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New Cars, New Tracks in GT5

The selection of cars and tracks in GT5 are sure to impress some people and disappoint others. You can view the entire list on the official website.

Now I am going to put on my car geek hat, so if this section bores you, skip to the next one.
Fan favourites like the Nurburgring Nordschleife, Laguna Seca Raceway, the Monaco GP circuit and the Suzuka GP circuit make a return.

New entries include the Monza F1 circuit, Daytona International Speedway, Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the Nurburgring Gran Prix circuit - all of these are pretty awesome circuits.

Combined with the traditional GT fictional circuits such as Deep Forest and Trial Mountain Circuit, as well as fictional tracks based on real-life locations (the new London and Rome circuits, as well as the Tokyo R246 from GT3/4, which I've only recently found out is an actual route in Tokyo), the variety and number of tracks is pretty impressive.

Personally, I wish there were more real-world tracks, especially those from the Formula 1 calendar, but I guess we can't have everything.

As for the car selection, your satisfaction with the list of available cars is largely dependent on whether or not your favourite cars are there.

The selection is pretty wide and there are quite a huge number of cars from the 70's and 80's too.
Unfortunately, the car list is still overwhelmingly Japanese - out of the 1,031 cars available, there are around 150 Nissans, over 100 Hondas, about 100 Toyotas, just under 100 Mazdas, about 70 Mitsubishis, 30 Subarus and a smattering of Daihatsus, Isuzus and Suzukis.

That's almost 600 Japanese cars, or more than half of the total, and almost any Japanese performance car you can think of is there.

So if you're a fan of Japanese cars, you're in luck.

But on the other hand, European car fans are bound to be a little upset that many boring Japanese cars like the Toyota Prius and Honda Odyssey have made the cut while many European icons of the 80's and 90's are absent.

Off the top of my head, I can think of the Peugeot 405 Mi16, the Volvo 850 T5 Wagon, BMW E30 M3, Ferrari F355 and Ford Sierra RS Cosworth - all iconic cars among car geeks, and none of them are here.

I can think of another 20 European cars that should be here, but I shall not bore you with any more lists.
Also, the cars themselves come in two tiers: Standard and Premium.

Premium cars are modelled in very high detail with loads of polygons and look like real cars up close - the headlights, taillight clusters and wheel arches have proper geometry instead of just clever texturing.

Even the interiors of the cars are modelled, so they look awesome in an actual race because you can look into them and see the driver moving about in the cockpit. The Premium cars also give you an in-cockpit view, where you can see the dashboard and your hands on the wheel.

The bad news, though, is that only 200 or so cars from the total are Premium ones.

The remaining Standard cars are basically models lifted right out from GT4, which look great at a distance, but when you come close to one, you'll notice that most of the features are really just low-resolution textures rather than actual geometry.
While these Standard cars looked fine in GT4, they stick out like a sore thumb in the age of 1080p high definition.
This is actually really disappointing, especially if your favourite car happens to be just a Standard car.

Also, in spite of boasting 1,031 cars, a lot of them are variants of the same car. There are over 20 variants of the Mazda MX-5 and Mitsubishi 3000GT for example, and all of them with very minor tweaks and differences.In the end it's impossible to keep everyone happy.

Quick review of Panasonic AF100

Basically, the AF100 is what happens when you stuff the innards of a DLSR into the body of a video camera and slap some interchangeable lenses in front of it. Listing at $4,995, the AF100 rocks a Micro Four Thirds sensor that records to dual SD cards in AVCHD and outputs 8-bit uncompressed 4:2:2 video to an external recorder via an HD-SDI connection. It also attempts to solve the audio issues plaguing DSLR video shooting (namely, the difficulty of getting pro-level audio to play nice with a camera designed only for imaging) with its two phantom-powered XLR audio inputs and built-in stereo microphone.


Panasonic is also claiming to have lessened aliasing and the dreaded "jellycam" found in DSLR video with an optical low pass filter and faster scanning, while still boasting the wide viewing angle and shallow depth of field that movie-makers (and Vimeo users) know and love to death.

Toshiba outsources chip production to Samsung

Toshiba is set to significantly restructure its silicon chip manufacturing operations in 2011, outsourcing some production to Samsung and selling a manufacturing plant to Sony.

