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DEFCON saved on 2008-10-20 12:20:25   
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Photo album to meet the characters.
In Revolution Studios’ horror/thriller The Fog there really is something out there in the dark.
In the small town of Antonio Bay, a terrifying and malevolent force hidden within a thick and deadly fog terrorizes the local residents. Shrouded by the mist is a ghastly mystery of merciless revenge, one that the town’s inhabitants would do well to unravel -- before it’s too late.
In 1871, as an eerie mist was rising over the sea, four men committed an unspeakable crime. The crew and all the passengers of a clipper ship sank to a watery grave. Their lives lost, their names forgotten, their stories remained unfinished and untold as an impenetrable fog concealed the murderers’ grisly secret for several generations.
Now the restless spirits of the dead surface, determined to reveal the past and bring this perfidious crime to light.
When Nick Castle (Tom Welling, in the role originated by Tom Atkins) captain of the charter boat captain Sea Grass and his first mate Brett Spooner (DeRay Davis) unknowingly hook their anchor on an old sea bag wedged between rocks on the ocean floor and spill its contents, they trigger a series of terrifying events that will have deadly consequences on their small island, Antonio Bay.
Artifacts from the past begin washing ashore -- an old gold hairbrush, an antique pocket watch, a gold music box -- and the vengeful spirits of their previous owners are unleashed on Antonio Bay.
Yet even before these ghostly personal effects surface, the past and present are already in conflict within the small population of Antonio Bay. The generations are divided about using the town’s limited financial resources on a statue honoring four of its heroic founding fathers -- Patrick Malone, David Williams, Norman Castle and Richard Wayne. Nick Castle, a direct descendent of one of the town’s founders would rather see the money invested in repairing the town’s dock and sea wall -- much to the displeasure of Antonio Bay’s elderly mayor, Tom Malone (Kenneth Welsh) and Kathy Williams (Sara Botsford), the town’s historian.
Elizabeth Williams (Maggie Grace) returns to Antonio Bay to visit her mother Kathy, from whom she has become estranged since Elizabeth abruptly moved away. Her ex-boyfriend Nick still cares for her -- even though she left town without telling him -- and he and Elizabeth tentatively reconnect.
In the original film version of The Fog, directed by John Carpenter, Elizabeth (Jamie Lee Curtis), is an outsider who hitches a ride into town and is caught in a nightmare not of her own making. In the updated version, Elizabeth also hitchhikes into town, but she was born and raised there, which strengthens the film’s past-meets-present theme.
Nick and Elizabeth's relationship is further complicated by Nick's dalliance with Stevie Wayne (Selma Blair, in the role created by Adrienne Barbeau), keeper of the lighthouse, which is dedicated to her great-great grandfather. Stevie is the disc jockey of the local radio station, which she also owns and broadcasts from the lighthouse. She is a single mom, who has provided Nick with more than good conversation while Elizabeth was away.
Spooner warns Nick about his infidelity, but it falls on deaf ears -- though Spooner can hardly be considered a credible advisor on the subject. No sooner does Nick head off to a secret rendezvous with Stevie than Spooner organizes a “booze cruise” on the Sea Grass. The party passengers include several beautiful women, Sean, Nick’s cousin -- and a camcorder for Spooner to tape the festivities. However, the fun and games quickly turn into gruesome horror the moment the ominous fog rolls in. Spooner is the only survivor of the havoc raised by the deadly fog.
The spirits’ revenge has begun.
At the same time as the Sea Grass partygoers are suffering their frightening demise, Elizabeth is experiencing a recurring nightmare in which she’s one of many people trapped in the burning hold of a ship. She is terrified, confused and unaware of the dream’s significance. Later, when the town’s eccentric beachcomber hands Elizabeth an antique pocket watch he found buried in seaweed on the shore, it suddenly starts ticking again -- the first sign of Elizabeth’s connection with the town’s ghostly past.
While Elizabeth struggles with her past and her future, Stevie is very much rooted in the present. Slightly older and wiser, Stevie’s response to Elizabeth’s sudden return from New York -- somewhere between disinterest and bemusement -- illustrates how at ease Stevie is with herself and her place in the world.
