The release of call of Duty: Black Ops 2 has been confirmed to be on November 13, 2012. Treyarch developed the first-person shooter video game, which is published by Activision. the game is compatible with Windows, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360. although it is already the ninth call of Duty game, it is the first one to feature futuristic warfare setting. It also allows the player to form a storyline of his own. the upcoming game is already talked about on Black Ops 2 forum sites.

The futuristic setting depicts 2025, during which time China and United States hold a cold war. But this war is run by robots and unmanned vessels, all depicting modern, advanced technology-based warfare. In the game, there is an element that depicts cynicism towards the advanced technology. the origin of the China-US cold war dates back to the 1980s, wherein the roots of the story were taken. the main antagonist in the game is Raul Menendez, who instigates war between the two countries. back in the 1980s setting of the Black Ops game, Alex Mason is the protagonist. His son, David Mason, becomes the leading character in the 2025 version of the game.

As mentioned, Black Ops 2 will have branching storylines, as players can influence the game, as well as its story. the game will involve Strike Force missions, which will give players control over different war assets. these assets include robots, jets, and unmanned aircraft. the campaign continues even if the player dies in the mission, but the loss is recorded. the antagonist, Raul Menendez, will change his plans according to the progress of players in the Strike Force missions. Players can change the course of the Cold War.

Every Strike Force mission will remind you of the small sandbox battlefield, and you are free to choose the order you want to meet your aims. For instance, you can choose the units you play, or have a good look of the battlefield by zooming out the picture, while the flesh and blood soldiers deploy UAVs and walking robots. you can select a new unit and adopt its perspective, and you can quickly acquire any unit that you prefer at the moment. the overwatch mode allows you to give orders and go through the whole Strike Force missions.

The game developer, Treyarch, said that the Zombies mode will reappear in the new version of Black Ops, and it is its third time to appear in call of Duty games. Zombies will have its own campaign and will execute the multiplayer engine, which allows a more intense experience together with novel game modes. the Zombies mode sets Black Ops 2 from older call of Duty games, as it supports an 8 player co-op. Treyarch has not yet revealed much information about the Zombies mode, though.

The visuals of Black Ops 2 are improved with the use of more advanced graphics engine. Players will marvel the facial animation, which has been given more thorough attention. That means the characters will have more precise facial expressions.

Getting a Glimpse of Black Ops 2

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The Vita
The latest in handheld technology, known as the PS Vita, was released in February 2012 and has had a big impact on the way we play our handheld devices. it is by far the most powerful and impressive handheld gaming console ever built and its specifications are phenomenal.

Power
The Vita packs a quad core ARM Cortex processor which helps the stunning 5-inch touch screen OLED display continue to look crisp and beautiful. it is available with both 3G and Wi-fi to keep you connected wherever you go and it also has Bluetooth capability. it has dual analogue sticks that make it feel much more like a modern day controller and the front and rear touch screens give it more delicate movements and actions. The Vita also has a six Axis motion Sensing System including 3-axis Gyroscope, 3-axis accelerometer and 3-axis electronic compass.

This is quite a large console but the size is necessary to support its big screen and all those buttons. The Vita’s width is 7.2 inches, height 3.3 inches and it has a thickness of 0.7 inches. Despite its fairly big size it is a snug and comfortable fit in your hands but you won’t be keen on sliding it into your pocket.

Vita Gaming
The PS Vita since launching has been repeatedly praised for the amount of games that are already available on it and the quality of many of these games. Lumines: electronic symphony is a very popular block busting, puzzle solving game, which has made its return on the Vita and has scored a rating of between 80% – 90%

Wipeout has made a brilliant comeback on the PS Vita and is one of the most popular in the Wipeout series. it looks great on the Vita and the implication of cross platform play between the Vita and PS3 shows what we can look forward to in the future.

The Future of PS Vita
Although the PS Vita is an all round beast of a console there is plenty of juice left to be squeezed out. One feature that has kept chins wagging is the idea of remote play between PS Vita and PS3. The idea of being able to play your Playstation 3 games on the Playstation Vita is truly a mouth watering thought.

Sony has also promised a huge round up of games this year. Where the 3DS was greatly criticised for its lack of games and content, Sony are trying very hard not to fall short in these categories.

An Overview of the PS Vita

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Think West end and you think Harrods, the Royal Academy and an evening at Covent Garden punctuated by gins and the beef at the Naval & Military then Assam and macaroons at Fortnum’s.

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   Struggling: But keep rents down and businesses will survive.

Alas, the name refers to the West end of Nottingham; more precisely, the West end of Upper Parliament Street, which all proper geographers will confirm is the highway marking the boundary between the North and the South of England.

