Eat, Sleep and Dream TECH!

Linkin Park's Recharged : What the heck is wrong with LP?

2013-11-14T23:13:00.002-08:00

Sorry for the spoiler but Recharged is a really.. really really bad album. I mean half (much more than half actually) of the songs are from Living Things. Except one which is too crappy to mention.
Some of the remixes are just too bad to be called Linkin Park material.

Compared to the other releases out there, LP's new album stands no chance.

I'd say that pass this season and wait for LP to release a better album next year. But yeah, the cover of the album is Epic!

FIFA 13 Crash after appearance of EA Logo Fix! FINALLY!

2013-10-06T05:08:00.000-07:00

It occurred to me today. Yesterday at 11 PM I switched off my Laptop and went to sleep just after completing a match on FIFA 13. Today morning at 10 PM, I switch on my Laptop, open FIFA 13 and.... disaster.
Just after seeing the logo, it crashes to the desktop! I became INSANE! Searched all over the net!
Installed, re-installed, deleted, updated, did almost everything. Finally, now, at 5:27 PM, I realized something.
I restored my computer to the day a Windows Update was made. (In my case 3 days ago)
I opened my Origin. Tried to start and failed. Not losing hope, I went to the folder where FIFA was installed.
Then I knew what was wrong.
My Fifa 13 was installed in a folder called "Games".
On opening "Games", I saw two Fifa 13 folders.
What I did was place everything in one folder and then organize it correctly as it was when the game was working.
Now, Fifa is running as smoothly as ever.
I know, I am a genius.
And welcome!

-THE ASH ( A.K.A. SauraTheInferno)

FINALLY A LEGITIMATE HACKING APPLICATION!

2013-09-17T07:43:00.005-07:00

Download this:-
http://www.mediafire.com/?2shzlfi1ql8ddsf

Post by
king

GET READY FOR A NEW GALAXY!

2013-09-14T02:56:00.000-07:00

We've been waiting for a long long time for this! Get ready for the Galaxy Note III!

I don't need to tell anything about this beforehand cause I am sure you are dying to know the specs and my opinion about the phone.

Well first off, the specs!

The phone is available in:~

Samsung Galaxy Note 3 N9000
Samsung Galaxy Note 3 N9002 with dual SIM card support
Samsung Galaxy Note 3 N9005 with LTE connectivity.

General	2G Network	GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
	3G Network	HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100
	4G Network	LTE
	SIM	Micro-SIM
	Announced	2013, September
	Status	Coming soon. Exp. release 2013, September

Body	Dimensions	151.2 x 79.2 x 8.3 mm (5.95 x 3.12 x 0.33 in)
	Weight	168 g (5.93 oz)
		- S Pen stylus

Display	Type	Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
	Size	1080 x 1920 pixels, 5.7 inches (~386 ppi pixel density)
	Multitouch	Yes

Sound	Alert types	Vibration; MP3, WAV ringtones
	Loudspeaker	Yes
	3.5mm jack	Yes

Memory	Card slot	microSD, up to 64 GB
Memory	Internal	32/64 GB storage, 3 GB RAM

Data	GPRS	Yes
	EDGE	Yes
	Speed	HSDPA, 42 Mbps; HSUPA; LTE, Cat4, 50 Mbps UL, 150 Mbps DL
	WLAN	Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band, DLNA, Wi-Fi Direct, Wi-Fi hotspot
	Bluetooth	Yes, v4.0 with A2DP, LE, EDR
	NFC	Yes
	Infrared port	Yes
	USB	Yes, microUSB v3.0 (MHL 2), USB Host

Camera	Primary	13 MP, 4128 x 3096 pixels, autofocus, LED flash
	Features	Dual Shot, Simultaneous HD video and image recording, geo-tagging, touch focus, face and smile detection, image stabilization, panorama, HDR
	Video	Yes, 2160p@30fps, 1080p@60fps (LTE model)/ 1080p (3G model)
	Secondary	Yes, 2 MP, 1080p@30fps

Features	OS	Android OS, v4.3 (Jelly Bean)
	Chipset	Qualcomm Snapdragon 800
	CPU	Quad-core 2.3 GHz Krait 400 (LTE model)/ Quad-core 1.9 GHz Cortex-A15 & quad-core 1.3 GHz Cortex-A7 (3G model)
	GPU	Adreno 330 (LTE model)
	Sensors	Accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass, barometer, temperature, humidity, gesture
	Messaging	SMS(threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Mail, IM, RSS
	Browser	HTML5
	Radio	TBC
	GPS	Yes, with A-GPS support and GLONASS
	Java	Yes, via Java MIDP emulator
	Colors	Black, White, Pink
		- S-Voice natural language commands and dictation - Air gestures - SNS integration - Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic - Dropbox (50 GB storage) - TV-out (via MHL A/V link) - MP4/DivX/XviD/WMV/H.264/H.263 player - MP3/WAV/eAAC+/AC3/FLAC player - Organizer - Image/video editor - Document editor (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF) - Google Search, Maps, Gmail, YouTube, Calendar, Google Talk, Picasa - Voice memo/dial/commands - Predictive text input (Swype)

Battery		Li-Ion 3200 mAh battery
	Stand-by
	Talk time

Misc	SAR EU	0.29 W/kg (head) 0.36 W/kg (body) NOW, MY OPINION on the phone: Well, it's a all powerful phone with superb specs as you have already seen. It's competition might be the iPhone 5S or the Sony Xperia Z or maybe the HTC One X or the One Ultra but if you ask whether its better than the S4, I'd say "Yep!". And the only reason is the mighty S-Pen! The only drawback can be the battery and erthe size but if the Mega sold so well the Note will be a giant in the market. The other drawback might be the unattractive camera on the back looks wise but I am sure the screen can melt you aaaaawaaaay. It is really an awesome phone but the question is "Is it worth the budget?". Well we don't yet know the price announced by Samsung but we can take it to be 400 - 500$. In that case I'd say it's worth the buy. Well that's it for today! Next post :- iPhone 5S vs. Galaxy Note III.

A Little Hint on JAVA

2013-08-30T04:38:00.003-07:00

Well people have been constantly asking me as to HOW WE CAN LOG BASE 2 IN JAVA.

STEPS:~

Well, firstly, YOU CAN'T DIRECTLTY log base 2 in Java like in Python or C++.

This is how you do it:

int a = 100;
int log = Math.log10(a)/Math.log10(2);

CONCEPT:~

Well, what we are doing is we are first logging with base 10 and then dividing with 2 logged to base 10.

Hope you liked it.

The Ash.

Dream Theater fans....GET READY!

2013-07-27T00:05:00.000-07:00

Callin all Dream Theater fans. Maybe you already know this (coz you're a fan) but Dream Theater is making a new album and is releasing it this September 24th. I know right?

Well the album's name is..............Live at Luna Park. Pretty uncool right, you'll not think so after knowin that there's no such place called Luna Park. According to John, in an interview, he revealed that when he was young, he loved to see the moonlight and sometimes he would see clear reflections in his mind. He would be imagining that he is singin at the moon with the moonlight all round him.

You see, Dream Theater's genre (pronounced "John-er" Just For Your Knowledge) is Progressive Metal and Instrumental Rock.

Their real strength are their instrumentalist. I mean c'mon. Whaddya need after having a shredder like Petrucci (pronounced "Petruji). Their vocalist ain't that good. I mean his voice is kinda irritatin. But, then again, in the screeches and in some songs, his voice attunes well.

So, lemme give you some quick info on the album Dream Theater.
Name : (As already told above,) Live at Luna Park
Cover :

Place of release/performance : Buenos Aires, Argentina
Songs :

Dream Is Collapsing (Intro Animation)"

"Bridges in the Sky"

"6:00"

"These Walls"

"The Dark Eternal Night"

"Build Me Up, Break Me Down"

"This is the Life"

"The Root of All Evil"

"Caught in a Web"

"Lost Not Forgotten"

Mike Mangini Drum Solo

"A Fortune in Lies"

"The Silent Man"

"Beneath the Surface"

"Wait for Sleep"

"Far From Heaven"

"Outcry"

Jordan Rudess Keyboard Solo

"Surrounded"

"On the Backs of Angels"

"War Inside My Head"

"The Test That Stumped Them All"

John Petrucci Guitar Solo

"The Spirit Carries On"

"Breaking All Illusions"

"Metropolis"

"Pull Me Under"

Releasing date : November 5, 2013

Well that's it. If you want more info, go to www.dreamtheater.net.
Reporting out.
Posted by : KING

Deutsch! Up and at 'em!!!