Stevie’s otherwise calm demeanor is seriously challenged when things at the lighthouse go horribly awry. First the KAB airwaves are taken over by the sound of a music box, which plays over the screams of the dying passengers we saw aboard the clipper ship. Then the antique hairbrush her son Andy found on the beach bursts into flames and leaves behind a hallmark identical to the one Elizabeth found on the back of the gold pocket watch.
The situation on the island worsens when Elizabeth finds the 1871 journal of one of the town’s founding fathers, Patrick Malone -- or, rather, it finds her. After a near drowning experience, the terrified Elizabeth turns to Father Malone, brother of Antonio Bay’s mayor Tom Malone. Tormented by the knowledge of his forebears’ misdeeds, yet unable to violate the sanctity of the confessional, Father Malone finds solace in drink.
When Elizabeth turns to Father Malone for help and he’s unable to shed any light on the mystery, she and Nick search for clues in the cryptic entries they find in Patrick Malone’s 1871 journal: “May God forgive my soul. I say these words, but in my heart I wonder, can God forgive any man for a sin as great as the one I am about to commit?”
As Elizabeth and Nick pore over the journal at a local pub, Elizabeth becomes aware of old photos that line the tavern’s walls: The fledging town of just a few ramshackle huts and tents, seemed to have grown overnight into a thriving community. The date of this sudden transformation: 1871.
If there is a connection, Elizabeth and Nick better discover it quickly as the fog has just claimed two more innocent lives.
Over at City Hall, a small soiree is in progress celebrating the unveiling of the controversial statue of the founding fathers. But the citizens of Antonio Bay, shaken by the recent deaths on the charter boat, are preoccupied with the tragedy’s effect on the local tourist trade. In response to the celebration of the four heroic founding fathers, who it becomes clear, were responsible for an unspeakable act, the fog knocks out the town’s generator, shrouding the island in darkness.
At the lighthouse, Stevie, who just witnessed the horrifying death of the local weatherman, Dan (Jonathan Young), is desperately trying to reach her son. She sends an S.O.S. over the radio but, unsure that anyone has intercepted her plea for help, sets off for her beach house to find Andy. The fog, thick and wet, obscures the road and Stevie’s car is broadsided by a truck and careens down an embankment into the cold, dark sea.
As Stevie struggles to save herself, she comes face to face with the bloated, ghostly bodies that rise from the deep. After a narrow escape, she resumes the search for her son Andy, unaware that the fog has claimed another victim, the boy’s grandmother Connie. The terrified young boy has holed up in his room, taping the cracks around the doorframe to keep the killer fog from invading his room. But even that is no protection against the encroaching menace. Fortunately, Nick arrives at that moment to save the boy from certain doom.
Desperate to save her mother, Elizabeth and Nick head to the Town Hall. But the fog envelops Nick’s vehicle, blinding him and causing a crash. In the chaos that ensues, Stevie emerges from the darkness, shaken but safe.
But something else also appears through the fog at the town pier: A spectral clipper ship and its revenge-starved passengers.
Spooner, who has escaped from the hospital after his injuries aboard the Sea Grass, stands at the dock with the drunken Father Malone, watching in horror as the Elizabeth Dane sails into the harbor. Spooner recognizes the ship he saw the night Nick’s charter boat was attacked but only Father Malone understands why it has come to Antonio Bay, and seems to accept his fate.
Elizabeth, Nick, Stevie and Andy finally arrive at the Town Hall. The statue’s significance dawns on Elizabeth and the secret of the doomed clipper ship and its fiery destruction by the town leaders of Antonio Bay in 1871, is finally revealed.
The Town Hall is a museum celebrating Antonio Bay’s success and its dark, secret past, and is therefore the perfect spot for this revelation. After Elizabeth solves the mystery, Father Malone is no longer bound by the confessional. While everyone else is prepared to accept the truth and its possible consequences, Mayor Tom Malone is still convinced his great grandfather’s deathbed confession was nothing more than the ramblings of a madman. “We are not guilty,” he insists.
After exacting revenge, the souls of the Elizabeth Dane can finally rest in peace. The dark secret exposed, the fog drifts back out to sea.
