Adult Swim first teamed up with the acclaimed Santos Party House earlier this year and treated fans to a live show hosted by “Delocated!” star and creator Jon Glaser, with music from Andrew W.K. and Cheeseburger. The response was huge, so Adult Swim and Santos Party House are working together again to give fans more of what they want all summer long. Up-to-date information on the Adult Swim Presents Summer at Santos Series can be found at www.adultswimpresents.com.

All six shows of Adult Swim Presents Summer at Santos Series will occur every other Thursday night, beginning on June 11 at the Santos Party House located at 96 LaFayette St. in New York City. Doors open at 7 p.m.; the show starts at 7:30 p.m. All shows are free and open to the public, ages 18 and up.

Current line-up for Adult Swim Presents Summer at Santos Series*:

June 11 – Andrew W.K.

Opening sets by: Cherie Lily, Aleister X, Bad Brilliance & Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head

June 25 – Jon Glaser (”Delocated!”)

With The Woggles, Cheeseburger, A.C. Newman and masked burlesque dancers, The Pontani Sisters

July 9 – Brendon Small (”Metalocalypse”)

With Paul Green’s School of Rock

July 30 – Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim (”Tim and Eric Awesome Show,” “Great Job! “)

With DJ Douggpound, Gildon Works, The Party Animals and Beat Jams

August 6 – Dave Willis (”Aqua Teen Hunger Force” and “Squidbillies”)

With special guests

August 20 – Christy Karacas (”Superjail!”)

Featuring a night of local New York bands

*Line-up subject to change

Drawing on the childhood traditions of “Power Rangers” and the recent melodrama that is the ‘dark’ retellings of happier shows, they have brought together classic mecha with broken-down failures trying to prove themselves.

Executive producers Seth Green, Tom Root and Matthew Senreich will pool together past voice talents and use them in the new series. Green will voice the show’s villain, along with voice talents from Breckin Meyer, Rachael Leigh Cook, Dan Milano, and Eden Espinosa.

At the top of the writing heap will be lead writer, Tom Root, accompanied by the epic comic book chops of Geoff Johns (”Superman: Secret Origin” #1-6, “The Flash: Rebirth” #1-5 ) of DC Comics and veteran “Robot Chicken” writer Zeb Wells (”Civil War: Young Avengers/Runaways” #1-4, “Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man” #13-16) of Marvel Comics.

The story takes place one hundred years in the future. Saturn’s moon Titan is defended by Titan Force Five, an elite squadron of young, brash pilots whose spaceships combine to form the giant robot Titan Maximum. As the series opens, the team has been disbanded due to budget cuts, but must hastily reassemble when a former team member turns rogue and tries to conquer the solar system with an assault of giant monsters. Now, the fate of humanity rests in the hands of a team of dysfunctional misfits commanding a rust-bucket robot.

Score one Adult Swim: you’ve got me interested.

Created, written and directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, “The Office” is about the day-to-day lives of office employees in the Slough, Bershire branch of the fictitious Wernham Hogg Paper Company. The main character in the series, David Brent, as played by Gervais, is now firmly established as one of the great creations of comedy — and one familiar to office workers everywhere. As regional manager of the company, Brent fancies himself as a great team leader using humor to win the loyalty of his staff. In reality, he is belittling, smug, sexist, insensitive, patronizing and unthinkingly offensive. He tells crude jokes and talks in cliches and only gets away with it because his staff feels obliged to humor him. His employees are stuck in mundane, dead-end jobs, surrounded by irritating colleagues and engaged in bitter feuds over the most trivial things. Filmed as a fly-on-the-wall documentary, “The Office” is working life at its worst. Get ready for ostrich costumes and copy-machine rofl-copters.

In case you can’t wait, “The Office” Seasons One and Two (BBC edition) are already available for purchase at most video stores, online and off.

Along with “The Office,” Adult Swim also recently purchased “The Mighty Boosh” from our entertaining neighbors across the pond, BBC Worldwide. “The Mighty Boosh” is a stoner’s entertainment series, but still very entertaining and funny when not high.

Trying to pin-down the core of a show like “The Mighty Boosh”, is like trying to capture wet bar of soap. The show revolves primarily around Howard (Julian Barratt) and Vince (Noel Fielding), along with their friends Naboo the Enigma, mystical shaman and pot dealer, and Bolo the gorilla, as they go on various surreal journeys. Recently in the series, (Season three had started in November 2007) the show was still set in Dalston, but this time has the foursome working in their shop called the Nabootique. Their adventures and outings in the third series were more toned down than the previous two series’, and they focused more on the involvement of new characters (e.g. Sammy the Crab, or Lester Corncrake etc) than just the two of them ‘journeying through time and space’.

With the original TV format being PAL, the conversion was delayed for Americans to have easy (legal) access to the series. But with rising popularity, “The Mighty Boosh” is coming to the US in standard North American DVD format (NTSC).

