geekosystem

After much anticipation, Warner Bros. has released the first full-length trailer for Jonah Hex this afternoon. Set to be released on June 18th, the film is based on the beloved John Albano/Tony DeZuniga comic of the same name. Whatever your familiarity with the original, you will surely appreciate the universal appeal of Josh Brolin firing a stick of dynamite from a crossbow and mowing bad guys down with chainguns mounted on a horse, not to mention John Malkovich as an evil Civil War-man with great facial hair. The biggest drawback: Staring at the nasty scar on Brolin/Hex's face could be tough for the duration of a whole movie. We had our doubts before, but the trailer dispelled some of them: Getting kind of a Wild Wild West vibe from this, which, whatever the haters say, is not an entirely bad thing.

Right now, you could argue that we're in a new age in filmic storytelling, and that science fiction has been brought into the limelight in way that it hasn't enjoyed in years. One of the people who brought that shift toward mainstream is J.J. Abrams. A director who took on Star Trek in 2009, effectively retconned it, and made it a good movie with widespread appeal. Well, it looks like Abrams might be up to something new and with a little help. Sources are telling New York Magazine's Vulture blog that Abrams is currently working on a project that will, in some way, shape, or form, involve a certain Steven Spielberg and pay homage to his early work.

For all of the tension in Steve Jobs' dissertation on his antipathy to Flash, the nut, I believe, is this:

Since that golden era, the companies have grown apart. Apple went through its near death experience, and Adobe was drawn to the corporate market with their Acrobat products.

Each of the two companies has known multiple iterations. Apple has had three: the Jobs (and Wozniak) era ('76 - '85), the non-Jobs era ('85 - '97) and the re-Jobs era ('97 - now). Adobe, two: the John Warnock/Chuck Geschke era ('82 - '00), and the post-Warnock/Geschke era ('00 - now). The "golden era" Jobs refers to above encapsulates a large part of that 1982 - 1985 overlap (and somewhat beyond), with the development of PostScript, the Macintosh, and the Apple LaserWriter. The companies built desktop publishing in concert: Apple, the hardware side, Adobe, the software. The critique Jobs makes in the quote above is acidic.

What with the satellite TVs and the YouTubes, TV test patterns may increasingly be a thing of the past, but one fan has preserved their memory in the most reverent of ways.

Peter Roof, a TV man from DC, not only has the 12"x9" stained glass test pattern hanging in his home office, but writes, "Contact me if you want one." Hmm...

Well, this is an interesting development: Bungie, the video game developer behind the Halo series, among others, which spun off from Microsoft in 2007, and Activision, the mega-sized game publisher, have struck an "exclusive 10-year partnership to bring Bungie’s next big action game universe to market."

While many gamers' knee-jerk reaction here will be to bring up Infinity Ward, the Modern Warfare 2 developer which recently sued Activision for hundreds of millions of dollars, alleging nonpayment of royalties and other bonuses, Bungie will retain ownership of its intellectual property.

The spat between Gizmodo and Apple over Gizmodo's mysterious acquisition of an iPhone 4G months before its release -- which most lately culminated in a crack force of Apple-advised police raiding Giz editor Jason Chen's home and Gizmodo considering suing the police right back -- has proven to be an endlessly engrossing spectacle for the techies out there, with many, like Daring Fireball's John Gruber, saying Gizmodo and its publisher Gawker Media broke the law and basically deserve whatever they have coming at them.

Well, last night, Gizmodo got a high-profile supporter for the crowd who have no idea who John Gruber is: Jon Stewart. But he didn't exactly fight the good fight:

This coming Saturday, May 1st, is Free Comic Book Day, and we will be pretty jazzed to check out the offerings. With it in mind, we've put together a list of ten of the oldest superheroes around, most of whom make Old Man Logan look like a whippersnapper.

You know, like the Martian Manhunter, who's 10,000 years old or so? But even he's a tot when there are some superheroes who are literally as old as the Universe…

See the full Grid.

According to John Mayer, Twitter is over. Well, actually, he’s over it. But it all pretty much boils down to John Mayer predicting that, as Twitter seems to have hit its “cruising altitude”, it may be time to disembark. Let’s clarify. It’s not that Twitter has run its course, or that Twitter may cause celebrities to say things they shouldn't and then suffer the consequences. Instead, it seems to be that, for Mayer at least, the “Twitter-bred syntax” has lost its je ne sais quoi.