Federal officials are routinely asking courts to order cellphone companies to furnish real-time tracking data so they can pinpoint the whereabouts of drug traffickers, fugitives and other criminal suspects, according to judges and industry lawyers.
Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment
Details are still a bit thin, but it looks like
SageTV -- developer of alternative media center software -- is poised to release an HD media extender for in-home placeshifting. The company, which already makes a standard definition wireless extender, revealed pics of the so-called STX-HD100 today, along with a few shots of the retail packaging which expose such features as HDMI, component, S-Video, and composite jacks as well as USB 2.0 Mass Storage Interface. Keep reading to check out another angle, and you can probably dig up a little more info by trawling around the SageTV forums, where it seems like quite a few folks have been waiting around on this product for some time now...
[Thanks, Matt C.]
Continue reading SageTV reveals STX-HD100 HD Media Extender
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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
It had seemed for a short stretch of time, gossip guffaw wunderkind Paris Hilton had semi-retired from her long schedule of making a complete fool out of herself. Had the press simply grown weary, or did Ms. H take a break to get it together? Whatever was caging her away from herself, she has been released back into the wild, and she?s as wild as ever. Even a Hilton can get bounced from a Hilton
6 new shots posted.
These are some new images of the Nintendo Wii game Links Crossbow Training
Tags: Nintendo, Wii, Links Crossbow Training
More Nintendo Wii News
New Lost Odyssey tailer from the press event on the 19th
Read link from Official Sony forums.
Description Not Available
Love and CapesComic Pants’ Randy Lander chats with Thom Zahler about his comic, Love and Capes. Zahler talks about, among other things, how Free Comic Book Day affected sales:
3. Along the same lines, you released Love and Capes #4 as a Free Comic Book Day selection. How did that go for you? Did it [...]
Gamer.Blorg writes of how the PS3 was able to outsell the Wii in the previous week thanks to the release of the popular Dynasty Warrior 5 in Japan and the limited production capabilities of the Wii.
This is good news for both PS3 and Blu Ray fans as more hardware sales for the PS3 means better software sales for PS3 games and Blu Ray movies.
In the spirit of cooperation fostered by the restart of WGA-AMPTP comes this amusing video about a different kind of love story. (It lags in the middle but stick with it to the end...)
Will sending Web content to your handheld device be as simple as clicking a button? Mobile software company Bango believes so. Its new Internet-based application simplifies the process of downloading images from social networking sites to cell phones. The software appears as a Bango Button on the home page of the user's cell phone browser window.
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World's first electronic computer lives again.Colossus, the world's first electronic computer, is up and running again.
New, thinner DS is already done and ready to go, according to industry analyst. "Speculation", says Nintendo.
The DS Lite isn't even two years old, yet an industry analyst reckons Nintendo already has another redesign ready.
Click here to read the full article
Description Not Available
Hewitt Associates turned in a deep fourth-quarter loss Monday, thanks to another punishing charge to write down the value of its struggling business process outsourcing operation. With the latest results, the Lincolnshire, Ill.-based firm closed out what Chairman and Chief Executive Russell Fradin called "a year of stabilization and rebuilding for the future."
Ubisoft’s highly anticipated action-adventure game is shown off in all its high-resolution glory.
Don Lindich, a national columnist and creator of the "Digital Made Easy" book series states, " I enthusiastically recommend HD DVD because it's a better product and a better proposition for consumers. Signs are showing it is going to trounce Blu-ray, and soon."
"For those looking for a single sentence explaining why go with HD DVD: It's a better thought-out, more solid product than Blu-ray, it is half the price, and picture and sound quality are identical. At less than $200 including seven or more movies, HD DVD players are a stunning value. Why pay twice the money when Blu-ray has serious issues and the movies look and sound the same?"
"I smile when I see people buying HD DVD players based on bargain pricing, because they are unknowingly getting the Ferrari as well. Despite its purported superiority and much higher cost, Blu-ray is the emperor with no clothes. HD DVD has been superior since day one."
This week, on
Survivor, it's time for the merge. Also, they steal liberally from Big Brother, which means that the immunity challenge is fixed so that a Donato wins. Just kidding, CBS!
LinuxWorld: "'Containers' are a form of lightweight virtualization as represented by projects like OpenVZ..."