Adult Swim is owned by Turner Brodcasting System Incoporated. Which itself is a company owned by Time Warner. Adult Swim airs nightly around 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. BBC Worldwide is a subsidiary of the UK Britsh Brodcasting Corporation. The BBC has a US channel known as BBC America.

Fancast has always provided VOD, over 3,000 film and TV titles are currently available, with pricing starting from $3.99 for 24-hour film rentals, $9.99 for film purchases, and $1.99 for TV shows.The difference being, with it’s recent push in both the hardware and now content, it’s stands a chance against the likes of Hulu.com and Veoh.com, among other video sites, when it begins streaming it for free of charge. Available only to those whom already have an cable subscription with them.

While no specifics were mentioned (When will I be able to watch any show from any cable network at any time?), and the issue of recent bandwidth usage caps wasn’t addressed, the most we can be sure of is Comcast’s cautious steps into the wild west of the digital realm. With a complex system of how to pay for all the content it’s going to provide, subscribers to Comcast should look forward to milking this deal before it will surely become a paid-for-service entirely. Who needs Blockbuster or Netflix when you got this?

Stuart Snyder, President and COO of Turner Broadcasting Animation and Young Adults and Kids Media Division, said in a press release “[Cartoon Network] built tremendous momentum over the last year, both on air and through our thriving digital businesses, so we’re thrilled to introduce new content that our audience cannot find anywhere else. Today marks the next big step forward in an evolution that is helping us reach our goal of becoming a dominant youth culture brand.”

John O’Hara, Executive VP and GM of Marketing has stated that he stands by the current aging form of advertising in their shows. While recent reports have them climbing personal charts, Nielson has them inching barely a smidgen of success with their “Star Wars: Clone Wars” among recent cable ratings. Cartoon Network has a lot to do to start making the impact they’re looking for in a demographic as malleable, but fickle, as children. So with new “diverse” programming lined up they expect to finally move in a new direction, hopefully toward doing some damage to the children’s power house that is Nickelodeon.

One volley includes a team-up (no pun intended) between Cartoon Network and the NBA. Boston Celtic’s guard Eddie House and his 7 year old son, Jaelen, will be featured in a ‘lifestyle’ series (read:reality show) of their own titled My Dad’s a Pro. It’s a prototype for future merging of shows involving the CN and the NBA brand.

Hot on the heels of “Total Drama Island” comes its successor, “Total Drama Action.” True to reality TV shows, “Total Drama Action” has 14 contestants facing kid-friendly challenges on an abandoned film studio back-lot, all inspired by movies.

From Cake Distribution and Fresh Animation, “Stoked,” is about surfers and their lives. Other reality series in production are “The Outsiders,” “Survive This,” “Destroy Build Destroy,” “Head Rush,” “Dude What Would Happen” and “Bobb’e Says.”

Another attempt is the original movie line up, starting with well established, “Ben Ten: Alien Swarm” and “Scooby Doo, The Mystery Begins!.”

Cartoon Network then takes a chance with a personal favorite “Firebreather” and “Tiger’s Apprentice.” Creator Phil Hester says of “Firebreather” going to Cartoon Network, “we’ve known about it for a while, and there’s actual work being done on it. We’ve seen a treatment of the screenplay so things are moving along. It’s more than just an initial pickup.

“Since it’s two hours,” Hester continues, “it’ll expand on [the mini-series] and dig deeper into certain aspects of it. It will expand certain characters that we introduce in our comic, but don’t really get into. It will expand on the back story.”

To provide more of whats been at the forefront, the Ben Ten franchise returns for “Ben Ten: Evolutions.” “The Mysterious Misadventures of Flapjack” and “Batman: The Brave and the Bold” also make a return for another season of proven entertainment.

On the scripted-live action side of things, “Unnatural History” and “Prepped” pilots will try their hand at entertaining the young adult crowd.

Blast readers would do well to keep an eye on “Firebreather.” We all know Adult Swim is lacking lately, and this could be the next big thing.

Cartoon Network is owned by Time Warner.

It would have been appropriate had our publication been a scholarly review of cultural and sociological studies. But alas, it’s BLAST! So I cut it down to the list to eight of the most memorable, and (if forgotten) important moments.

While I could list “Christmas” this, or “New Years” that; I’m not as festive for the season as most people are. But I do appreciate a look-back to what got us where we are in the first place. So on to the list and a brief explanation as to why these events were important:

8. The Beijing Olympics
You saw it on TV, or were one of the lucky ones to have been there. A vast majority of the global world, not the American world, tuned in to watch and support their respective country. You should find it memorable that a Communist Country opened it’s doors to the world and hosted such a prestigious event. With obvious controversy leading up to, during and follow the event, you have to admit that China handled such a momentous event with flying colors. No pun intended. Bringing together such diverse groups of people is truly one for the record books. Many of which were written that week. 

