Find chocolate is one of life?s simple pleasures, and there is no chocolate finer than that offered by Ghirardelli. Whether you happen to be a chocolate connoisseur yourself or have a close friend or family member who is, there is nothing that will put a smile on a person?s face quite like the gift of Ghirardelli fine chocolates. These chocolates are unlike anything that you will find in the candy aisle of the local supermarket because they are crafted by the finest chocolatiers in the world and stimulate all of your senses.
Luckily, the world?s greatest chocolate does not cost a fortune. When you go to their website, you will find excellent deals on premium chocolates that are perfect for every holiday or special occasion or simply to treat yourself. If you are the type of person that enjoys trying new things in the kitchen, you may want to take a look at some of the recipes that they have that turn already extraordinary chocolate into something out of this world.
Once you see how excited a loved one is to receive the gift of fine Ghirardelli chocolates, you may even start looking for reasons to give these gifts throughout the year. Of course, the holidays are the perfect time to give chocolates and you can cut down on your shopping list by purchasing Ghirardelli for everyone. The only real problem with giving these chocolates is that you might find yourself a little hesitant to hand the gift over which is why you should go ahead and order some for yourself as long as you are at it.
Ghirardelli Fine Chocolates are the perfect gift for:
Holidays
Birthdays
Anniversaries
Graduations
Retirements
Or just because
Keep in mind that you don?t have to wait for someone to give you chocolates in order to enjoy some of these for yourself. If you have just gotten a promotion, accomplish the goal, or reach the milestone that you set for yourself then why not treat yourself with something that you know you are sure to love? When you shop online you can save even more money than if you purchase these exquisite chocolates in the store and take advantage of the fact that you can do all of your shopping from the comfort of your own home without ever having to step foot outside the house. See for yourself why Ghirardelli is one of the premier names in fine chocolates.
Indulge in decadent gourmet foods at www.myreviewsnow.net/.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 25th, 2012 at 7:38 pm and is filed under Food & Drink.
Artificially intelligent game bots pass the Turing test on Turing's centenaryPublic release date: 26-Sep-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Daniel Oppenheimer daniel.oppenheimer@utexas.edu 512-745-3353 University of Texas at Austin
BotPrize winners score as more human than half their human competitors
AUSTIN, Texas An artificially intelligent virtual gamer created by computer scientists at The University of Texas at Austin has won the BotPrize by convincing a panel of judges that it was more human-like than half the humans it competed against.
The competition was sponsored by 2K Games and was set inside the virtual world of "Unreal Tournament 2004," a first-person shooter video game. The winners were announced this month at the IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games.
"The idea is to evaluate how we can make game bots, which are nonplayer characters (NPCs) controlled by AI algorithms, appear as human as possible," said Risto Miikkulainen, professor of computer science in the College of Natural Sciences. Miikkulainen created the bot, called the UT^2 game bot, with doctoral students Jacob Schrum and Igor Karpov.
The bots face off in a tournament against one another and about an equal number of humans, with each player trying to score points by eliminating its opponents. Each player also has a "judging gun" in addition to its usual complement of weapons. That gun is used to tag opponents as human or bot.
The bot that is scored as most human-like by the human judges is named the winner. UT^2, which won a warm-up competition last month, shared the honors with MirrorBot, which was programmed by Romanian computer scientist Mihai Polceanu.
The winning bots both achieved a humanness rating of 52 percent. Human players received an average humanness rating of only 40 percent. The two winning teams will split the $7,000 first prize.
The victory comes 100 years after the birth of mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing, whose "Turing test" stands as one of the foundational definitions of what constitutes true machine intelligence. Turing argued that we will never be able to see inside a machine's hypothetical consciousness, so the best measure of machine sentience is whether it can fool us into believing it is human.
"When this 'Turing test for game bots' competition was started, the goal was 50 percent humanness," said Miikkulainen. "It took us five years to get there, but that level was finally reached last week, and it's not a fluke."
The complex gameplay and 3-D environments of "Unreal Tournament 2004" require that bots mimic humans in a number of ways, including moving around in 3-D space, engaging in chaotic combat against multiple opponents and reasoning about the best strategy at any given point in the game. Even displays of distinctively human irrational behavior can, in some cases, be emulated.
