梦想成真

甲：为了我做的梦，我太太已经好几天不跟我说话。
乙：什么梦？
甲：我梦见和她吵架，狠狠地打了她一巴掌。
乙：梦嘛！怎么会呢？
甲：是啊！不过醒来后，我太太的脸红红的，肿了半边.....

The MacBook Air

Sleek, shiny and lightweight. Is there anything else a portable-computer user could want in such an uber cool device?

IT IS obvious that Apple’s latest ultraportable is aimed at mobile users who have a disdain for heavy notebook computers bristling with buttons, LEDs and ports.

Here is a seemingly paper-thin device in brushed metal with a gorgeous display and full-sized keyboard – its looks oozing science fiction, in our eyes – for the minimalists among us.

The MacBook Air is certainly a marvel to behold. But having said that, could anything less than such elegance be expected from the company that brought us the Macintosh and iPhone?

Despite its waif-like appearance, it is solidly built. Its casing durability and lightness come from a healthy dollop of aluminium in the manufacturing process, and we get a portable that's just 1.36kg in weight.

Compared to rival notebooks that are considered light at 1.9kg, Apple's contender is a flyweight among the heavyweights, in our book.

One minor gripe, though, is that the casing is so smooth that there hardly seems any spot that you can get a proper grip on; and if you're Mr Butter Fingers, the Air could slip right out of your hands.

In keeping with its sci-fi looks, all the ports are cleverly hidden inside a small, foldable latch that closes flush with the exterior when not needed.

Pop it out and you get the headphone jack, one USB port, and a micro-DVI port that can be fitted with two video adaptors for DVI and VGA output. The adaptors come bundled with the notebook.

LIGHT AS AIR: The MacBook Air is so light that you can hold it up with just one hand without difficulty.
This brings us to our next gripe, involving form versus function. It's nice that Apple opted to keep things neat with the well-hidden ports, but we think that such a limited number of ports may not go down well with most users.

The lack of a Firewire port presents a problem for users wanting to perform high-speed data transfers, such as the transferring of video files. It also doesn’t help that the connection port is so recessed within the casing that it becomes difficult to connect larger peripherals without having to resort to a USB extension cable.

On the opposite side of the notebook, you will find the teensy MagSafe charging port.

Note that it is different from the regular MagSafe port on other portables – Apple has set it at a slight slant. Should you need to plug in an older MacBook charger, it won't seat properly because of the angle.

Inside the Book

Opening up the Air, you are greeted by a nice large 13.3in LED backlit display, which has a brightness control to help conserve battery life.

With a native resolution of 1,200 x 800pixels, the screen looks great and the bright colours almost jump out at you. It also offers excellent viewing angles, with almost no hint of colour shifts when seen from different angles.

Unlike some other ultraportable notebooks that have smaller keyboards, the Air's full-sized backlit keyboard is very comfortable to use. No cramped fingers here, thank you.

The keys are well spaced out, giving you plenty of room to move about and there is a nice tactile feel to the keys as you type.

You will also like to know that the keyboard backlight automatically goes on or off depending on the ambient lighting around the notebook when it is being used.

LOTS OF SPACE: Unlike most ultra-portables, the Air has a full-sized keyboard and a new multitouch enabled trackpad.
Also, there is a bunch of shortcut keys tied to the “F” keys that gives you quick access to the brightness setting, Apple's exposé feature, keyboard backlight and some media function buttons that correspond with the iTunes music application.

The Air also has an enormous trackpad that gives you lots of space to move about and generally makes menu navigation really easy. So easy in fact, we never even thought of hooking up an optical mouse.

One new feature of the trackpad is that it supports multitouch gestures, which greatly enhances the way you would adjust item views in the Finder window and icon sizes.

You can also zoom in and out of photos by just pinching or moving apart your thumb and index finger on the touchpad. iPhone and iPod touch users will know how this works.

However, the best bit for us is how picture orientation can be adjusted by just twisting two fingers of one hand on the trackpad – really neat.

Performance

Running on an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, the Air is a capable workhorse with enough horsepower to easily take on everyday user tasks such as wordprocessing, web surfing as well as music and video playback.

It comes standard with 2GB RAM and this should suffice unless you are into video editing or other power hogging applications.

We were pleased to note that the Air is a very silent notebook. Throughout the entire review, we can't recall hearing it emit any sound, not even the sound of the hard disk spinning.

Startup is almost instantaneous from hibernation or sleep mode. This is a bonus if you are often making presentations or need to view a file quickly.