7. The Phoenix lands on Mars
Not exactly covered like the Olympics, the martian landing of the Phoenix on the Northern polar ice cap on mars is just as important, if not just as costly. ”Radio signals received at 4:53:44 p.m. Pacific Time (7:53:44 p.m. Eastern Time) confirmed the Phoenix Mars Lander had survived its difficult final descent and touchdown 15 minutes earlier. The signals took that long to travel from Mars to Earth at the speed of light,” NASA officials stated earlier in the year. Most don’t realize the true rocket science that goes into learning about our planetary history. So a worldwide effort of this magnitude rivals that of the Olympics, in that NASA is sending it’s athletes into space.

6. Bank Bailout
Many saw it coming, many even said it was already happening. But everyone can agree, it’s the most talked about debacle for Americans. Forget the billion dollar Hubble debacle, we had ourselves a far-reaching and horribly understated crisis of our foundations in finances. If we don’t learn how to control our credit, we end up licking wounds of debt and disarray. And if that wasn’t enough to mortally wound the triumph that was our mixed economy, we decided that we needed to bail out our banks. I guess we understood the hardships banks would face in a couple of months; compared to our lifetime of debt. I’m just glad our bailout money bought them a nice day at the spa. All 700 billion dollars of it.

Minx started her podcast, Polyamory Weekly, in March 2005. She said it has been about “a cautionary tale; [a] tell-the-next-guy-what-killed-you kind of thing,” where she can be less preachy and more verbal exhibitionist, providing explanatory and narrative content on her show using previous experiences she has had as a basis to answer her listeners’ questions.

One of Minx’s main rules about hosting the show is that she doesn’t “want to give anyone advice.” She clearly states that over and over again, show after show. What she does instead, is provide a personal experience about how she dealt with a particular issue.

Polyamory is a term used to describe nonmonogamy, or having more than one life partner. Polyamory Weekly, now with over 170 episodes, has come up for new and different definitions for “polyamory” almost every week – whether it represents the standing of a relationship at a time or describes a lifestyle.

Minx had to learn the basics of syndicated podcasting as quickly as she was putting out episodes. With things like show notes, provided on the “Polyamory Weekly: LiveJournal” and on-air apologies for late episodes or technical errors, Minx tries to make the production of her podcast as open to the public as she can.

While she has managed to weed out these types of problems now, Minx said there were more than a few times she wanted to call it quits.

“About every other week [I was ready to quit],” she said. “Or every time I look at my email inbox in despair. I suppose it’s more that I wish I could do PolyWeekly full-time and really give it the time and energy it deserves. I never feel like the show is good enough.”

Armed with, “Many voices are more powerful than one,” a quote from the authors of the Cluetrain Manifesto, Polyamory Weekly has become less about Cunning Minx and more about the Poly community that listens to her show. Some listeners aren’t even Poly themselves, or even pan/bisexual either.

One of the appeals of the show is its all-inclusive factor: love, which is honored in the PW tagline, “It’s not all about the sex.” With such a blatant exclusion on its own genre, Polyamory Weekly survives, not on the smut, but on the truth.

“A good percentage of my life and relationships, both mono and poly, have been about sex. About wonderful, kinky, sweaty, mind-blowing sex. And the other 80 percent of the time, they were about communication, laundry, text messages, lunch plans and Google calendar,” Minx said.

Already on episode 170, Polyamory Weekly is gaining momentum with the honest, brutal truth about loving more than one person at the same time.

Getting the word out about the show is the community of listeners themselves. In fact, Polyamory Weekly listeners are keeping the show running as much as Minx herself.

“Without [them] the show simply couldn’t have gone on this long,” Minx said,

With not one life-threatening email to date, Cunning Minx continues to interview notable Poly people like, Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy, the authors of the polyamory bible, “The Ethical Slut,” as well as, the always well-spoken Michelle Bellanger, and high profile Tristan Taormino, author of “Opening Up”, all the while maintaining grounded in everyday poly relationships by adding a new segment dedicated just to her listeners to provide feedback on the previous week’s episodes.

While emails are always welcome, audio-mail is much preferred, and encouraged, Minx is always giving a voice to her listeners. Without focusing on sex, Polyamory Weekly is more than a public airing of dirty laundry and tasty tidbits of self-help polyamory.

Minx has expressed that the show is less a flashy audio one-night-stand, and more “a personal instrument of public change.”

The “customer-defined” usage limit is 250GB a month. Comcast says it’s “an extremely large amount of data, much more than a typical residential customer uses on a monthly basis.”

They include in their Terms of Service that this roughly constitutes: 
 
* Send more than 50 million plain text emails (at 5 KB/email); 
* Download 62,500 songs (at 4 MB/song); or 
* Download 125 standard definition movies (at 2 GB/movie). 
 