2013-06-09T02:44:00.002-07:00

So, recently, I found interest at learning Languages. Foreign languages.
I already knew three languages - Hindi, Bengali and English, but I thought, "Let's do something new!"
And I came across an interesting fact!

Did you know that America's national language was decided to be English by just 1 vote!
If 2 people wanting to vote for English were absent on the voting, then the official language would be...guess what (No prize for guessing right)... Deutsch, or simply put, German.

Didn't know this right? Well at least I didn't know it. So I decided to learn German.
And once I started learning it, it felt pretty easy. All the things were damn simple and I soon understood quite a heck of German.
Now I can conversate in Deutsch easily. :D Mission controlled!

Guten Tag!
Wondering what that means, it means Hello!
Well, I need to do something useful now. So, let me introduce you to CRYPTIDS!

Well, do you know what a Cryptid is, it's a creature that was unknown and is only described in myths and by few eye-witnesses. I am sure you've heard of the yeti or the Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster or Champ. Well let me introduce to you some lesser known Cryptids.
Check out www.listverse.com/2012/12/24/10-cryptids-that-could-be-real/‎

1 Year COMPLETION! Yipee!

2013-06-08T08:42:00.003-07:00

Sorry technoholics, this is just a fun post, not any serious reviews this time. This time I just want to show my joyous exultation as ONE whole year has passed since the BIRTH of this blog!

It was an epic journey guys and it's all happened cause o' your support.
Now, I can't just post without giving you nothing. But as I already said, it'll be disappointing for the geeks.

This time, I'll give you JOKES!

The show 'WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONARE' was going on.
I was luck to get a chance.
In the selections I was chosen and finally, the barrier between me and my millions was just 15 questions.

Surprisingly enough, all the questions were very very easy.

I got through all of 'em with ease.

The final question came. However I thought of gambling it all on winning double the actual amount. It was a special 'Take it all or Lose it all' question.

The host, before giving the question, told me my instruction. I had to choose between the first and the second question. He also said that the second question was easier. I believed him as he had helped me like this previously.

I said, "Sir, I'd like to answer the second question."
The host said, "Okay sir. So here's your final question!.........And where did it start?"

Now I know why people like taking risks and the long way round!

X-Box 720 or PS4? The next BIG thing!

2013-05-30T09:06:00.001-07:00

Yeah, I know guys that I am a little late but, better late than never right?
Well I was waiting for Microsoft to launch X-Box's design before writing the review.

Now as for the PS3 vs the X-Box 720, Kinect really changed how people looked at the X-Box, as it's motion sensing and gameplay was just flawless. In that department, PS Move was not that good, but on the other hand, the PS3 proved to be have the upper hand as it got support from true gamers.

"PS3 vs. X-Box 360, well undoubtedly PS3 has the win. Full HD movie playing, Blu-Ray support and a truly fabulous sound, what else is required for an awesome gaming flagship?" - John Cardley, Gamer.
"X-Box is truly very good for average usual gamers and is also better, but if you are a true gamer.......PS3 is your device." - Grunt Advodely, Gamer.

Now as for PS3 and X-Box 360, PS3's graphics was better and X-Box's Gameplay was better.
But, can things change with the PS4 and the X-Box 720? Now firstly, let me tell you that Microsoft has a really good Business strategies. Instead of giving a name of X-Box 720 (That seems natural), they have given it the name "X-BOX ONE".

X-Box One:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Xbox One the home entertainment package launched by Microsoft last week or rather unleashed by them was their highly anticipated next generation console from the Xbox family. And the fact that they call it the Xbox One and not Xbox 361 or Xbox 720 is testament to the approach they are bringing to the living room entertainment industry.
I call it a living room entertainment industry because Microsoft have created one gem of a product. One which is no longer restricted to the millions of gamers across the world, this product – the Xbox One dares to challenge the home entertainment industry. It wants to be new Television and the new Internet while improving on its extraordinary gaming legacy and it wants to do all that in new intuitive and revolutionary ways (read Kinect).

The Indredible Xbox One.

So while everyone who has ever heard of Microsoft now knows that with the Xbox One they want to infiltrate new markets in the media industry, what most people seem to forget is that with the Xbox One Microsoft might just be vying for a place in computer technology history as if they needed anymore of that.
Here are the things that Microsoft is doing right with the Xbox One -

One platform for all forms of entertainment.
Placing more emphasis on gesture control (Kinect) and the voice control technologies than the previous Xbox version.
Acquiring important entertainment studios like R2 Studio to strengthen their Xbox One task force.
Making the Windows platform a seamlessly integral part of the Xbox One.
Not rushing the gaming wing of the Xbox One into procuring or producing poor B-grade games.

Most of the above points are pretty much self explanatory. But certainly there is a lot more to the Xbox One than meets the eye at the moment.
Now here are a few things that Microsoft is doing wrong with the Xbox One -

Not opening up to the indie developing community.
Relying too heavily on the voice control technology.
Not being able to find a better controller for the gaming needs than the current one for Xbox One.
Not taking cognizance of other potentially big players in the home entertainment industry, especially Apple and Valve.

I put the first point where it is for a reason. It is actually a fallacy to refer to indie gaming as a community, it is more like an industry now. Some of the best games in the world on multiple platforms have been from the stable of indie developers and to see a major game console ignoring them could deprive Microsoft of some highly engaging original content for the Xbox One. Especially since their major console competitor Sony has embraced indie developers for the PlayStation 4.

The Anatomy of the Xbox One

Finally here are the impressive numbers that Microsoft would look to conquer with the Xbox One when ranked against its predecessors-

Total console sales (Xbox 360) – 58 million+
Best selling game ever (Halo 3 – 15 million+
Total console games sold (Xbox 360) – 290 million+
Number of Xbox Live subscribers – 30 million+

If these numbers tell a story of the success of their all-game-console the Xbox 360, one can only hope to see improved and likely massive numbers for a device which is not just a game console but is a crossover product. Imagine adding Television stats and internet browsing stats to those numbers above. Imagine the scope of advertising that opens up for Microsoft through the Xbox One. Now that they have a fully functional browser for the Xbox One, imagine the seamless integration of Bing in the platform and the amount of data that their search product can vomit for other divisions to leverage upon.

The Xbox One seeks to redefine entertainment.

The possibilities are endless and the time might be right for them to start considering the Xbox One as a platform rather than a console. Imagine Microsoft controlling the gaming, entertainment, online content and search industries. A bit scary considering their well known skepticism about the open world (read .Net platform, early versions of the IE and disregard for the indie game developer community).

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PS4:

As the X-Box One aims in enlarging it's market to not only improved 7th Generation gaming but also a home entertainment system, the PS4 only concentrates on gaming.

"PlayStation 4 puts an emphasis on cloud computing, where instead of relying on actual physical copies users can access games and other content including Netflix TV shows and digital movie rentals from Amazon, over the internet" - The Evening Standard

Features:
• HDMI

• Analog-AV out

• Digital Output (optical)

AV output

• Ethernet (10BASE-T, 100BASE-TX, 1000BASE-T)

• IEEE 802.11 b/g/n

• Bluetooth® 2.1 (EDR)

Communication

Super-Speed I/O USB (USB 3.0), AUX

• BD 6xCAV

• DVD 8xCAV

Optical Drive ( Read only)

Hard Disk Drive Built -in

Memory GDDR5 8GB

• Single-chip custom processor

• CPU: low power x86-64 AMD “Jaguar”, 8 cores

•GPU: 1.84 TFLOPS, AMD Radeon™Graphics Core Next engine

Main processor

Ports USB (Micro B), Extention Port, Stereo Headset Jack

Wireless communication Bluetooth® Ver2.1+EDR

• Type: Built-in Lithium-ion Rechargeable Battery

• Voltage: DC3.7V (tentative)

• Capacity: 1000mAh (tentative)

Battery

Other Features Light Bar, Vibration, Built-in Mono Speaker

Six-axis motion sensing system (three-axis gyroscope, three-axis

accelerometer)

Motion Sensor

Touch Pad 2 Point Touch Pad, Click Mechanism, Capacitive Type

PS button, SHARE button, OPTIONS button,

Directional buttons (Up/Down/Left/Right),

Action buttons (Triangle, Circle, Cross, Square),

R1/L1/R2/L2/R3/L3, Right stick, Left stick, Touch Pad Button

Keys / Switches

Weight Approx. 210g (tentative)

Approx. 162mm x 52mm x 98mm (width x height x depth)

(tentative, excludes largest projection)

External Dimensions

DUALSHOCK®4 Controller

Capture Range 30cm～∞

Field-of-View 85°

Microphone 4 Channel Microphone Array

Connection Type PS4 dedicated connector (AUX connector)

Approx. 2m (tentative)

February 20 2013. Specifications are subject to change without notice.

