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Stephen Fry in America (UK - BD)
Scott McKenzie takes a trip across America in a taxi with Stephen Fry...
At the beginning of this series, Stephen Fry tells us that but for a twist of fate, he could have been born in America, which explains his love of the USA. The series follows him as he tours all fifty states in a British black cab and visits the more out-of-the-way places along the way. Most of all we get to experience America through his eyes and enjoy his exchanges with the locals and his surprising honesty with us.
It's his honesty that surprised me most about this series. I might be wrong, but I suspect Stephen accepted the job of touring America on the understanding that he could go wherever he wanted, not where the producers wanted to send him. His tour doesn't take us to the usual tourist traps you may think of, instead heading for odd and interesting places like the factory in Chicago where the Oscars are made and for a meeting with Apple's head designer in San Francisco. There seems to have been some kind of trade-off though because there are one or two moments where Stephen Fry obviously didn't want to be in the situation he found himself in.
Being a world-renowned public figure, it makes sense that Stephen would stop by some of his famous friends on his journey. Sting and Morgan Freeman make an appearance and he takes the opportunity to pay a visit to Ted Turner, who appears to throw Stephen off balance with his no-nonsense style. There are also a number of other characters that crop up along the way. One of the most interesting is an elderly woman who looks after holiday homes in Newport and appears to have an endless reel of anecdotes about past presidents.
In typical Stephen Fry style, there are a number of genuine laugh out loud moments, in particular when he is faced with the back-ends of dozens of sheep in Wisconsin. Another key section is when he takes part in a spy game in Las Vegas, but is secretly given the brief to sabotage the chances of his team, which is made up of off-duty Chippendales. It's not all a laugh riot though—there are some more serious moments to be found when he visits Angola prison and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
There are a few movie references thrown into the mix, in particular some music cues from Alien that will please fans. Stephen Fry in America is an enjoyable series from start to finish, where the most important part is that we see America through the eyes of a very clever and funny man who can wax lyrical on any subject. There is more fun to be had than just watching an ageing English man bumble around outside of his comfort zone, but to be honest that is where a lot of the enjoyment can be found.
The appearance of any BBC series on Blu-ray is always welcome, however those of you expecting presentation on the scale of the high definition wonder that is Planet Earth will be sorely disappointed. Since this series follows Stephen Fry on the road, there's a lot of handheld camerawork and it's no surprise that his crew weren't expected to carry the biggest and baddest high definition cameras around with them. The quality and detail in the picture is almost totally dependent on the lighting of the place he finds himself in. External daytime shots looks great but internal or dark shots can look very grainy at times. The transfer is very colourful though, especially the American Football game in the second episode, but while the quality is good enough for TV, I don't think it's up to scratch for a pricey high definition package.
I wrote down plenty of notes about the video quality while I was watching the series, but when I came to look back at them for prompts to write up this section, I realised I'd only written one word down about the audio— loud. Showing its TV roots, the audio track is a DTS-HD Master Audio Stereo track, so any surround action will be determined by how your amp handles the feed. While the audio may have been louder than most other Blu-ray discs that have passed through my player, I didn't notice the same interference that was evident in the picture so all I can really say is 'no complaints' and recommend that you lower your expectations a little.
Unfortunately all we get are six deleted clips, one from each episode. Not all of them add too much to the series as a whole but the first one where Stephen joins in a game of Left, Right, Centre is definitely worth watching.
Stephen Fry in America gives us a view of America that hasn't really been shown in other prime-time travelogues and (for this reviewer at least) the fact that it has Stephen Fry in the title gives it extra kudos from the beginning. It's difficult to see how the presentation could have been much better given the way it was filmed, but just don't expect to be wowed with the video and audio quality.
* Note: The above images are taken from the Blu-ray release and resized for the page.
Review by Scott McKenzie
keffa Member Join Date: July 2007 Location: United Kingdom Posts: 436
was a good show. wished it was longer. showed the `other` side of america, off the tourist trail.
Sam Spade Member Join Date: January 2007 Location: United States Posts: 2,032
I love travel shows and I have never heard of this. Sounds like the British version of Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations sort of.
Rob Taylor Member Join Date: March 2005 Location: United Kingdom Posts: 7
It was indeed an excellent program and it was criminal that it wasn't much longer.
Exempt from classification
Disc Details
Release Date: 17th November 2008
Discs: 2
Disc Type: Blu-ray Disc
RCE: No
Video: 1080p
Aspect: 1.78:1
Anamorphic: No
Colour: Yes
Audio: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 English
Subtitles: N/A
Extras: Bonus Footage
Easter Egg: No
Feature Details
Director: John Paul Davidson, Michael Waldman
Cast: Stephen Fry, Morgan Freeman, Sting
Genre: Documentary
Length: 375 minutes
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sE Munro Egg Monitoring System: The Egg has Hatched!
Radically Different, Frighteningly Accurate
The Egg 150 is the first system in a series of sE Munro active integrated monitoring systems that are designed to open our senses to the realities of accurate studio monitoring. The concept of the Egg is most definitely a radical difference to what we're used to seeing from professional monitoring manufacturers. Yes, companies like Apple and Sony have created some pretty strange and funky hi-fi systems in their time, but this is the first instance of professional studio monitors being, well... so different.
When Andy Munro, James Ishmaev-Young and Siwei Zou were designing the Egg, they basically rethought the fundamentals of loudspeaker engineering, focussing on the fact that the traditional, rectangular, wooden enclosures that are used so widely around the world are in fact not the best designs for monitoring systems at all. The team replaced these "wooden boxes" with a new curved enclosure that is scientifically proven to virtually eliminate diffraction, spectral distortion and resonant effects that we know has a tendency to distort and artificially colour the original sound.
The impeccable design reveals a much more defined and "open" mix with stunning clarity and "ear-opening" accuracy. The Egg speaks the truth, whether you're open enough to hear it or not, these monitors will provide you with the purest, untainted sound you have ever known from a monitor of this size. Yes, that means that those mixes that you done when you were first starting out, the ones you thought were amazing at the time, they now might cause you some embarrassment. The Egg simply reveals clarity, accuracy, truth... and for those not too scared to really face the music, the truth shall set you free.
If monitors were "supposed" to be clouding and distorting signals, wouldn't we all just use hi-fi speakers, to blend all the frequencies and just produce a jumble of undefined sounds?
"A monitor that flatters to deceive has no place in a professional recording studio" - sE Electronics
This new revolutionary system features bi-amplification with linear power supply and full protection against overload and short-circuits. Features of the Egg amplifier include electronically balanced input stage, analogue active crossover filters and a crossover frequency of 2.1 kHz.
The Egg system was recently awarded "best of show" at AES (Audio Engineering Society) NY by Pro Audio Review, Pro Sound News, Pro Sound Network, Pro Media and MIX Magazines. The sE Munro Egg system was also demoed at the PMT Manchester store (Dolphin's sister company) in November 2011 and attendees were given the oportunity to win a completer Egg Monitoring System worth over £2000. Some of you may have made that demo, some not, but you can be sure not to miss out on more great opportunities, for more incredible competitions by keeping up to date with upcoming Demos and competitions and visiting our Facebook page here.
More Egg monitoring systems are currently in development and this medium package is really just the beginning...