Much like how innocent passersby wander into the foggy abyss that is Silent Hill never to return, fans of the series tend to stay devoted to these games because of their consistently disturbing thrills. But the warning lights are up now, Silent Hill has been spinning its wheels for too long, and it?s becoming harder for fans to stay lost in the fog.
Red Hat has signed on to participate in Sun Microsystems' open source Java Standard Edition (SE) project, OpenJDK, and to coordinate its own Java development efforts for Linux with the project.
Red Hat has signed Sun's OpenJDK contributor agreement and will now align the work its done on its IcedTea project, which was its own implementation of some parts of the Java SE JDK, with OpenSDK, said Shaun Connolly, vice president of product management for JBoss.
IcedTea brought together the Fedora project with key Java technologies in a Linux environment, and currently provides open source alternatives for the few remaining proprietary sections in the OpenJDK project, he said. Fedora is a Red Hat-sponsored Linux project.
Red Hat also has licensed the OpenJDK Community Test Compatibility Kit (TCK), which allows Red Hat to build an implementation of OpenJDK and test it to ensure it's compatible with the implementation the project itself develops, he said. The Java SE JDK, the basis for OpenJDK, includes the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) as well as tools for developing Java applets and applications; it is the software that serves as the basis for desktop Java applications.
As part of its participation in the OpenJDK project, Red Hat eventually will create a compatible OpenJDK implementation for its Enterprise Linux distribution. It also will also use OpenJDK to create a runtime for its JBoss Enterprise Middleware that is optimized for a Linux environment, according to the company.
Prior to its purchase of JBoss and its Java-based middleware last April, Red Hat and Sun were competitors in the OS market, and Red Hat wasn't very active in the community that supports Java development. However, now that the company is pushing its open source strategy beyond Linux and using JBoss as its first step to get there, Java is becoming more integral to its overall product plan.
When it was an independent open source company, JBoss was an active member of the Java Community Process (JCP), the formal process and group of companies that oversee the overall strategy of the Java technology. Earlier this month, Red Hat's Middleware division was re-elected to a position on the Executive Committee for the SE/Enterprise Edition (EE) project within the JCP, a position that lasts three years and is the one JBoss occupied as an independent company.
Red Hat ships JBoss middleware with its Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and includes three different implementations of the Java SE JDK from IBM, Sun, and BEA Systems, Connolly said. The company will continue that strategy in the near term, but eventually will include an open source version of the JDK that it can make changes to dynamically for customers without having to worry about when third-party companies will update their software, he said.
Reporter's Notebook: The tax moratorium lives another seven
years. Will free community broadband access survive as well?
Game tops lifetime sales of all other Fallout titles combined in just two days.
Bethesda's Fallout 3 has made an impressive debut by comfortably taking the top spot in the UK software chart.
Click here to read the full article
With all the Martina Hingis coke allegations going on, I thought that these Anna Kournikova pictures at some Cartier event might help deflect some attention off of the five-time Grand Slam champion. Wait a sec, hasn’t Anna and her hotness always stolen the spotlight since she stepped onto the court? Do any of you [...]
Download this white paper to learn how to put a successful, effective content filtering policy in place for your organization to block inappropriate website activity.
StelsXML is a JDBC type 4 driver that allows you
to perform SQL queries and other JDBC operations
on XML files. It allows you to easily access data
contained in XML documents using the standard SQL
syntax and XPath expressions. The driver is
completely platform-independent. It supports most
keywords of ANSI SQL'92, XPath expressions for
defining tables and columns, inner and outer table
joins, aggregate, numeric, string, conversion, and
user-defined SQL functions.
Let us assume you have a girlfriend; what would you get her for Christmas? Imaginary problem solved; enter the Electric Paper Plane Launcher Educational Aid. The kit contains all the materials to construct a launch pad for paper planes, which will allow them to travel at speeds of 50km/h. Fifty freaking km/h!