As for hard disk space, there isn’t a lot of real estate here. There's just 80GB, which is small by today’s standards – most notebooks have about 160GB as standard.

We also weren't impressed with the sound quality of the Air. There's a tiny mono-speaker hidden underneath the keyboard.

While it is loud enough to be heard, it sounds flat and just isn’t good for music or movies. You’re better off plugging in a headset or a bigger set of speakers for better sound quality.

WiFi connectivity is good and using this to surf the Web is smooth and satisfying. The built-in iSight webcam comes in handy when making video calls over the Internet.

While browsing on Safari, I used some of the multitouch gestures on the touchpad and found them useful for adjusting text sizes, or to scroll webpages.

Next up is Bluetooth connectivity; this helps with the Air's limited number of ports because you won't take up any when you use a wireless mouse.

TINY PORTS: A small foldable latch reveals the MacBook Air's three sole ports - the headphone jack, USB an micro-DVI port. Now, Apple claims the Air is able to go five hours without charging. We ran our own battery test, using the Air to surf the Web, watch a movie and perform some light processing tasks, and it fell short of the mark; only lasting three hours and 10 minutes in continuous use.

However, three hours of non-stop should still be acceptable to most mobile users.

Missing features

Apple has made some sacrifices to maintain the Air's slim form-factor. This means some features have had to be left out.

The most notable feature missing is an optical drive. Apple argues that consumers won’t miss this that much, but we beg to differ.

While we don’t hugely utilise an optical drive, it is a necessity when installing new programs, most of which are on a disc.

Apple’s solution to this is Remote Disc, which basically allows the Air to read and access data from an optical disc on another desktop or notebook computer over a wireless network.

Before you start installing programs using Remote Disc you are going to need to install the Remote Disc application on a PC or Mac with a disc drive. The installation process is quick and there aren’t a whole lot of settings you need to tweak.

SLIM JIM: The MacBook Air's slim form factor makes it easy to carry around. Once you are done installing, click on the Remote Disc icon listed on the left side of the Finder to remotely access any disc in the drive.

Having used Remote Disc to transfer some media off a DVD, I found that the Air needs to be within close proximity of the borrowed DVD drive in order to maintain a stable connection.

I transferred a 600MB video file from a nearby DVD and managed a transfer rate of roughly 37MB per minute.

Admittedly, Remote Disc is a handy tool for accessing data over a wireless network but it still has limitations.

Among them is that while you can browse the file contents of commercial DVDs, you cannot playback any media on the disc. You also can’t browse or listen to music CDs, let alone rip or burn CDs and DVDs over the network.

So what can you do with Remote Disc? Well, you can install applications, browse and transfer data from data CDs, as well as reinstall the operating system should the system crash.

Alternatively, if you find Remote Disc too troublesome there is the option to purchase an external USB-powered SuperDrive optical disc drive which will read both CDs and DVDs, as well as burn dual-layer DVDs.

The major drawback to the SuperDrive is that it only works with the Air

Duck this dark lord

Tired of being the nice guy in a game? Here's your chance to put on dark underwear and be the bad guy. Sadly, you're unlikely to impress Sauron or Voldemort, or even Cobra Commander, in this one.

Most computer games cast you on the side of the good and noble hero who is out to save the land from an evil overlord and must save a damsel in distress.

This game, however, puts you in the boots of the evil overlord. You join the ranks of movie villains such as Sauron from The Lord of the Rings series and Voldemort from the Harry Potter films.

Funny Video

FREE encyclopedia

ONLINE encyclopedia are a great idea, but most of them aren't free. One exception is Encyclopedia.com (www.encyclopedia.com) which allows you to search its extensive database and provides enough information to get average student or information seeker started.
The site also includes several free e-mail based services, including a " today in history " and an automated "topic tracker", which claims to deliver the latest information on a topic of your choice directly to your e-mail inbox

Redemption through annihilation

The Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War series comes to an end with Soulstorm but does it end with a whimper or flourish? Read on to find out
BEING a big fan of the Warhammer 40,000 (also known as 40K) universe, I was eagerly anticipating this release, which incidentally, is the last title of the Dawn of War series.
To kick things off, there’s a short introduction movie that explains why all the different armies are fighting in the Karuva system as well as why the forces of the Imperium are at each other's throats.
Aside from the seven factions from Dark Crusade; Space Marines, Imperial Guard, Eldar, Orks, Necrons, Tau and the forces of Chaos, you also get two new armies, namely the Sisters of Battle and the Dark Eldar.