subset: commoncrawl


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NVIDIA SHIELD Review - Tegra 4, Android Gaming and PC Game Streaming
Tegra 4 Performance Benchmarks
Even though the focus of this article is really on the experience of using the new NVIDIA SHIELD, we would be remiss if we didn't benchmark the device. After all, it is the first Tegra 4 device to see the light of day and NVIDIA has promised a lot with this new SoC in terms of performance.
Our comparisons are a bit limited right now, but after the next week or so we'll be expanding our results for other hardware to make our data a bit more interesting. For now though, we are going to be pitting the SHIELD against the ASUS Nexus 7, 2012 edition, powered by the previous generation Tegra 3 SoC. This will allow a clear view of how much both the A9 to A15 upgrade has improved CPU performance and how much the upgraded GPU affects gaming performance. Also in the mix is my Samsung Galaxy S4 (US edition) powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 600 SoC that integrates a quad-core Krait CPU and Adreno 320 GPU.
First up, let's take a look at the new 3DMark for Android.
Clearly in both CPU (physics) and GPU testing the Tegra 4 processor in the NVIDIA SHIELD is the dominant competitor, besting the previous generation Tegra 3 by nearly 7x in graphics and nearly 3x in processor performance. Even the S600 falls victim to Tegra 4, falling behind by 47% in GPU performance and 25% in CPU performance.
For these results, the on-screen and off-screens tests look at things a bit differently. The on-screen test runs at the native resolution of the screen (720p on the SHIELD for example) while the off-screen test runs at fixed resolution and is the best way to compare SoC performance. So even though the on-screen test results in an advantage of nearly 3x the performance for SHIELD over the GS4, the off-screen result is much closer, with the edge going to NVIDIA's T4 by 36%. Tegra 3 is 76% slower than the new Tegra 4.
In BrowserMark, the Tegra 4 is only 42% faster than the Tegra 3 part from last year and only 18% faster than the S600 found in the Galaxy S4. SunSpider shows wider gaps in CPU performance between the T4 and T3 SoCs, hitting 318%! Even the Qualcomm S600 falls behind by nearly 80% to Tegra 4 in this test.
Obviously the performance of NVIDIA's new Tegra 4 SoC is damn impressive and is a massive jump over the previous generation Tegra 3. It becomes apparent that the move from Cortex-A9 to A15 is providing significant advantages. Of course the graphics portion of T4 is an even bigger step forward, and hopefully we'll see more Android developers strive to take advantage of the horsepower T4 (and other upcoming GPUs) can provide for gaming.
It should be noted however that Tegra 4 is more than likely using much more power than the SoCs in the Nexus 7 or the Galaxy S4. Both of those other products are using passive cooling and are focused on getting as much battery life as possible from the unit. NVIDIA's SHIELD needs only be modestly mindful of power and heat – as is evident by the fact they are using an active cooling solution.
I am actually looking forward to this, we need something to take over the portability area, the PS Vita "idea", and the DS doesn't have great graphics.
I think this would be a winner provided Android could make enough quality games....and the spectrum that was "gameboy/DS"
Mechanical or rubber membrane buttons? Production shots make it seem like it is rubber membrane. http://blogs.nvidia.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/someassemblyrequiredw...
Membrane makes a lot of sense. There are only a handful of mechanical gamepad switches that I am aware of... a knockoff ALPS switch for some Guitar Hero strum-bars and some arcade sticks (well, buttons on the arcade stick... not the stick itself).
Apparently Razer makes at least one mouse with mechanical buttons... which also surprises me... but meh.
All three variants of Razer's 360 controller (Onza, Onza Pro and Sabertooth) have all used mechanical switches for the face and shoulder buttons, but uses rubber membrane for the directional pad.
I have no idea what switch type the Vita uses, but it sure feels nice, with a definite audible and tactile "click" with each press. https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/45JHbSwE51rIAPQd.huge
They appear to be the same type of switch that is used in the DSi, which also has a very tactile clicky feel. https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/Ive2yIEWZn2AUhYj.huge
A little too early for this device. Should have done this with Logan on board. Would have made much more sense allowing games to run on processors that don't have the thermal constraints they might have on a thinner form-factor.
A waste of money in my opinion.
personally i don't think there is too early or too late with this device. yes it meant for gaming (android and pc) but the very purpose of this device is to showcase the capabilities of nvidia tegra processors and other nvidia tech at the same time (for example the pc gaming stream feature is something related to their GRID technology, so actually it giving the glimpse to the public and developer what Geforce GRID should like given the internet network is not an issue). also this device will not compete with the likes of of PS Vita/3DS or even other android console like many like to believe. it has the capabilities in terms of performance but what nvidia want the most i believe is for those company to use their chip instead competing directly with them.
Support for gaming related stuff in Android means that better games can be built. It doesn't have to compete with any product. If they were able to get the Logan GPU to support this, then it would make the Shield an interesting product. Right now, I still can't see who is it going to be good for. Being a niche product is good and all, but the niche itself is too small. nVidia will have to eat the costs like Microsoft did with RT. This stinks of desperation. This will remain a proof of concept until the 20nm chips are released.
ROFL...It was only 10mil to dev. They are already sold out. No idea how many they made but I'm guessing it was at least 100K run which means they already broke even (assuming 100/device, based on BOM of Vita $159 and 3DS $100.71). This can't cost more than $200 vs. those two so they are making $100 easily IMHO. If they sell 100K they are at 10mil which is the cost to dev this thing.
I wish Ryan would have told if there is any difference when say, setting up the HDMI out to TV (is quality any different than over miracast??). I'd like to know that as this is a feature I'd want to use (a portable roku/bluray replacement etc).
20nm will be better but it has no effect on it's ability to play games now. Clearly it does the job already and the list of PC streaming games will only grow all the way to xmas and into next year when they surely put out a kepler 20nm rev.
I'm guessing by xmas this will add 100mil to their bottom line. I can't see how they won't sell 1mil+ of these considering 65% of us own NV gpus and they are already sold out. Did they already sell 1mil? Who knows. I suspect we'll see a price drop by xmas to $250 or so, so they can nix some xbox1/ps4 sales and possibly sell even more discrete cards because of it. Then do it all again for every soc release...LOL. Each year making a console sale even harder to fathom.
I think AMD will rue the day they signed up for SINGLE digit margins, with only barely into double digits as the process matures. So if AMD is lucky they'll make 100mil in the next year (of course that isn't profit for quite a while, as they had to dev both sony/ms chips - what was that cost? I've guessing far more than 10mil for shield), while shield will probably hit that in a few months by xmas and only get better stealing from console sales. AMD made a mistake. If margins on those were say 20% from the get go and moving to 35% over the 8yrs or something, then it would have been a great deal. But single digits moving to double sucks. Realizing they have about 6 consoles coming to compete makes AMD's move even worse and NV's low risk 10mil go at it a NO RISK device. Google/Apple both have consoles coming, madcatz, ouya, shield, wikipad, gamepop etc. There is a lot of people after MS/Sony/Nin and wiiu is already off 50% after xmas. Sales of it and Vita are awful at best. I expect the same after xmas for MS/Sony. Only the 3DS escaped the same fate because of selling before phones/tablets really took off on gaming. Now Vita/3DS are useless and Vita is seeing this (which is the better device of the two BTW...Again showing they're dead).
Finally I think we get to wave goodbye to stuck in stone for 8yrs consoles :) YAY.
Nobody special, I could not agree more. Jen-Hsun Huang is my new product development hero. I've been a product developer (in other fields) for many years, and have nothing but admiration for how quickly, beautifully and profitably (I must guess at the last, but the sell out is a great sign) they conceived and executed project Shield. If, as I think, this is their first full-on consumer device, it's amazing to me how glitch-free and smooth the experience seems to be, from the reviews I've read. We should also bear in mind that this is the kind of thing nVidia MUST do if it's going to maintain high margins -- because supplying processors for Nexus devices or gaming consoles, both of which are sold at break-even, can never pay the bills. I read a fascinating article on the nVidia b,of called "How Shield was Built" and am preparing an article of my own in which I speculate on the marketing reasons that drove the development process. It's tempting to think of this as a reaction to the OUYA, but I kind f doubt even nVidia could have turned around a product so polished that quickly. I agree with the comment that Logan would have provided an even better experience, but you gotta start somewhere, I think nVidia wants to dominate mobile gaming -- I agree that Android and iOs are where it will happen -- and think nVidia is off to a roaring start. Making the screen detachable seems to me to be the next big hurdle, but I doubt we'll see that until Shield 3.
Nobody special, I wish you'd tell us who you are, because you sound like Somebody Special who knows a lot about marketing!
I have zero interest in this as an Android device. My specific interest in this is only as a tethered device to stream games from my PC around the house.
Unfortunately, it lost my interest back when I saw that it was $350, the streaming games thing was only beta, and only about six games supported it.
at it's current pricepoint...a guaranteed flop.
regardless of specs and price of parts, unless it's impulse price of $99 or below, very few going to touch it.
flop or not it's not that nvidia expect to make tons of profit with this device. and nvidia will not be stupid enough to price Shield so low just so they can sell the unit and making the mistake by competing with another android console maker directly
Well one day later it's sold out. That can't be considered bad...LOL.
Microsoft did the same trick the with the Surface RT, they severely limited initial supply to only 1-3 units per entire store for the first 2 months and claimed what a wild success RT was always being "sold out".
Don't be so gullible next time.
You have no proof NV did that. Thus no proof I'm gullible :)
I never thought RT would sell with a 1.3ghz vs. what should have been in there 1.7gh T3+. I do believe shield will sell out of first production and probably second. Don't forget it is far better than vita/3ds power wise, plays movies out to tv via hdmi on the go, plays all android stuff, etc etc...Titan still is pretty much selling every chip they make. The first run was 100K and sold out in hours. There are MILLIONS of 600 series owners and adding 700 series owners daily. All of these are candidates for this device. Considering the power (and the power of nearly all phones next year being about T4 level), devs will start aiming FAR above Vita/3DS on android. Android gaming will kill these 2 devices shortly, so their entire audience will be looking at android (they are already) instead of vita/3ds which devs are abandoning according to GDC2013 survey. When less than 3% of 2500 Devs are planning a game for your device and 60% are planning mobile games you're dead.
NV hasn't said they are sold out. It's just an observation at newegg gamestop, microcenter (found one in stock in houston) etc. On NV's site says 2-3weeks will ship, but on newegg says back in stock 8/5 supposedly. Until I see evidence of them NOT selling well, I think they'll do ok. This device has way too many things over Vita/3ds to be a failure and consoles are 3 months off giving it plenty of time to sell before xmas. We will know in 3 months. I haven't seen a bad review yet either. 8/10 of the buyers on newegg are verified owners (so they bought there). I'm surprised anyone took the time 1 day after it went on sale. I'll wait for the Kepler model next year (have to purchase maxwell first anyway...LOL) but this thing will sell regardless, and in enough quantity to make NV some decent cash and further push us to mobile gaming on gamepads (which is the point, get us off consoles, thus using more of NV's stuff).
Spoken like a foreigner to handheld gaming.
There are a lot of things we don't even know about when it comes to the Shield. Very basic gamer things; how many times the controller reports inputs, what types of switches it uses, or even the commitment to long term software and hardware support.
Before the Shield, *all* controllers for Android have sported a loathsome report rate of once per frame, with an actual average of once every three frames. This is completely unacceptable for gaming purposes, and I'm not going to trust anyone's review on how responsive it "feels." I want hard numbers, and Nvidia is tight lipped as ever.
Throughout the entire process of the Shield, from project to final product, we have not been able to see anything about the inner workings of this device. We have no idea what sensors are being used for the analog sticks, or how long they'll remain accurate. We have no confirmed information about what switch types are used for the buttons. We don't even know how the directional pad compares to the timeless Sega Saturn directional pad. You know, things gamers care about.
