ATI (um, now AMD) makes a turd come back!

Competition is usually a good thing.  That’s especially the case from a consumer’s point of view.  It drives the businesses to deliver better products at better cheaper prices.  You say Intel, I say AMD.  You say nVidia, I say ATI, um… I mean now, AMD as AMD bought out ATI.

After what felt like decades of delays (though in effect about 6 months or so), ATI/AMD finally released HD 2900. If you just google search on  it, you will get loads of reviews saying how disappointing it is.  Why?  ‘Cause nVidia still is the king in the graphics processing kingdom.  8800GTX pwns the HD 2900!!  Without much trying even!    Why is this a sad news for me?  It’s because I had hopes for ATI merger with AMD.  AMD, if you are listening, get your act together!!   Don’t become another 3Dfx!!

As a die-hard PC gamer, I sure hope for healthy balance in the hardware industry.  AMD needs to make a comeback to Intel’s Core 2 Duo, and ATI needs to fight off 8800 GTX (now with Ultra).  This has been a nerd’s ticked-off show-down thread.   

FLAC beats MP3 anyday!!!

So I remembered that I have some FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) music files on my computer and with my newly found X-Fi XtremeMusic sound card, I decided to give it a boot again. Couple that with awesome Foobar2000, pipe that through the PiMETA amplifier and listen through the wunderbar Sennheiser HD-535 and what do you get?? An audio bliss, my friends…

Pipe that lossless music of my favorites in the likes of Brave Saint Saturn’s “Daylight” from “The Light of Things Hoped For”, and Five Iron Frenzy’s “Eulogy” and “Phenomenon” by Thousand Foot Krutch, and my sentimental pick of “The Reason” by Hoobastank (yes, you read that right) and I am gliding through this late Sunday in musical haven.
In case, I haven’t, I will be sharing “Daylight” from Brave Saint Saturn soon…
Oh, here it is! Pay attention to the lyrics my friends… sheer beauty. Speaks volume… and well, space!

Why I love to hate Microsoft

Microsoft is a bloated company.  Sure, it does lots of things right.  But in my book, it does a whole lot more wrong.  Case in point:  Microsoft is suing loads of open source project people on patent infringement.  However, no one knows what they are infringing on ’cause Microsoft won’t say what is being violated!

They better wise up.  This is now officially beyond frustrating!  You have no right to sue someone if others have no idea what they are violating because you refuse to disclose that information!

Best Cars of 2007

Consumer Reports article on money.cnn.com

My first notice was that first several cars were all from Honda! Inclduing Infiniti, which is the luxury division of HondaNissan. Then came Toyota cars… but by the end, I didn’t see ANY American cars that made the best cars of 2007! GM, Ford, and Chrysler (no longer part of Daimler-Benz) weren’t in the list at all!

We better shape up if we don’t wanna be shipped out (to the bottom of the ocean!).