Manuel Reis

The casting directors for Disney‘s new Star Wars movie — April Webster and Alyssa Weisberg in the U.S. and Nina Gold in the UK — have sent casting breakdowns to agents. It provides the first real clues about what’s happening in the next movie in the franchise, which Michael Arndt is writing and JJ Abrams is directing. Abrams said recently that he expects production to start on Star Wars — Episode VII at the beginning of 2014. Kudos to Bleeding Cool for scooping this list, saying these are lead roles and that casting is officially underway in the UK, where the movie will lens. Here’s the list of characters in play sent around, so have fun trying to figure out who’s who:

A young man aged between 20 and 25, witty and smart, fit but not classically handsome,

Man in late twenties, also fit, but this one is handsome and confident.

Late teenage girl, independent, good sense of humour, also… physically fit .

Second young female, also late teens, tough, smart and physically fit.

Man in his forties, obviously physically fit, this one is a military type.

A man of around thirty or so, this one is an intellectual type.

Finally, a guy aged around seventy, strong opinions and tough.

A film's trailer is practically a movie in itself — serialized into traditional trailers, red-band ones, teasers, and teasers of teasers, it creates a condensed version of the film full of fleeting references and heavy-handed setting of the narrative. There's a reason recut trailers are so popular: the tropes used in a trailer can drastically change a film's tone or even the decade in which it was apparently produced. In a multi-part feature (with links on the left of the page), Wired takes a look at what goes into a trailer, charting its history from the studio spectacles of the 1940s to the present-day summer blockbuster. And what, they ask, was the best trailer ever? Hitchcock and Kubrick films get a mention, but at least one top pick is proof that "you can't judge a trailer by its movie:" it's an early ad for The Phantom Menace.

The bicycle helmet has massively reduced the risk of death from cycling. But present-day helmets are sorely unable to protect riders from less catastrophic concussions that can cause serious long-term brain damage, says journalist Bruce Barcott at Bicycling. The hard plastic is designed to take the brunt of a hard blow, not absorb the impact of a softer one, and designing a helmet that can protect against both is proving difficult. Safety is also, Barcott argues, being held back by the very standards meant to uphold it. Researchers have worked on creating better helmets, but since the safety certification rules aren't developed with concussions in mind, there could be little incentive to adopt them. "We'd created a situation where good protection was available but no one gave a damn about it because you didn't need it to pass certification," says the head of MIPS, a company developing new helmet technology.

GigaOM noticed that Apple quietly released an update to Siri that offers to put a user in contact with the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, should he or she mention suicide. Should the person decline the offer, Siri then brings up area suicide prevention centers in a second attempt to provide resources.

As GigaOM notes, Google has had this search since 2010. Apple noted in its customer privacy statement on Tuesday that among the most common requests from law enforcement are ones from police hoping to prevent suicide.

There's a lot of useful and even more silly ways to take advantage of Siri, but having a proactive response to a serious issue is a wonderful thing to have in the program.

Apple updates Siri to help those considering suicide to get help originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 19 Jun 2013 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

EXCLUSIVE: Universal Pictures has closed a deal for domestic distribution on Dumb And Dumber To, the sequel to the classic comedy that brings back Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels, with Peter and Bobby Farrelly directing their rewrite of the script by Sean Anders and John Morris. Wolf Of Wall Street financier Red Granite is stepping up to finance the $35 million budget film and sell foreign territories. Deadline reported this is how it would likely go after Warner Bros finally stepped away from the project, after hovering over it like a dark cloud since January. That studio will retain a participation stake in the film, but its exit made all this possible.

All this is going down as we speak, and now the scheduling will begin for a movie that will find its way into production very quickly, with Conundrum’s Bradley Thomas and The Farrellys producing with Charlie Wessler. The film will be PG-13 like the original, and once again it puts Lloyd (Carrey) and Harry (Daniels) back on a road trip. The urgency has to do with scheduling: Daniels needs to do it soon before returning for his Aaron Sorkin HBO series The Newsroom. Carrey also has that bank heist comedy at Relativity with Jared Hess directing and Owen Wilson co-starring. For physical comedy fans, this is a real win. The package was put together by CAA and WME, and attorney Cindy Gesner Farrelly repped the Conundrum troika.