Comcast also released some of their current customer usage data, which puts the average residential Internet traffic downloads at 2-3 GB a month.

You should notice some key word usage in the statement, that will be coming as a bill stuffer, as harmless and not worthy of another glance. “Managing the network is essential as Comcast works to promote the use and enjoyment of the Internet by all of its customers. The company uses reasonable network management practices that are consistent with industry standards. Comcast tries to use tools and technologies that are minimally intrusive and, in its independent judgment guided by industry experience, among the best in class.”

The italics are mine. With such mitigating word usage, Comcast is trying to drive the point to it’s docile customers that it’s doing this for your good, and the good of the network. 
 
To all the Comcast customers who just check their email, you won’t be reading this unless it’s forwarded, and you won’t care about the limit.

To the people who read news and emails and visit Myspace or Facebook, you might think about it for a second, but disregard it.

For the users who email, social network, game online and download, a notice about this usage cap will hold more weight.

Finally, there’s the Comcast customers whom utilize the Internet more efficiently and can do all of the activities above while running a P2P agent in the background. These users know exactly what it means to them.

So why should anyone who doesn’t live on the Internet care? The speed of technological advancement dictates that pretty soon, this “massive” usage cap will become a noose we so quickly placed on ourselves. With the advent of not only high-definition video on demand, and digital downloads, there are a score of other programs that use the bandwidth while people just check their email, or just check their networking sites.

Even websites have become more content rich. Heavy text news sites have become a multi-media room. What 56K once could handle is a neanderthal-like usage now with higher speeds becoming standard. As Internet speeds rise, and our daily lives connect more to the Internet, the usage cap will seem more and more stringent. 
 
“Though the proposed cap is relatively high, it will increasingly ensnare more users as technology continues its natural progression,” said Free Press Research Director S. Derek Turner. 
 
For those Blast Magazine readers live on the Internet and are worried about what would happen if you crossed the line, don’t worry. “As part of our pre-existing policy, we will continue to contact the top users of our high-speed Internet service and ask them to curb their usage.”

“If a customer uses more than 250GB and is one of the top users of our service, he or she may be contacted by Comcast to notify them of excessive use. At that time, we’ll tell them exactly how much data per month they had used. We know from experience the vast majority of customers we ask to curb usage do so voluntarily.”

For now anyway, although the Internet is abuzz with future network shutdowns and or including excessive bandwidth usage fines, all of this is on top of the confirmed diurnal network bandwidth-throttling practices that Comcast got in trouble for.
 
For the non-Comcast customer, all this should be a red flag. Comcast clearly states in their ToS that, “The need to engage in network management is not limited to Comcast. In fact, all large Internet service providers manage their networks. Many of them use the same or similar tools that Comcast does.” Comcast is leading Internet service provider, so it’s only rational to expect other major ISPs to follow suit, especially if they see any Comcast practices as a “success”.

Enjoy the gallows.

What the National Geographic Channel set out to do instead, is inform. With “Spore’s” highly anticipated release September 7, the National Geographic Channel will be releasing a companion documentary called, “How to Build a Better Being.” Which delves deeper into the development of the game’s core mechanics and what they have to do with genetic research and bioengineering.

Will Wright has revolutionized the gaming world once again. A man with big ideas, and in partnership with Electronic Arts, they have made a galaxy-wide impact with his newest multi-genre, massive, single-player game. Users are put forth to evolve their own creature from its origins as a single-celled organism to a space faring civilization, with plenty of room for evolution in between.

“One of my goals for this whole thing has been to give somebody an awe-inspiring global view of reality, almost like a drug-induced epiphany with a computer. The kind of, ‘Oh, man, what if we were a molecule inside of a galaxy?’ type thing,” Will Wright said, explaining the scope of Spore.

A precursor to the full game came out this summer called “Spore: Creature Creator,” which allowed users to custom create a simulated organism and raise it to their every unique specification. Which in turned spawned some of the weirdest, most original creatures ever to grace the Internet, and that’s saying something.

User-created videos began to spring up on video social-networks like YouTube. Some creations looked like dogs and cats, yet others had no discernible mouth or even head. In some cases, the creator of the creature was so skilled as to create accurate representations of a specific piece of male anatomy.

The Creature Creator prompted a backlash from a small group of “militant atheists,” and even garnered a full report pm CNN: “Scrolling through the database — past the three-legged sea horse, past the seven-eyed wildebeest and the half-motorcycle-half-pig — revealed something many users didn’t expect. Buried among the more wholesome attempts were two-legged dancing testicles, a ‘giant breast monster’ and a four-legged ‘phallic fornication machine,’ for starters.”

