Mordern Warfare 3 Trailer

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Modern Warfare 3

It would be easy to dismiss Modern Warfare 3 as just another iterative update to the massively successful shooter series. After attending a preview event this summer, I left with concerns that the Infinity Ward/Sledgehammer Games collaboration shelved the multiplayer innovation Treyarch introduced with Black Ops in favor of more minor, underwhelming updates. Some of my early concerns proved valid, but many of the incremental tweaks are smart additions to the multiplayer experience. Modern Warfare 3 does little to fundamentally change the well-known franchise formula, but it offers enough enhancements to recommend it to any fan.
On the surface, this Call of Duty experience is similar to the other Modern Warfare games. If a casual fan sat down for a few rounds of team deathmatch or domination, it would be easy to forgive them for mistaking this for a map pack. Its visuals are familiar, most of the weapons are recycled from previous games, the tight gunplay feels similar, maps are still fairly cramped affairs for the most part, assembling a party operates the same, and many of the killstreak rewards return. Modern Warfare 3’s most noteworthy tweaks may be smaller changes, but they add up to contribute in a big way.


Custom classes are as crucial to online play as always, and players can choose between three new strike packages for their loadouts. Assault is for offensive-minded players, as its rewards are mostly death-dealing instruments like remote control assault drones, devastating air strikes, and the proximity-based I.M.S. (Intelligent Munition System). If you’re outfitted with this package, your killstreak progresses as always – it builds as you rack up kills, but resets to zero once you’re taken down. Considering I’m usually heavy on offense, I stuck with the assault package for my first few hours of multiplayer.


The Support package killstreaks are defensive in nature, like SAM turrets, recon drones, and counter-UAVs. They don’t have the flash of the deadly assault rewards, but they’re still helpful. Unlike the assault package, this package’s killstreak count doesn’t reset upon death. You wouldn’t normally reach one of the crazy 18-kill assault rewards without dying, but now it’s feasible to earn the most valuable support items in a single game. This package was even more appealing to me when I unlocked a few offensive rewards, like the remote sentry turret, the B-2 bomber, and the recon juggernaut suit. Once I realized the value of this package, it became my default for the majority of my future rounds.

The final package, Specialist, is for tacticians who strategize formulas for specific game types. Specialist allows you to unlock a specific order of perks as you rack up kills. For instance, let’s say you want to create a specialist package for use in Domination.

You start with whatever three perks you normally have available, but you could then unlock Extreme Conditioning after a few kills to help you sprint from flag to flag. If you live long enough to capture a few flags, you’ll probably be running low on ammo. Not a problem – you can set your specialist package to unlock Scavenger to help you pick up more ammo. To reap the rewards of this killstreak package, you have to analyze how you play and where you’d benefit from the unlocked perks most. For the hardcore crowd, this is an ideal pick.

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HTC Evo 3d Review

Pros: + Dual LED flash
+ Dual core processor is fast
+ Call quality has been excellent
+ Slightly slimmer than the original and feels great in the hand
Cons: - Much of the hype is on the 3D feature
- Screen would be more vivid
Summary: When the Evo 4G came out, it was a beast like nothing before it. Even a year later, the Evo 4G isn't too shabby. It just received Gingerbread, the latest Android update and is one of the few Android phones right now that can stream Netflix.


A little history on myself, I've generally had the top Sprint smartphone since the Mogul, then to Touch Pro, Palm Pre and in the last year, I've used mainly the Evo, with a few months of the Epic.


Onto the 3D: HTC's follow-up to the blockbuster Evo 4G is to give us a feature that nobody was asking for: a 3D capable display with stereoscopic cameras. The 3D effect is pretty cool. You do have some blur until the camera adjusts. While it's something you've probably never seen, short of the Nintendo 3DS, it just not something most people will find impressive.

At no point have I thought wow, I'm really glad my phone can do this. You do have the option to turn it off and take regular pictures. The 3D has dual LED flash, just like the first Evo and the standard pictures come out sharp. Speaking of the LEDs, it is missing the flashlight app, but I'm sure HTC will add that in for a future update.


Ok, that's out of the way. What else does this phone have? Speed. The dual core processor is fast and you will notice it from the first boot-up. Subsequent boot-ups take about 12 seconds to get to the home screen. My Epic Galaxy S, not a slow phone by any means, takes over 30 seconds to boot to the home screen.




  Even when downloading my 30-40 apps from Market, there was no lag. You have 1.15GB of internal memory for apps, so you won't have to worry about running out of space like the first one. HTC is still only throwing in an 8GB micro SD, but it's class 4 speed this time. 16GB cards are cheap, so that's a worthwhile upgrade for those that want to put a lot of media on their phone.

HTC's Sense interface has been a popular feature and with Sense 3.0, a lot of improvements are made and there's a lot to love here. I don't care for the carousel effect when flicking screens and you still don't have an option to remove screens (I don't need 7). 













The notification bar has a quick settings tab that let's you toggle all your data widgets. I will eventually go back to Launcher Pro, but for now I am enjoying the new Sense. The lock screen has the ability to go to certain apps, and to display weather or other items that you can personalize. It's a welcome integration and you no longer have to rely on a third party app for this function. You will notice other little things like the segmented app drawer pages.

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Android Ads Cloud Attack

  
  To guard against malicious behavior, apps that run on Android smart phones must ask politely for permission to do things like access your personal information, track your location, or transmit data via the Internet. 


But once they have approval, these apps can share the permissions with the advertising libraries they use to serve up ads, creating serious potential privacy and security vulnerabilities, researchers have found.Combing through 100,000 apps selected randomly from Google Play (the erstwhile Android Market), a team of researchers at North Carolina State University found that 48,139 of the ad libraries used by these apps tracked the user's GPS location; 18,575 tracked the identity of the phone (its IMEI number); 4,190 let advertisers track the user via GPS; and 4,047 accessed the device's phone number. 


 Dozens of such "ad libraries" exist, generating on screen ads with the associated apps. When you click on an ad, the app maker gets a fee. One of these libraries, called energy source, uses an insecure method of loading code from the Internet, says Xuxian Jiang, the North Carolina professor who led the study, released as a paper to be presented at a conference in Tucson next month.
 Though the researchers did not detect malicious behaviour from the app, they did say it poses a security threat simply by allowing code to be downloaded and run.  Of the 100,000 apps, 297 contained ad code that allowed the phone to run code downloaded from the Internet, providing a potential path for malicious software to get inside the device. "If your app has permission to access personal information, the ad library also has permission to access your information," Jiang says.    
[Image]The North Carolina research is only the latest evidence of gaping security and privacy holes in smart phones. In April of last year, iPhones and Android devices were found to track users' locations automatically. 
Then, in December, these and other smart-phone devices were found to carry diagnostic software that also tracks a wide range of user information. More recently, it was discovered that both iPhones and Android devices share users' address books and other information with apps. 


And instances of mobile malware have been rising.  The new findings point to a flaw in the business model behind apps, Jiang says. Developers rely on revenue from ad libraries to support free apps, but they have no control over what those libraries do. "The current model of embedding ad libraries in mobile apps for monetization purposes poses security and privacy risks. These ad libraries will essentially have the same set of permissions granted to the apps that enclose them. And certain ad libraries may abuse them for other unwanted purposes."  Mobile device makers should provide ways to isolate the two, Jiang says, so that the ads run separately from the host apps—and require separate explicit permissions. "There are fundamental concerns in the way mobile apps are being monetized," he adds.

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