"People tend to tenaciously pursue specific opponents without regard for optimality," said Schrum. "When humans have a grudge, they'll chase after an enemy even when it's not in their interests. We can mimic that behavior."
In order to most convincingly mimic as much of the range of human behavior as possible, the team takes a two-pronged approach. Some behavior is modeled directly on previously observed human behavior, while the central battle behaviors are developed through a process called neuroevolution, which runs artificially intelligent neural networks through a survival-of-the-fittest gauntlet that is modeled on the biological process of evolution.
Networks that thrive in a given environment are kept, and the less fit are thrown away. The holes in the population are filled by copies of the fit ones and by their "offspring," which are created by randomly modifying (mutating) the survivors. The simulation is run for as many generations as are necessary for networks to emerge that have evolved the desired behavior.
"In the case of the BotPrize," said Schrum, "a great deal of the challenge is in defining what 'human-like' is, and then setting constraints upon the neural networks so that they evolve toward that behavior.
"If we just set the goal as eliminating one's enemies, a bot will evolve toward having perfect aim, which is not very human-like. So we impose constraints on the bot's aim, such that rapid movements and long distances decrease accuracy. By evolving for good performance under such behavioral constraints, the bot's skill is optimized within human limitations, resulting in behavior that is good but still human-like."
Miikkulainen said that methods developed for the BotPrize competition should eventually be useful not just in developing games that are more entertaining, but also in creating virtual training environments that are more realistic, and even in building robots that interact with humans in more pleasant and effective ways.
###
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Artificially intelligent game bots pass the Turing test on Turing's centenaryPublic release date: 26-Sep-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Daniel Oppenheimer daniel.oppenheimer@utexas.edu 512-745-3353 University of Texas at Austin
BotPrize winners score as more human than half their human competitors
AUSTIN, Texas An artificially intelligent virtual gamer created by computer scientists at The University of Texas at Austin has won the BotPrize by convincing a panel of judges that it was more human-like than half the humans it competed against.
The competition was sponsored by 2K Games and was set inside the virtual world of "Unreal Tournament 2004," a first-person shooter video game. The winners were announced this month at the IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games.
"The idea is to evaluate how we can make game bots, which are nonplayer characters (NPCs) controlled by AI algorithms, appear as human as possible," said Risto Miikkulainen, professor of computer science in the College of Natural Sciences. Miikkulainen created the bot, called the UT^2 game bot, with doctoral students Jacob Schrum and Igor Karpov.
The bots face off in a tournament against one another and about an equal number of humans, with each player trying to score points by eliminating its opponents. Each player also has a "judging gun" in addition to its usual complement of weapons. That gun is used to tag opponents as human or bot.
The bot that is scored as most human-like by the human judges is named the winner. UT^2, which won a warm-up competition last month, shared the honors with MirrorBot, which was programmed by Romanian computer scientist Mihai Polceanu.
The winning bots both achieved a humanness rating of 52 percent. Human players received an average humanness rating of only 40 percent. The two winning teams will split the $7,000 first prize.
The victory comes 100 years after the birth of mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing, whose "Turing test" stands as one of the foundational definitions of what constitutes true machine intelligence. Turing argued that we will never be able to see inside a machine's hypothetical consciousness, so the best measure of machine sentience is whether it can fool us into believing it is human.
"When this 'Turing test for game bots' competition was started, the goal was 50 percent humanness," said Miikkulainen. "It took us five years to get there, but that level was finally reached last week, and it's not a fluke."
The complex gameplay and 3-D environments of "Unreal Tournament 2004" require that bots mimic humans in a number of ways, including moving around in 3-D space, engaging in chaotic combat against multiple opponents and reasoning about the best strategy at any given point in the game. Even displays of distinctively human irrational behavior can, in some cases, be emulated.
"People tend to tenaciously pursue specific opponents without regard for optimality," said Schrum. "When humans have a grudge, they'll chase after an enemy even when it's not in their interests. We can mimic that behavior."
In order to most convincingly mimic as much of the range of human behavior as possible, the team takes a two-pronged approach. Some behavior is modeled directly on previously observed human behavior, while the central battle behaviors are developed through a process called neuroevolution, which runs artificially intelligent neural networks through a survival-of-the-fittest gauntlet that is modeled on the biological process of evolution.