And finally there's the massive bugbear of how long Nvidia will offer support for the operating system. If it is anything like other Android devices, you'll get three or four updates in the first six months for the operating system, and then it'll be forgotten to the ages, while the 3DS and Vita will have support from their respective companies for years to come. I still get updates for the DSi, a five year old system. I'd wager that the Shield will never get 4.3 Jelly Bean update.
A "handheld" at nearly the price of upcoming new consoles themselves and within 3-4 months of their release?
What dufus at nvidia approved this price point?
This device is strictly for fanboys. That pricepoint is going to force a very steep price cut in the near future implying it's a business failure, whether it is or not, and perception is everything.
A shame, as it doe s appear to be a very interesting concept but ridiculously overpriced.
@ nobody special:
if it's worth your yime defending it, how come you haven't bought one, done a youtube unboxing and submitted your full review to PC Per?
(insert your lame excuse here)-------->
My Maxwell card comes first. At which point I think rev2 will be out. So no point in rev1 for me as I want to stream my PC's maxwell. I currently have a radeon 5850. So a good chunk of this things use is not usable by me.
That is not a lame excuse. It's reality. If I own an NV card I would have bitten already, then handed it to my nephew when rev2 comes along by june next year.
Likely developed as in in house remote terminal for an Nvidia GPU/GRID equipped Steam Box, where it would actually make sense, it's release into the wild indicates Nvidia ultimately lost out to AMD to provide that hardware, probably due to publisher/developer pressure to go with a more console compatible solution, an AMD HSA APU that they could port to easily and cheaply.
If it is AMD HSA APU based, and is supposed to be upgradable, then I would guess Kaveri + Sea Islands GPU. Though Steam Box is to be part of a larger Linux based ecosystem, whatever is in Steam Box will become the default hardware of choice for that ecosystem as Steam Box game ports will target that particular hardware. The beauty of HSA based APUs is future iterations will retain nearly complete hardware compatibility, so HSA based Steam Box game ports will be fully hardware compatible with future AMD HSA based APUs and GPUs. Not only makes the publishers and developers job very very easy, but moves them substantially toward their nirvana, a single future proof PC hardware standard to port to, so it would actually be in their interests to, over time, not only heavily optimize their ports for AMD HSA based hardware, but specifically NOT optimize their ports for Intel or Nvidia hardware. Death by (not so) benign neglect as it were ... at the very least make Intel and Nvidia foot nearly the entirety of whatever optimizations do occur.
As for timing ... if the above is the case it is unlikely Steam Box will arrive before Kaveri is available to meet that larger ecosystem demand, and as recent reports indicate Kaveri is delayed into early 2014, I would expect Steam Box to arrive sometime after ... say E3, 2014 ... they'd have the new console reveal center stage spotlight all to themselves and the time to get a healthy selection of their Linux based game and application ports ready to go. It would be hard to imagine a launch scenario better geared to ensure the success of Steam Box.
Several months ago a leaked (and quickly pulled) AMD developer PDF showed up on Semi-Accurate forums showing Kaveri with some 2014 roadmap 'system integration' features. Makes sense as Kaveri was on the same engineering/fabrication timeline as the custom console APUs, so it's logical, and likely, knowing exactly what was going into both console processors, AMD simultaneously optimised Kaveri's architecture based on that knowledge and pulled some 2014 GPU/context switching HSA elements into Kaveri and making sure Sea Islands was system integration ready. They would want all the HSA elements pertinent to porting to and from console games and future proofing fully in place with Kaveri. Kaveri's delay might be related to such optimizations along with sharing console APU fabrication lines creating capacity issues. If Kaveri is delayed into 2014, I wouldn't be surprised to see a 'soft' launch for Kaveri during the holiday season to put review site next gen game performance numbers on prospective buyers radar. If those If those gaming performance numbers on next gen games blow away the Intel/Nvidia competition on cost/performance like I think they will, it would be well worth AMD taking a 'soft launch' PR hit.
Such an optimised Kaveri would be utterly ideal for an upgradable, future proofed Steam Box and it's associated third party ecosystem. It was pretty obvious at CES Gabe was intending an Intel/Nvidia solution for Steam Box, but he also stated developer support was 'critical' to the success of Steam Box. This was before confirmation of AMD APUs for both consoles. Valve said they were there mainly to liaise behind closed doors with software and hardware vendors. I'm guessing Gabe was in for quite a surprise when he saw the reaction when he then, and subsequently, approached the major game publishers and developers, already in deep liaison with AMD and months and eyebrows deep into optimizing their game engines and toolsets specifically for AMD hardware in general and HSA APUs/GPUs in particular, and who already knew Kaveri was going to be super compatible with the console APUs, with an Intel/Nvidia based Steam Box solution.
Note that these same factors will also make future AMD HSA APUs the overwhelming choice for future Sony and Microsoft console iterations as there will be built in software/hardware compatibility and almost no associated development costs. No reason a fully hardware backward compatible/4k capable Xbox One or PS4 'Turbo' edition couldn't be released in three or four years.
I think given his druthers, Gabe would still prefer an Intel/Nvidia solution, particularly in light of his stated desire for Steam Box to have a 'multiple simultaneous game streaming' capability (GRID), to remote in-house terminals (Shield). It's worth noting that concurrent with the PS4 reveal an AMD spokesperson pointed out the PS4 APU was capable of multiple game streams and AMD was well along with their own GRID like game and application streaming solution.
While in his latest public appearance on YouTube Gabe is basically shilling for Intel CPUs, it's likely it just isn't economically/publisher/developer/Steam Box success feasible to go with anything but an AMD HSA APU solution.
I agree with a few of your buried points: I do not think people appreciate what seems to be right around the corner. Virtualized GPUs allowing Linux users to run Windows applications at full speed and, probably more importantly, purchase one "beefy computer" and have all the rest of your tablets/handhelds/netbooks/laptops/HTPCs/whatever simply stream in video (and stream out keyboard/mouse/gamepad input) from that one PC.
Thanks for the great review.
This is a really nice surprise from nvidia and I hope it will inspire developers to port console games to it.
This looks really nice.
PS the first Shield may indeed be strictly for fanboys, but even if so, said Fanboys are plentiful enough to fund the development cost. Bear in mind that, as Tim Stevens observed at CES, this is also AN INVESTMENT IN ANDROID GAMING. Logan is plainly built for powerful gaming, and nVidia wants to prime the pump for it, getting Devs excited about Android as a platform for serious gaming.
Looks like Tegra 4 sucks if Snapdragon 600 can rival it @ 1080 and Snapdragon 800 kill it.
Tegra 4 products will be limited to below 1080p. Guessing that why Shield stuck to 720p. An the Tegra 4 tablet is 768 resolution.
Will other tegra 4 tablets be able to do the pc streaming feature as well, or will this most likely only be available on the Shield.
XBMC is a great program as a home theater program. I use the SkystreamX to run XBMC on my TV. It comes preloaded with all of the good add ons. I didn't have to spend hours programming it. I just plugged it in, hooked it up to my internet and starting watching all of my favorite TV shows, Movies and live sports. It also turns your TV into a smart TV with over 800,000 Android Apps. I highly recommend this Android TV Box
They would want all the HSA elements pertinent to porting to and from console games and future proofing fully in place with Kaveri. Kaveri's delay might be related to such optimizations along with sharing console APU fabrication lines creating capacity issues. If Kaveri is delayed into 2014, I wouldn't be surprised to see a 'soft' launch for Kaveri during the holiday season to put review site next gen game performance numbers on prospective buyers radar and more that No reason a fully hardware backward compatible/4k capable Xbox One or PS4 'Turbo' edition couldn't be released in three or four years.Android Box TV
Nothing really better than the G-Box MX2 in my opinion. Plays games and does XBMC like nothing else out there. I found it at this android xbmc website. I would steer clear of the fakes out there like the Skystream box and other chinese brands. They dont have any support and you can forget about them about as quickly as buy them. Ouya is also not too bad at XBMC but overall. I'd just grab the G-Box and call it a day.
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SANDY, UT – On a warm night in Sandy, Utah, Vancouver Whitecaps FC (2W-4L-3D) fell to a 2-0 defeat against Real Salt Lake (4W-4L-2D) at Rio Tinto Stadium.
Highlights: Real Salt Lake 2 - 0 Whitecaps FC
Despite having several opportunities, The Force was not with the 'Caps on International Star Wars Day.
Head coach Martin Rennie made six changes to his starting lineup that faced FC Edmonton this past Wednesday, with Joe Cannon, Young-Pyo Lee, Alain Rochat, Nigel Reo-Coker, Daigo Kobayashi and Corey Hertzog drawing in, and Brad Knighton, Greg Klazura, Jordan Harvey, Tommy Heinemann, Jun Marques Davidson, and Darren Mattocks coming out.
Just seven minutes in, Hertzog tried his luck with a long range strike as his shot deflected out for a corner kick, which went through the 18-yard box without being converted.
On 23 minutes, Real Salt Lake began to apply pressure, as midfielder Javier Morales set up two chances that were thwarted by 'Caps defender Andy O'Brien. Two minutes later, Chris Wingert provided a beautiful cross that could have been put into the net, but was again foiled by the 'Caps defensive work.
In the 35th minute, the Blue and White were nearly given the lead when a well-placed corner kick by Kobayashi ended up on the head of O'Brien, but his attempt went high and landed on top of the net.
Just three minutes later, on 38 minutes, an RSL corner kick ended up on the head of Chris Schuler, but his powerful header went just wide of the goal.
Despite chances for both teams in the first half, the match was scoreless at halftime, 0-0.
However, two minutes into the second half, on 47 minutes, RSL opened the scoring. From a goal kick, 'keeper Nick Rimando found striker Joao Plata streaking down the right. The diminuitive Ecuadorian then set up Luis Gil for a header that went past Cannon, off the post, and into the net to give the home side a 1-0 lead.
In the 59th minute, another chance for the away side presented itself when Camilo took his time with the ball inside the 18-yard box, but his eventual shot sailed just over the crossbar.
Just a minute later, Hertzog nearly gave the 'Caps an equalizer as he was sent in by Camilo and squeezed a shot through Rimando. Unfortunately for the 'Caps, as the ball rolled slowly towards the empty net, Nat Borchers managed to clear the ball just before it crossed the line.
The first substitution for the Blue and White came on 68 minutes, when Kekuta Manneh came on for Camilo. The move provided a spark, as the 'Caps appeared to be energized by the addition of the youngster.
The chances of a comeback took a major hit on 71 minutes. A defensive lapse allowed Plata to break free and set up Morales for a low finish to give the home side their second goal of the match.
The Blue and White had another chance on 75 minutes, as Mattocks, who had subbed in, made a nice run and pass to Manneh, but the rookie was unable to get his shot through the crowd of RSL defenders.
Despite continued intent, the 'Caps could not muster another comeback as the final whistle blew in a 2-0 defeat to their Western Conference rivals.
After the match, head coach Martin Rennie expressed disappointment with his team's performance.
Next up for the 'Caps is a return home as they host reigning MLS Cup champions LA Galaxy next Saturday, May 11 at BC Place. A limited number of tickets remain available at ticketmaster.ca/whitecapsfc.
Budweiser Man of the Match: Gershon Koffie
Referee: Juan Guzman
Attendance: 17,480
47' - RSL - Luis Gil (Joao Plata, Nick Rimando)
71' - RSL - Javier Morales (Joao Plata, Sebastien Velasquez)
Match Stats:
Shots: Real Salt Lake 15 - Vancouver 11
Shots on Goal: Real Salt Lake 4 - Vancouver 3
Saves: Real Salt Lake 0 - Vancouver 0
Fouls: Real Salt Lake 14 - Vancouver 10
Offsides: Real Salt Lake 2 - Vancouver 2
Corners: Real Salt Lake 2 - Vancouver 6
18' - VAN - Nigel Reo-Coker
79' - RSL - Chris Wingert
87' - VAN - Gershon Koffie
Vancouver Whitecaps FC
1.Joe Cannon; 12.Young-Pyo Lee, 40.Andy O'Brien, 16.Johnny Leveron, 4.Alain Rochat (29.Tom Heinemann 75'); 13.Nigel Reo-Coker ©, 28.Gershon Koffie; 14.Daigo Kobayashi, 7.Camilo (23.Kekuta Manneh 67'), 31.Russell Teibert; 26.Corey Hertzog (11.Darren Mattocks 74')
18.Brad Knighton, 2.Jordan Harvey, 19.Erik Hurtado, 27.Jun Marques Davidson
Real Salt Lake
18.Nick Rimando; 2.Tony Beltran, 6.Nat Borchers, 28.Chris Schuler, 17.Chris Wingert; 5.Kyle Beckerman, 21.Luis Gil (26.Sebastien Velasquez 54'), 11.Javier Morales, 20.Ned Grabavoy (23.Khari Stephenson 80'); 49.Devon Sandoval, 8.Joao Plata (16. Carlos Salcedo 89')
45.Josh Saunders, 7.Lovel Palmer, 13.Olmes Garcia, 29.Kenny Mansally


