More News On The Evil Dead Remake

Here’s a little bit of movement on that remake of The Evil Dead that Panic Attack director Fede Alvarez will oversee. The movie is based on Sam Raimi‘s fan-favorite original 1981 film, with a script Alvarez co-wrote with Rodo Sayagues before Diablo Cody did a rewrite.

Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions and FilmDistrict have partnered with Sam Raimi’s Ghost House Pictures to make a big deal to distribute the movie, with the bottom line being that Sony Pictures will distribute The Evil Dead in many countries, including the US.

Variety has the new, saying that the film is set to shoot in 2012. Longtime Raimi producing partner Robert Tapert said,

For 30 years, Sam, Bruce and I have been looking for the right home where we could return the deadites to the big screen. Amy Pascal and Jeff Blake at Sony and Peter Schlessel at FilmDistrict have always been incredible partners who share our passion for great storytelling as well as our obsession for scaring the pants off the audience. Together, we are looking forward to terrorizing a whole new generation.

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Giant, HUGE LAN Party In Sweden

What does a legion of Swedish LAN party-goers and a 120Gbps internet connection look like? Something like this. Dreamhack, officially (by Guinness Book of Records, no less) the world’s largest LAN party, offered up all sorts of gaming thrills along the lines of StarCraft II and Counter-Strike to the 12,000 attendees.

It looks like the air was thick with excitement, perspiration — and hopefully a little air freshener.

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Multi-Touch Glass Keyboard & Mouse

When in doubt, strip out the moving parts and see what you wind up with. This is the idea inventor Jason Giddings is following as he turns to Kickstarter to help fund the prototype creation for a glass keyboard and mouse, both sporting multitouch functionality.

The design uses the same biometric systems that currently capture fingerprints on assorted trackpads and keyboards, and uses a technique known as Frustrated Total Internal Reflection — which incorporates a series of LEDs on the bottom of a device — to bounce infrared light beams around the inside of the glass.

This process is interrupted when a finger touches the glass, wherein a simple embedded camera captures the event, processes where the keystroke, mouse click or gesture took place and relays the signal to the computer.

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Ham Radio Licenses In The U.S. Top 700,000,

New Image From ‘John Carter’ Shows Giant White Ape

The summer preview issue of Entertainment Weekly has more gifts. Last night it was the first new pics from Ridley Scott’s Prometheus that we’ve seen in months. Now it is a new image from Andrew Stanton‘s John Carter, which shows Taylor Kitsch as the title character facing off against off one of the film’s six-limbed, giant-toothed beasts. Check it out in full below.

So, yeah, it’s a little bit like something out of the Star Wars prequels — I could see a few lightsaber-wielding Jedi facing down that thing. We haven’t seen much at all from this movie, and while the trailer left some people pretty cold, I think this is just the beginning of the wave of alien creatures that are going to be revealed from the film. Read more

RIP Anne McCaffrey

Groundbreaking fantasy author Anne McCaffrey has passed away of a stroke on Monday, November 21, 2011 at her home in Ireland.  McCaffrey is best known for the Dragonriders of Pernuniverse.  She authored or co-authored nearly 100 books, with a lot of firsts as a writer:

First woman to win a Hugo Award (1968, for “Weyr Search”)

First woman to win a Nebula Award (1969, for “Dragonrider”)

First with a science fiction title on the New York Times Bestseller List (1978, The White Dragon)

McCaffrey was recognized as one of the best ever for her impressive career:

Named Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America (2005)

Joined Science Fiction Hall of Fame (June 2006)

The Pern universe was introduced in the award winning short story, “Weyr Search” in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, in 1967.  “Weyr Search,  the novella “Dragonrider,” and a third story were published as the first Pern novel, Dragonflight, in 1968.  The initialDragonrider trilogy was not completed until 1976.  McCaffrey began collaborating with her son Todd McCaffrey since 2003.

Fantasy artist Michael Whelan was strongly associated with McCaffrey due to the numerous covers he did for her books.  Eclipse published three graphic novels based on Dragonflight in 1991.  Mayfair Games produced a Dragonriders of Pern boardgame in 1983.

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Bethesda Ships 7 Million Copies Of Skyrim

Bethesda has shipped 7 million copies of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, garnering approximately $450 million in global sales, the publisher said Wednesday.

Over 280,000 players simultaneously accessed the PC version of Skyrim during its first 24 hours of availability on digital distribution platform Steam, setting a new record for the most concurrent players on the service, Bethesda added.

The open-world role-playing game has been lauded by critics since its release last Friday. It currently holds a 96 on review aggregating site Metacritic.

Wired.com gave Skyrim a perfect score in our review last week.

‘Warriors of Mars’ from Dynamite Entertainment

Dynamite Entertainment will launch its next miniseries set in the world of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Princess of Mars, Warriors of Mars, in February. 

The series will introduce a new character, Lt. Gullivar Jones, to the story, which will be written by Robert Napton, drawn by Jack Jadson, with covers by Joe Jusko.

Jones originated in Gullivar of Mars, a 1905 novel by Edwin Lester Arnold.  Princess of Mars began serialization in All-Story Magazine in 1912, with a number of similarities to Arnold’s novel, including lead characters that are southern U.S. solders that arrive on Mars and fall in love with Martian princesses. 

Gullivar was more hapless and less heroic than Burroughs’ John Carter.  Now the two characters will appear in the same story.

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HTC Edge – A Quad-Core Smartphone

HTC Edge may be the first quad-core smartphone to market originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 07 Nov 2011 20:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Commodore USA’s C64x Extreme: Quad Core Coming December 2011

Everyone old enough remembers Commodore 64. For many, it was their first computer. It was among the first computers aimed for home use and its unique form factor was unforgettable. Simply put, Commodore 64 had everything inside a keyboard-like chassis. The original Commodore 64 was made by Commodore International, which defuncted in 1994. Last year, a company called Commodore USA bought branding rights for Commodore brand.

Commodore USA launched C64x Ultimate in 2010, which was a direct copy of the classical Commodore 64 with new internals. It featured a dual core Atom CPU and NVIDIA Ion 2 graphics, so not exactly top-notch hardware, considering that it was priced at $999. The company has now announced C64x Extreme with Core i7-2720QM. The complete specs are below.

Commodore C64x Extreme Specifications
Processor	Intel Core i7-2720QM (4/8, 2.2GHz, 6MB)
Chipset	Intel HM67
Graphics	Intel HD 3000
Memory	8GB DDR3
Storage	2TB 7200rpm hard drive
Ports	2x USB 3.0, 4x USB 2.0, LAN, HDMI, DVI, VGA, PS/2, audio-in, audio-out, mic
OS	Mint 11
Price	$1499

Due to the price, C64x will most likely attract mainly Commodore enthusiasts. There isn’t even a discrete GPU or Windows included. C64x comes with pre-installed Mint 11, which is a Linux distribution. There is a Linux based Commodore Vision OS coming from Commodore USA later on, though, for ultimate retro experience.

C64x uses regular mini-ITX motherboards and Commodore USA also sells a barebone model without any innards priced at $349. Not cheap, but it might be a good alternative in case you are not pleased with the configurations provided by Commodore USA. However, the form factor limits your components a lot so fitting a desktop CPU and GPU without modding is likely impossible.

C64x Extreme will start shipping on December 15th and can be ordered from Commdore USA’s website.

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