Networks that thrive in a given environment are kept, and the less fit are thrown away. The holes in the population are filled by copies of the fit ones and by their "offspring," which are created by randomly modifying (mutating) the survivors. The simulation is run for as many generations as are necessary for networks to emerge that have evolved the desired behavior.
"In the case of the BotPrize," said Schrum, "a great deal of the challenge is in defining what 'human-like' is, and then setting constraints upon the neural networks so that they evolve toward that behavior.
"If we just set the goal as eliminating one's enemies, a bot will evolve toward having perfect aim, which is not very human-like. So we impose constraints on the bot's aim, such that rapid movements and long distances decrease accuracy. By evolving for good performance under such behavioral constraints, the bot's skill is optimized within human limitations, resulting in behavior that is good but still human-like."
Miikkulainen said that methods developed for the BotPrize competition should eventually be useful not just in developing games that are more entertaining, but also in creating virtual training environments that are more realistic, and even in building robots that interact with humans in more pleasant and effective ways.
###
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) ? North Korea's parliament convened Tuesday for the second time in six months, passing a law that adds one year of compulsory education for children in the socialist nation, the first publicly announced policy change under leader Kim Jong Un.
The Supreme People's Assembly's second meeting of the year was notable mainly as a departure from how Kim's father did business. Before he died in December, Kim Jong Il convened his legislature just once in most years, and during one three-year period after his own father's death it didn't meet at all.
By adding a year to North Korea's state-funded educational system, from 11 to 12 years, Kim may be trying to cultivate loyalty among younger generations as he consolidates his power base.
Kim Jong Un himself attended Tuesday's session, which was adjourned after a single day, according to the official Korean Central News Agency. Foreign reporters were denied access. Video on state TV showed legislators, many of the women in traditional Korean dresses, holding up deputy badges in the vast Mansudae Assembly Hall.
North Korea's Constitution allows political parties, but politics is overwhelmingly dominated by the Workers' Party, founded by Kim Il Sung, grandfather of the current ruler. Virtually all legislators are members of the Kims' party who ran unopposed in the last nationwide election, leading many outside observers to consider the body a rubber stamp for the regime's policies. A few legislators are from the Chondoist Chongu Party and the Social Democratic Party, both believed to government aligned.
Here's a look at the Supreme People's Assembly and how it works:
? The current 12th parliament formed in 2009 has 687 legislators, or deputies, of which 107 are women. The number of deputies is determined by the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly in proportion to the country's population.
? The assembly meets at the austere Mansudae Assembly Hall in the capital, Pyongyang.
? Deputies are elected after a committee of more than 100 people from each district recommends candidates to represent the constituency in the parliament. Even though the law provides no limits on the number of candidates who can run from each district, almost all candidates ran unopposed in the last election in March 2009.
? According to Kim Song Chun, a parliamentary official, deputies meet to discuss and pass laws and establish the country's domestic and foreign policies. They also can appoint or dismiss officials at top state organizations and confer titles. For example, at the last session in April, Kim Jong Un was made first chairman of the powerful National Defense Commission.
Holding a second parliamentary session could mark a return to the more active role that parliament played under Kim Il Sung, who often held two sessions a year, said John Delury of Yonsei University in South Korea. Parliament typically met only once a year under Kim Jong Il.
"This was part of a general trend under Kim Jong Il of holding less frequent and less regular meetings of key party and government organs," Delury said. "The striking thing is that Kim Jong Un seems to be reversing that trend by regularizing and re-institutionalizing governance."
___
Associated Press writer Hyung-jin Kim contributed in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report.
___
Follow Jean Lee, AP's Korea bureau chief, on Twitter at twitter.com/newsjean.
The law would seem to have achieved its objectives in reducing the welfare rolls
Esene Manga, an Eritrean refugee living in Atlanta, hadn?t heard of Albertville, Alabama until a recruiter offered him a job there. Now Manga, 22, earns $10.85 an hour cutting chicken breasts on a poultry-plant night shift, an unexpected beneficiary of a year-old law designed to drive out illegal Hispanic immigrants.