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NCAA finals a first for most FPU RavensBy ALLEN LESSELS
New Hampshire Union Leader
May 24. 2013 2:26AM
Franklin Pierce University opens its latest run in the Division II NCAA Championship National Finals on Saturday against Shippensburg (Pa.) State University in Cary, N.C.
The Ravens, 35-17, won the East Regional and qualified for the eight-team championship for the sixth time since 2003 and first since 2010.
Senior shortstop Dan Kemp and outfielder Nick Lacroix played in the finals as freshmen in 2010, but this is the first go-round for junior first baseman Zach Mathieu of Derry and junior pitchers Trevor Graham and Kevin McGowan of Nashua and most of the team.
Mathieu leads Franklin Pierce with a .342 batting average and 35 runs batted in.
Graham has a 9-2 record and has allowed 69 hits in 102 1/3 innings while striking out 114 and walking just 18.
McGowan is 7-1 and has allowed 71 hits in 75 innings with 60 strikeouts and 13 walks.
Professional scouts have been around all season to watch Graham, Mathieu and McGowan and coach Jayson King expects all three will be picked in next month's Major League Baseball draft.
Graham, in particular, has drawn lots of attention.
"Pretty much every team in Major League Baseball has seen him pitch," King said. "There have been teams at pretty much every one of his starts. He's had a heckuva season for us. Zach has put himself in a pretty good position where I think someone is going to give him a chance to play. And Kevin has taken the ball any time we need him to and given us a chance to win. He's had a great season."
Doug Willey, a sophomore out of Shelburne and Gorham High School, pitched 3 2/3 innings of two-hit relief in a 3-2 win over Southern New Hampshire that got Franklin Pierce into the regional championship game.
Shippensburg, 42-16, lost its opener in the Atlantic Regional to Seton Hill and bounced back with four straight wins, including two straight on Sunday over Seton Hill, to claim its regional title and advance to the championships.
Junior pitcher/infielder Pat Kregeloh leads the Raiders on the mound and at the plate.
He has a .352 batting average with nine home runs and 59 RBIs and a 9-4 pitching record with a 3.68 earned run average and five complete games,
The tournament is divided into two four-team divisions.
Grand Valley State, 34-17, of Allendale Charter Township, Mich., and Minnesota State Mankato, 38-8, play in Franklin Pierce's bracket.
The first-day winners and the first-day losers play each other on Monday.
Tampa, 42-11, takes on Coker College, 37-14, of South Carolina in one first-round game on Sunday in the second bracket and Grand Canyon, 38-17, of Phoenix meets St. Edwards, 41-16, of Austin, Texas, in the other.
The championship game is scheduled for Saturday, June 1 at 7 p.m.
In 2010, Franklin Pierce lost to Kutztown State in its first game and rebounded with wins over Minnesota State Mankato and Kutztown before being eliminated by California, San Diego in the semifinals. It was the third time the Ravens had made the semis.


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Demonstrators carry a giant mock pipeline while calling for the cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline, November 6, 2011. (Reuters/Joshua Roberts)
This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com.
Presidential decisions often turn out to be far less significant than imagined, but every now and then what a president decides actually determines how the world turns. Such is the case with the Keystone XL pipeline, which, if built, is slated to bring some of the "dirtiest," carbon-rich oil on the planet from Alberta, Canada, to refineries on the US Gulf Coast. In the near future, President Obama is expected to give its construction a definitive thumbs up or thumbs down, and the decision he makes could prove far more important than anyone imagines. It could determine the fate of the Canadian tar-sands industry and, with it, the future well-being of the planet. If that sounds overly dramatic, let me explain.
Sometimes, what starts out as a minor skirmish can wind up determining the outcome of a war—and that seems to be the case when it comes to the mounting battle over the Keystone XL pipeline. If given the go-ahead by President Obama, it will daily carry more than 700,000 barrels of tar-sands oil to those Gulf Coast refineries, providing a desperately needed boost to the Canadian energy industry. If Obama says no, the Canadians (and their American backers) will encounter possibly insuperable difficulties in exporting their heavy crude oil, discouraging further investment and putting the industry's future in doubt.
The battle over Keystone XL was initially joined in the summer of 2011, when environmental writer and climate activist Bill McKibben and 350.org, which he helped found, organized a series of non-violent anti-pipeline protests in front of the White House to highlight the links between tar sands production and the accelerating pace of climate change. At the same time, farmers and politicians in Nebraska, through which the pipeline is set to pass, expressed grave concern about its threat to that state's crucial aquifers. After all, tar-sands crude is highly corrosive, and leaks are a notable risk.
In mid-January 2012, in response to those concerns, other worries about the pipeline, and perhaps a looming presidential campaign season, Obama postponed a decision on completing the controversial project. (He, not Congress, has the final say, since it will cross an international boundary.) Now, he must decide on a suggested new route that will, supposedly, take Keystone XL around those aquifers and so reduce the threat to Nebraska's water supplies.
Ever since the president postponed the decision on whether to proceed, powerful forces in the energy industry and government have been mobilizing to press ever harder for its approval. Its supporters argue vociferously that the pipeline will bring jobs to America and enhance the nation's "energy security" by lessening its reliance on Middle Eastern oil suppliers. Their true aim, however, is far simpler: to save the tar-sands industry (and many billions of dollars in US investments) from possible disaster.
Just how critical the fight over Keystone has become in the eyes of the industry is suggested by a recent pro-pipeline editorial in the trade publication Oil & Gas Journal:
"Controversy over the Keystone XL project leaves no room for compromise. Fundamental views about the future of energy are in conflict. Approval of the project would acknowledge the rich potential of the next generation of fossil energy and encourage its development. Rejection would foreclose much of that potential in deference to an energy utopia few Americans support when they learn how much it costs."
Opponents of Keystone XL, who are planning a mass demonstration at the White House on February 17, have also come to view the pipeline battle in epic terms. "Alberta's tar sands are the continent's biggest carbon bomb," McKibben wrote at TomDispatch. "If you could burn all the oil in those tar sands, you'd run the atmosphere's concentration of carbon dioxide from its current 390 parts per million (enough to cause the climate havoc we're currently seeing) to nearly 600 parts per million, which would mean if not hell, then at least a world with a similar temperature." Halting Keystone would not by itself prevent those high concentrations, he argued, but would impede the production of tar sands, stop that "carbon bomb" from further heating the atmosphere, and create space for a transition to renewables. "Stopping Keystone will buy time," he says, "and hopefully that time will be used for the planet to come to its senses around climate change."


