Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

If this is Earth, what's Heaven like?

Cherry Blossoms Japan

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Tundra

Autumn in Germany

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The beauty of Antarctica

Saltzburg Austria - the most beautiful city we have ever seen.

Neuschwannstein, King Ludwig's Castle in Bavaria , Germany

Windmills of Holland

Beauty of Tibet

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Disney Castle

Golden Maple Leaf

Edge of Glacier

Lavender Farm and Tree

Lavender Farm

The Night Scene of Eiffel Tower

Blue Sea

Earthbound Rainbow

MirrorLake

Lavender at the Foot of the Mountain

Comet (Make a wish)

The Purple Romance

Breithorn Peak ( Switzerland )

Deep Autumn

The Moon and Star on Earth

You only pass this way Once...

AMD doubles up, announces ATI HD Radeon 4850 X2 and 4870 X2

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/362545228/

Filed under: Desktops, Gaming

Sure, times might be tough at AMD, but that's not stopping the crew at ATI from gunning for NVIDIA's newest gear -- the company just announced the new HD Radeon 4850 X2 and 4870 X2. Aimed at the "super high-end" of the market, the $399 4850 X2 and $599 4870 X2 feature two GPU chips on a 625 or 750MHz bus, respectively, with up to 2GB of 900MHz GDDR5 RAM. ATI says that there's a 20 percent overhead from pairing up the processors, so the X2s should offer 180 percent of the single GPU cards -- certainly enough to outgun a single NVIDIA GTX 280, and reportedly enough to match a dual-280 setup depending on the game. We'll see for sure when the inevitable flood of benchmarks hits when these bad boys arrive next month -- any gamers out there going to take the plunge?

Read - ExtremeTech
Read - CNET

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AMD dubs HD 4870 X2 "world's fastest graphics card," benchmarks prove it

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/362661560/

Filed under: Gaming

Looks like all the Cinema 2.0 fuss that AMD has been blustering about with its new RV770-based GPUs is fully warranted. The benchmarks are in and AMD's new $549 ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 -- what AMD calls the "world's fastest graphics card" -- is an out and out screamer, besting the best cooked up over at NVIDIA thanks to that RV770 GPU pair nuzzled up next to 2GB of GDDR5 memory. As noted by PC Perspective, the new champ, "is able to run away from NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 280 1GB card handily. Our various game tests proved this - Crysis, Call of Duty 4 and GRID showed big gains for AMD's new card at resolutions 2,048 x 1,536 and 2,560 x 1,600," though performance gains are less dramatic as resolutions drop to 1,600 x 1,200. Not that any self-respecting gamer would push so few pixels. CrossFireX performance was disappointing, however, as the systems didn't scale well when going from 2 to 4 GPUs. In fact, Crysis seemed to barely notice the additional CrossFireX horsepower, something that should be corrected with future driver releases. Make no mistake though, as power-hungry, expensive, and hot-running as the new HD 4870 X2 may be, it's a big day for AMD as it retakes the graphics crown from NVIDIA, as short-lived as this victory may be.

Read -- HotHardware
Read -- PCPer
Read -- Tweaktown
Read -- CustomPC
Read -- TechGage
Read -- AMD press release

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Limited Edition Eee PC 901 and 1000H ready to candy-coat Korean hearts

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/362791687/

Filed under: Laptops

After suffering a presumed Jolly Rancher infestation, ASUS is prepped to loose these artificially flavored Eee PCs onto Korea. Available for pre-order now, the limited edition "pink" (hey, that's what they say) and Jell-O green Eee PC 901 and Eee PC 1000H ship on the 22nd of August for an undetermined price. Hmmm, blood-red snowflakes and glo-stick mistletoe? Feels like Christmas in our very own Eee PC hell.

Gallery: Limited Edition Eee PCs ready to candy-coat Korea

[Via Akihabara News]

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Gigabyte's swivel screen M912V netbook gets reviewed

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/362702930/

Filed under: Laptops, Tablet PCs

There's a whole mess of netbooks out there, but if you're scouting one with a swiveling screen, chances are the M912V is sky high on your list. For starters, this one's pretty pricey at $699, and for that much change, you'd really expect the battery life to be better than "poor," the temperature to remain a few degrees below boiling and the keyboard to not be described as "cramped." Of course, not everything was a downer -- the speakers were strong, the port assortment was praised and the touchpad was smiled upon. Still, critics couldn't recommend procuring one without strong reservations, so unless you're just goo-goo for swivel, your dollars are probably better off spent elsewhere.

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Dell E-series netbooks to include 10-incher? Today we hope to find out.

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/362702929/

Filed under: Laptops

It's time for more Dell E-series netbook rumors, you ready? According to DigiTimes and its industry sources, Compal Electronics is slapping together both 8.9-inch and 10-inch E-series netbooks for Dell. Previously, we've only heard mention of an 8.9-inch E and 12.1-inch E Slim. The 10-inch E is scheduled for an October product launch while the 8.9-incher was previously rumored for August. Interestingly, Dell expects the 10-incher to experience almost twice the demand of the 8.9-inch model (assuming a sole-source manufacturing deal) based on Compal's monthly production estimates of 400k-450k and 250k units, respectively. There's a Dell press event later on today where we might just bring all these Dell netbook rumors to rest. Stay tuned, as they say.

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Monday, August 11, 2008

Blue Screen of Death Strikes Bird's Nest During Opening Ceremonies Torch Lighting [Olympic Fail]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/362000018/blue-screen-of-death-strikes-birds-nest-during-opening-ceremonies-torch-lighting

Well this is just perfect. At the exact moment Li Ning was rounding the lip of the Bird's Nest during the amazing torch-lighting climax, someone snapped this photo of our good friend the BSOD nestled amongst the Nest's steel twigs. Perhaps an Opening Cermonies IT dude spit out his coffee on the machines in the server room when Li took to the sky? Another question is what a projection screen is doing inside the Nest at that location, but I think the better question is what wasn't going on inside the Nest's roof—did you see that thing during the ceremonies? Lights! Fireworks! LED screens! Everything! Anyway, if only one image of this perfectness existed we'd be skeptical, but thankfully, someone has grabbed more from a different angle that pretty much seal the deal.

UPDATE: And it's been confirmed on the NBC broadcast by commenter cirby on his DVR. Fo' real!

Click for high-res:

Ouch! More super-zoomed images for error message decoding here:
[Powerapple Forum (Chinese, original pic), and Rivercool (alternate angle pics) via Dvor ak - props to Dvorak commenter Improbus for "Olympic Fail"]

Read more pan-Gawker coverage of the 2008 Olympic Games.

Fastest Graphics Card Alive ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 Gets Official Tomorrow [Ati]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/362461925/fastest-graphics-card-alive-ati-radeon-hd-4870-x2-gets-official-tomorrow

ATI's Nvidia-slaying Radeon HD 4870 X2, previewed last month, will get official tomorrow at SIGGRAPH says the WSJ, who notes that some reviewers are calling it the most powerful card around. It's an interesting test of ATI's graphics card strategy: Cheaper, less power-hungry GPUs that can be easily strapped together (like the dual-GPU 4870 X2) versus Nvidia's penchant for obscenely powerful single GPUs. The best part? Whoever you go with, you can't really go wrong anymore.