What goes on behind the scenes of one of the Fast & Furious series' elaborate, physics-stretching car chases? Car and Driver took a look at a seven-minute, $20 million sequence from Fast & Furious 6, from the first written draft to the finished product. The dozens of cars involved are choreographed with Hot Wheels models, and the shooting is done only after the locations have been surveyed and measured with lidar — so that they can be spliced together convincingly and digitally extended to seem larger. At the center of it all, stunt drivers must master dangerous, difficult-to-control vehicles like the "flip cars" used in Fast & Furious 6, though more effects make the cars look faster and sound beefier. There's probably no better example of how much work goes into a summer popcorn movie.

Earlier this month a top-secret PowerPoint presentation was released that leaked the existence of the US government's PRISM program. The program is a surveillance program that gives the US government a backdoor into user accounts at major technology companies such as Microsoft, Facebook, Google and Apple, among others. All of the companies involved have strenuously denied any knowledge of PRISM's existence and have been in damage control mode assuring users that their privacy is upheld.

Early today Apple issued a statement called Apple's Commitment to Customer Privacy in which it aims to clarify to users the steps it goes through to protect their privacy and also to state how many requests for user data it received from the government. Below is the statement in full.

Apple's Commitment to Customer Privacy

Two weeks ago, when technology companies were accused of indiscriminately sharing customer data with government agencies, Apple issued a clear response: We first heard of the government's "Prism" program when news organizations asked us about it on June 6. We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers, and any government agency requesting customer content must get a court order.

Like several other companies, we have asked the U.S. government for permission to report how many requests we receive related to national security and how we handle them. We have been authorized to share some of that data, and we are providing it here in the interest of transparency.

From December 1, 2012 to May 31, 2013, Apple received between 4,000 and 5,000 requests from U.S. law enforcement for customer data. Between 9,000 and 10,000 accounts or devices were specified in those requests, which came from federal, state and local authorities and included both criminal investigations and national security matters. The most common form of request comes from police investigating robberies and other crimes, searching for missing children, trying to locate a patient with Alzheimer's disease, or hoping to prevent a suicide.

Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it.

Apple has always placed a priority on protecting our customers' personal data, and we don't collect or maintain a mountain of personal details about our customers in the first place. There are certain categories of information which we do not provide to law enforcement or any other group because we choose not to retain it.

For example, conversations which take place over iMessage and FaceTime are protected by end-to-end encryption so no one but the sender and receiver can see or read them. Apple cannot decrypt that data. Similarly, we do not store data related to customers' location, Map searches or Siri requests in any identifiable form.

We will continue to work hard to strike the right balance between fulfilling our legal responsibilities and protecting our customers' privacy as they expect and deserve.

Continue reading Apple issues 'Commitment to Customer Privacy' statement

Apple issues 'Commitment to Customer Privacy' statement originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 17 Jun 2013 06:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

In 2009, the ugly French authority Hadopi – with the mission of cutting people off from the internet for the good deed of sharing culture and knowledge – reared its head.

This was in the middle of the copyright industry’s “mass disconnection” strategy, where they saw it fit to legislate mass disconnections to protect their obsolete industry.

Fortunately for everybody else, an election interrupted the otherwise-prepared legislative process, and a new European Parliament got to finalize the bills that would have made such disconnections possible throughout Europe. It was obvious that the bill was intended to pass without discussion.

Unfortunately for the copyright industry, the Pirate Party got a seat on the final negotiating committee in the European Parliament, and we were able to – with the help of brilliant activists like Monica Horten – educate everybody else on the parliamentary committee as to what was actually happening. It stopped being a matter of having Parliament steamrolled into just passing the bill without question, and escalated into a matter of Parliament’s dignity. “We’re the Parliament, not a doormat”, as some legislators made very clear.

That derailed the intended process of enabling “Three Strikes” disconnections across Europe. The very opposite became law, in no small part thanks to the footwork of the Pirate Party in the European Parliament and that negotiation committee.

The civil rights violations that the French Hadopi agency intended to carry out – disenfranchising people from most of their civil liberties – was specifically targeted when writing the language for the Telecoms Package bills. The language of the bills was not good enough until it made super clear that disconnecting anybody from the net without a prior fair and full adversarial court proceeding – exactly the thing the copyright industry had intended to bypass and cut citizens off en masse – was completely illegal across all of the European Union, and by extension, through the European Economic Area.

The text in the Telecoms Package bill had to pass the “Hadopi Test”, as it was actually called in the European Parliament – making it absolutely clear that what Hadopi intended to do was to be made completely illegal.