Cable Length

Lens Dual Lenses, F value/F2.0 fixed focus

Video Format RAW, YUV (uncompressed)

• 1280x800 pixel @ 60fps

• 640x400 pixel @ 120fps

• 320x192 pixel @ 240fps

Video Frame Rate

Video Pixel (Maximum) 1280 x 800 pixel x 2

Weight Approx. 183g (tentative)

Approx. 186mm x 27mm x 27mm (width x height x depth)

Still, even though we know the specs of the PS4, we don't know what exactly it promises.

It's hard to tell the winner.....my guess is, its the X-Box One. Only one way to find out.....wait for both the releases!

Meanwhile you can check out these videos showing the graphics and gameplay of the games of X-Box One and PS4.

X-Box One games^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Actually, this video has no authorization as real or fake as Microsoft has not yet launched an official trailer of any game of the One.

Kill-Zone Shadowfall PS4 gameplay trailer^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The PS4 on the other hand is not very eager to show off the designs of the main body ( just the Dual Shock 4 was revealed ) but has released the gameplay trailer of many games. This being one.

DmC : Devil May Cry 5 Review

2013-05-04T03:04:00.001-07:00

Sorry for being so late. :P

The Good

Tight, enthralling, and deep combat
Big variety of weapons and enemies
Imaginative demon designs
Convincing voice acting
Reboots the series without compromising its soul.

The Bad

Boss battles aren't nearly as fun as regular combat
Some minor graphical glitches
Ending doesn't live up to the rest of the story.

There's a point in DmC: Devil May Cry where everything just falls into place, a point where--after being mollycoddled through hours of gentle combat--you're finally let off the leash. And at that point, chaos ensues. The gates of hell are opened, once-timid demons become tremendous horrors, and Dante transforms into a fighter of glowing theatrics and tense technical wizardry. Immense, over-the-top combos flow from the fingertips, unleashing all manner of visually enticing carnage with a precise, fluid feel. So entertaining is the combat, in fact, that it's easy to overlook what a wonderful achievement DmC is as a whole.
What follows is a tale of evil, world domination, and love that weaves in touches of conspiracy theory and religious dogma to great effect. There's no denying that there's still a drop of Devil May Cry lunacy to it all, particularly in Dante's cheesy quips, but underneath that over-the-top exterior lies heart. There are real moments of drama and excitement that are coupled with some well-realised characters that walk a fine line between good and evil. It helps that they're backed by a terrific voice cast--especially the truly frightening villain Mundis--that delivers even the maddest of dialogue with the utmost sincerity.
DmC's greater focus on storytelling comes at expense of some freedom, but the game is no worse off for it. Gone is the tedious backtracking and repetition of Devil May Cry 4, replaced with an adventure that--for the most part--propels you forward at a breakneck pace. One moment you're escaping a blood-red city that's folding and crumbling around you, and the next you're infiltrating the offices of a famed TV network where the earthly world and that of Limbo have collided in an explosion of vicious demons and ghastly black ooze that drips from every wall.

Dante might have a new look, but deep down he's still the same ass-kicking demon slayer.

Such is the variety in your adventure that it does an admirable job of glossing over the linear nature of the story. It helps, of course, that the action is exciting too. Dante is a man with some impressive physical skills that are augmented by an equally impressive range of deadly weaponry. Initially that weaponry takes the form of Rebellion, a sword with a medium speed and attack range that serves as the bedrock for combos.
With just a few taps it's easy to perform simple combos that cut a sharp path through enemies and launch them into the air where you can deal more damage before they explode into a wonderfully satisfying mess of gory blobs. It's not long before you reach the limits of what you can do with a single weapon, though, which makes the time it takes to gather new ones a tad grating. Still, once the game finally lets you loose with a bigger arsenal, the combat takes a rewarding turn. What opens up before you is a vast set of moves that can be smoothly chained together for some technically impressive and oh-so-gorgeous-looking combos.
The combat is done in a way that cleverly plays to the strengths of each weapon, and that of your opponents' weapons. For instance, lighter, angelic weapons like the Osiris scythe are geared towards juggling enemies in the air and dealing spinning swipes that take out large groups all at once. Heavier, demonic weapons like the Arbiter axe focus on all-out strength, pummelling demons into the ground with a hefty brute force, albeit at the expense of attack speed. Combine the two, and you can knock out enemies with the swifter, lighter weapon before neatly finishing them off with a deadly demonic blow.

Dante was soon disappointed to find his jacket was dry clean only.

As you gain more-advanced weapons and abilities, the combos that are open to you become more complex. Chains that let you pull yourself towards enemies, or pull them towards you, result in some explosive combos that see Dante zipping elegantly between enemies, dealing out brutal punishment between each throw of a chain. Then there are Dante's guns, Ebony and Ivory, which are ideal for dishing out short, sharp bursts of bullets and filling in the gaps between other attacks. Combine your moves, and the combat turns into a harmonious ballet of sword slicing, swinging, and all-out carnage that's not only impressive to look at, but delightful to perform too.
It's a fluid system that's easy to get to grips with. There's a trick to the timing that only practice can perfect, but the barrier to entry is low enough that even newcomers to the genre can dish out some tasty moves. And if you really want to get cocky, there are various moves that can be cancelled midway through their animations for chaining together even larger and deadlier combos. The neatly animated and gruesomely designed enemies add a level of complexity too. Some, such as eerie walking skeletons, are armed with shields that can be broken only with heavy weaponry, while others, like vicious blue mutant dogs, can be damaged only by your lighter, angelic scythe.

And there are others, like decrepit cherubs that hover in the air, that are ready to be pulled down to earth with a mighty whip of a chain, and huge, heavily armoured behemoths that can be destroyed only from a certain angle of weakness. Such variety means you can't simply sit back and hammer buttons to win; you have to make use of your brain as well as your thumbs to succeed. That alone makes for combat that's far more engaging than a run-of-the-mill hack-and-slasher. Plus, if you really want to spice things up, you can use Dante's stylish devil trigger ability to freeze enemies and take out a whole group of them in one huge combo.
The reward for all your hard work, aside from the visual payoff, are souls. Souls can be used to upgrade Dante's abilities and weapons, giving you new moves and increased power to play with. Indeed, there are quite a few moves, including Dante's famous Rainmaker, that are essential purchases for combo chasers. Upgrades that increase your power make some of the tougher enemies--particularly those towards the end of the game--a little easier to deal with. There's also the requisite Devil May Cry scoring system, which remains largely unchanged: the longer and less repetitive the combo is, the more points you get and the higher your rating.
Being awarded with, say, an A rating over a D rating is your primary incentive for perfecting your attacks, and striving for such perfection is compelling. That's down in part to the fact that the combat is so fun in the first place, and partly down to the end-of-level totals that let you see just how poorly (or brilliantly) you performed overall. And because everything is so well put together, you know that the shameful D is due to your own lack of skill, rather than any failure on the game's part.

Some neat visual effects help make battles all the more exciting.

Unfortunately, for all the greatness of the combat system, the boss battles are a big disappointment. It's not that they're inherently bad so much as that they're formulaic and, well, old. The fights follow the usual formula of learning each boss's repetitive movements, and then identifying key moments to launch an attack. All that time spent perfecting your combos and technique is simply of no use against them; you have to follow the plan or you die. They are at least a visually striking bunch, with the gruesomely bulbous and foul-mouthed Succubus being a particular standout.
The game peters out towards the end, both in its narrative and in its combat. The story takes a twist you can see coming a mile off, while later levels eschew combat for laborious platforming sections that don't live up to the excitement and action of what came before. Things fare a little better for completionists, who can check out the many trapped souls scattered in hard-to-reach places around each level, as well as the unlockable rooms that are filled with fun and sometimes very difficult challenges for you to complete. Those include trying to defeat a whole room of enemies without being hit, or platforming down a tricky obstacle course.
The great completionists, and indeed anyone up for a serious challenge, are catered to with a whole raft of different difficulty levels that are unlocked after you complete the game. You can, for instance, play levels with more-powerful enemies that come in different waves to the standard campaign. Or you can play a mode where every enemy dies with one hit, along with Dante. Or if you've really got it in for your own sanity, you can play a mode with the most difficult, hardcore, no-mercy enemies where it's game over after a single hit. Such is the joy of DmC's combat that even if you're not quite skilled enough to make it through those hardcore levels unscathed, it's still a lot of fun to try. And in those moments when the combo system clicks and you enter that Zen-like state of Matrix realisation to perform an epic SS-rated combo, little can raise a bigger smile or give you such a feeling of achievement.