BATTLE ON: Soulstorm is a fun game to play, especially if you are new to the genre or a big fan of the 40K universe.
Hot warriors
The Sisters of Battle are a largely all-female army of holy warriors serving the Church of the Imperium and their idea of dealing with their enemies involves an excessive use of bolter fire and flame. This is pretty much reflected in the composition of their force, which gives you plenty of infantry and flame-equipped units.
The Sisters of Battle also have a unique resource called “faith points” – generate enough faith points and you can call in some neat holy powers which help you in battle, including having a unit of angels fight for you!
Their vehicles are largely not that powerful but balanced out by the fact they cost less so you can field more of them.
INTERPLANETARY WARS: Your war campaign take place on four planets, and you battle in phases against one or two opponents on each planet.
Unfortunately in Soulstorm, the game continues to make flame weapons affect only unit morale and buildings, which is pretty annoying as anyone who’s read the 40K novels or played the tabletop game knows that flame weapons in the 40K universe pretty much destroys anything it is used against.
In the game, this translates into the Sisters of Battles’ defensive structures being pretty weak as they all utilise flame weapons. So you need to make sure you have your units ready to respond quickly to any attacks on your defensive structures.
Join the dark side
The Dark Eldar are the sadistic, corrupted brethren of the Eldar whose main purpose is to raid and gather plunder along with slaves to torture.
This faction does a lot of damage especially when you upgrade their weapons but they can’t really take damage so going toe-to-toe with most of the other races is not a good idea.
However, you can swing the advantage in your favour since the Dark Eldar infantry have the “terrorflex grenade,” which stuns and breaks the morale of enemy units, giving you free shots at them along with being able to inflict more damage.
The Dark Eldar also have a unique resource in the form of souls harvested from their enemies. Dark Eldar worker units, in the form of slaves, can gather souls from Dark Eldar buildings or from any slain enemy units, though the latter is fairly pointless since your workers can just simply stay in your base and gather souls from your buildings.
Harvest enough souls and you gain access to various powers that you can use on your enemies such as lowering their morale, corroding their vehicles or poisoning their troops.
Airheads
The other armies from Dark Crusade pretty much are the same, save for minor adjustments to them and the addition of air units to all armies.
TAKING FLIGHT: Unlike the Dark Crusade, each army in Soulstorm has an air unit.
My personal favourite still remains the Baneblade tank of the Imperial Guard, which pretty much lays waste to anything facing it.
The air units, in my opinion, really don’t make much difference to the game and most of the time I hardly build any of them anyway. This may be due to the fact that when I play my favourite faction, the Imperial Guard, my tactics consist solely of getting the Baneblade operational and then rampaging with it or parking my artillery pieces outside the enemy base and lobbing shells into it.
The fact that they can largely be easily shot down by most units also lowers their appeal for use in most cases.
The plus side might be that the air units are more of a testbed for inclusion in Dawn of War II and that the designers will then be able to make them more usable based on the experience in Soulstorm.
Honour guards
As always each faction is led by a Commander who you can upgrade with various equipment to make him or her more powerful in combat. The only Commander from Dark Crusade who returns in Soulstorm is the Ork Warlord Gorgutz, while all the others are new characters.
When you conquer certain areas, you get an honour guard unit, which is basically a more powerful version of standard units to take into battle with you.
The honour guard units don’t count towards your infantry and vehicle caps and thus allow you to field a larger army.
They are particularly valuable in the Take and Hold missions since you need to quickly capture critical locations and hold on to them for a certain amount of time.
Didn’t we fight before
The campaign takes place on four planets divided into provinces with limited access between the planets via provinces with Warpgates. The result is that you end up battling in phases against only one or two opponents on each planet in contrast to Dark Crusade where since all factions could easily move around.
Personally I’m not keen on the format in Soulstorm since it can get pretty boring fighting the same foe several times in succession and it takes a while before you get to fight a particular faction for the first time.
The missions are divided into Annihilation, Take and Hold and Stronghold missions. Annihilation missions require you to wipe out all enemy forces – pretty much straightforward except when you fight the Eldar as they can make their buildings invisible so it can get very annoying when you have to search the map for that last Eldar building.
Take and Hold, as mentioned above, requires you to capture a certain number of critical locations and hold on to them. Since you need to do this quickly with no time to build, along with the fact that the defending force is already well set up, having a decent honour guard with you is essential.
The Stronghold missions occur when you attack your enemies’ home province and opens with a short video story. Sadly the opposing commanders' dialogue at the start in which your commander and the enemy commander engage in some trash talking is no longer present. A real pity since Dark Crusade had some pretty humourous dialogue in this section.
Final salvo
FIERY: The Sisters of Battle serve the Church of the Imperium and their idea of dealing with their enemies involves an excessive use of bolter fire and flame.
The Soulstorm campaign, while fun to play, doesn’t really have much of a storyline. This is always a problem when you have an open-ended campaign setting.
Hopefully Dawn of War II will have a more storyline-based campaign as the Soulstorm campaign storyline doesn’t do enough justice to the 40K universe. To be fair, however, there are some nice short stories and flavour text in the archive section of each province. There’s also an awesome end credit movie featuring the Space Marines and Orks.
Overall Soulstorm is still a fun game to play, especially if you are new to the genre or a big fan of the 40K universe. Being able to play out the mass mayhem and carnage that you read about in the 40K novels is a big plus factor for me personally.
However it’s probably just as well that THQ and Relic have opted to end the Dawn of War games since the series has pretty much run its course.
The good news is that Dawn of War II is set for next year and you can see a preview of it here at www.dawnofwar2.com/us/home.
Now excuse me as I go back to crushing the enemies of the Imperium.
Pros: New armies; 40K mayhem; and more 40K mayhem.
Cons: Very little back story: air units fairly superfluous; not much change from Dark Crusade.
WARHAMMER 40,000 DAWN OF WAR: SOULSTORM
(THQ)
Real-time strategy game for the PC
System requirements: Intel Pentium 4 2.4GHz or better, 512MB RAM or more, 5GB free hard disk space, DirectX 9.0c-compatible graphics card with hardware T&L.