For weeks, the tech media has wondered who was going to buy Palm, Inc., the pioneering smartphone manufacturer that has since fallen on harder times. Now, we've got an answer, and a price: The buyer will be HP, which has reached a "definitive agreement" to buy Palm for $1.2 billion.

This knocks out recent rumors that RIM or HTC would buy Palm, although an HP acquisition is a thought that has crossed some people's minds before.

Update: CNBC's breaking report on the acquisition, after the jump:

When we received this press release from a company that paints terrifying murals of knights, escalators to Hell, Anarchist tanks, orcas, elephant beasts, underground parking lots, and other phantasmagoria on your garage door for a mere $189-$389, we could have 'researched it further' and 'done our jobs,' but... it kind of speaks for itself.

Why be a "zero" [person who has a normal garage door] when you can be a "hero" [person who has an insanely painted garage door]?

Have you ever broken your phone in a way that seems too stupid to be true? Well, you're not alone, as a new site called Phone Funeral proves. Phone Funeral is like an obituary column combined with an insult comic routine ... for phones. Every entry features a picture of a dead phone and a caption that (usually) mocks the deceased handset's owner.

Read more about it at Urlesque.

While it may not pass Roger Ebert's muster, anyone who has played a video game since the dawn of Pong will be hard-pressed not to call Exploding Rabbit's Jay Pavlina's flash game Super Mario Bros. Crossover a work of art. The game allows the player to play the entirety of the classic Super Mario Bros., but do so using some of the greatest characters in video game history as well as the mustachioed plumber. The ridiculous thrill one gets when using a warp pipe while playing as Mega Man, Samus, Link, [Contra's] Bill R., or [Castlevania's] Simon has to be felt to be believed. Pardon the hyperbole, but it's true. Fortunately, Pavlina has been nice enough to allow us to embed an updated version of his baby so you can play it right here. Take a turn at it after the jump!

The Pentagon has been gearing up its "prompt global strike" program in several ways. Experimenting with putting conventional warheads on intercontinental nuclear missiles, making cruise missiles that fly at about 2000 meters/second, and building a Hypersonic Technology Vehicle that "was supposed to be rocket-launched from California to the edge of space... [and] would could[sic] screaming back into the atmosphere, maneuvering at twenty times times the speed of sound before landing north of the Kwajalein Atoll, 30 minutes later and 4100 nautical miles away."

Last week's launch of the HTV-2 was all going fine until DARPA lost contact with the glider somewhere over the Pacific ocean.

No, unfortunately, this article is not about new stealth technology. File it under funny, 'cause otherwise you'd just cry.

Dark Horse, the publishers of such renowned comics as Sin City, Hellboy, and The Mask, may have gotten themselves in some creator-related hot water. According to the Swedish newspaper Metro, John Ajvide Lindqvists, creator of Let the Right One In (Swedish horror novel turned Swedish horror film turned American cult success), takes issue with how Dark Horse plans to adapt and use his work into American comics.

Dark Horse has said that it has plans to not only make a graphic novel adaptation of Lindqvists' book, but also produce prequels and sequels, expanding upon his story. According to Lindqvists:

Nobody has asked me about this and I think that the project stinks. I am looking into this matter and hope that they have no right to do this.

A Facebook group implicitly calling for the death of President Barack Obama now has more than 1 million members who 'like' it, and there's no ban yet in sight, though there's a rival group petitioning Facebook to remove the anti-Obama group as offensive speech.

The anti-Obama group is called "DEAR LORD, THIS YEAR YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE ACTOR, PATRICK SWAYZIE. YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE ACTRESS, FARAH FAWCETT. YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE SINGER, MICHAEL JACKSON. I JUST WANTED TO LET YOU KNOW, MY FAVORITE PRESIDENT IS BARACK OBAMA. AMEN." This is likely a riff on a letter circulating New Jersey teachers' unions earlier this month that employed similar language with respect to (Republican) governor Chris Christie. The president of the New Jersey Education Association went on to issue a formal apology for the email.

While the members of the group might see it as a 'joke,' it seems to be calling for the death of a public figure in a pretty inflammatory way. Why hasn't Facebook taken action?