Some of DmC's demons are truly horrifying creations.

DmC succeeds both in its story and in its brilliant combat, and it looks the business too, despite a few minor glitches and the more colour-soaked levels looking like they've spent a little too much time in an Instagram filter. Sure, you may baulk at Dante's trendy new haircut, or maybe even miss a little of that B-movie Devil May Cry insanity, but the heart of what makes the series so enticing and so much fun to play holds true here. DmC pulls off that unlikely reboot trick of feeling fresh and inviting while still holding onto what made the original series so appealing and so special. There's no point in looking back: Dante has got a brand-new future in front of him, and if DmC: Devil May Cry is anything to go by, it's going to be a great one.

Vedic Mathematics

2013-05-04T02:23:00.000-07:00

Well as the name misguides, let me first tell y'all this type of Maths has no similarity or relation to the earliest literature texts, it is called Vedic Maths because it's founder loved the Vedas.

The complete guide to Vedic Maths is in a book written by 'Dhaval Bathia' titled "Vedic Mathematics".

I will be showing one such technique.
Let's consider a 2-digit number ending with 5, whose square we want to find.
Normally, we would multiply and get:

(let's say 25)
                            2 5
                        x  2 5
-----------------------------------
                     1   2    5
                     5   0    x
------------------------------------
                     6   2    5

However this is the long way round. In Vedic Maths, we follow simple steps.
Let's consider 25
The steps for squaring it is:
1. We should remember that all squares of numbers ending with 5, have their last two digits as 25.
2. Therefore, we write the answer as _____25
3. Next we multiply the remaining digits except 5 with the number corresponding to them. In case of 25, the number instead of 5 is 2.
4. Therefore, we multiply 2 with its corresponding number, ie, 3
5. Hence we get 6.
6. Thereby, we can write the answer as 6|25

Hence, our final answer becomes 625.
Therefore, we reduce a lot of time and energy. In fact we can even do it mentally.

----------------------------------------------------------Did you know?----------------------------------------------
The word with the most definitions in English is 'Set'. It has 900 lines of meanings in the Standard Oxford Diction of England Dictionary.
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HOPE YOU LIKED IT!!!!  If you want the book, you can search it in sites like Amazon or eBay. I tell you , it's pretty helpful.

IntelliJ Idea Community Edition 12.1.1

2013-04-26T09:34:00.000-07:00

Now I told recently about my sudden obsession with Java. Well, now I am so addicted that I found out this totally AMAZING Java Compiler (or Interface so to say) known as 'IntelliJ'. And as the name suggests it is totally intelligent. For example, if you type in 'p', all the commands, methods and functions starting with the letter P are instantly shown to you beside your cursor.

Together with the IDEA 12 release Scala plugin brings a brand new Scala compilation subsystem. Here are the main updates:

The compilation is now “external”.
Incremental compilation is now handled by SBT (instead of IDEA itself).
Compile server is now implemented via Nailgun (instead of FSC).

Of course, a lot of explanations is needed to clarify all the details.

External build

External build is a one of the major features of IntelliJ IDEA 12.

External build implies that all compilation tasks (including project model interpretation) are performed in a separate process, fully isolated from the main IDE’s process.

As a result, we can:

lower IDEA memory consumption and free its garbage collector;
reduce load on IDEA’s code model (PSI) and virtual file system (VFS);
speedup compilation (according to this and that).

Now we can compile IDEA projects without running IDEA itself, e. g. from command line or from build tools (like Ant, Maven, etc.).

An additional benefit is an ability to use an automatic background compilation, so that your project will be kept in compiled state all the time.

Background compilation can be also used as a means to reveal code errors when type-aware highlighting can’t keep up with code complexity.

For more information on external build you may check the Brand New Compiler Mode in IntelliJ IDEA 12 blog post.

SBT compiler

Although “SBT compiler” sounds like a completely new kind of Scala compiler, that is not really so. To see what SBT compiler is and how it fits into Scala compilation, let’s start with a “big picture”.

Here are the main tasks we need to perform during Scala project compilation:

We need to compile source code to bytecode (and to search for all kind of errors along the way). This task is always performed by Scalac (or Javac, for Java sources) no matter what tool is used to invoke it (IDE, SBT, Maven, Ant, Zinc or whatnot). So, Scalac (and Javac) is the actual “true” compiler, however it knows nothing about project structure, incremental compilation and so on. All it can do is to take a list of source files and produce a set of corresponding compiled classes.
We need to perform compilation incrementally (as opposed to compiling all sources all the time). Strictly speaking, this task is not required for project compilation (and it can even slow down a full project build). The whole point here is to save time during subsequent compilations. To do that, we need to track code changes and re-compile only affected files. And it is harder than it sounds — we need to monitor timestamps, store source-to-output mappings, check for public API changes, analyze direct and transitive dependencies (including ones between Scala and Java) and so on. There are not many tools capable of such a feat, and that is exactly what SBT “compiler” (as well as IDEA) does.
We need to compile project parts according to project structure i. e. to split project into separate, possibly dependent, modules of various types (test, production, resources, etc.), devise compilation order, apply compiler settings, provide required libraries and so on. Each tool (like IDEs, SBT, Maven, etc.) uses its own way of describing and storing project information.

So, bytecode is still generated by Scalac (and Javac), project format is still IDEA’s, but incremental compilation is now handled by SBT instead of IDEA (so, we don’t use SBT project model, only SBT compiler, that acts as a wrapper around Scalac).

What’s the point of such an update? – Because there is a qualitative difference between how IDEA and SBT discover dependencies and process changes.

IDEA analysis is bytecode-based and language-agnostic. While it’s a very fine-grained, robust and time-proved method, there may be some rare unexpected glitches, specific to Scala code.

For example, let’s define a class C (in C.scala):

and then “add” a method name via an implicit conversion (in Main.scala):

After we compile and run the main method, we will see that the output is “foo”, and that’s what we expect it to be.

Then, let’s add a “real” method name to the class C:

After the next compilation, we will discover that the output is … still “foo”, and that is is not what we expected… Why so? – Because, in terms of the bytecode, there’s no need to recompile Main class yet.

There are many additional cases (for example, related to named- and default parameters) which demonstrate, that bytecode analysis is not enough for proper incremental compilation of Scala code.

That is where SBT compiler comes to rescue, because it relies on source-based analysis of compiled code (to do that, SBT intercepts internal Scala compiler data), so it can take account of Scala-specific details to perform incremental compilation correctly (though SBT analysis of Java classes is still bytecode-based).

As a bonus, because SBT uses a so-called compiler interface layer to communicate with the Scala compiler, we can now run multiple versions of in-process Scala compilers in the same JVM. That’s how we can:

reap the benefit of JIT compilation (either during compilation of multiple modules or when using a compile server),
avoid creation of temporary files (with compiler arguments),
avoid compiler output parsing,
make compiler JVM parameters (in Scala facet) obsolete.

It’s worth noting, that there is a one side-effect of using SBT compiler, resulting in how Java files are handled in Scala projects (ones with a least one Scala facet). Because we need to maintain a coherent model of dependencies, compilation of all Java files, event in “pure” Java modules, is routed through SBT. For most use cases that is perfectly OK, unless you need to use a non-standard Java compiler (by the way, SBT supports in-process Java compiler as well).

For more information on SBT compiler you may check Understanding Incremental Recompilation article in SBT documentation.

New compile server

Scala compiler is a quite complex piece of software, so it takes time to load and initialize it. When you compile a project with hundreds (or thousands) of files, this time is negligible comparing to the time needed to compile the code. However, when incremental compilation is used, and all you need is to re-compile a few files, it may take longer to warm-up a Scala compiler than to actually compile those files.
One solution to this problem is to run Scala compiler in-process to avoid compiler re-instantiation when compiling subsequent modules. This, however, still cannot liberate us form a first compiler initialization. To speedup compilation further, we need to use a pre-initialized compiler instance, and that is exactly what compile server does.
Originally, Scala compile server was implemented via FSC (Fast Scala Compiler). While it works well enough, it has several limitations:

FSC instance is bound to a single compiler version, so compile server settings were a part of project configuration and FSC instances are not shared between projects.
Because FSC reuses symbol table between runs, it sometimes might produce various errors during compilation.