Yet beyond all the simple menus, cute creations, and potential for graphic beast on beast pornography, lies an even deeper story. The framework for a game about creation, life and ultimately playing host to an entire civilization might seem daunting, but Wright and his team had it all covered. Speaking to ZDNet Asia, he expanded on the foundation of Spore. “A lot of it was science, looking at science as a whole, and around the question of Astrobiology and SETI, and how we turned that into an interesting game experience where you look at the entire universe from a very different perspective.”

The National Geographic Channel then took that grand premise and made a documentary focusing more on the technological/biological side of the game. With the motto of “Think Again,” NGC interviewed Will Wright and leading biology scientists in exploring how genetically, we’re all connected.

Scheduled to appear on September 9, at 10 p.m., “How to Build a Better Bring” was written and directed by Ron Bowan, who produced and directed “National Geographic Explorer” episodes, “Python” and “Violent Volcano,” and is Executive Produced by Howard Swartz. The video will be released stand-alone, or it can be purchased with the “Spore: Galactic Edition.”

“It’s kind of a biologist’s dream to be able to design your own animal,” says marine biologist and National Geographic Emerging Explorer Tierney Thys, “to pick and choose the traits of animal groups that you most enjoy … Oh my gosh, I love this.”

The direct to DVD and Blu-ray feature is directed by series veteran, Martin Wood. Written by Brad Wright and Johnathan Glassner, developers and creators of the TV series, this movie is sure to please hardcore fans. The budget is clearly much bigger this time around. Everything from the back-from-the-past costumes, the CGI, and even the on-location filming looked far more detailed, expansive, and expensive than even the previous movie.

The movie is not advised to be seen by the unconverted. It is not only rich with time paradoxes and alien technology dialogue, but it’s also deep in Stargate universe mythology and SG-1 history. New people will get lost, and fans of the show will find their trivia knowledge absolutely put to the test. What you thought you knew about Stargate will need to be re-visited or you will have questions.

So far, fan reviews have given it praise. That being said, there are always the fans who will see this and ask ‘what the hell?’ While the movie clocks in at an average length of 1 hour and thirty minutes, it will seem short. Not rushed, but will seem as if more could of been included to show what happened than the explanations that were verbally given. Stargate is known for this sort of scripting, where days pass by and an explanation for an obvious gap in visuals is just spoken of as a cheap way out of actually filming something.

This movie will get confusing, as it is with all time-travel stories, logic will need to take a step outside. In Stargate:Continuum, Ba’al is the last of the Gou’ld to be sentenced to death in the new Tok’ra headquarters. Interesting to note that Tok’ra are nomads, but have finally chosen to settle. The well internet leaked appearance of Jack O’Neill comes early, and doesn’t disappoint as the one true fulcrum of the SG-1. The plot begins to take off when the SG-1 team members begin to disappear one by one.

The featured characters turn out to be Colonel Mitchell, Daniel Jackson, and Major Samantha Carter. They escape the disappearing phenomenon by jumping into the stargate. They find themselves not back home inside the SGC, but instead, inside a frozen boat, far away. What makes this movie worth while, as the remaining SG-1 team figures out away to foil Ba’al’s plans, are the numerous cameos by past Goa’aulds. This movie is truly meant for the Goa’auld lover out there.

One of the returning characters that should be reveled, specifically for Blast readers is the appearance by Don S. Davis, as General Hammond. Davis, who died this summer, gives an all too familiar performance as the well-loved authority figured who’s so partial to SG-1. This time it comes with a twist, but he has optimal screen time to do him final a Stargate farewell. Which is more that I can say for Apophis. Again.

While not wholly loved by the Stargate community, Beau Bridges gives a stellar monologue that finally does justice to what we all thought of about the alternate realities. He really gives voice to the ‘alternate universe’ perspective of why they wouldn’t just allow another SG-1 copies to run the place just so they can get back to their own time and/or space. With this movie we even get some semblance of normalcy and real heart break toward the end.

Fans of the series will need to see this one to finally wrap-up those 10 years of adventure. SG-1 has already proven themselves legends among the stars. And now they the prove how timeless they really have become.

I’ll leave you geeks, nerds, dorks, fans with something from Brad Wright himself: “MGM has suggested we start thinking about that and start putting a story together, and that’s what we’re doing right now. But not just a movie … it seems that MGM is confident SciFi Channel or some television outlet will pick up the previously announced third series “Stargate: Universe” as well.”

Filing against Comcast, the Free Press and Public Knowledge non-profit organizations prompted the FCC into litigious action. As the battle went on in the courts, it seemed to be going in favor of the consumers. Last Thursday, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin dealt another blow in keeping with that trend.

“The commission has adopted a set of principles that protects consumer’s access to the Internet,” Martin told The Associated Press late Thursday. “We found that Comcast’s actions in this instance violated our principles.”

His word was the tipping point that consumers and organizations supporting ‘net neutrality’ needed.