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The ability to accurately measure moisture in a bale of cotton will add to the value of U.S. grown cotton in the export market and provide more reliable payments to producers.
Cotton has been marketed by weight in the U.S. for nearly 200 years and until recently little concern was given to moisture. Excessive moisture can add to weight and value of cotton, but excessive moisture will lead to loss of quality in storage.
With such a high percentage of U.S. cotton (roughly 70 percent in 2006) going for exports, it is especially critical to keep moisture levels low.
Finding a portable, easy to use and highly accurate meter to measure cotton moisture has become a high priority for USDA-ARS test facilities in Mississippi, Texas and New Mexico.
Speaking at the recent Southeastern Cotton Ginners meeting, Rick Byler, research leader at the Stoneville, Miss., ARS research facility, said researchers have identified several hand-held devices that may be able to do the job. Accuracy of these meters, durability, cost, and the speed and ease of use were focus points for the research, according to Byler.
"When I first started working with cotton, I was amazed there was no reliable way to measure moisture. I grew up on a dairy farm and measuring moisture in corn, soybeans and wheat was a routine part of our operation," Byler said.
In 2005, the cotton industry determined excessive moisture in cotton to be 7.5 percent. Using 7.5 percent moisture content as a target, the USDA research team set out to find a reliable way to determine which bales of cotton did and did not measure up to this standard.
"I had a farmer call me last fall. He said he had sent his cotton to a warehouse and the warehouse had hired a consultant to check moisture. The consultant determined this farmer's cotton to be at 10 percent moisture. Based on a hand-held moisture meter reading, the warehouse intended to dock the price of this farmer's cotton, and the farmer was justifiably upset," Byler said.
The big problem is that none of the hand-held devices used to measure moisture in cotton are certified. By comparison, in the corn industry there are certified meters. In cotton, there is no such program and no certified meters, Byler explained.
In the ARS study seven commercially available portable moisture measurement devices, consisting of a bale probe and display, were purchased and used. We used four different Stramberg meters, two Aquaboy meters and one Delmhorst meter.
We wanted to work with cotton from commercial gins, so we collected bales from the Southeast, Southwest and California-Arizona, Byler explained.
A total of 40 bales were prepared in several gins with regimes designed to achieve different moisture content. Each bale was measured in six locations with the seven measurement devices, lint samples obtained from the same locations, and the moisture content determined by the oven drying method.
We wanted to use bales with different moisture treatments, including ginning with little or no drying and no moisture restoration, medium dry with no restoration, normal drying with steam-type moisture restoration, normal drying with both steam and water-spreading restoration, Byler said.
Lint samples were gathered from the different locations and placed in an oven to determine moisture content. The meter readings were compared with the oven-based moisture content. The readings from all meters were improved significantly with linear corrections. It is unknown if the corrections found would be applicable to any particular meters other than those used in the study and these corrections may not be applicable with these meters at a later time because of drift, according to Byler.
Unfortunately, measured moisture content was consistently different from the oven-based samples versus data for each of the meters. A constant offset was then calculated for each device and later a linear fit with two coefficients was applied and several of the meters were comparable in accuracy.
The Delmhorst meter is the least expensive among those tested, costing $416. The Aquaboy that uses a screw-in probe was the most expensive ($1,900) and most difficult to find, Byler says. Some meters don't read below seven percent, which is usually not a problem because we were trying to determine 7.5 percent moisture.
"We have over 5,000 measurements in the data set, so it will take a while to get the whole picture," Byler noted. Data from Stoneville showed variability using the Aquaboy probe from 6 percent to 12 percent on samples that measured 6 percent moisture in the oven tests. The Delmhorst meter gave a reading of 3 percent to a little over 6 percent, which looked best in the Stoneville test.
"None of the meters were impressively accurate. Each tracked moisture in that when the meter read higher the cotton was wetter and vice-versa, but the best meter was within 1.5 percent accurate. So, if you want cotton to be no more than 7.5 percent moisture, you would have to read 6 percent moisture to be sure cotton meets the 7.5 percent standard," Byler said.
Byler said complete results of the bale moisture tests should be available in the summer of 2007.


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Cheap & Fast Cheer: Glass Ball Ornament Swag
It's amazing how much holiday glitz $2 and ½ hour can get you sometimes. Bulk bags of glass ball ornaments from the thrift store, some rustic twine, and one episode of The Gilmore Girls were all it took for a perfect bit of cozy winter craft time.
- I've seen similar bags of ornaments at all the thrift stores around San Francisco, but Thrift Town at 16th & Mission has definitely had the best selection. My friend Crystal was with me when I bought these back in October, and asked what I had planned. No idea, but 40 ornaments for $2!
- On this rainy morning, sipping coffee on the loveseat while carefully stringing glass balls was winter perfection. I swear my blood pressure dropped a LOT. It occurred to me that even if I didn't do anything with the finished product, the fun of making it was priceless.
- I'll be honest — I didn't string these that carefully. I don't tend to be very careful, so if the delicate glass balls can survive me, you should be golden. I tied off one of the ends of the twine onto an ornament, leaving a few feet for hanging purposes, and then simply threaded the rest on, creating as random a pattern of sizes as possible.
- Then, I walked around the apartment for 15 minutes trying to figure out where to hang it. And my apartment is tiny. If the swag had been double this length, more of a garland, I think I would have strung it across the window. As it is, I hung it from my vintage shelf brackets above my bedside table. I think it might look very pretty in the evenings, glowing in the light of my reading lamp.


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your My Gallery and when you email a product to your customers.
sterling journey
Like its namesake, "Sterling Journey" presents exquisite shades of silver. The piece's textured round shape is split vertically into two pieces with a robust metal ball joining both sections together near the item's top.
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Brilliantly brightening a room with its bold shade of red, is "Red Circles." An overlapping pattern of varying-sized circles plays on one another to create a multi-dimensional appearance, in a flowing pattern, with a contemporary flair.


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WEST POINT, N.Y. – Friday at the USTA/ITA Northeast Regional Championships, the Bulldogs finished with four of five wins in doubles play, with two pairs still alive.
The first pair to play was senior captain Elizabeth Epstein and sophomore Hanna Yu, the tournament's eighth seed, going up against Christine Ordway and Dena Tanebaum of Cornell. The Yale pair went ahead 5-2, but allowed the Cornell duo to climb back into the match at 5-4. However, from that point the Bulldogs did not look back, snagging an 8-5 victory that vaulted them into a second-round matchup against UConn's Jen Learmonth and Abby McKeon. In that match, Yu and Epstein continued their hot play with an 8-1 victory. Saturday, they will continue play against Erin Colton and Jamila Paul of Army in the round of sixteen.
The tournament's fourth seed, composed of junior Annie Sullivan and freshman Madeleine Hamilton, took their first-round matchup against the Penn pairing of Jaime Yapp and Stephanie Do 8-2. In the second round, faced with St. John's Nevena Selakovic and Amber Washington, surged ahead to a 5-2 lead before letting their opponents back into the match. Selakovic and Washington tightened the score to 6-5, then 7-6, but were unable to ever grab the lead, with Sullivan and Hamilton emerging triumphant 8-6. Saturday, they will face Katherine Flanigan and Emily Hanh from Princeton, with a spot in the quarterfinal round on the line.
Junior Blair Seideman, playing with sophomore Amber Li, fell to Buffalo's Miranda Podias and Tanvi Shah by a score of 8-2.
Although no Bulldogs played singles matches Friday, the draw for Saturday's play was released, with five of six Bulldog competitors earning first-round byes.
Epstein, the No. 2 seed behind last year's champion, Nicole Bartnik of Columbia, will play the winner of the match between Cornell's Dena Tanebuam and Sacred Heart's Gabi Kaldan.
A Bulldog, Seideman is the tournament's next highest seed, at No. 3. She will face the winner of Columbia's Ioana Alecsiu and St. Bonaventure's Fatya Amiri match.
Yu earned the No. 7 seed, and will face the winner of the match between Binghamton's Agatha Amrozy and Boston College's Kelly Barry.
Sullivan is seeded No. 12, and will face the winner of the showdown between BC's Olga Khmylev and New Jersey Institute of Technology's Monika Graff.
The No. 16 seed, Hamilton, will face off against the champion of the matchup of Sarah Bown, from Hofstra, and Albany's Cheryl Kukkonen.
Freshman Courtney Amos, the lone Bulldog playing a match in the round of 128, will face off against Boston College's Julia Casselbury.
Epstein/Yu (Yale) def. Ordway/Tanebuam (Columbia): 8-5
Epstein/Yu (Yale) def. Learmonth/McKeon (UConn): 8-1
Hamilton/Sullivan (Yale) def. Do/Yapp (Penn): 8-2
Hamilton/Sullivan (Yale) def. Selakovic/Washington (St. John's): 8-6
Podias/Shah (Buffalo) def. Seideman/Hamilton (Yale): 8-2
Report by Calvin Bohn '14, Yale Sports Publicity