Ironically the north side of this section of Upper Parliament Street gets the prosperity points. Indian and Chinese scoff. Up-market sandwich parlour. Coffee shop and casino. Throw in a turf accountant and vintner and it would be a shopping parade fit for the Kingdom of Heaven.

The opposite side of western Upper Parliament Street, representing the well-scrubbed South, is shamed by comparison. in recent years the parade has taken on a generally seedy appearance with its “yoof” bars and adult provisions emporium. in the centre of it all is the distinctly unpromising upper entrance to the beleaguered West end Arcade.

The entrance is framed by a truly hideous building whose architectural origins lie in the mid-20th-Century AMALAIC movement (Any Material as Long as It’s Concrete) with influences from the AMIFU school (And Make it Jolly Ugly).

Above the portal, the mounted words West, end and Arcade look down on the shopper with an apologetic 1960s shrug.

If you enter the arcade and follow it to its lower entrance in Chapel Bar you will descend via an escalator. Only you won’t, because the escalator has been what unlucky actors like to call “resting” since an accident back in March which caused a young man and a big toe to part company.

First things first, I wish the chap a quick recovery, an easy convalescence and a long, happy and rewarding life full of love and great food.

Second things second, it would be wrong to speculate about the circumstances of the accident.

Third things third, it would be satisfying to learn a little more about the arcade and its owner’s plans for the future.

Asked about the escalator, the commercial property agents refused to comment to the Nottingham Post.

You might say they’re being cautious. I might say they’re being insolent.

Shops in the arcade are suffering from lack of passing trade and pedestrians are being inconvenienced by the temporary withdrawal of a time-saving cut-through from Chapel Bar to Parliament Street.

The traders and their customers could do with an update. When will the escalator be re-opened? When will the arcade get some through traffic?

Since the accident a lot of online pundits have been beastly about West end. I agree it is no Burlington Arcade. I cannot see LBV port or Balkan cigarettes in the widows and I’m not sure if I’d shop there for detachable collars.

Even so, I like what it does and I like the businesses it accommodates.

I don’t need a Special Forces camouflage jacket and I don’t want an autographed photograph of Frank Bruno to hang on my garage wall.

However I do like my coat sleeves shortened by the charming ladies with the sewing machines and accents suggesting they’ve fixed some hems a fair way east of Broadstairs. And I do like to drop into the empty shop when it is rented by my chum Lord Biro for displays of his topical verse.

As for secondhand books, a sign of a cultured city is the number of its bookshops and public lavatories. Nottingham has nowhere near enough of either.

Like some of the alleys and twitchells of Nottingham, and a bit like the off-piste retail offer in Hockley, West end Arcade puts some useful little businesses into NG1, whose retail profile otherwise conforms to the boring big-city norm – a riot of coffee parlours and portable telephone and cheesy gift card shops.

It falls to precious few cities to have a mixed retail offer in which, either through accident or design, small independent traders can … well, I was going to say flourish, but perhaps a better word is survive.

Keep the rents down and the West end businesses will survive.

Fix the escalator (and throw in a few bob for the general appearance of a place that seems as dated as a Hammer flick or a Slade album) and they will start surviving sooner.

Jeremy Lewis: Why city’s troubled West End Arcade deserves better after escalator horror

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Danny Moloshok/AP Photo

Jim Parsons, who plays lovable, clueless geek Sheldon Cooper on the hit CBS TV series “the Big Bang Theory,” has been revealed to be gay in a recent newspaper profile.

The new York Times profile on Parsons, 39, who is currently starring as Elwood P. Dowd in a Broadway revival of “Harvey,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy that was also a hit 1950 film starring Jimmy Stewart, casually mentions that “mr. Parsons is gay and in a 10-year relationship.”

Parsons never discusses his sexuality in the Times profile. His representative had no additional comment when reached, according to People magazine.

Parsons, who took home the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series in 2010 and 2011, spent last summer on Broadway as well, portraying Tommy Boatwright, a young gay activist in Larry Kramer’s “the Normal Heart.” He is slated to reprise the role in an upcoming film adaptation of the award winning play.

The Times’ revelation may not be news to some of Parsons’ avid fans, who note that during awards acceptance speeches he regularly thanks his reported partner, Todd Spiewak, with whom he is often photographed.

Jim Parsons, Emmy Winning Star of ‘The Big Bang Theory’ Comes Out as Gay

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The news hit late Wednesday night that the storied New Orleans Times-Picayune, the newspaper that served as a community rock in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, will be cutting its print run to three times a week and slicing its staff by up to a third.

