not buy a Dell computer without buying Microsoft Windows.  You could not. Period.

If you ordered a computer without a hard drive you would still get (or at least be charged for) a copy of Windows.

If you asked not to have any OS installed on your new computer, you would be told that was impossible and you would be charged for Windows and there was nothing you could do about it. There were cases of people going to small claims court trying to get refunded the cost of Windows.

My understanding of the old deal was that Microsoft got paid for every computer that rolled off the Dell line. No matter what.

Now, on one hand that is a scumbag kind of deal and really sucks but on the other hand if I were MS and could get that kind of deal from someone I’d do it in a heartbeat.

What’s all this mean to the average person?  Who knows. I can’t see Dell raising its prices to cover the costs but the 100 million will have to come from somewhere. I guess if you’re in the market for a Dell you should keep your eyes open. If you own the stock, look out but then again, the next stockholder’s meeting is going to be fun!

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