If that statistic does not get your fabricated love's dopamine receptors to hypersensitive status on receipt of the gift, you are with the wrong fictional person (sorry). So what? That is one less person to get in your way when making/unleashing your paper planes at 50km/h using your $14.95 launcher kit. You can do better, buddy; a nonexistent girlfriend that refused to make out with you and continually nagged you about playing too much Xbox 360 isn't worth your effort, anyway. Keep looking, and go easy on the hallucinogens. [Product Page via Nerd Approved]
The Frontlines Mechanic
By Martin Raymond
Senior Game Designer, Kaos Studios
When we set out to design Frontlines, we knew we wanted to create a first-person shooter that could do it all, from close-quarters infantry combat to intense land and air vehicle battles. After merging our gameplay ideas together, we were left with the question: "How do you combine intense, fast-paced tactical action with large, open-ended gameplay and a huge arsenal of vehicles and weaponry?" Tanks versus helicopters is just one of the many things that can occur in Frontlines.
This was our big design challenge, and our ultimate answer is something we call the frontline game mechanic, which is the driving force behind Frontlines. We wanted to offer a wide selection of gameplay experiences, from tight urban infantry battles to massive, open-ended armored battles (let's not forget about the jets and choppers--however, that's probably for another post).
From G4tv: "X-Play caught up with Street Fighter IV producer Yoshi Ono for an interview and in addition to all the great details you'll get in the segment on tonight's all-new episode of X-Play at 8PM ET, we've got some major news for you:
We have a good idea on a release window for the United States launch of the home versions of Street Fighter IV, which will hit the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC."
John Lee Hancock will direct the big screen adaptation of Michael Lewis' "The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game" for 20th Century Fox.
Scarface applies the exaggerated themes from the movie to a turn-based strategy game with surprisingly good results.
DEFCON (PC)
Flush the bombers. Get the subs in launch mode. We are at DEFCON 1.
Rapper Common has been appearing in a lot of movies this year, starting with Joe Carnahan's Smokin' Aces and Ridley Scott's upcoming American Gangster , but he apparently has not only gotten the acting bug but also the bug for comic book movies. Next March, he appears in Timur Bekmambetov's Wanted as the gun-savvy Gunsmith, but in recent weeks, there's been rumors that he's one of the actors testing for the part of John Stewart/Green Lantern in Warner Bros' fast-tracked Justice League movie.
ComingSoon.net/SuperheroHype sat down with the rapper to talk about his latest role but we squeezed in a couple questions about his comic book movies before we were cut-off.
Prime time Saturday night spots secured as SCEE gets behind ?benchmark PS3 title?
Sony is backing upcoming PS3 title Ratchet and Clank: Tools Of Destruction with a million pound TV campaign throughout the gifting season.
The platform holder has heralded the game as a ?benchmark? release for PS3 owners, and set its sights on a target demographic that covers the whole family.
?The ad will target 16-34 year olds, with a focus on Saturday night family programming, which draws upon a broad demographic of viewers, matching Ratchet And Clank?s target audience,? Sony product manager Lucy Garnett told MCV.
Date Added: Skeleton Cat 10/19/2008 01:01
AppleInsider reports that Apple is ready to unleash Penryn-based Mac Pros as soon as Intel can provide the new chips to Apple.
They'll also be amongst the first machines from any PC manufacturer to employ chips from Intel's upcoming P...
WeatherBug has announced a new web app for iPhone and iPod Touch that streams localized weather information through Safari. Although just released, it has already become a Staff Pick, according to the Apple Web Apps page. The app offers international weather, a detailed 7 day forecast, radar, and camera images from WeatherBug tracking stations. The...
Midway released today an allnew video for Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe highlighting allnew features from the games unique fighting system.
Members of a congressional panel have accused Yahoo executives of giving false information about the company's role in a human rights case in China that resulted in the imprisonment of a Chinese journalist.
The Official Playstation Magazine in the UK had the pleasure of recently jetting off to Amsterdam to get a world exclusive hands on with the hotly anticipated Killzone 2. Obviously as one might expect, after some time with the creators and the game itself, the OPM writers were left amazed and remarking that Killzone 2 is a 'notch ahead' of anything else being done on consoles at the moment, which is ultimately a very good thing for PS3 owners.
Indicators start later this week with No. 1 maker Nokia due to report on Thursday, followed by Sony Ericsson on Friday, LG Electronics on Monday, then Samsung and Motorola.