“We did not make this decision lightly,” the new company president, Ricky Mathews, said in corporate-speak of the layoffs in the Times-Picayune’s own announcement. “It’s the toughest part of transitioning from a print-centric to a digitally-focused company.” most of the paper’s own staff found out initially about the restructuring by reading Wednesday night’s New York Times story, New Orleans’s alt-weekly reported.

Depriving a region of a vital public resource—one that, according to Romenesko, remains profitable—seems a shortsighted decision by parent company Newhouse.

To get a sense of the paper’s ongoing importance (as hurricane recovery continues seven years later), here are some links to past CJR coverage:

Here is a snapshot of the Times-Picayune in 2010, five years after Katrina

Here is a three-part series on how the paper continued to get reported coverage to its readers in the midst of utter chaos

Here is a profile of TP columnist Chris Rose, who became the voice of New Orleans’s struggles

The Times-Picayune cuts staff and print runs : CJR

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If you’ve ever wanted to make music but have felt that you can’t because of what it takes to be a musician, read on. You’ll discover how to start making music right away even if you don’t know how to make music.

Pick an Instrument

What instrument would you love to play? What would you want to pick up and really make music with right now? it could be a guitar. it could be a horn. it could be a piano. it doesn’t matter, as long as you really want to start playing it.

You don’t have to buy an instrument to start playing. you can borrow one. Or perhaps there’s an instrument that you can use at school or at work. if you can even start with clapping your hands, snapping your fingers, or playing the spoons if you want to be a percussionist or drummer.

Explore: What Can you Do with What you Have?

If you don’t know how to read music, you can figure out how to make sounds you like with your chosen instrument, whether it’s a guitar, piano, or piccolo. Just start making joyful sounds. Some of the most memorable musical solos are a single note. (Think Neil Young and the solo to Cinnamon Girl or Katrina and the Waves tune Walking on Sunshine).

All music is a series of notes or chords repeated over and over (and in the case of modern music, over and over and over). So just find a pattern that makes you happy or makes sense to you, and put it together.

Find a Music Buddy

It’s much more fun to play with someone else. find someone who likes the kind of music you do and start playing music together. You’ll learn from them and you’ll inspire them, so everyone becomes a better musician.

Don’t worry about them playing better than you. Don’t worry about them knowing more than you. they started where you are a while ago and they are willing and eager to share what they know. Music lovers teach others to be music lovers. So, find a music lover and get taught. You’ll pay it forward later when you get where you want to go.

Learn from Other Artists

Every one of your favorite musicians was inspired by another artist. it will be no different for you. So listen, copy, and learn from them. Each has a unique view of music that’s reflected in their music. Discover what it is and see how you can add your own passion and life experience, making it your own. you might be a little bit of AC/DC and a little bit of Santana and come up with your own sound, feel, and contribution to music with your style.

Don’t Be Afraid

You only have to please yourself. you don’t have to please everybody. in fact, you don’t have to please anybody but yourself. And chances are that you’ll find others who will resonate with your style an appreciate connecting with your music.

You don’t have to be good to start, but you have to start to be good. And until you start, the world won’t hear your music. And that would be a waste of your talent.

How to Make Music: Making Music When You Don’t Know How to Read Music

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Kanye West tried to suppress the urge to check out a New York Knicks cheerleader, but it looks like he couldn’t resist. Still, his relationship with reality star Kim Kardashian seems to be getting serious, according to reports.

The Daily Mail caught photos of West sitting courtside with Tower Heist actor Ben Stiller at Thursday’s playoff game between the Knicks and the Miami Heat. Stiller and West tried their hardest to avoid looking at the cheerleaders, but in one photo, West is clearly taking a good look at the beautiful cheerleader. Of course, it could also be possible that his attention was on something else and she just happened to be in the way.

During halftime, West was seen talking to Kardashian’s friend Lala Vasquez, reports ContactMusic. the two had a close conversation and were laughing. It doesn’t seem like the Knicks’ loss stopped the celebrities from having a good time.

West and Kardashian have been spotted dating and sources for Us Weekly say that it is getting “very serious” and that they are already looking at rings. “She wants to be with him as much as possible,” the source said, explaining that Kardashian wants to join West on tour. “They really know and love each other.”

Kardashian still has to officially end her marriage to Kris Humphries. on Friday, her lawyer accused Humphries of letting his feelings get in the way of finalizing the divorce. Humphries is seeking an annulment of the marriage, claiming fraud.