This isn?t what the law?s backers said would happen. Republican state Senator Scott Beason, a sponsor, said at a news conference last year that the restrictions on undocumented workers would ?put thousands of native Alabamians back in the work force.?
Instead, it caused a labor shortage that resulted in the importation of hundreds of legal African and Haitian refugees, and Puerto Ricans, according to interviews with workers, advocacy organizations and businesses. Most were recruited by the poultry industry, in a segment of the economy that has been a heavy employer of undocumented workers, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, a Washington research group.
Alabama is one of five states that last year passed immigration laws modeled on a 2010 Arizona measure largely invalidated by the U.S. Supreme Court in June. Last month, an appellate court in Atlanta said many of the Alabama law?s requirements also aren?t constitutional. Other provisions, including one allowing police to arrest suspected illegal immigrants, remain in place.
Destination: Albertville
In Albertville, a city of about 21,000 in the northeast corner of the state, Manga, his friend Abrahaley Araya and about 18 other African refugees started at Wayne Farms LLC?s plant in the days after the law took effect a year ago, according to the two men and Albert Mbanfu of Lutheran Services of Georgia, which helps refugees find jobs.
Johnell Rodriguez, 26, said he was among 17 Puerto Ricans who arrived at another Alabama Wayne Farms plant a week after the law took effect. Haitian Saul Jules said he was recruited in Miami to work in Albertville by JBS SA (JBSS3)?s Pilgrim?s Pride Corp. a few months ago.
Plants sought refugees because too few local residents were interested or qualified, said Frank Singleton, a spokesman for Wayne Farms, based in Oakwood, Georgia.
Many legal Hispanic employees left after the immigration law took effect, he said. The company, which operates six plants in the state, spent $5 million to replace and train new workers, he said. Turnover in North Alabama was 50 percent last year, and is now as high as 90 percent in some plants because replacements didn?t stay, he said. The company is ?having to use alternative methods and sourcing,? including recruiting refugees, Singleton said.
Wayne Farms found Eritreans, displaced by war and conflict, and other Africans through East Coast Labor Solutions LLC, a Fairlea, West Virginia-based labor broker. East Coast has about 200 workers in Alabama, owner Ray Wiley said in an interview.
?Our jobs are often in states where immigration laws have hit the hardest, and mostly in the poultry industry,? he said.
East Coast began calling Atlanta refugee agencies several months ago looking for legal immigrants to come to Alabama for a year, said Mbanfu, refugee employment director for Lutheran Services in Atlanta. He said the company would have taken as many refugees as he could refer.
The agency connected East Coast with refugees who had been in the country three to five years, he said.
Chris Gaddis, head of human resources for Greeley, Colorado-based Pilgrim?s Pride, which has four plants in Alabama, said the law didn?t affect its workforce. Worth Sparkman, a spokesman for Tyson Foods Inc. (TSN), which has two plants in Alabama, also said there was no effect.
Alabama doesn?t track the number of refugees who come to fill jobs. The state had an estimated 120,000 illegal Hispanic immigrants in 2010, of whom 95,000 were in the labor force, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. They were 2.5 percent of the population and 4.2 percent of the workforce.
Changing demographics are reflected on store shelves. Albertville?s main Hispanic grocery, Tienda El Sol, added coconut milk, new varieties of hot peppers and other items to appeal to newcomers, manager Marjorie Centeno said.
The Alabama law?s intent was to attack ?every aspect of an illegal alien?s life,? and ?make it difficult for them to live here so they will deport themselves,? Republican House sponsor Micky Hammon said during legislative debate, according to a Birmingham News report.
More HERE
?Recent posts at CIS? below
See? here for the blog.? The CIS main page is here.?