Now, because of our newfound ability to run multiple versions of Scala compiler in a single JVM, we can do better than that. New compile server is implemented using Nailgun (basically, it’s just a JVM process that can be accessed via a TCP/IP connection), so:

It is now a matter of personal preference whether or not to use a compile server. Compile server configuration is moved from project settings to application settings.
Compile server is now application-wide – it is reused for multiple compiler versions and shared between all projects (so we can save a lot of RAM).

Compile server configuration is now located in Settings / Scala:

It’s recommended to use the following JVM parameters for the Scala compile server:

-server – to maximize peak operating speed (for the price of longer start-up time) and to encourage soft references retention (that we use to cache compiler instances).
-XX:MaxPermSize=256m – to provide enough memory for loading of multiple sets of compiler classes.
-Xss1m – to ensure that there will be enough stack space for recursive code in Scala compiler.

If compile server is not used, it’s still recommended to use the same parameters (except, maybe, -server) in Project Settings / Compiler / Additional compiler process VM options.

How all this is related to Zinc

Zinc is a stand-alone launcher for SBT incremental compiler (and Nailgun server). It was created, primarily, to be used in command line tools (like Scala Maven Plugin).
Because both Zinc and the new compilation subsystem use the same tools and techniques, they are essentially equivalent. There is not much sense in using a launcher from another launcher, so we run both SBT compiler and Nailgun directly, rather than via Zinc.
Besides, we need much more data from the compiler (to display compilation messages, report progress, compile UI forms, run annotation processors, etc.) which is not available from Zinc output. Zinc’s Nailgun server also cannot be used by IDEA because its process is started without IDEA-specific classes (communication protocol) in JVM classpath.
As Zinc cannot build a project by itself, it must be invoked from another tool (like Maven), which stores all incremental compilation data using its own scheme, that differs from IDEA’s one. So, currently we cannot unite IDEA’s and Zinc/Maven’s incremental compilation even though they are very much alike.

Summary

Let’s sum-up all the advantages of the new Scala compilation subsystem:

Less load on IDEA process.
External project build.
Background compilation.
Source-based incremental compilation.
In-process Scala and Java compilers.
Simplified project configuration.
Application-wide compile server.

There must be a catch in it somewhere, you know… And here it is – because the new compilation subsystem is written completely from scratch, some bugs are simply inevitable. Please, report them so we can fix them as soon as possible.
Keep in mind, that the previous compilation subsystem is still available, and can be always turned on by clearing “Use external build” checkbox in Project Settings / Compiler page:

So, basically to sum it up, IntelliJ is muuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuch better than Eclipse!

New Hacker discovered!

2013-04-20T10:41:00.002-07:00

Hey guys, I just discovered this Hacker. It's completely free and it's an EXE application that's just 244 KB. It works fine.

Here is the long awaited link.
Get ready guys!
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?w3246y996vjm9mt

Sudden Interest in Java

2013-04-20T09:42:00.000-07:00

I don't know why, but I have a sudden interest in JAVA. Also, good news for people out there. I am developing an Android app. Anyway, back to what I was saying, Java suddenly seems to appeal to me a lot.
Well, if you want to learn Java, here is the tutorial that I created. http://www.mediafire.com/view/?f7a99bhb39xbz26.

Well, here's the compiler download link:
1. Blue J =   http://www.bluej.org/download/download.html

2. Eclipse (I find it to be better) = http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/

This is an example of a basic JAVA program :

public class Hello_World
{
    public static void main (String args[])
    {
        System.out.println("Hello World! This is The Ash. This is my first program in JAVA!");
    }
}

FOR ADVANCED JAVA USERS:

Guys, I am developing an app through Eclipse. I have downloaded the adt-bundle and am now using it. The download link, is well, not confirmed and I would like it if any of you can post it in the comments. Anyway, I think I'll win the app developer competition this time. :)

Audi : The Commute to never tire you!

2013-04-19T09:38:00.001-07:00

Audi R8

Overall

When we consider the finest sports cars in terms of their technologies, Audi R8 is the best option. Precision and performance are put beyond the limits in Audi R8. Engineers of Audi had developed the car which is embodied with best technology thereby fulfilling the requirement of perfection for the car. The four rings being the firm fixture in the motorsport and the new introduced quattro permanent all wheel drive engine had made the Audi R8 the topper in various racing events throughout the world.
Audi R8 has V8 mid-mounted engine and with quattro permanent wheel drive which adds to the performance, control and stability of the car. The newly introduced FSI technology in 2001 is such that the fuel is injected directly into the combustion chamber, all which helps in increasing the engine efficiency and the engine performance. It is to be considered that Audi is the first car to use Aluminium in building the body of the vehicle. And the latest upcoming in this technology is high-strength AudiSpace Frame (ASF) , which provide more strenght to the3 vehicle with maximum possible light weight. Audi magnetic ride adaptive damper system is a new inovation by Audi having special damper oil, the shocks are so developed that the viscocity of the fluid filled in them can be changed with the applied magnetic field. There by making the car to adjust in different conditionns with appropriate damping force.

The mid-mounted V8 engine of Audi R8 with 4.2 litre displacement and four valve FSI technology is highly capacitive to produce 309kw of power and is capable to accelerate the new Audi R8 from 0 to 100 km/hr in just 4.6 seconds. The maximum torque delivering capacity of Audi R8 is 430 Nm with the amazing thrust it providing. With a top speed of 301 Km/hr the Audi offers a maximum comfort of power and thrill as possible, all there by providing excellent driving enjoyment. Besides generating power of the vehicle from displacement, the mid engine present in Audi R8 utilises high-revolution techology. This technology is highly capacitive to provide a top broad speed band of 8250rpm. With this high-revolution concept Audi R8 provides high torque, spontaneous movement response even at very low speeds of the car. The excellent thrust provided by Audi R8 is because of the its suspensions all ultimately increasing the transverse acceleration. The six speed manual gearbox is such developed that it fulfills the requirments of a racing car. This manual gearbox has been much more advanced to a R tronic transmission in order to increase the performance of the car. Automatic mode with wire shift technology allows even very short shift times.

Audi R8 Models

Audi R8 4.2 FSI quattro
Audi R8 5.2 FSI
Audi R8 Spyder
Audi R8 V10 Plus

Audi R8 Mileage

Editor's Take : A person buying the Audi R8 will be the last person to be concerned about the fuel efficiency, still for readers, it gets about 3-5km/l depending on the engine variant and the type of driving.

Power of Audi R8

Editor's Take : The power produced by the Audi R8 is phenomenal, especially the 5.2-litre V10. This produces 520bhp of power, while the newly launched V10 Plus produces 550bhp of power.

Audi R8 Colours

These colors are available with all variants of Audi R8

Brilliant Red
Estoril Blue Crysta
Daytona Grey, pearl effect
Teak Brown Metallic
Samoa Orange
Panther Black
Phantom Black, Pearl Effect

Ibis White
Suzuka Grey, Metallic
Ice Silver Metallic

Acceleration & Pick-Up

Editor's Take : The acceleration produced by the V10 is capable to push you back into the seat and create a bellow in your chest.

Audi R8 Interior

View

Editor's Take : The interior styling of the R8 is pretty sport, with top-notch interiors and high-end leather. The seats are bucket and only two of them are there as it has mid-engine.

Audi R8 Engine and Performance

Editor's Take : The performance of these engines is astounding and there is loads of power that is always available on the tap of your right foot.

Braking & Handling

Editor's Take : The R8 being based on the Gallardo is agile when it comes to handling. Drive it on the track or on the road, and you will be comfort to push to without any difficulty.

Handling & Safety

Editor's Take : The safety features on the R8 are the airbags, aluminium spaceframe, ABS with EBD and ESP.

Stereo & Accessories in Audi R8

Editor's Take : The R8 comes loaded with several features that you will find in supercar, like high end music system with touch screen, navigation, etc.
You can now buy . Great discounts available.