Comcast has said publicly that the FCC’s policy on broadband standards is not enforceable and that the commission has “never before provided any guidance on what it means by ‘reasonable network management.’” The FCC approved a policy statement in September 2005 that outlined a set of principles as a means to ensure that broadband networks are “widely deployed, open, affordable and accessible to all consumers.” Those standards have been set forth as:

• To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice
• Consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement
• Consumers are entitled to connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network
• Consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers

Other Internet Service providers argue that this kind of unclear regulation and enforcement, naturally leads them to come up with network solutions, among them ‘network bandwidth throttling’, and ‘ceasing P2P network patterns’, to manage their billion dollar hardware network traffic as they choose. This activity isn’t central to America. Bell Canada Enterprises and Rogers Communications Inc. have also reacted in much the same way as Comcast has.

FCC chairman Martin (a Republican) had strong support from the two Democrats on the commission, who are proponents of the network neutrality concept. Their two votes were enough for a majority ruling on the five-member commission. Without being dealt a fine, but a stern warning instead, the commission asked that Comcast release any information that pertains to the practices of its current mode of ‘network management’, and to divulge to its consumers on how its implementation of any future network management practices will affect them. Any new network management practices will be in use by the end of the year.

“We want to make sure the Internet stays as it is,” said Ben Scott of Free Press, earlier in the year. “Should we give more control to the network owners, who can then decide which Web sites load quickly?” Scott asked. “Can they become the gatekeepers for Internet content?”

With the sounds of David Bowie and Bauhaus providing the soundtrack for her adolescent romps through Canadian forests, it was clear a future of tours and gigs was where Sharma was headed. But as her teenage years began, a love of acting began to manifest itself. 

“I was going through life after graduating from high school trying to figure out all my shit,” Sharma said. Upon graduating, she enrolled in the Emily Carr Institute of Design, inspired by the likes of Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso. In a continued youthful attempt to find her career path, she also earned a Holistic Counselor Certification from the West Coast College of Massage Therapy soon after.

It was then that Sharma decided to devote herself to the pursuit of acting as a career choice. She knew the odds were stacked against her as an Indian woman in a predominantly white industry.  

She trained at Ivana Chubbuck Acting Studio, and later the Lyric School of Acting. She acted in roles on the cult classic series “The Lone Gunmen” (2001), and “Dark Angel” (2002), along with parts in well-known series such as “The Twilight Zone” (2002) and “John Doe” (2003). Pretty soon she had secured the part of Dr. Harden on the series “Smallville” (2006).

Her auditions and unique career choices got her noticed, because soon she was filming on the sets of the major motion pictures “The Core” (2003), and “The Chronicles of Riddick” (2004), then on Showtime’s “The L Word (2004). Finally, she landed her a role on the award-winning show “Battlestar Galactica” (2006).

“Battlestar Galactica” is a re-imagining of the original 1978 television series of the same name. It follows the last remaining human refugees who fled their home world after a nuclear disaster.

On the show, Sharma’s character Tory is an aid to the president, played by actress Mary McDonnell. In this season of the show, plot twists involving Sharma’s character have garnered mixed reactions from fans.

Sharma said she often finds herself defending her character’s actions, after she was revealed to be a Cylon, part of the race of robots and human-looking cyborgs who launched the apocalyptic nuclear attack. In the story, the Cylons’ ultimate goal is to pursue the last of humanity and wipe them out.

“I think even Tory the Cylon is still human,” she said. “If you look at all the characters on the show, they’ve been starved, hunted, homeless, dying, imprisoned and after all that, they’re still living together in space. Sometimes what is seen as evil under one circumstance, will seem the most humane thing to do in another.”

In terms of filming, Sharma said it’s Tory’s on-screen romance that cause her more stress than her character’s moral dilemmas. 

“Love scenes are extremely anxiety-filled,” she admits, “especially being half-dressed in front of the film crew. But, hopefully our hard work shows through on screen.”

The recent strike by the Writers Guild of America left shows like “Battlestar” at a stand-still. Many actors and crew members in the industry were left without work. Sharma used the break to work on other projects and to spend some time at home in Vancouver. She recalled an awkward dinner with other Battlestar Galactica cast members where no one was even sure if the show would even return.

She also began to focus more on humanitarian work. “I was lucky to grow up with such loving parents,” she said, “whom showed me how to be humble, so I can help those in need.” She supports various charities, including helping victims of 2005 Hurricane Katrina, and victims of the 2006 tsunami in Southeast Asia. She has even supported, through donations of time and money, womens’ shelters across Vancouver. In the past she has given free acting lessons to youth in Vancouver.

As Battlestar Galactica draws to its finale, Sharma is keeping herself busy with a role in “Traveling”, a film in post-production starring Jennifer Aniston and Aaron Eckhart due out in the fall. Although Sharma acknowledges an off-screen romance, when asked about a significant other she would not reveal any details. She said her significant other has kept her grounded and her newly-acquired and much larger sci-fi fan base is making her focus more intensely on the quality of her performances. 