Kanye West caught checking out Knicks cheerleader despite ‘very serious’ relationship with Kim Kardashian

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Fresh off the London Book Fair, the hungover publishing industry is heading to Iran for the Tehran International Book Fair, which starts today and runs through may 12th. (All images: Mehr News Agency)

Um, actually, slight correction: The publishers of "Bioeconomics of Fisheries Management" are indeed welcome, as the Los Angeles Times reports that's one of the few Western titles that will be featured at the fair. As for the mainstream book industry, it's about as welcome as Woody Allen in the repressive Islamic state, where access to outside cultural influences is tightly regulated by the mullahs and their bearded puppet, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

According to the Iran Book News Agency, the fair will be held at "Tehran's Grand Imam Khomeini Prayer Ground with the motto of 'a Quarter of a Century of Cultural Jihad." The LA Times says that some 500,000 visitors are expected daily to buy and sell books that promote "Islamic values," which means that Bethenny Frankel's new novel isn't going to get the traction it deserves.

This is the 25th year of the Tehran fair. According to Iranian cultural officials, 2,451 publishers will attend, hawking some 207,170 titles.

Iran's semi-official PressTV agency said the Tehran fair was "the most significant event of its kind in Asia and the Middle East and a significant venue for publishers and book lovers to exchange opinions and experiences."

Unless, that is, you run afoul of Iran's strict religious codes.That's what happened to the publishing house Chesmeh, which got shut down by Tehran's meanies in 2011 for publishing Western titles like "My Name Is Red" by the Turkish Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk. And in 2010, the authorities said no book that had been published before Ahmadinejad became president in 2005 would be allowed at the fair.

The fair's own website describes the warning of a culture minister: "any publishers with anti-Shii titles would be barred from the fair…any titles that may contain obscene materials or images will be seized and their publishers will be banned from the cultural fair forever."

also required of attendees will be an "adherence to Islamic code of clothing and behavior."

It is unclear how large a role Holocaust denial will have at the book fair, but don't be surprised to find at least a couple of "historical" titles on this topic beloved by the nutty Ahmadinejad. for example, last year saw the publication of the subtly-titled "The Holocaust – The Jews' Greatest Lie."

how did culture-rich Persia get from the poetry of Rumi to this insanity? Beats me, but I think I'll stick to my Bethenny Frankel for now.

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Tehran Book Fair starts today: Islamic publishers descend on Iranian capital for tightly-scripted 'celebration' of literature

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The meteoric rise in the smartphone market is creating a dangerous vulnerability in smartphone security – one that may not be patched until the problem expands into what has been dubbed an “apocalypse.”

Dan Auerbach, a staff technologist at the Electronics Frontier Foundation, points to outdated encryption standards and the inherent vulnerabilities of the baseband processor found on modern smartphones as the makings for a security hole through which users can be exploited at large.

The situation is similar to the PC boom of the late 1990s, Auerbach says. Just as PCs were designed to communicate freely with any and all network elements at the time, the baseband processors found on many of today’s smartphones interact with any base station with which they come into contact.

At the same time, “the cost of having portable base stations has decreased quite a bit,” Auerbach says. This has already enabled some police-state government agencies to create false base stations to monitor cellphone communications, he added.

“So you have just kind of a fake base station, and then you get a user’s cellphone to interact with that instead of the real base station,” Auerbach says.

This idea is known as the “baseband apocalypse,” and it is nothing new. At last year’s Black Hat DC Conference, security researcher Ralf-Philipp Weinmann presented the vulnerability and warned that new open source tools for establishing mobile base stations will make smartphones easier to exploit than in the past, when the code for base stations was retained by the service providers that managed them.

What’s scarier, though, is that smartphone developers since have focused on features like user interface and screen resolution, as opposed to fixing a fundamental vulnerability that has been public knowledge for at least the past 16 months, Auerbach says. The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) standard for 3G cellphones still employs the A5/1 encryption algorithm, which Auerbach says is “incredibly broken” and “basically worthless.” indeed, the industry has been aware of an attack against A5/1 that can intercept voice and text communications since 2009.

“So, in light of that, controlling the base station and the network elements really does give you access to users’ communications,” Auerbach says.

Another similarity between the mobile industry of today and the PC security outlook at the turn of the century is that OEMs and mobile carriers have no incentive to secure this vulnerability during the product development life cycle, Auerbach says. The faster smartphones are developed and pushed out to market, the more money companies like Qualcomm and Apple stand to make. with the way the smartphone market has grown lately, they likely won’t be slowing down any time soon – a recent IDC report showed 42.5% year-over-year growth in worldwide smartphone shipments in the first quarter of 2012.

Although he says he does not know the exact cost it would entail, Auerbach believes that “it would be significant to overhaul the encryption that’s used.” as long as OEMs and carriers aren’t feeling any pressure to make such a significant change, they will continue pushing more smartphones through the assembly line as is.