Pros & Cons

Audi R8 Pros :
Excellent speed and control at road

Audi R8 Cons :
Space for luggage and sitting capacity

Audi R8 Specifications

Audi R8 Variants

Variants Transmission Engine Description Mileage Power AC Power Steering Central Locking

City Highway

4.2 FSI quattro (Petrol) Automatic 4163cc
8 Cylinder 32 Valve 7.0 8.5 423.8bhp @ 7900rpm Standard Standard Standard

5.2 FSI (Petrol) Automatic 5204cc
10 Cylinder 40 Valve 4.5 9.0 517.6bhp @ 8000rpm Standard Standard Standard

Spyder (Petrol) Automatic 5204cc
10 Cylinder 40 Valve 9.6 13.5 517.6bhp @ 8000rpm Standard Standard Standard

V10 Plus (Petrol) Automatic 5204cc
10 Cylinder 40 Valve 4.5 9.0 542.5bhp @ 8000rpm Standard Standard Standard

Audi R8 Price

Audi R8 Variants Price

Audi R8 prices were updated on 01 Apr 2013

Variants New Delhi Bangalore Mumbai Chennai Pune Hyderabad Kolkata

4.2 FSI quattro (Petrol) 1,34,55,000 - 1,29,36,000 1,34,55,000 - - 1,38,26,000   Get On Road Price

5.2 FSI (Petrol) 1,57,88,000 - 1,51,49,000 1,57,88,000 - - 1,62,23,000   Get On Road Price

Spyder (Petrol) 1,73,55,000 - 1,66,71,000 1,73,55,000 - - 1,78,34,000   Get On Road Price

V10 Plus (Petrol) 2,05,00,000 - - - - - -   Get On Road Price

Exams : The FEAR!

2013-03-17T01:48:00.001-07:00

Sorry guys...my exams were on and therefore I couldn't blog much. Anyway if YOU find exams to be a pain...then read on! WELL EXAMS ARE NOT A PAIN!

Exam Techniques, Tips and Tricks

Throughout my time at school and University, I had a friend called Graham. We did exams in exactly the same subjects from the ages of 15 to 22. Despite the fact that Graham is quite a lot brighter than I am, as far as I can remember he never beat me in a single exam. Why? Well, mostly because he got interested in the subjects, and started exploring them. I was just trying to pass the exams. (Graham is now a professor at the University of Glasgow. I’m just a lecturer here at York. Which goes to show that being brighter pays off in the longer term. However, there’s no reason he shouldn’t have beaten me in at least a few of those exams.)

Since then I've seen the issue from the other side, having set hundreds of exam questions and marked thousands of exam scripts. And I must say that the standard of exam technique apparent from many students at York, supposedly one of the top universities in the UK, is, to be frank, awful. It's almost as if many of you have no idea what you're doing. This is madness - don't you want to pass?

Here, then, are a few collected tips and tricks from, if I say so myself, quite a successful campaign to do well in every exam that was put in front of me, (given the limitations of my intelligence), and to try and understand the minds of students who have written thousands of exam scripts that I have read and marked. You might find some of them useful.

If you’ve got anything yourself to add to this list, please let me know. I’ll try to keep it up to date with the current state-of-the-art in exam technique.

Part A) Preparing for an Exam

1) Revise actively.

Just reading through your notes is the worst possible way to revise. Well, OK, perhaps not the worst possible, but it’s really not very good. The more of your brain you can engage in the revision, the more you will remember. Memory is not a box in one part of your brain that things are either in or out. Memory is spread out everywhere: there’s verbal memory, visual memory, audio memory, muscle memory, all sorts. The more your brain does with the information, the more you will remember.

So don’t just read. Make up poems and mnemonics. Summarise the notes. Set them to music. Extract key points and write them down yourself somewhere – even if you’re just copying them out, this is better than just reading, since more of your brain is involved. Make up quizzes and do them. Write limericks. Above all – do problems. Make up your own if you run out. Get active!

2) Plan revision.

Write a good revision plan, and stick to it. Don’t do just one subject a day, you’ll get tired of it; then again swopping too often means you don’t get the chance to get deep into anything. I used to do mornings on one subject, afternoons on another and evenings on a third.

3) Do past papers – as many as you can lay your hands on.

The internal web has (at least) the last three year's papers on it. Papers from previous years are stored in the library (at least that used to be true - it's worth checking if they still have them). Work through them. If you can't do a question, check that it is still in the syllabus (the modules change every year, and it's always worth checking what is new). With a good revision plan you should be doing nothing in the last week before the exams except working through exam papers and examples sheets making sure you can do them.

I can’t emphasise the importance of this enough. Anyone who doesn’t work through past papers has very little chance of doing well in an exam.

Oh - and do the past papers, and the examples sheets, against the clock. Time is short in an exam, you need to get used to thinking, and writing quickly. Get your hand trained up so it can write fast (but legibly, please).

4) Question-spotting.

This can be risky, but if you're playing the percentages it's worth a try. Look for any topic that was in the exam two and three years ago, but not last year. If you can get hold of papers from further back, try and spot patterns: does any topic come up every other year, for example?

Another good tip is to make a very careful note if the lecturer says at any point "this is new in the course this year". If he does, there's an above average chance that this will be in the exam - it gets harder every year to come up with new questions about the same old subjects, and putting a new topic in the course is an easy "new question" for the examiner.

5) If you can’t do the past papers – ask someone for help.

Study groups work well, provided you don’t think this will mean other people are doing your studying for you. They can’t – that doesn’t work. You have to go and study a subject, or attempt an exam paper by yourselves first, then meet together to discuss your answers. Don’t work through the past papers in the group – the temptation to let other people do the work is too strong. You need to learn to do it yourself. Always remember, exams are not a team exercise.

Failing that, make an appointment to come and ask the lecturer. Lecturers are usually perfectly happy to answer questions of the form “this is how far I’ve got, but I can’t see how to do the next bit – is this right?” However, anyone turning up and asking for the worked solutions to an exam question having made no apparent effort to try themselves first is likely to be told to go away and do some more work. This is for your benefit – if we just tell you how to do a problem, you won’t remember it very well. If you really struggle to get through it yourself, and then with some help finally succeed, you may remember it for the rest of your life. The more effort you put into it, the better it will stick in your memory.

6) If you just can’t understand something, learn it parrot-fashion.

This really is a last-ditch solution. But it gives you at least something to do with the questions on subjects you really don’t understand. Even questions on these subjects usually start off by giving you a few marks for “describing XXX”. Even if you don’t understand it, you can get a few marks by writing down the description straight from the notes.

Part B) The Last 24 Hours

7) Don’t be tired.

If you have to stay up all night to do last minute revision, you’ve already failed. It doesn’t work – you end up so tired in the exam you can’t work anything out. It might work for the first one or two exams in a year, but you won’t be able to keep it up throughout a whole series of exams.

8) Eat protein before long exams – not carbohydrates.

An exam is just as much a physical exercise as a race. Well, OK, perhaps not quite as much, but you can’t ignore your body if you want your brain to work at its best. Stuffing it full of sugar, or some Red-Bull type drink just before will work fine for the first hour or so, but by the end of a three-hour exam you’ll have completely run out of energy. You need some food that will slowly release energy. Try pasta, fish or eggs.

9) Get the important facts into short-term memory.

In the last 24 hours it's too late to try and understand anything new. What you can do is cram some facts into short-term memory. This is the time to go through the notes looking at those "key points" sections. If you haven't already done it as part of your revision (and you should have done it), write out a sheet with just the key facts. See how many you can remember. Then write out another sheet with just the ones you forgot. See how many you remember now. Continue until you've either remembered it all, or run out of time.

Also, read through your worked solutions for the last three year's papers. Then, get a good night's sleep, or go for a walk and get some fresh air into your lungs.

10) Exercise - get the blood pumping round.

In the last couple of hours, go for a run, or work out in the gym. Seriously. Studies have shown that the most creative periods come after a period of exercise, and that the benefits of taking exercise can last for up to two hours. Exams aren't just about memory, you'll need your brain to be in top working condition.

Part C) The Exam Itself

11) Planning your campaign

The first thing to do is read over, carefully, the entire exam paper. Spend a good ten minutes reading before you write anything. In this time, work out which questions you are going to answer, which order you are going to answer them in, and plan your time in the exam: how much time you are going to spend answering each question. Take careful note of the marking scheme (see later) when making this plan. Write down the plan on the back sheet of your answer book - you can always score it out later. It helps you feel in control, and that helps keep you calm.

Don't be tempted to do a question on subject X just because it's the subject you know the most about. It might be a real stinker of a question. Are you sure you can do it? Which parts can you do? How many marks do you think you could get on the parts of the question you can do? You might find there is another, much easier question on subject Y, which you might not have chosen because you found subject Y is harder, or because one part of the question looks really difficult. Work it out for each part of each question: which question is likely to get you the most marks? Do that one.

Reading the whole question is also important because many questions lead you through a problem - the answer to part a) is used in part b), etc. There might be clues in later parts of the question about what the examiner is expecting. Make sure you spot them.