Publications
1. Visa Mills, Diploma Mills, and Other For-Profit Colleges.? Sorting Out Some of the Controversies in Higher Education
Blogs
2. No Hezbollah in Mexico?
3. GAO Report: State Dept. Has Good Tools but Lacks Coordinated Approach to Address Rampant Visa Fraud
4. More Proof that Visa Abuse Is Instinctive at IBM
5. Are Non-Hispanics Really that Negative Toward Hispanics, Really?
6. How Many Murders Is Enough? Slain Teen's Father Implores Calif. Gov. to Veto Sanctuary Bill
7. Bad Dreams About "Free" Health Care
8. Could It Happen Here? Probably Not, but It Did in Canada!
9. On the Notion of Risk Management at DHS
10. USCIS Does Right Thing on EB-5 Issue ? and Gets Sued
11. Is Visa Abuse Instinctive at IBM?
12. Tech Immigration and the Visa Lottery
13. USCIS Annual Fee Waiver Loss Soars to $198 Million
The mortgage lender can always ask the bankruptcy court for permission to begin or restart a foreclosure. These kinds of creditors tend to do so either at the beginning of your case if they don?t like the Chapter 13 payment plan that you and your attorney are proposing, or later in the case if you?ve not made the payments that you said in your plan that you would make. The court balances your rights against those of the lender in deciding whether to give you the extra time you need. Source: schoenbohmlaw.com
Video: Will filing bankruptcy stop foreclosure?
Can bankruptcy stop foreclosure?
After a certain period of time the bank or lender will start legal proceedings to foreclose on the home, which may mean taking physical possession of the house, and ultimately putting it up for auction or sale.? Fortunately, this cannot be done quickly ? by law it requires a number of steps, which may take months.? Usually, a homeowner must miss three to six monthly mortgage payments before foreclosure proceedings begin.? This time period can give the homeowner a chance to look at other options, such as a short sale, loan forbearance or a deed in lieu of foreclosure. If the homeowner cannot use any of these options, then bankruptcy is the next logical step. Source: craigswapp.com
Help for DuPage homeowners to stop foreclosure
A recent event in DuPage County was held in response to the large number of residents struggling to pay their mortgages. According to the DuPage Home Ownership Center, the county is experiencing a high rate of foreclosures: 500 new cases are filed each month, resulting in a current total of 6,400 pending foreclosures. The majority of the foreclosures in DuPage County occur due to a homeowner?s unemployment or underemployment. The event focused on community education, intended to help homeowners by disseminating information on refinancing and ways to avoid foreclosure. Source: illinoislawyerbankruptcyblog.com
Good Morning Flint!: HAVING PROBLEMS PAYING YOUR DEBTS? FLINT BANKRUPTCY 235
If you have property, which is non-exempt, you could sell it before filing bankruptcy and use the money to purchase things, which are exempt; such are food, furniture, or clothing. However, you cannot give property away to friends or relatives, and have them give it back to you after the bankruptcy. Any transfers of property without receiving fair value for it within one year before filing bankruptcy are called a fraudulent transfer. The property could be taken by the bankruptcy court and sold to pay some of your debts. If the court finds you have been dishonest in your bankruptcy, you could be denied your discharge. You could also be charged with federal or state crimes, which carry serious fines and jail sentences. Source: blogspot.com
Minnesota Home Foreclosure Attorney
More and more Minnesota residents are succumbing to foreclosure. The process of foreclosure happens when you are unable to make the mortgage payments each month and the lending company repossesses your home. This usually happens after a few missed or late payments as well as a warning. Foreclosure is a devastating result of the global financial crisis that can leave you without a roof over your head when you need it most. On top of all the other financial stresses, the last thing you want to worry about is losing your home. Source: mnbankruptcylaw.com
Can Bankruptcy Stop Foreclosure?