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The mosquitos buzzing around Gov. Rick Snyder and the GOP-Legislature these days are wearing black robes.
The Ingham County Circuit Court is making its presence known these days by raising legal questions about the laws coming out of the Capitol this session. At least six times in the last seven weeks, the court has temporarily put the breaks on a Snyder-signed law.
Their opinions aren't sticking at the appellate level, but the Ingham bench — if only for a few days — is raising public questions about what the heck Snyder & Friends are doing.
The latest example came last week when Judge Clinton Canady III suspended the immediate implementation of two new laws out of concern that neither had the required two-thirds support in the GOP-run state House to make them effective immediately.
He threw down a temporary restraining order on both laws. One law would stop graduate student research assistants from unionizing. The second would keep school districts from taking union dues out of employees' checks. Neither, he said, should take effect until next April or until the constitutionality of how the House conducts its immediate effect vote is settled.
The state Court of Appeals lifted the restraining order Monday and politely told Canady it would handle the case from now on. But the House Democrats benefited from a 17-minute scathing (albeit inaccurate) portrayal of events on Rachel Maddow's national MSNBC show.
Why do Ingham County's judges get all the luck?
Since new laws are generated in the city of Lansing, most resulting court challenges originate in the Ingham County Circuit Court, giving our judges a bigger stage to opine on statewide issues. Back in the 1990s, Judge James Giddings, now retired, went a few rounds with then-Gov. John Engler for the former's rulings on a prisoners' rights lawsuit.
Now, Chief Judge William Collette has become Snyder's sparring partner. Recently, he ordered that financial review teams — the gubernatorial appointed group that figures out if an emergency manager should be named for a broke city or school district — meet in public.
The initial decision and others that followed created interesting theater this spring as emergency managers in Flint and the Highland Park School district were pulled from power only to be put back in by an appellate court.
The Ingham Court's decisions haven't all been for show. After Collette's decision on the unconstitutionality of a mandated 4 percent contribution that state employees were ordered to set aside for retiree health care, Snyder & Friends changed course and refunded each state employee around $1,000 a piece shortly after the new year.
Collette's presence also has forced Snyder to go straight to the GOP-controlled state Supreme Court on two high-profile questions — the constitutionality of the "pension tax," or the elimination of the state income tax exemption on pension income, and a new law that gives appointed emergency managers the power to alter bargained contracts.
The Ingham County Court's power isn't a secret in the legal community, which makes a spot on the bench appealing to district court judges and local lawyers. It can also generate interest from statewide interest groups looking to support a particular candidate — a dynamic we could see this year with Judge Paula Manderfield opting not to seek re-election.
Here's a recap of the Court's most recent rulings.
2/15/12 Collette rules that emergency financial review teams should meet in public. The Highland Park School District's new emergency manager was temporarily removed from office and the Detroit Financial Review Team began meeting in public.
2/15/12 Collette overturns a state law that had scrapped Oakland County's new commissioner district maps. While upheld, in part, in the Court of Appeals, the state Supreme Court struck down Collette's ruling.
3/20/12 Judge Rosemarie Aquilina kicks out Flint Emergency Manager Michael Brown for about a week since the Flint Financial Review Team never met in public. The Court of Appeals put Brown back into office six days later.
3/20/12 Collette rules the state cannot enter into a consent agreement with Detroit until March 29, as part of another maturation of the Open Meetings complaint against the Detroit Financial Review Team. The Court of Appeals invalidated the ban three days later and told Collette they'd take care of the matter until further notice.
4/2/12 Canady agrees with House Democrats on their "immediate effect" argument. The Court of Appeals paused the injunction a week later.
4/2/12 Judge Joyce Draganchuk bans the Detroit Financial Review Team from meeting to sign a consent agreement with Detroit on the argument that state law only allows the body to exist for 90 days. The Court of Appeals lifted the ruling two days later, allowing a consent agreement to be signed.


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Granite Labs was a runaway success. In just three years, it jumped from 100 users in enterprise support to more than 7,000 users across the company. Today, it draws users from nearly every department—from education to marketing, sales, QA, and R&D. The lab's prebuilt environments have saved the company millions of dollars and accelerated the time to deploy a virtual data center by at least two weeks. This alone has eliminated more than 37,000 weeks of effort and has given employees on-demand access to the resources they need to better serve their customers.
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David Beckham has been included in Paris Saint-Germain's 20-man squad to face Olympique de Marseille on Sunday.
The former England captain moved to the Parc des Princes on deadline day in the January transfer window, but is yet to feature for the side.
However, coach Carlo Ancelotti has seemingly been convinced of his fitness after the veteran spent the last few weeks training with the Ligue 1 leaders, and has made him part of the group who will face OM.
A host of PSG's stars are set to line up alongside him in Le Classique, including Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Javier Pastore, Ezequiel Lavezzi and Lucas Moura.
However, Thiago Motta and Thiago Silva have lost their battles to be fit in time for Sunday's clash, and will be forced to sit out the encounter.
PSG and OM are due to kick off at 20:45CET on Sunday in Ligue 1, and also clash three days later in the Coupe de France.


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Obama to press for action on transportation funds
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is pressing Congress to make a long-term commitment to keep highway and transit aid flowing to states, but lawmakers appear headed for a short-term patch to sustain projects through next May.
Obama has proposed a $302 billion, four-year transportation spending plan that is paid in part by closing corporate tax loopholes.
The White House on Monday said it would support a smaller, $11 billion Republican House bill that finances transportation projects for nine months, but said in a statement that the legislation "does not address the continued need to pass a long-term authorization bill that creates jobs and provides certainty for cities, states and businesses."
A conservative group, the Club for Growth, on Monday staked out its opposition to the House measure, saying the plan is paid for with budget gimmicks and urged lawmakers to vote against it.
In a report released Monday, the White House Council of Economic Advisers said greater spending on infrastructure would help the construction industry, which has an elevated unemployment level of 9.9 percent. The report also said states and local governments were well positioned now to undertake capital projects because construction is cheaper and because the cost of borrowing through municipal bonds is at a historic low.
Obama will discuss the issue during remarks Tuesday at a facility in Virginia that tests new technologies for highway transportation. He'll also promote the need to invest in the nation's infrastructure Thursday during a trip to Delaware, where he'll announce an initiative to increase private sector investment.
The administration has warned that by early August the fund will no longer have enough money to cover promised aid to states, and the government will begin to stretch out payments. States have been told to expect a 28 percent reduction in aid on average.
The White House argues that the United States has fallen behind other major economies in its spending for transportation needs.