Obama struggles to win white vote in rural Pa.

MUNCY VALLEY, Pa. (Reuters) - Barack Obama's efforts to woo white voters in the Pennsylvania Democratic primary have been hurt by his comments on small town bitterness and his association with an outspoken pastor, residents of Muncy Valley say.
U.S. Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) addresses supporters at a town meeting in Reading, Pennsylvania April 20, 2008. (REUTERS/Bradley Bower)
Local people called the Illinois senator arrogant, unpatriotic and un-Christian after his remarks that residents of small towns in Pennsylvania and elsewhere are bitter because of job losses, and so have turned to traditions like guns, religion, and anti-immigrant sentiment.
"He is saying people are weak, dumb and naive, and they are seeking religion as a way of getting through," said Darwin Whitmoyer, 54, a white truck driver, at the gas station in this town of about 100 people 150 miles (240 km) northwest of Philadelphia. "He didn't help himself."
While most black voters in Pennsylvania will back Obama in Tuesday's crucial presidential primary, only about 35 percent of whites have said they will vote for him, compared with the 53 percent of whites who say they will back Hillary Clinton, according to a Newsmax/Zogby poll published on Thursday.
Pennsylvania's population is about 85 percent white and 11 percent black, with most of the remainder Hispanic.
GUNS AND GOD
Whitmoyer said Obama's mention of guns as an emblem of rural culture was interpreted by local people as a sign that he will restrict their use if he becomes president.
"If he isn't for guns, he's against guns," Whitmoyer said. "He just cut his own throat with everyone who owns a gun."
Whitmoyer, who said he will probably vote for Clinton, also said he opposes Obama's support for gay rights, and is suspicious of his endorsement by black TV host Oprah Winfrey.
"Anyone who walks with the true Christ is going to be against Obama," said Whitmoyer, whose license plate has the message 'I'm saved, Jesus is Lord!' He added: "Religion is going to hurt him."
Across the street at Steve's Saw Repair, owner Steve Peterman said he was offended by the remarks of Obama's black pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who said the Sept. 11 attacks were payback for U.S. foreign policy and expressed anger at what he called racist America.
"I'm not racist, but if he would allow white people in that church, I don't think that stuff would have been said," said Peterman, who will probably vote for Republican nominee John McCain as "the lesser of three evils."
But Peterman, 51, agreed with Obama's assessment that local people are bitter about a lack of job opportunities in rural Sullivan County, which Peterman described as having "7,000 people and one red light."
"There's no work here," he said. "You have to drive 30 to 40miles to find a job." He said U.S. companies should be penalized for outsourcing jobs overseas.
In the county seat of Laporte, Lara McNeil, 35, of nearby Lycoming County, said she was suspicious of any church that would allow a preacher such as Wright.
"I don't know what belief he is following but it doesn't sound like any church I know," she said.
Wright's sermon raised questions about Obama's patriotism in the mind of Robert Bressler, 74, a retired truck driver, having coffee in The Vale Family Restaurant in Muncy Valley.
"The guy demonized the U.S. and Obama still likes him." Bressler said. "We don't need him as president."