Monday, April 9, 2012

IT News Head Lines (TweakTown) 4/9/2012

TweakTown



Noctua gets you ready for Spring with April TweakTown BF3 Contest
TweakTown and Noctua are teaming up for the April Battlefield 3 contest. Noctua, market of premium grade CPU heatsinks, fans and thermal paste will give away three prize packages to the top three point scores spread across the two TweakTown Battlefield 3 game servers.

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This contest is a little different than last month's contest that only took place on the Air Maps Server. TweakTown now has the Infantry Server up and running. The combined scores of both servers will be combined to determine the top three players by server score.

  • 1st Place: Noctua NH-D14 + 2 NF-F12 Fans
  • 2nd Place: Noctua NH-14 + 1 NF-F12 Fan
  • 3rd Place: Noctua NH-L12
This is an amazing prize package donated by Noctua!

The fine print: Winners cannot have won a TweakTown sponsored Battlefield 3 Prize Package in the last 6 months. You will also need to post your in game name in this forum thread. This contest runs throughout April and scores will be calculated April 30th at 11:59 PM. Winners will be contacted by May 5th.


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The Day After Tomorrow (2005) Blu-ray Movie Review
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After the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, Director Roland Emmerich suddenly found that the market for disaster porn films such as Independence Day and Godzilla no longer existed. A staple genre of cinema since the 70's from directors such as Irwin Allen, and one which saw a resurgence in the mid 1990's, audiences no longer felt comfortable with cinema experiences that were anything like the reality that had been witnessed and the ramifications that the attacks brought to everyday citizens.

However, Roland Emmerich, the smart fellow he is, pitched his next film as a cautionary tale of the threat posed by global warming, which tapped into growing worldwide sentiments regarding the issue (which have all but been put on hold, post global financial crisis - unless of course you live in Australia). This way, he could still sate his desire for cutting edge global destruction and audiences didn't have to feel so bad. Win, win.

Paleoclimatologist Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid) and his team are drilling for ice cores on the Larsen Ice Shelf off the Antarctic Peninsula when the shelf gives way, releasing millions of tones of ice into the Pacific Ocean. When Jacks attempts to alert authorities of his theories, including a climactic drop in ocean temperatures falls on deaf ears, his fears are realized when freak weather incidents, including tornadoes in Los Angeles, hailstorms in Tokyo and turbulence closes airports worldwide are joined by a massive tsunami of water which is headed for New York City.

As far as cinema goes, The Day After Tomorrow is an entertaining enough time with enough human drama to up the ante, but as far as a cautionary tale of coming climate woes, I think it is reaching just that little bit too far, whipping up warmists worldwide with a scary piece of propaganda.

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Video

The Day After Tomorrow is presented in the film's original aspect ratio of 2.35:1, encoded with the AVC codec.

In the eight years between Independence Day and this film, the production pipeline had changed significantly - with far less reliance on optical and model effects, and far more on computer graphics. This gives The Day After Tomorrow a slicker and richer visual design, but one that is inherently faker. Speaking of which, the higher resolution makes the computer generated wolves look even worse than they did on DVD.

There is a lot of fine detail in every shot and with a nice colour balance that accentuates blue hues, in a very James Cameron esque way.

Despite being one of the earlier Blu-ray releases from Fox, The Day After Tomorrow still holds up very well.

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Audio

The Day After Tomorrow is presented in DTS HD Master Audio, encoded at 24 bits.

Make no mistake; this is reference quality material all the way - just as Emmerich is completely unsubtle as a director, so too is the case with his audio mixes. From the get go, it's clear this is going to be a rather aggressive audio mix and when the wave hits New York city every channel booms to life - not least the subwoofer.

Despite the activeness of the front and rear sound stage, there is no problem with audio intelligibility.

The score, provided by co-writer and co-producer Harold Kloser is quite good and a bit of a change of the previous Emmerich go-to musician David Arnold. His score is mixed well into the wider soundstage.

Overall, an extremely pleasing experience.

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Extras

Unfortunately, Twentieth Century Fox has failed to port over all of the extra that were to be found on the impressive special edition DVD release from 2004, so fans will want to hang on to the second disc from the set to retain everything. Let's take a look at what they did include.

First up are two Audio Commentaries, the first provided by Director Roland Emmerich and Producer Mark Gordon. Emmerich is throughout the professional German, and much of his commentary is quite dry in nature. However, Mark Gordon is a riot (although a little more restrained than the commentary he provided for Speed). It's a reasonably enjoyable listen if you have a bunch of hours to burn. The second track, provided by co-writer Jeffrey Nachmanoff, Cinematographer Ueli Steiger, Editor David Brenner and Production Designer Barry Chusid is a cozy group affair. It's nice to get some of the lesser credited staff a go at the microphone, however you are going to have to be a big fan to get through this one.

Next up are 10 Deleted Scenes, totaling approximately 16 minutes in length. Most scenes are relatively superfluous, but the Hurricane Hunter snippet is worth a look. Unfortunately these are presented in standard definition only.

Finally, we have the Original Theatrical Trailer and Teaser Trailer.

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ASUS PadFone™ is Available for Purchase in Taiwan
Taipei, Taiwan (5 April, 2012) - ASUS today announced that the much anticipated PadFone will be available for pre-sale in Taiwan from tomorrow, Friday April 6, 2012. The official launch event was opened with an introduction by ASUS Chairman Jonney Shih and a detailed product presentation by ASUS CEO Jerry Shen.

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"I am very excited to deliver the ASUS PadFone into the hands of our customers. It is an ultra-savvy intelligent device that combines the function of a phone, a pad, as well as a notebook. It was built to offer users an unrivalled level of performance, customization and choice in how they connect with their digital world. Welcome to the future," said Jerry Shen, ASUS CEO. "I would also like to take this opportunity to extend my appreciation to our local partners," Mr. Shen added as he introduced Chuanghwa Telecom Chairman Shyue-Ching Lu (呂學錦) and Senao International President Paul Lin (林保雍) to join him on stage.

Customers can make their purchase at all participating Chunghwa Telecom and Senao stores throughout Taiwan starting from April 20th while pre-order begins tomorrow. Taiwan will be the first market to enjoy the newest ubiquitous cloud computing experience created by ASUS, with Singapore, Hong Kong, Germany and more European countries to follow shortly.

The ASUS PadFone is an incredible 4.3" smartphone featuring a Super AMOLED qHD display, the latest Qualcomm® Snapdragon S4 dual core 1.5GHz processor, an ultra-sharp 8-megapixel digital camera with Fuji image processor, F/2.2 aperture, and a 5-element lens all wrapped in an exquisite design that is optimized for Google's Android 4.0 operating system. When placed inside the optional PadFone Station, it transforms into a 10.1" tablet with up to *63 hours of extended talk time. The PadFone offers unmatched versatility via ASUS' proprietary DynamicDisplay technology which allows seamless transition between the PadFone and PadFone Station display screens. In addition, the PadFone Station offers an optional keyboard dock that essentially turns the PadFone into an ultraportable computing device, with an extended talk time of up to 102 hours*. The PadFone also comes with the option of a PadFone Stylus Headset which is a Bluetooth stylus pen that transforms into a headset for picking up calls easily.

PadFone owners will also be receiving 32GB of ASUS WebStorage for three years and utilize ASUS' cloud service to optimize their ubiquitous cloud computing experience. This latest ASUS innovation comes preinstalled with ASUS' exclusive SuperNote application - a versatile note taking app that allows users to take notes and information through a variety of options, including the keyboard, finger input, photo and video capture or audio notes.


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