For today, we exercise all our fundamental liberties – freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, freedom of expression – through the net. Therefore, the net has itself become just as fundamental a liberty as all the other fundamental liberties we exercise through it.

It shouldn’t even be a matter of discussion that you can’t cut anybody off from the net, not any more than you can order them to not read newspapers, not meet anybody, or not speak.

But alas, the copyright industry is infamous for ignoring the law completely when they don’t like what it says, and throwing loud tantrums when anybody else doesn’t do what they demand (sometimes regardless of law). They seem to be stuck in the “mine, mine, mine, waaaaaah” mindset of a three-year-old, and what’s worse, they’re completely oblivious to the concept of equality before the law.

The Hadopi bureaucrats who made the decision of cutting somebody off from the net and their fundamental rights this week deserve to go to jail for a considerable time, so they can contemplate the concept of being equal before the law; how the law isn’t intended to protect the copyright industry against the people but never the other way around. Unfortunately, that will not happen under French law, but the Hadopi can and should still be sued for ridiculously punitive amounts in European courts for this deed. There is no way they can claim ignorance of the law in this matter, and even if they are arguably ignorant, that’s still not a defense.

As a final note, it seems copyright monopoly lobbyists think they can get this disconnection scheme in Britain now, too. I would encourage anybody in the affected countries – France and Britain – to sue the shirt off their backs. What they’re attempting to do is illegal. Not “maybe illegal”, not “possibly in a grey area”, but “deliberately targeted behavior written into law as specifically illegal”.

Update: In response to the opinion above some commenters rightfully point out that the disconnection order comes from a judge. These and other issues are discussed below, feel free to add yours.

Source: Hey Hadopi, You’re Breaking The Law. We Made “Three Strikes” Illegal Across All Europe.

Devo começar por dizer que não sou daquelas pessoas que desdenha quando alguém português tem sucesso (e elas existem). Se o Diogo Morgado fosse nomeado para um Emmy ficaria satisfeito. Não, o que sou é um grande fã dos Emmys e não me refiro apenas à revelação dos nomeados e à consagração dos vencedores, mas de todo o processo. E é por isso que ontem me surpreendeu uma dúzia (talvez mais) de notícias que circularam em Portugal de que o Diogo Morgado estava pré-nomeado para um Emmy. Ora, olhando para os boletins de voto que estão disponíveis desde a passada segunda-feira, até é verdade, ele integra uma lista de onde sairão os 5/6 nomeados finalistas da categoria (Melhor Actor num Telefilme ou Minissérie), logo está pré-nomeado.

Porém, não está ali por mérito como muitas dessas notícias levam a crer. Não foi colocado nestes boletins porque os membros da Academia gostaram tanto da sua prestação que o elegeram para integrar esta lista. Não. A integração nos boletins de voto para esta fase de pré-nomeações está a cargo dos estúdios que produzem as séries/programas, dos canais que os exibem e dos próprios nomeados (ou, como é comum, a tarefa recai nas suas equipas de relações públicas, visto que muitos têm mais que fazer do que escolher a categoria onde querem ser inseridos).

Este processo de auto-selecção é sempre fascinante pela politiquice que envolve, resultando recorrentemente em surpreendentes (e muitas vezes sem sentido algum) trocas de categoria para se tentar ganhar vantagem (por exemplo, este ano o Freddie Highmore vai como secundário por “Bates Motel”, o que não faz o mínimo sentido visto ele interpretar o icónico Norman Bates), ou por originar algumas histórias bizarras (uma das mais famosas dos últimos anos tem como protagonista a Katherine Heigl, que se recusou a colocar o seu nome nos boletins de voto, e assim retirou-se da corrida ao prémio, por achar que os argumentistas de “Grey’s Anatomy” não lhe tinham dado material com qualidade suficiente para lhe merecer uma nomeação). E se o próprio Diogo Morgado se mostrou surpreso e honrado por estar “pré-nomeado”, então foi porque alguém tomou a decisão em colocar lá o seu nome sem sequer o consultar, provavelmente o estúdio.

O problema dos media nacionais é que devem ter apanhado uma notícia internacional qualquer, e como não conhecem o processo e não se deram ao trabalho de pesquisar, deram a notícia como se a integração do Diogo Morgado nos boletins de voto fosse um grande feito em termos meritórios quando na verdade foi somente lá colocado como acontece com todos os outros actores das outras séries (e quem não é membro da Academia até tem de pagar para integrar as listas). Por exemplo, não deixa de ser curioso que toda a gente esteja a falar no Diogo Morgado e ninguém tenha “reparado” (é o que dá não pesquisar as coisas, pois os boletins de voto são disponibilizados no site oficial dos Emmys) que também a Daniela Ruah consta desses mesmos boletins (tal como mais alguns milhares de outros actores).