Toshiba Corp plans to reduces its non-memory chip exposure in an effort to claw back revenue, following an operating loss of $3.4 billion in its 2008 financial year, in the midst of the global financial crisis.

System chip design
Outsourcing to Samsung and others is part of the plan to cut capital investment outlays in the next financial year starting in April 2011.

"Thanks to this tie-up Toshiba will gain a stronger position," said Yumi Nishimura, a senior market analyst at Daiwa Securities Capital Markets.

"In a situation when bigger capacity is required, the burden of capital investment can be too big for one company, so the accord is a positive factor for Toshiba."

Toshiba has also announced that it will sell its system chip production line in Nagasaki to Sony. That line produces chips for Sony PlayStation 3s – and is located in a factory already owned by Sony.

Source: Reuters

Millions affected as Skype goes down

Skype suffered an outage lasting several hours on Wednesday affecting millions of users of the Internet communications service.

"Our engineers and site operations team are working non-stop to get things back to normal - thanks for your continued patience," Luxembourg-based Skype said in a message on its Twitter feed @Skype.
In a blog post, Skype explained that computers known as "supernodes" had been taken offline by an unspecified problem affecting some versions of Skype.


"Under normal circumstances, there are a large number of supernodes available," Skype said. "Our engineers are creating new 'mega-supernodes' as fast as they can, which should gradually return things to normal.

"This may take a few hours, and we sincerely apologise for the disruption to your conversations," Skype said. "Some features, like group video calling, may take longer to return to normal."
Skype, which was founded in 2003, bypasses the standard telephone network by channelling voice, video and text conversations over the Internet.

The service has millions of users around the world and many took to Twitter to complain about the outage in a variety of languages.

Quick review of wireless baby monitoring system by AVENT

THE upcoming Philips Avent SCD 600 is a wireless baby monitoring system packed with the latest technologies to ensure that your precious one is safe and secure.

It's made of two parts - a 0.1-megapixel camera to monitor the baby and a rechargeable 2.4in colour QVGA display which you can take with you.

The camera has a ball-joint that makes it easy to swivel it into the best position to monitor the child. The device transmits video in real-time to the portable display unit.

It can transmit up to a distance of 150m via a secured 2.4Ghz frequency band.

The camera also has a night vision function to view your baby in the dark. To lull the baby to sleep, the camera comes with a night light and can play soothing lullabies.

To save power, the video display switches off if it doesn't detect any sound for 30 seconds.

The display unit also has a status indicator that can alert the parent with a sound when the connection goes down.

The Avent SCD 600 is expected to be available in January 2011.

Malaysia plans to build nuke power plants by 2013

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia plans to build two nuclear power plants that will generate 1,000 megawatts each with the first plant ready for operation in 2021.

The second plant is expected to be ready a year later.

These are part of an overall long-term plan to balance energy supply.

Energy, Green Technology and Water Minister Datuk Seri Peter Chin said the Government would engage an international consultant to evaluate the location and requirement for such plants to be built.

“Hopefully, by 2013 or 2014, we will able to finish evaluating this. As for calling of tenders, we hope it will be done by 2016,” he said.


Chin said Malaysia was heavily reliant on gas and coal for its electricity supply as it was the Government’s policy to reduce reliance on fossil fuel.

Gas accounted for 64% of the country’s energy generation while the remainder came from coal.

“We must get away from this. (It is) very much an imbalance. Most countries have a good balance. We want hydro to assume a prominent role as it is clean but this can only be achieved in Sabah and Sarawak where there is much potential but not in Peninsular Malaysia,” he said.

Furthermore, Chin said other sources of energy such as biomass and wind were too minimal while solar was a good potential but the technology was still very expensive.

Chin also said the Government must have a balanced approach when it came to renewal energy as it would not want tariffs to go up due to higher cost.

Nuclear, he said, had become a more prominent choice in balancing the energy source due to lower maintenance cost and lower tariffs in the long-run.

“For example, in Abu Dhabi, they are building huge solar energy plants but at the same time balancing it up with a nuclear plant. They are not just concentrating on fossil fuel,” he said.

Malaysia began operation of a 1MW Triga research reactor in 1982 and has had an international nuclear safeguards agreement in place since 1972.

Recently, Malaysia also tightened export control laws to thwart the possibility of nuclear technology smuggling. — Bernama