Herein lies the difference in security for smartphones and PCs. Just over a decade ago, then Microsoft CEO Bill Gates wrote a memo to the company’s employees that set off the industry-changing Trustworthy Computing initiative. From 2000 to 2003, the number of Internet users across the globe nearly doubled, from 389 million to 759 million, and a large-enough security threat could affect roughly 12% of the world population. with numbers this staggering, Gates was compelled to ensure Microsoft “customers will always be able to rely on these systems to be available and to secure their information.”

Ten years and 1.5 billion new web users later, Trustworthy Computing seems to have made a difference. Microsoft has since come up with the Security Development Lifecycle, for example, to instill security and privacy considerations before new products come to market.

Whether the mobile industry will receive a similar call to arms remains to be seen, but Auerbach, for one, is less than optimistic. Because the smartphone market is not showing any signs of becoming as monopolized as the PC market was in 2002, Auerbach says any federal legislation aimed at improving cybersecurity, such as CISPA or the SECURE IT Act, “should at least be thinking about incentivizing companies to care about security.” so far, partially because lawmakers are unaware of these threats and partially because those tasked with educating them have their own agenda, solutions to that problem are “nowhere to be found,” Auerbach says.

“I think, unfortunately, members of Congress are not very educated about real security issues and real problems, and instead they are taking their cues from interested parties, for example the intelligence community, as to what needs to get passed,” Auerbach says. “Unfortunately, the result is that the legislation is not focused on the relevant issues, such as mobile, and instead it tends to become blanket legislation.”

An increase in user education about the privacy and security issues with their smartphones could help the problem, as could improvements in sharing information about and patching newly discovered mobile software vulnerabilities, Auerbach says. however, OEMs and carriers are unlikely to respond until they have to, after a major security issue puts their customers directly at risk, he says.

“Unfortunately, it might be the case where it will require some sort of big, newsworthy event where users’ privacy is compromised in a big way,” Auerbach says. “I hope that’s not the case. I hope that we can kind of improve security without that, but unfortunately I think it’s going to take a lot of press coverage to get mobile platform vendors and manufacturers to really start caring about this issue.”

Colin Neagle covers emerging technologies, privacy and enterprise mobility for Network World. Follow him on Twitter https://twitter.com/#!/ntwrkwrldneagle and keep up with the Microsoft, Cisco https://twitter.com/#!/ciscosubnet and Open Source community blogs. Colin’s email address is cneagle@nww.com.

Read more about anti-malware in Network World’s Anti-malware section.

Smartphone security is heading for 'apocalypse'

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The unfortunate outcome of divorce is that children will no longer live with both parents but must divide their time between the homes of the parents. the State of Georgia is no different. In a Georgia custody case, several types of custody can be awarded with one parent usually having primary custody.

Types of custody include:

In many cases a hearing is held in Georgia Superior Court after a divorce is filed to determine who will have temporary custody of the children. In most cases, the parent who has the children will have temporary custody. however, temporary custody in Georgia has the same standards as permanent custody-it must be in the best interest of the child. and just because a parent has been awarded temporary custody it does not mean that he or she will be awarded permanent custody.

In order to have sole custody, a parent must have legal and physical custody. Legal custody in Georgia is given to the parent that will make all of the important decisions regarding the child. This includes education, religious upbringing, medical care and discipline. the parent that has physical custody has the child living with him or her every day. In most cases, the other parent has visitation rights.

Split Custody Split custody cases are rare but do happen. In these cases one child may live with one parent while another child lives with the other. each parent has custody of the child that lives with him or her. This happens most often in cases where the children are teenagers.

Joint Custody Jon and Kate Gosselin of Jon and Kate plus 8 are showing America one version of joint custody. the two have continued to maintain the same home for their children but each lives there with them at different times on a rotating basis. Joint custody also refers to legal custody. This is where the parents share in the decision making about the upbringing of the child. For example, education and religious decisions are made jointly Parents can also agree to shared physical custody. In this case, the parents agree that the child has two homes and the child spend at least 35 percent of the time with the other parent.

Who decides custody in Georgia Courts?

The determination as to who gets custody is always up to a superior court judge. But the judge will usually approve a plan that the parents agree to as long as he or she considers it to be in the best interest of the children. Before agreeing to any type of custody arrangement, consult with a Georgia child custody attorney. Once a custody agreement is in place, it is very difficult to get it changed. you will have to file court motions to show that the change of custody is in the best interest of the child. This is difficult to prove unless there has been abuse or neglect.

Child Custody – An Overview

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