Quanto à possibilidade dele vir a ser nomeado… tenho grande dúvidas. Ao lado de nomes como Al Pacino, Michael Douglas, Matt Damon, Rob Lowe, Kenneth Branagh, Benedict Cumberbatch, Dominic West e Toby Jones, isto apenas citando os nomes dos favoritos… ou tem uma grande ajuda graças a alguma intervenção divina, ou então não terá grandes hipóteses.

The Foundry shared with AppleInsider the story of how its team worked with the new Mac Pro in a room at Apple HQ known as the "Evil Lab" ahead of the desktop's unveiling. During the tests, the Mac Pro was entirely concealed in a giant steel cabinet, keeping its new design a mystery to The Foundry and Pixar.

"We were essentially doing a blind tasting of the machine," said Jack Greasley, MARI product manager at The Foundry. "All we could see was the monitor, and the Mac Pro was encased in a giant metal filing cabinet on wheels. Experiencing the machine in this way was actually really cool, because I can tell you that the speed and power of this machine really stands up. Mari running on this machine out of the box is the fastest I have ever seen it run."

After three years and millions of warning letters, the French three-strikes anti-piracy law ‘Hadopi’ has resulted in the first Internet disconnection.

The customer in question will be without Internet access for two weeks and must also pay a 600 euro fine. Quoting officials, PC Inpact reports that the file-sharer was caught sharing one or two files and failed to respond to earlier warnings.

If no appeal is filed within 10 days the file-sharer’s Internet provider will move forward with the disconnection. For 15 days the customer will be denied access to the Internet, but the ISP must ensure that e-mail, instant messaging and other VOIP services continue to work.

The sentencing comes at a peculiar time. Last month a nine-member panel recommended that the Government scraps the Hadopi agency, the body that currently oversees the graduated response system.

In a detailed report the panel concluded that although there was a reduction in file-sharing on P2P networks such as BitTorrent, there had also been an increase in use of other services such as streaming sites and cyberlockers which are not covered by Hadopi. In addition the panel concluded that the three-strikes scheme had failed to benefit legal services.

The ineffectiveness of the three-strikes policy was confirmed two weeks ago by a music industry group. In a separate report the group concluded that the anti-piracy law had failed to halt the decline in music sales.

But while Hadopi might be dead soon, file-sharing penalties are not going away.

Based on a recommendation from the panel, the Government now plans to replace the current system of Internet disconnections with automated fines. Under Hadopi, fines extended to a theoretical maximum of around 1,500 euros, but these are now expected to be reduced to around 60 euros each, but with increases applied to repeat offenders.

The Government presented the new automated warning system as a better deal, since no one would be at risk of losing access to the Internet. However, at the time of the announcement this statement made little sense.

“They pretended it would be a better deal for internet users, but it wasn’t. No one had been convicted to a suspension of Internet access, and we all believed no one ever would. With the recent conviction they can now claim they are right, and defend their new legislation,” Guillaume Champeau of French news site Numerama told TorrentFreak in a comment.

“The timing is really the best one possible for the Government. But was the sentencing totally independent, or did it follow instructions that suited a political agenda?”

Despite having the first conviction in the bag, the Hadopi law will go down in history as a failed experiment. However, the announced changes are certainly no win for file-sharers as the automated system takes away judicial oversight, opening up the possibility of thousands of people being issued with fines every week.

Time will tell whether that’s going to happen.

Source: France Disconnects First File-Sharer From the Internet

Vamos partir do princípio que toda a gente já viu o tal episódio 9 de “Game of Thrones”? Toda a gente já o viu. E é disso que vamos falar.

Já passou algum tempo, entretanto o episódio já foi exibido em Portugal, mas na semana passada, enquanto o Manuel e o Vítor esperavam pelo Ricardo, decidiram gravar um extra sobre o 9º episódio. Ah: O Manuel não viu o episódio. Ou seja, é o comentário do Vítor. À Rui Santos.

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Finally.