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Interview: Dave Berstein on the NBN, construction and VDSL
xDSL, fibre, construction and gigabits
The Register: In the fibre rollout, in the business plan for the fibre rollout – we saw what is not surprising, a very rapid escalation in per-premises cost for every percent over 90. The first 90 percent did not vary much about the median price per home. The 91 varied a lot, 92 varied more, 93 a lot more.
In VDSL – here I'm looking at the characteristics of Australia …
Dave Berstein: Anybody who tries to give you a good answer to this, beyond eight-five percent, is bullshitting you. Because nobody has done this kind of node rollout beyond eighty, eighty-five percent.
So they're guessing … for the last fifteen percent they're guessing. Now, the guesses may be fairly well informed. The US Broadband Plan had a team with seven very good people trying to figure out where the costs are, and what was involved in the rural rollout.
What they found was that the cost was utterly and totally brutal – for the last forty-four hundredths of one percent!
Whether the point at which the costs escalate is at eighty-six percent, or ninety percent, ninety-three percent, or ninety-seven percent – expert opinion would differ, and nobody who hasn't spent a week with hard data of where those homes are located and what the distances are, is giving you any answer that isn't bullshit.
I would guess that somewhere between eighty-five and ninety-five, your cost escalates. I wouldn't tell you whether it's eighty-eight or ninety-four without access to a hell of a lot more data than anybody except Telstra or the NBN has access to.
And it would take me a lot of work to give you a good answer.
The Register: There is an inflection point …
Dave Berstein: And there's the fact that the NBN did what looked like some fairly careful work to say "you'll get killed at ninety-three percent", which is why that's the cutoff. They may be wrong, it may be ninety or it may be ninety-five, and hopefully they put good people on to deciding that before they put money into building.
And some of getting this right is to go out and build some of those, and get some experience from the field, based on the density of the housing, and see what it actually takes with Australian labour and Australian systems.
The Register: In data-gathering terms, it is not a bad idea to start with a mix of territories, as in fact they did?
Dave Berstein: The best experts in the world on this can't give you a good answer until they get out there, and get the data. So, getting the data is why I'm fudging and not giving you direct answers to your questions! Instead of thinking that some expert from Sydney, New York, Berlin or Paris can come in from outside and give you the answer.
This needs real people, real engineers, real world, and lots of experience.
The Register: Final question: There is, at each inflection point – something unexpected happens. History at least suggests that anyone who tries to do a linear projection of bandwidth requirements ends up being proved wrong.
The shift from dial to 256, brought unexpected things – there was Skype ...
Dave Berstein: P2P video. Netflix, and so on.
I can bring you the opinion of some of the very best people in the world on this subject. Because I've had a chance to research some of this!
We don't know.
Dave Farber – called the grandfather of the Internet, because most of the people who are called fathers of the Internet were his students – said "it is utter nonsense to say that we don't need a gigabit, because the experience is that we always need more bandwidth and we'll find a way to use it."
The guy who built one of the largest gigabit networks in the world is telling me he's only been able to figure out one real application … any time soon … that's likely to need more than 100 megabits.
A network engineer who's looking at the 100 megabits said he's got a big family doing a lot of stuff, but he doesn't ever touch 75 megabits.
So – we don't know if the extrapolation of the curve which says we always need more and more bandwidth is realistic going 20 years into the future, or the practical experience with disk drives is more relevant.
For 20 years in this business, whatever disk drive you had, you filled and needed a bigger one. Until about five years ago, when disk drives got so big that most people don't wind up running out of space on their Terabyte or 2 Terabyte drives, unless they do a heck of a lot of video.
Or have two-and-a-half Terabytes of jazz …
But those are relatively few, and we see that in the declining sales of hard disk drives.
There was a point where you had just about what you needed – so, smart people disagree on this one, and I'll wait 'till I see.


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8 Apr 2018Maratona di Roma 2018
- -- Tage : -- Stunden : -- Minuten : -- Sekunden
News&Media / News
Purosangue won the Macerata Overtime Film Festival as the best short film
Written and produced by Massimiliano Monteforte (Director: Virginio Favale), supported by Skyrunner and Maratona di Roma and sponsored by New Balance, Purosangue keeps gaining appreciations. After winning the "Paladino d'oro" as the best short film at the 34th edition of Palermo SportFilmFestival, also won the Macerata Overtime Film Festival as the best short film.
Purosangue has been also included among the "SELECTED" of "Sport Movies & Tv 2013 – 31st Milano International FICTS Fest".


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The Sixth Gun's Cullen Bunn stops by to talk about his spooky new young adult novel, just in time for Halloween!
Cullen Bunn is the writer of the hot indie hit, The Sixth Gun, which is being developed into a Syfy miniseries. His latest work comes not from the world of comics but rather the much more frightening world of children's prose novels. The Outhouse sat down with Cullen to get the scoop on Crooked Hills, his new novel.
The Outhouse:So Cullen, tell us a little bit about Crooked Hills. What's the general premise of your new prose novel?
Cullen Bunn: Crooked Hills is a horror novel set in the Missouri Ozarks. Our protagonist, Charlie, is uprooted from the life he knows in suburbia to spend the summer in the backwoods town of Crooked Hills... which just happens to be the most haunted small town in America.
Hijinks ensue.
And by "hijinks" I mean headless chickens, scorpions, tarantulas, hellhounds, bullies, and undead monsters who are trying to return from the grave!
Not only is Charlie a fish out of water in a town simply crawling with ghosts and goblins, he is thrown headlong into an encounter with Maddie Someday, a fiendish child-eating witch who met a terrible demise decades ago. Maddie's not really happy about being dead, and her minions are hard at work bringing her back. When Alex vanishes, it's up to Charlie, his cousin Marty, and his new friend Lisa (and her trusty slingshot) to rescue him from the clutches of a creature that is simply too evil to stay dead!
The story comes off a little bit like The Goonies Meet The Blair Witch (even though the target audience probably doesn't get those two references)!
OH: What would you say are the main themes of Crooked Hills and who do you think they'd most resonate with?
CB: I didn't sit down with a theme in mind when I started writing this story. Instead, I sat down to tell a rollicking ghost story set in a quirky haunted town. But as the story came together, the theme of putting it all on the line for your family certainly surfaced loud and clear (at least to me). It's a theme that comes up again and again in the story (and in the future stories I have envisioned) although it is often masked under the comedy, action, and horror elements.
OH: What inspired you to write Crooked Hills? Is there any real life basis for the town of Crooked Hills that children should avoid?
CB: I grew up in rural North Carolina, and my imagination was fueled by a steady diet of ghost stories, horror comics, spooky novels and short stories, late night horror movies, and urban legends. Stories of the Maco Light, Blackbeard's Ghost, and the Devil's Tramping Ground scared me silly when I was a kid. And if the famous legends weren't enough, I heard plenty of more... uhm... grassroots attempts to get me to wet my pants.
...We lived for a while near a small pond where a teenage boy had supposedly drowned... only no one had ever found the body. On certain cold mornings, they say you could find foot prints in the mud leading out of the pond...
...A wild gorilla was said to have escaped from a transport vehicle on the way to the zoo in Ashville. The animal had never been found. It was said to stalk some of the deepest parts of the woods...
...A flying saucer once soared over town, dipping so low out of the skies that it chased the local sheriff off the road, causing him to wreck his patrol car...
These stories—and plenty of others—came from my older brothers and sister, who must have delighted in the idea of traumatizing me. But I still never hesitated to slip off into the woods to go exploring in search of "haints" or ghosts. Soon enough, I was making up my own "legends" in an attempt to scare my own friends and my little brother.
Crooked Hills is a combination of small towns I lived in throughout my life. Newton Grove, Goldsboro, Thayer, Koshkonong, and every other tiny town rife with spooky legends and deep woods.
OH: Where do you think is the ideal setting to read Crooked Hills at?
CB: Read it by the glow of a flashlight while hiding under your bed sheets from the boogieman. Also, I think it might be a fun read on a family road trip. Barring that, dim the lights a little bit, sit back, and enjoy.
OH: What makes Crooked Hills the perfect Halloween story for kids?
CB: Kids love ghost stories and folk tales and being scared... and Crooked Hills is a pretty scary tale. I didn't pull any punches when it comes to the "stuff of nightmares." At the same time, though, I didn't forget that getting scared can be fun! The story is full of adventure and comedy. I've always thought this is a book that both kids and adults can enjoy. It's funny to me that many of the adults who read it comment on how scary the tale is, while most of the kids who've read it mention how much fun they had with the story.
OH: When will be seeing the next installment of Crooked Hills? Is there any chance that Crooked Hills will cross over into comics?
CB: The plan is for a new Crooked Hills novel to be released every year in October. I'm working on the next book, Casket Full of Nightmares, right now. In terms of comics, there has always been plans to do a series of original Crooked Hills stories as graphic novels or short comics. In fact, on Halloween, Earwig Press is releasing an 8-page comic titled "Raw Head & Bloody Bones" that readers can check out for free on IndiePulp (www.indiepulp.com).
Earwig Press was kind enough to give the Outhouse an exclusive preview of Raw Heads and Bloody Bones. Enjoy!
Written or Contributed by: Christian Hoffer


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Payrolls increased in 32 U.S. states in July, and the unemployment rate climbed in 28, indicating progress in the labor market remains uneven.
California led the nation with a 38,100 gain in payrolls, followed by Georgia with 30,900 more jobs, figures from the Labor Department showed today in Washington.
Economic growth is projected to accelerate in the final six months of 2013 as the effects of federal budget cuts and higher taxes fade and job- and home-price gains spread across wider swathes of the U.S. Faster hiring would help spur consumer spending, which accounts for about 70% of the economy.
"There's demand for workers," Stuart Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Financial Services Group in Pittsburgh, said before the report. "We'll see some pickup in the economy as the fiscal drag fades in the second half."
Nationwide figures released on Aug. 2 showed the economy added 162,000 workers in July after 188,000 the prior month. The jobless rate dropped to 7.4% from 7.6%.
State and local employment data are derived independently from the national statistics, which are typically released on the first Friday of every month. The state figures are subject to larger sampling errors because they come from smaller surveys, thus making the national figures more reliable, according to the government's Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The differences can be seen in the unemployment figures, with the state data showing the national average rising to 7.5% last month from 7.4% in June. Additionally, states with some of the biggest gains in payrolls also showed an increase in joblessness.
Jobless Rates
The unemployment rate in California climbed to 8.7% in July from 8.5% the prior month, while Georgia's shot up to 8.8% from 8.5% in June. Other states showing statistically significant increases in their jobless rates included Alaska, Iowa, Nebraska, Vermont and Virginia. Mississippi was the only state showing a significant drop, with the rate falling to 8.5% from 9%.
Nevada remained the state with the highest level of unemployment at 9.5%, followed by Illinois at 9.2%. North Dakota had the lowest at 3%.
Other states showing gains in payrolls included Florida, with an increase of 27,600, and Michigan, which showed an advance of 21,400.
Payrolls declined by 7,300 in New York and by 11,800 in New Jersey. Nonetheless, New Jersey's jobless rate fell to 8.6% from 8.7%.
Sequestration, or the automatic across-the-board federal budget cuts that started taking effect in March, may have played a role in last month's job count. Maryland lost 9,200 jobs from payrolls and the District of Columbia saw a 1,600 reduction. The jobless rate increased in both regions. Payrolls in Virginia climbed for the first time in three months, rising by 1,400. At the same time, its jobless rate increased to 5.7% from 5.5% in June.
Copyright 2014 Bloomberg. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.