Looking ahead, Sharma said she is taking her acting career one role at a time.

The Institute, spurred on by a CNET report showing that Comcast defended its blocking of BitTorrent P2P traffic to the FCC “as a necessary practice that is done only during periods of heavy network traffic.”

Using the well-documented diurnal pattern of most P2P network (meaning it is more active in the daytime than nighttime) the study’s tests were instead done during the evening and morning hours. The Institute wanted “to see if hosts in Comcast and Cox networks see fewer of their upstream transfers blocked during early morning or weekends (when network load is generally low) than during other times of the day.”

The study found that the cable companies lied about their regulation practices of their networks, blocking traffic no matter what time of day.

The Max Planck Institute conducted the testing between March 18 and May 15 from 8,175 unique hosts that ran its specific BitTorrent tests. Participating hosts were in 90 countries, connected through 1,224 ISPs, and ran the Glasnost testing tool. The only locations where cable ISPs blocked BitTorrent traffic to a significant extent were in the United States, with Comcast and Cox the guilty parties, along with Singapore’s Starhub.

Comcast had blocked 30-80 percent of BitTorrent uploads. Cox blocked 20-100 percent of BitTorrent uploads, except for one period at 3 a.m. where one request wasn’t blocked.

The Institutes’s report notes that “ISPs may throttle (rate-limit) BitTorrent traffic without blocking it. The results we present here are limited to hosts whose BitTorrent transfers to our servers are blocked, i.e., interrupted by RST [Reset] packets generated … along the path.”

The report also noted that only upstreams were completely severed and downloads were largely untouched. While cable ISPs were actively shutting down the upstream connections, DSL hosts were largely unaffected.

“P2P traffic doesn’t necessarily follow normal traffic flows,” Comcast said responding to the report. “[Comcast is] now working with a variety of companies including BitTorrent [to] move to a protocol-agnostic network management technique.”

The backlash has already begun. Organizations like The Open Internet Coalition have beefed up calls for so-called “network neutrality” legislation that would prohibit service providers from blocking any Internet traffic or favoring certain types of content over others.

Net Neutrality is shaping up to be one of the biggest battles of the Internet age. The problem is that many consumers are largely apathetic to what’s going on (or not) in the background.

Ghost In the Shell franchise follows an elite covert government team that fights information/technological terrorism. The original incarnation came in the form of a manga, created by Masamune Shirow. Its many adaptations have included anime movies and video games. Recent releases include: “GITS: Innocence,” “GITS: Solid State Society,” and the TV series “GITS: Stand Alone Complex.”

After heavy fighting over the rights — Sony and Universal has bids too — DreamWorks Studio ended up on top. This has been a change from the cartoonish image and low-profile movie choices of recent year.

The choice seems to be a personal one.

“Ghost in the Shell is one of my favorite stories,” Spielberg said. “It’s a genre that has arrived, and we enthusiastically welcome it to DreamWorks.”

Early fan outcry is pointing toward a dismal, disapproving, if not blatant disregard for the source material. This has been a curse when many manga or comic properties have been taken “directly-from page,” but ended up not pleasing either the hard-core fan nor attracting new fans to the franchise.

I’m very sure the film will neither garner new fans, nor take the hard-core fans to new levels. Final Fantasy: Spirits Within, as a major example. That movie was made with the Square Enix’s own movie division, Square Cinex, and yet still managed to flop in the box office.

Another icon of Japanese animation will be making it’s jump over to big screen with Akira jumping on board with Warner.

The name alone garners 20,200,000 Google hits. So when Greg Silverman, executive at Warner Bros., announced it’s acquisition of the rights to Akira a similar outcry was heard.

Akira is an epic story involving two teenagers’ lives through the dramatic genetic change of one of them into a being with super destructive power.

The original six-volume manga, written by Katsushiro Otomo, has since been made into an iconic anime movie. Though Warner Bros. states that it will take it’s material directly from the manga, not the 1988 anime.

Ruairi Robinson, who has only worked on commercials prior to this project, will be making his directorial debut. The two film deal will be penned by first time screenwriter Gary Whitta.

As with the “Ghost In The Shell” project, these are still in Pre-Production and as such, are going to be under development and anything concrete is strictly rumor. Only time and money will tell whether the right choice was made in either ventures.

Many products out there claim to enhance gameplay, but most turn out to be frivolous gimmicks. More than once, SplitFish’s tech has turned out to actually upgrade the way you play.

One of their recent pieces of gameware, recently released stateside after almost two years of availability abroad, MotionFX is a standalone motion-sensing adapter for the PS2 controller. It turns your Dualshock into a Sixaxis.

Out of the box, it’s literally a snap to set-up. The small booklet of instructions shows you how to snap it on, then turn it on. Depending on the amount of sensitivity you’d prefer, you’re able to adjust that as well.