Apple's WWDC 2013 keynote saw the company announce its very latest mobile and desktop developments, but it also gave one of its executives the chance to shine. While Tim Cook and Eddy Cue appeared at home on the stage, it was Craig Federighi who won plaudits from critics with his natural (and often humorous) 30-minute demonstration of Apple's new software and designs. Federighi emerged as another of Apple's prominent frontmen following the departure of iOS VP Scott Forstall last year, when he moved from VP of Mac software to lead Apple's iOS and OS X teams. The Wall Street Journal charts Federghi's rise from his early, enterprising roots to his position as the driving force behind the release of Apple's new operating systems earlier this week, providing an interesting comparison to the man he replaced.

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Mission: Accomplished.

Yesterday evening the season finale of Game of Thrones aired on HBO and shortly thereafter the first unauthorized copies were uploaded online.

In recent weeks the hit show has been shared millions of times online, but never before have we seen this many people sharing the same file.

Within a few hours after it was released hundreds of thousands grabbed a copy of the show via The Pirate Bay and other torrent sites, breaking the old record Game of Thrones set just a few weeks ago during the premiere of the third season.

At its height the Istole tracker reported that 171,572 people where active on a single torrent, 128,686 sharing a complete copy while 42,886 were still downloading.

Data gathered by TorrentFreak shows that, within 24 hours, the season finale has been downloaded a million times. This could increase to more than five million during the weeks to come and means that unless a miracle happens, Game of Thrones will be crowned the most pirated TV-show of the year once again.

A new record

As previously revealed, Game of Thrones downloaders come from all over the world. Most downloaders come from Australia, followed by the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

Australia stands out in this list as it also has the smallest population, and this hasn’t gone unnoticed.

The Ambassador of the United States of America to Australia recently complained about this “plain theft” by Australians. However, since the local cable provider has chosen to decrease instead of increase availability next year, things are not going to change anytime soon.

In the U.S. the situation is not much better, and to a certain degree one could claim that HBO is to blame for Game of Thrones’ BitTorrent record. They want to keep access to the show “exclusive” and even Netflix wasn’t able to buy the rights no matter what they offered.

It’s clear that HBO prefers more exclusiveness over less piracy, a stance that is reflected in recent comments from HBO programming president Michael Lombardo. He sees piracy as a compliment and doesn’t believe it negatively impacts DVD sales.

The huge numbers of unauthorized downloads don’t bother the show’s makers all that much either, quite the contrary.

David Petrarca, the show’s director, noted that these unauthorized downloads actually do more good than harm. According to the director, pirates are partly responsible for the “cultural buzz” the show needs to thrive and survive.

Game of Thrones will be back next year, and if most torrent sites are still unblocked in in most parts of the world, we can expect another record to be set.

Source: Games of Thrones Season Finale Sets New Piracy Record

Craig Federighi simply didn't have the time to go through all of the features in iOS 7, so I decided to scrape some of those features from a slide.

• View PDF annotation -- in iOS, it's been impossible to view annotations that someone has added to a PDF. It appears that feature is finally coming to iOS 7, and that will bring even more PDF power to our apps.
• Enterprise single sign-on -- Not sure how this is going to be implemented, but providing a way for enterprise users to use one sign on for all of the sites that they need to work with on a daily basis is huge. This resolves the issue of needing to log into multiple apps on an enterprise network.
• Turn-by-turn walking directions -- Finally, what we have in Google Maps, available for iOS Maps.
• Do Not Track option in Safari -- I believe this is similar to Chrome's "incognito windows."
• Improved Mail search -- I currently find searching iOS mail to be frustrating, and when I really need to look up an old email, I resort to OS X. I can only hope that iOS Mail search is improved to that level.
• Night mode for Maps -- No more glaring screen when using Maps at night.
• WiFi HotSpot 2.0 -- Not sure what the improvements are going to be, but it's interesting to see that "Personal Hotspot" is getting an update.
• FaceTime Audio -- the ability to do FaceTime using only audio -- this could be helpful for doing podcasts.
• App Store Volume Purchase -- This may be a way for developers or Apple to offer volume purchase rates to schools, perhaps with "promo codes" that work for a large number of users.
• Scan to acquire Passbook passes -- At a store? Want to get a Passbook pass for a discount coupon? Just scan a code to have it automatically loaded into Passbook.

We'll continue Zaprudering the slides as time goes by here today. There's a lot of information to digest!

Continue reading Some other cool (and relatively unmentioned) iOS 7 features

Some other cool (and relatively unmentioned) iOS 7 features originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 10 Jun 2013 16:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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WWDC 2013 Wallpaper (Download Here)

Phlat.