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For the Bread Basket: 10 Best Rolls, Buns, and Biscuits
I don't feel like the table is really set unless there's a basket of dinner rolls to pass around. Whether it's a simple chili dinner with friends or Thanksgiving itself, some sort of warm buttery bread feels necessary for nibbling throughout the meal and then scooping up that last saucy bite. Here are ten recipes that will do the job quite nicely.
The advantage of buns and rolls is that they can often be made ahead: the dough can be refrigerated overnight, or the baked rolls can be frozen and warmed again before serving. The advantage of biscuits is that they can be mixed, baked, and on the table in minutes.
Both are worthy of the bread basket. Both are easy to work into your schedule. Both will make your guests very happy. Done, and done.
• Homemade Ciabatta Rolls
• No-Knead Sweet Potato Dinner Rolls
• Potato Dinner Rolls
• Mama's Rolls from Paula Deen
• Herbed Olive Fantail Rolls
• Butter Dips
• Bacon and Cheddar Cheese Biscuits
• 15-Minute Cream Biscuits
• Yogurt Biscuits with Dill
• Buttermilk Biscuits
What do you like in your bread basket?
Related: A Visual Guide: How to Shape Dinner Rolls
(Images: Emma Christensen, Faith Durand, Sarah Rae Trover, and Joanna Miller)


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The Walrus Says
Last weekend members of Jamestown's Boy Scout Troop 1 dropped off plastic bags at local residences as the first step of their 24th annual Scouting for Food drive. The scouts will be back Saturday, Nov. 5, to pick up the bags with everyone's food donations.
The bags should be out in front of houses by 9 a.m. All collected items go to the St. Mark Food Bank to help needy islanders. Scoutmaster Jim Archibald says that if you did not receive a bag or your bag was not picked up, call him at 423-3094. Donated food items must be nonperishable with an emphasis on protein, wholegrain cereals, rice, juice and canned or dried fruits and vegetables. Star Scout Owen Baertlein is in charge of setting up zones on the island and assigning his fellow scouts to cover the areas.
Jamestown's Ironman, Andrea Brayman, has returned home after successfully completing the Ironman World Championships in Kona, Hawaii, with a time of 11 hours, 25 minutes. In that time, she swam 2.4 miles, biked 112 miles and ran 26.2 miles.
She writes, "Kudos to my family and the Jamestown community for supporting me and helping me get to Hawaii. My Kona experience was amazing. Thank you to my sponsors NBX, Kettlebottom Productions and Smith Optics. In addition, I received many in-kind donations from friends, family, and residents from the island… making Hawaii possible. Mahalo!
"If you ever think you can't do the unthinkable, think again. Just ask Scott Rigsby, the first double amputee to finish Kona. Scott was back this year and I was lucky enough to spend time with him. He is a true testament to the ironman mantra of 'Anything is Possible.' Ko Aloha La Ea."
It's a disgrace what the state DOT has done to the businesses on Narragansett Avenue.
There was a good response to last week's poser. Kathy Tiexiera, Mike Messinger, Liz Dunphy, Cheryl Fernstrom and Elizabeth Mancini all had the answer. Elizabeth wrote, "The lyrics for this week's poser are for 'Thriller,' which was sung by the late, great Michael Jackson. However, the actual lyrics printed in the column were part of a voice-over by Vincent Price in the recording/video. The 'Thriller' video is a classic, especially the terrific choreography. This video is particularly poignant at this time of year!"
I'm gonna thrill ya tonight, ooh baby,
I'm gonna thrill ya tonight, oh darlin',
Thriller night, baby, ooh!
Thanks, guys! You did so good with that one, how about this one.
*** Poser: Years spent in torment, Buried in a nameless grave,
Now he has risen,
Miracles would have to save,
Those that the beast is looking for,
Listen in awe and you'll hear him.
We note that the federal government is giving away an additional $111,775 of taxpayers' money to erect the island wind turbine. Since it is stimulus money, how many new jobs will that create?
Life has become a series of beeps.
Did you know Congress sends your tax dollars as foreign aid to China?
Someone should tell our friends at Save the Bay that extra high tides are common this time of year.
Don't understand all the media fuss over an old-fashioned nor'easter.
Kudos to islander Candace Powell who has been elected president of the Board of Directors of the Audubon Society of Rhode Island. She is also the founder and current organizer of the Conanicut Island Bird Count.
Debra Vierra Murphy is happy to report it has been a busy few months for her in the performing arts profession. "I did background work for the movie 'Moonrise Kingdom' and also was in the flash mob dance with Jackie Henderson's dance group in Newport. Jackie is an awesome dancer and choreographer and fun to work with! I was also recently cast in 'Dark Nights' to be performed at Second Story Theatre on Nov. 13."
Sixty-two years have past since Rita Murray founded the Jamestown Community Chorus in 1949. At the chorus' annual holiday presentation on Dec. 11, Rita's daughter, Jane Murray, will be playing oboe in the chamber orchestra that will be accompanying the chorus. Jane plays oboe and English horn for the R.I. Philharmonic and teaches at URI, Salve, St. George's and other places, and also runs the community music program in the URI Music Department. She was recently singled out in Channing Gray's ProJo review of a R.I. Philharmonic concert. Other instruments in the chamber orchestra will be two violins, viola, cello, bass, two trumpets, tympani and piano.
Kudos to Julia Littlefield, a 10-year-old fourth-grader at the Melrose School who was named last week's student of the week in the Newport Daily News.
Hayley Carlisle said she is still working on the laugh, an important prerequisite for her role as the Wicked Witch of the West in the Jamestown Community Theatre's production of "The Wizard of Oz."
"It's fun to have a part that's kind of crazy," she said. This is her third play with the JCT. She appeared in "Little Women" and was Cinderella in last year's production. The 14-year-old freshman at La Salle Academy explained that she is normally a dancer but had knee surgery and is now in therapy. Her acting talent keeps her performing. "I love the play. Mary Wright is amazing and the whole cast is very talented."
Just as her dad, Clayton, was the king to her Cinderella, this time he is the Wizard. "It's a fun character, he's full of bluster," he said. Clayton began appearing in JCT plays in "Music Man" and has had roles in some 10 different plays since then. How does he feel about being in the same plays with his daughter? "I love watching her perform," he replied.
Performances will be at the rec center Friday, Nov. 11, and Saturday, Nov. 12, at 7 p.m.; Sunday, Nov. 13, at 4 p.m.; Friday, Nov. 18, and Saturday, Nov.19, at 7 p.m.; and Sunday, Nov. 20, at 4 p.m.
"Very well, I'll bide my time. But just try to stay out of my way – just try! I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too!"
Saturday night, Nov. 5, from 7 to 11, the Jamestown Arts Center will host its big Bombay Bash, the second annual community fundraiser at the center. There will be cocktails and dancing to the Bombay beats of DJs Riff Raff & Njoy. Henna tattoos and chakra readings will be provided by the Cathryn Jamieson Salon, and an exotic boxes silent auction will feature local artists. Event chairs are Suzanne and Dan O'Donnell and Varsha and Ilesh Patel. Tickets are $55 per person online or at Baker's Pharmacy and the Conanicut Marine Services Ship's Store. They are $60 at the door.
Sponsors are the Narragansett Café/Jamestown Fish, Bridge Technical Solutions, Conanicut Marina, Taste Design, Walker Interiors, Ace's Pizza, BankNewport, East Ferry Deli, Island Realty, Island Rubbish, Janney & Associates, Lila Delman Real Estate, Salon Balayage, Christopher Regan Insurance, Secret Garden, Chopmist Charlie's, Island Animal, Jamestown Golf Course, Jamestown Wine & Liquors, Cathryn Jamieson Salon, Jamestown Hardware and Innerlight Yoga.
Revel on!
November is National Hospice Month, Military Family Month, National Adoption Month, National Family Caregivers Month, National Alzheimer's Disease Awareness Month, National Diabetes Month and National American Indian Heritage Month.
Next Wednesday, Nov. 9, is World Freedom Day.
Be true!
Call in your stuff to 829-2760 or 423-0383, or email me at jtnwal firstname.lastname@example.com. Thank you.