Originally, I couldn’t believe the MotionFX’s claims. The sales people at my local gaming store weren’t familiar with it and didn’t know if it actually worked or not. No one had bought it yet. So I took it upon myself. I splurged. I spent a whole $10.

The thing that first surprised me was the fact that the adapter came with a cord. Which made sense, since this thing runs without batteries. It’s sort of a mixed blessing.

I followed the simple instruction and snapped it on. Running NASCAR 08, I clicked the main button and the blue and red lights turned on, letting me know it had calibrated itself. You can recalibrate and adjust the sensitivity by pressing a few buttons.

You are also able to select which stick you want to substitute the adapter for. By default it assigns it to the left thumb-stick. I started the race and away I went. I found that I had to adjust my degree of tilt to get the controls comfortable. From then on, it was just a matter of getting used to the motion sensing, since I’m a traditional gamer, who just sits back without much hand/body motion.

I made the investment in a second MotionFX and did some PlayStation 3/Sixaxis comparisions. One of the first differences we noticed was the cord — powering the device off the PS2 instead of a battery pack.

You’re probably going to have to adjust the motion sensitivity a few times to get used to the MotionFX, but you’re in for an experience that’s very similar to the Sixaxis, only on a PlayStation 2!

One of the real “wow” factors with this thing is that the MotionFX can be re-calibrated for a desired angle of center. One friend was holding it level, like a normal controller, while another tried holding it like a steering wheel.

The only real downside is the cord, but you’ll never have to worry about recharging or the batteries dying out. Also, when I’m in a menu, as I tilt the controller to navigate, it tends to rummage through the selections out of control. So I just level it off, and use the stick to make my selections.

Overall, I’d say SplitFish’s MotionFX is a must-buy for loyal PS2 owners looking for a new experience without a $400 upgrade. Like a phoenix, the PlayStation 2 just keeps coming back for more.

Download the manual

Overall: 4.5 out of 5 stars

The feature-length movie that all Stargate: SG-1 fans have been waiting for is here. After the grandiose ending that left the Asgard in the dust, the Ori possibly finished, and our heroes stepping through to the unknown, this chapter ties up the loose ends once-and-for-all — so don’t worry about any “To Be Continued” showing up.

The movie’s direct-to-DVD format has allowed producers Robert C. Cooper and Brad Wright, the opportunity to finish of the Ori story arc mostly the way they intended to.

The DVD also comes stuffed with special features you’ll actually want to watch. There’s everything from a “making of” featurette, to a special Comic-Con Spolight. The cover-art, alone is worth getting it legally and not from P2P networks. Having the golden artwork in your physical DVD collection can really make it seem more like a trophy, than just another movie. Plus, it’s only around $20. Trust me, you’re getting your money’s worth, if not more.

The main film has a Prelude option, which serves as a “previously on…” segment, which is worth watching if you missed a couple of Season 10 episodes. Or, if you just haven’t been watching the Season 10 DVDs lately and you want a refresher course. It highlights where we left off from the TV series, from the time of Mitchell joining the SG:1 to Adria’s ascension, and finally the acquisition of the Asgard technology in the final episode.

I applaud the extended, full orchestra main theme. Jerry Goldsmith has outdone himself again.

SPOILER WARNING

In the opening scene, we get to see the Ancients, but old, benevolent race who built the Stargate system many years ago. Then the movie cuts to Daniel Jackson uncovering an artifact.

It all feels very much like a regular Stargate episode. This time around, theres no teaser. The action quickly vamps up. There are really no introductions per-se, so anyone coming in out of the blue will not know what the hell is going on.

Tomin, who we saw in seaons 9-10, makes his appearance early on, adding to the continuity of the story arc. As a small skirmish over the newly-discovered artifact quickly turns into a surrender, we find that our heroes have again something up their sleeve.

As Mitchell, Carter, Jackson and Teal’c begin their mission after receiving vital Intel, a new appointee from the IOA, James Merek, has his own agenda.

As the problems begin to mount for our team, new avenues of truth and solutions begin to unravel and appear. Sometimes in the form of Ancients, and other times it’s Mitchell’s run-and-gun approach. Carter’s ingenuity is always helpful, especially when seven Ori motherships are alerted the Odessey’s presence.

Teal’c’s past makes a wonderful come back, in an emotionally driven dialog between him and Tomin — betraying your false gods. The stakes get even higher when a Prior arrives on Earth with an urgent message.

You will not be disappointed with the conclusion and the aftermath.

It’s too early to tell whether this will lead to more direct-to-DVD movies for SG-1 but one thing’s for sure: This movie makes true legends of the team of SG-1.

5 out of 5 stars

By the way: Due to a reporting error, we incorrectly reported that Jerry Goldsmith made the musicial score for “Stargate: The Ark of Truth,” when in fact it was Joel Goldsmith.