After much preparation the MPAA and RIAA teamed up with U.S. Internet providers this February to launch their so-called “six strikes” anti-piracy notification system.

AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Verizon are all on board but countless other ISPs either weren’t asked to join or decided not to participate in the project.

Needless to say, customers of ISPs such as Charter, CenturyLink and Cox have been comfortable that the entertainment companies won’t be sending warnings to them. Today they will have to think again.

It is not unusual for customers of any ISP to receive copyright infringement notices via email, in fact they are legally obliged to forward them at rightsholders’ request. However, in recent weeks there have been reports of customers of non-participating ISPs receiving DMCA notices with a special twist.

“Your ISP has forwarded you this notice. This is not spam. Your ISP account has been used to download, upload or offer for upload copyrighted content in a manner that infringes on the rights of the copyright owner. Your ISP service could be suspended if this matter is not resolved. You could be liable for up to $150,000 per infringement in civil penalties,” the notices begin.

What follows next is not a “strike”, but an offer of cash settlement to make any nasty legal proceedings go away.

“If you click on the link below and login to the Rightscorp, Inc. automated settlement system, for $20 per infringement, you will receive a legal release from the copyright owner,” the notice adds.

TorrentFreak has reported on Rightscorp’s activities before 1, 2. The company is not operating a scam, even if some people do find their activities unsavory.

However, what really piqued our interest are claims that Warner Bros., a company involved in the six-strikes campaign, are also working with Rightscorp on these cash settlement schemes. So we asked the studio if the reports are true.

“Yes. Warner Bros. is working with Digital Rights Corp on a test ISP/subscriber notification program to many ISPs that are not participating in the Copyright Alert System,” a Warner spokesman told TorrentFreak.

Although not mentioned specifically, the company said that the warnings being sent by Digital Rights Corp are for content that is already available through various authorized channels.

“The notices inform consumers that our content is readily available legitimately through multiple channels, including electronic sell through and video-on-demand services,” Warner add.

“The notices give consumers an opportunity to settle the identified infringement for a very nominal sum of $20 per title infringed–not as a measure of damage, but as a concrete reminder that our content has value and as a discouragement of future unauthorized activity.”

The warnings and demands for settlement are being tagged onto the end of regular DMCA notices and forwarded by ISPs. What this means is that although Warner and Rights Corp are managing to get a message to an account holder, they have absolutely no idea who that alleged infringer is. This means that if the account holder refuses to pay, it’s almost certain that no further action will be taken.

Some people, however, do pay. This post on Reddit details a case where an account holder paid Rights Corp $20.00 for an infringement of Warner copyrights but discovered that the matter was far from over.

After the initial payment, Rights Corp matched the notified (and settled) infringement with two others already on file. Since the guy had filled in his phone number, the company then called him up and asked for another $40.00 to clear his file.

TorrentFreak has discovered a few instances of these cash settlement demands, including the one above, which were sent by Charter Communications. It’s worth noting that while Warner stood by their actions and gave a statement, Charter failed to respond to multiple emails requesting comment.

Have you received a Rights Corp notice? If so, please forward them to the usual address in complete confidence.

Source: Warner Bros: We’re Fining File-Sharers Who Use Non Six-Strike ISPs

BBC One has joined with The Jim Henson Company for That Puppet Game Show, a new comedy game series that has a few things in common with Henson’s original Muppet Show. The series is currently shooting and will occupy a primetime slot on Saturday nights beginning later this year. Each week, two celebrity guests – the only humans on the program – will compete head-to-head in a group of “madcap” games as they vie to win £10,000 for charity. Like The Muppet Show, which incorporated behind-the-scenes shenanigans along with the actual onstage goings-on, That Puppet Game Show will also feature a backstage sitcom. The new characters created for the program include Mancie the producer and show exec Udders McGhee. The host, Dougie Colon (above, and pronounced Cologne), bears a resemblance to Sesame Street character Guy Smiley, who was created and performed by the late Jim Henson. That Puppet Game Show is a co-production between BBC In-House Entertainment and The Jim Henson Company. The executive producers are Derek McLean and Brian Henson.

nevver:

The size of a giant iPhone screen if you combined all the iPhone screens ever sold, Stupid Calculations

“Except for a single very powerful radio emission aimed at Jupiter the four-million year old black monolith has remained completely inert. Its origin and purpose are still a total mystery.”