The Law Office of Jennifer L. Field, is a leading and friendly California law firm serving clients for many years in the areas of Probate, Estate Planning and Bankruptcy issues. I am a dedicated and experienced attorney serving your unique needs and legal requirements. When you make an appointment, you will meet and speak with me directly and not a law clerk or paralegal. I understand your case is personal and intimate to you and your family so I make sure to take the time to answer any questions you may have to fully address your needs. Give me a quick call without obligation to see how I can help you. At minimum, I might be able to clarify any questions or concerns you may have at this time. Source: shortsaleandforeclosure.net
Bankruptcy Stay In Repeat Filing May Terminate or Not Exist
In a repeat filing, the bankruptcy stay, which usually is automatic and lasts for the duration of your case, may terminate sooner than it would if it was the first time you were filing, or the stay may not even exist at all.?Hence, a repeat filing may not stop a foreclosure of your home or stop a wage garnishment or other collection activity.? This is because in an effort to curb abusive filings, the bankruptcy laws have been amended to place limits on the available protections in a repeat filing.?? Once such limit is the limit on the duration of the automatic stay. Source: sandiego-bankruptcylaw.com
How to Avoid Foreclosure Proceedings in Virginia
If you are based in Virginia and are faced with foreclosure, you need to know that there are legitimate agencies that provide genuine support in foreclosure. There are legal organizations that can help you save your home in the event of foreclosure. If you are behind your mortgage payments and fear foreclosure, you need to get in touch with one of the organizations that provide professional help in this regard. Before you reach out to any organization and look for Virginia foreclosure help, however, you will need to check the veracity and the authencity of the organization that is providing the assistance. The reason why you need to make all effort to stop foreclosure is that foreclosure is the most harmful thing is far as your credit rating is concerned. What is more, foreclosure is also has great long-term effects on your credit rating. Foreclosure stays for a period of seven years on your credit report. While your credit rating will recover after seven years, it is far more beneficial to avoid foreclosure. While some people even consider selling their houses to avoid foreclosure, others settle for the more conventional mechanics of loan modification. Loan modifications either increase the length of the mortgage or reduce the interest rate, both of which result in the lowering of the monthly amounts a borrower has to pay. To avail of the loan modification scheme, it is important for the borrower to call the lender right away, as soon as the borrower has missed a payment or a couple of payments. This indicates to the lender that the borrower is serious about keeping the property and will do what he can to retain it. Selling the home when faced with foreclosure is not a completely outlandish option. Doing so will help you save the equity amount on the home that would be completely lost by foreclosure. In addition, selling the home will save you the credit rating that would otherwise be completely damaged. There are several ways in which to carry out the sale and this is best carried out with the help of renowned operators. Whatever means you use to avoid a foreclosure, there is no doubt on the score that foreclosure is best avoided at all times. Foreclosure can mean great financial damages apart from a serious setback to your credit rating, that can compromise the chances of your owning a home again in the near future. If you are falling behind on your mortgage payments, make it a point to contact the appropriate authorities so that you can get help on foreclosure and are able to save your money and credit rating. Get Virginia foreclosure Help from the regular authorities so that you can avoid the many scams that are flooding the market. Take the help of the authorities and the laws enacted by the government to help save yourself and your home. Nothing can be more damaging to your financial health than a foreclosure. To know more about Bankruptcy Maryland and to gain some insightful knowledge on Mortgage modification then visit our website. Article Source : http://www.ideamarketers.com/?articleid=3513808&CFID=228176873&CFTOKEN=26453015 Source: jimdo.com
Can I STOP FORECLOSURE by Filing Bankruptcy?
11 attorney bank bankrupt bankruptcy bankruptcy attorney bankruptcy lawyer chapter Chapter 7 chapter 7 bankruptcy chapter 11 Chapter 13 credit crisis debt economy estate finance Florida Foreclosure foreclosure process fraud help home house insolvency law lawyer liquidation loan modification money Mortgage news of process real real estate sale Short short sale stop stop foreclosure tax video Source: bankruptcyandforeclosure.net
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The Cloud is coming, people. Soon, its low end-user cost, low-latency, high fidelity wizardry will gush upon us like the deodorant of God, banishing forever the stench of disc-supported local processing. That's according to Nvidia's Phil Eisler, general manager of GeForce Grid Cloud Gaming and a man with no vested interest to uphold whatsoever.
Eisler reckons Xbox 720 will be the last Xbox console, as cloud gaming services continue to improve. "The thing about the consoles ... they say this is the last console, and I am certainly a believer in that," he commented in an interview with VentureBeat. "The last one is almost 10 years old now in terms of the technology.
"The good thing about cloud gaming is it's going to get better every year. One of the reasons we're investing in it is we see that there are some issues today, but they're all solvable, and they're all moving in the right direction.
"Bandwidth is going up. The cost of server rooms is going down. We're bringing latency down. The experience will just get better and better every year, to the point where I think it will become the predominant way that people play games."
"You can put out multiple Blu-ray discs, but who wants to jockey discs anymore?" he went on. "People don't want discs in their lives anymore. They want to download everything, and when you're downloading that kind of stuff, it takes a long time.
"So we're also pushing the ability, of course, to play instantly. You don't have to download anything. You don't have to update any patches. It's all maintained for you. You just play."
Nvidia hopes to eradicate the much-publicised problem of cloud latency "very shortly". Eisler points out that server upgrades will allow cloud gaming services to whittle down lag as time goes on; by contrast, consoles actually get laggier as more sophisticated games arrive, bogging down the hardware's rendering capabilities.
"The consoles, when they launch, they're rendering the games at 60Hz and the average game has got three frames queued up, so it takes about 50 milliseconds to render a game," he explained.
"As time goes on and more advanced games come, the hardware's too slow, so they basically take the rendering down to 30Hz. Now you're spending 100 milliseconds to get a frame out of the console. We also measured a lot of the HDMI inputs on TVs, and the best one that we could find is about 60 milliseconds.
"So it's funny. The average gamer playing on an Xbox today with a standard television is probably experiencing 150 to 200 milliseconds of latency, and that's what they're used to playing with every day.
"Because we can always improve the hardware at the server end and we can improve the capture and encode... We can do that portion in about 60 milliseconds and effectively hide the network delay.
"I think [cloud gaming company] Gaikai showed, when they worked with Limelight, that with a distributed network in the United States, you could get to most homes in about 30 milliseconds. When I was out talking to the Koreans about these things, they're under 20 to get to houses. People worry about the network latency, but actually, in the whole pipeline, it's the smallest piece.
"Our monitors that we work with today are under 10 milliseconds of latency. We think that, working with smart TV manufacturers, we'll be able to cut that time down. It's going to be possible very shortly to have a cloud-rendered experience that has lower latency than the current console plus standard television experience."
Stepping back from pure questions of technology, Xbox co-creator Seamus Blackley recently told the world that the "console experience" - premium quality entertainment in your living room - would never go out of fashion. What are your thoughts?
With my iPhone 5's unboxed, iMore's Rene Ritchie asked me to whip up another video for a slightly unorthodox head to head comparison.
I may be the BlackBerry fan on the Mobile Nations team, but I've purchased every iPhone that Apple has released to date. Know thy competition, right? The iPhone 5 was no exception - I headed out to the mall and picked up a pair this morning.?
It seems since the iPhone 5 was unveiled, a lot of people have been comparing its design and build quality to jewellery rather than electronic gadgets. With extremely tight manufacturing tolerances, an understated and luxurious look and finely polished finishing details, I can see why the comparison would be made at first glance.
But what about at second glance? And third glance? Can you really compare compare the iPhone 5 to something like a Swiss-made mechanical watch? There's only one way to find out, and that's put them head to head! I'm no Arial Adams or John Biggs, but I do love watches. Heck, I even bought the domain watchreviews.com a couple years back (hmm.. watches are mobile... maybe that could be a new Mobile Nations site for 2013?!). So hit the video above for a not-so-serious head to head comparison. If I wanted to be real serious we'd have to rip the watches and iPhone apart, but that's not happening today.?
The verdict? The watches win for battery life and water resistance over the iPhone 5. The iPhone 5 wins for ease of texting and app catalog. Display quality was a tough call. Both the watches and iPhone 5 make use of super tough and scratch resistant sapphire crystal. While the watches use it on the face, the iPhone 5 uses it on the camera lense. The watches are always on, which makes them very user friendly for getting the time at glance, but it's hard to argue with a retina display. For night time viewing we'll have to give the edge to the iPhone 5 - the luminescence on mechanical watches can really vary.
In all seriousness though, the iPhone 5 really is a well made piece of kit. The tools that built it will no doubt be similar to some of the equipment being used by the big watch houses these days to turn out precision timepieces. But that said, I wouldn't go around comparing the iPhone 5 to a Swiss watch just yet. A statement like that will surely tick off the watch snobs out there, who can bite back even harder than Apple fans. :)
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Public release date: 26-Sep-2012
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The mortgage lender can always ask the bankruptcy court for permission to begin or restart a foreclosure. These kinds of creditors tend to do so either at the beginning of your case if they don?t like the Chapter 13 payment plan that you and your attorney are proposing, or later in the case if you?ve not made the payments that you said in your plan that you would make. The court balances your rights against those of the lender in deciding whether to give you the extra time you need.