As an examiner I am constantly amazed by students who set out to do questions that they've clearly got not the first clue how to do. Surely there would be another question on the paper that they could have got a few marks on at least?

When working out timescales, try and balance the time spend on a part of the question against the marks you will achieve. If it's a 90 minute exam, and it's marked out of 60, then on average you've got 1.5 minutes to get each mark. Plan time accordingly. Remember: exam questions are not about writing down everything you know about a topic - if you do this you'll almost certainly run out of time. You're trying to get the best mark you can on the whole paper, not just on the question you happen to be doing at the time.

Obviously, the plan (with timescales) is not a rigid one, and going a few minutes over on one question is OK – but try and catch it up if this happens.

12) Do the easiest questions first

There is absolutely no reason to do the questions in the order they are printed in the exam. I would recommend doing the easiest one(s) first.

That's it!!!

DJANGO : Is it the next best thing?

2013-03-17T01:44:00.004-07:00

I have to face it: Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained” is his most entertaining piece of moviemaking since “Pulp Fiction.” Some of it, particularly in the first half, is excruciatingly funny, and all of it has been brought off in a spirit of burlesque merriment—violent absurdity pushed to the level of flagrancy and beyond. That’s the place where Tarantino is happiest: out at the edge, playing with genre conventions, turning expectations inside out, ginning up the violence to exploitation-movie levels. The film is in two parts: the first half is a mock Western; the second is a mock-revenge melodrama about slavery, set in the deep South and ending in fountains of redemptive spurting blood. “Django” is a crap masterpiece, garrulous and repetitive, rich with jokes and cruelties, including some Old South cruelties that Tarantino invented for himself. It’s a very strange movie, luridly sadistic and morally ambitious at the same time, and the audience is definitely alive to it, revelling in its incongruities, enjoying what’s lusciously and profanely over the top.

What’s even stranger than the movie, however, is how seriously some of our high-minded critics have taken it as a portrait of slavery. Didn’t they notice that Tarantino throws in an “S.N.L.”-type skit about the Ku Klux Klan, who gather on their horses for a raid only to complain petulantly that they can’t see well out of their slitted white hoods? Or that Samuel L. Jackson does a roaring, bug-eyed parody of an Uncle Tom house slave in the second half? Or that the heroine of the movie, a female slave, is called Broomhilda von Shaft? Could Mel Brooks have done any better? (“Lili von Shtupp,” I suppose, is slightly better.) Yes, we are told that Broomhilda’s German mistress gave her the name and taught her German, but Tarantino is never more improbable than when he supplies explanations for his most bizarre fancies. Some of his characters spring from old genre movies, some spring full-blown from the master’s head. None have much basis in life, or in any social reality to speak of. (Remember the Jews who killed Nazis with baseball bats?) Yes, of course, there were killers in the Old West and cruel slave masters in the South—central characters in the movie—but Tarantino juices everything into gaudy pop fantasy. I enjoyed parts of “Django Unchained” very much, but I’m surprised that anyone can take it as anything more than an enormous put-on.
Much has already been written about the movie, but I would like to add a few notes of appreciation and complaint (don’t read past the middle of this post if you haven’t seen the movie).
1. Tarantino the Rhetorician
Tarantino loves elaborate rhetoric—the extremes of politeness, the exquisitely beautiful word, the lengthy, ridiculous argument that becomes funny precisely because it’s so entirely beside the point. Remember the stiff formalities among the criminals in “Reservoir Dogs”? Or the early conversation between John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson in “Pulp Fiction”? The two men are about to kill some punks who owe drug money to their boss. They stop to chat. The topic at hand: a man massaged the feet of the boss’s wife and, as punishment, was tossed out of a window. Is massaging a woman’s feet an offense worthy of death, like adultery? The thugs have quite a dispute about the matter; they could be bishops at the Council of Trent arguing the fine points of Church liturgy. Then they go ahead and blow the punks away. That’s the essential Tarantino joke—discourse and mayhem, punctilio and murder, linked together.
“Django” is set in 1858 and thereafter. A German bounty hunter, King Schultz (Christoph Waltz), poses as a dentist and spins around Texas, speaking perfect English. King Schultz is a mannerly scoundrel. When he encounters some white men transporting slaves through the dark woods, he says, “Among your company, I’m led to believe, there is a specimen I hope to acquire.” After shooting one of the white men, who howls in pain, he says, “If you could keep your caterwauling down to a minimum, I would like to speak to young Django.” Just as he did in “Inglourious Basterds,” in which Waltz was a polite S.S. killer, Tarantino writes fancy talk for this self-amused, highly elocutionary Austrian actor. The added comedy here is that the foreigner is so much more articulate than the tobacco-stained, scraggly-assed, lunkhead Americans he meets everywhere. He’s the Old World instructing the New in the fine points of etiquette and speech while enjoying the savage opportunities of the Wild West.
King Schultz teams up with Django, a slave he liberates, played by the growling Jamie Foxx (who doesn’t always seem to be in on the joke). The two travel around the West, killing wanted men for money. Schultz flimflams everybody, and in some cases shoots the person he’s teasing, popping him in the chest with a tiny pistol. Up until the middle of the movie, Tarantino comes close to moral realism: the cold-hearted Schultz is a complete cynic; he does what he does for money. We can accept that as some sort of truth. But then Schultz risks his life to help Django find his slave wife, who has been sold to a plantation owner in Mississippi, and the movie becomes nonsensical. The vicious comic cynicism of the first half gives way to vicious unbelievable sentiment in the second half. The murderous bounty hunter has a heart of gold.
In Mississippi, Schultz finds his rhetorical equal in Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), an elegant plantation grandee who wears his hair long and his beard finely clipped, and who speaks in even lengthier sentences than Schultz. DiCaprio plays this burlesque version of power-mad dominance with overwhelming relish, stroking his locks and beard like a Victorian stage villain; he even delivers a detailed lecture on phrenology (a pseudo-science beloved by racists in the nineteenth century) with thundering passion. Candie, like Schultz, is a verbally enabled sadist; the two duel at interminable length in scenes that go on so long you wonder if Tarantino hasn’t lost the feeling for pace that seemed so instinctive in “Pulp Fiction.” The timing of the plantation scenes is slack—Tarantino turns what should be sharp into an overexplicit wheeze. So here’s the downside of his boisterous skills as a writer: when a director is in love with his own words, his judgment goes south.
2. Tarantino the Racist Anti-Racist
Tarantino uses the n-word—a hundred and ten times, apparently—in a way that whites normally can’t use it. The word is all over hip-hop and street talk, of course, but the taboo against it is the most powerful of all taboos in journalism and public discourse. Tarantino must be amused by how those who like his work, and those who don’t, can’t operate with his freedom—the freedom, he claims, an artist must have. But freedom to do what? He tosses the word around again and again. Whites say it, blacks say it. They use it functionally, as a descriptive term, and contemptuously, in order to degrade. Samuel L. Jackson, as the unctuous and tyrannical Stephen, uses the word with especial vigor as a way of keeping down all the other blacks and ensuring his own predominance. When Tarantino was criticized for this n-wording by Spike Lee, he responded that that’s the way people spoke in 1858. Well, sure it is, but how much of that talk does Tarantino need to make his point? There’s something gleeful and opportunistic about his slinging around a word that now offends all but the congenital racists. How much of this n-wording is faithful reporting of the way people talked in 1858, or necessary dramatic emphasis, and how much of it is there to titillate and razz the audience? I’m with Spike Lee on this. By the end of the movie, the n-word loses its didactic value as a sign of racism. It seems like a word that Tarantino is very comfortable with—it was all over “Pulp Fiction,” too. In his own way, Tarantino has restored “nigger” to common usage in the movies.
3. Tarantino the Genre Filmmaker
Schooled in the lively swamps of a California video store, Tarantino has always delighted people with his encyclopedic knowledge of B-movies, his delving into disreputable genres and trolling through the bottom drawers of schlock. Just a few obvious things from “Django”: The red titles and florid opening song seem like something out of a clichéd American Western from the late fifties or early sixties. The long vistas alternating with super-tight closeups and snap zoom shots render homage to the visual tropes of the Spaghetti Westerns. The black slave—Django—who revolts and kills nasty white people is a throwback to the ex-football-player-turned-actor Fred Williamson, who appeared in such films as “The Legend of N----- Charley,” and its two sequels, in the blaxploitation heyday of the seventies.
But what is there to say about any of this referencing except that nodding to old movies is no particular virtue in itself? What matters is what you do with the movie past. In “Pulp Fiction,” Tarantino transformed trash into something scintillating. In the two “Kill Bill” movies, he seemed stuck in a lunatic overelaboration of figures from martial-arts films, repeating himself endlessly. In this movie, he’s as much imprisoned by junk stereotype as liberated by it. Django turns into a strutting modern dispenser of violence—a Fred Williamson who delivers frolicsome quips before dispensing each victim. Tarantino’s nature condemns him to always go over the top. Panache above all. The comic hyping of each speech, each emotion, each act becomes wearisome (for me at least). Look at the sombrely impressive violence in something like “Zero Dark Thirty” and you’ll realize how cheap the mayhem in “Django” is.
4. Tarantino the Lover of Revenge
The basic mechanism of exploitation is this: some bad person commits repeated atrocities against the innocent. This sets the grounds for retaliation, because the good persons and their allies have reasons to take revenge. Their violence is justified. They have been provoked and abused, haven’t they? The greater the initial assault, the more deserved the punishment. That way the audience can feel happy and morally assured in the display of violence—after all, the victims had it coming. Let the blood flow in all righteousness.
In “Django Unchained,” the following is done to black people: Slave women are horsewhipped, and one is branded on her face and thrown into a closed “hot box” in the Southern heat. A male slave is torn apart by dogs (there are repeated flashbacks to this). Django himself is hung upside down naked, his genitals menaced by a white plantation thug holding a red-hot knife. Two black slaves—”Mandingo fighters”—are shown fighting to the death in a gentleman’s club. The gentlemen, in beautiful frock coats, smoke cigars and drink rum cocktails and make bets. The inclusion of all the former atrocities can be justified, since slavery depended on constant coercion (no argument there), but the Mandingo fighting—central to the plot—is a fake. There was no such thing in the slave south. As Aisha Harris reports in Slate:

While slaves could be called upon to perform for their owners with other forms of entertainment, such as singing and dancing, no slavery historian we spoke with had ever come across anything that closely resembled this human version of cock fighting. As David Blight, the director of Yale’s center for the study of slavery, told me: One reason slave owners wouldn’t have pitted their slaves against each other in such a way is strictly economic. Slavery was built upon money, and the fortune to be made for owners was in buying, selling, and working them, not in sending them out to fight at the risk of death.

Slaves from different plantations were thrown by their masters into bare-knuckle fights, which were certainly brutal, but the men did not fight to the death. As for “Mandingo,” it’s probably derived (as Harris reminds us) from a popular junk novel of the same name, by Kyle Onsett, which was published in 1961 and then made into a movie in 1975, also called “Mandingo,” which featured much inter-racial raping—it is one Tarantino’s favorite movies (as he has said), a voluptuous piece of erotic and violent trash. In other words, his love of junk has led him to mix nonsense with the actual brutalities of slavery. The Mandingo scene in “Django” ends with DiCaprio’s plantation owner giving the victorious man a hammer to finish off the loser. You hear the skull being smashed. In “Django,” all the atrocities against blacks are staged as viscerally as possible, with lip-smacking emphasis. I wouldn’t call the scenes sorrowful. Is Tarantino telling us much about slavery that we don’t know, or is he turning us on with cruelties that set up an even bloodier vengeance?
Tarantino has used this basic mechanism of exploitation in the past. There was Uma Thurman slicing her way to vengeance in the “Kill Bill” movies; the Jews performing a counter-Holocaust, incinerating the Nazi leadership in a Paris movie theatre in “Inglorious Basterds” (thanks, Quentin); the women taking care of Kurt Russell’s nasty stuntman in “Death Proof.” Tarantino is so bent on revenge that he imposes it retroactively, and counterfactually, on history. He’s indignant over the submissiveness of history’s victims, so he gives them a second shot, as it were, to eliminate their masters. As Candie gives his phrenology lecture, he holds the skull of Old Ben, a former slave who shaved Candie’s father every morning with a straight razor. “Why don’t they kill us?” he muses, and he points to bumps in the skull which indicate, to his eyes, inborn traits of passivity. Well, Tarantino gives him an answer.
In the end, Django takes his revenge, killing dozens of white men and women, and the blood explodes off the bodies in little bursts of red. We’re meant to understand that the violence isn’t “real,” that it’s hyperbolic. There’s even grisly little joke about it. One of the bad guys is used as a shield by Django, and the sap gets shot again and again, and he howls. It’s funny, in a sick way. But how many jokes can you appreciate before you begin to feel a little rotten? “Django Unchained” isn’t a guilty pleasure; it’s a squalid pleasure.

LENOVO : FOR THOSE WHO DO.

2012-12-27T01:19:00.000-08:00

You must be wandering what this is all about. Well this is about the Lenovo . I used to think Lenovo is new at it's business and can' beat the old schoolers like HP and Dell. But I was shocked by the way Lenovo delivers service at your fingertips with nothing in return. In this post, I will be talking about the different pre-installed benefits Lenovo users get.

NUMBER 1> Lenovo EE Boot Optimizer :-

This is a real help to your laptop. It optimizes the time taken by your laptop to boot. First of all it measures the standard time required by your laptop to boot. Then it gives you ways as to how you can Improve Boot time and how you can get better performance.

Pros:- Gives you systematic graph showing you your real-time acivities.
Improves Booting Time.

Cons:- First time Optimizing requires a lot of time.

NUMBER 2> Lenovo Power DVD 10 :- This is actually a life-saver. If by chance your O.S. is Linux and you dont have any sort of player this is going to save the day.

Pros:- Lots of playback options.
Supports many video types.
Interesting designs.

Cons:- No match against Windows Media Player or VLC.
Screen Size is small.

NUMBER 3> Power ISO:- Real help. Full version is given and no need of serial key. Helps you make and store AND use virtual image files of CDs for playing games or running stuff without the CD.

Pros:- Saves your life if you dont have/uninstalled MS Office.
Runs ISO files as smooth as butter.
Virus free.

Cons:- ISO files are large in size.
Not a Lenovo Classic.

NUMBER 4> Lenovo Ready Comm 5:- Helps in data sharing and receiving. Detects Wi-Fi networks not detected normally.Ease of access.

Pros:- Faster sharing and recieving than normal BlueTooth.
Easier detection of Wi-Fi.

Cons:- ABSOLUTELY NO CONS!

Review : Sleeping Dogs

2012-12-26T01:21:00.000-08:00

The Good

Savage melee combat

Alluring atmosphere

Fun driving and gunplay

Varied missions

Numerous collectibles to hunt down and other enjoyable diversions.

The Bad

Unattractive character models and environmental textures.

What does it take to survive as an undercover cop who infiltrates one of Hong Kong's most ruthless criminal organizations? If Sleeping Dogs is any indication, it takes martial arts prowess, good marksmanship, driving skill, a reckless willingness to leap from one speeding vehicle to another, and the confidence to sing karaoke. None of the individual elements in Sleeping Dogs are best-in-class, but they're all thoroughly enjoyable, and the structured story missions have you switching from one type of action to another frequently enough that you're never tired of what you're doing at any given moment. Additionally, the fictionalized version of Hong Kong where Sleeping Dogs takes place is an exotic and atmospheric setting for this tale of conflicting loyalties; you probably wouldn't want to live amid the ruthless criminals who populate the game's cast, but this world sure is a nice place to visit.

You play as Wei Shen, a Hong Kong native who has returned after spending some time in the States. Driven by a desire to avenge his sister's death, he accepts a dangerous assignment to infiltrate the Sun On Yee triad and help take them down from the inside. Starting out on the lowest rungs of the criminal ladder, he rapidly climbs up through the ranks, behaving in ways that sometimes make his triad cohorts suspect he's a cop and sometimes make his police superiors think he's getting too attached to his brothers incrime. It's a typical tale of an undercover cop possibly getting in too deep, and the story doesn't have any surprises in store for you. But solid voice acting and writing that convincingly blends English and Cantonese make it a narrative that's more than capable of supporting the gameplay, providing context for many a dramatic mission and building up to a cathartic climax that's bloody enough to be taken right out of one of John Woo's Hong Kong action films.

Sleeping Dogs is an open-world game, but it doesn't start out by setting you free. The opening chapters keep you on a tight leash as they introduce you to the basics of movement and melee combat, which is good, since that combat plays a huge role in the game as a whole. Taking its cues from the standard-setting brawling of Batman: Arkham Asylum and its sequel, this combat has you unleashing combos and using timed button presses to counter enemy attacks. Wei's attacks look and feel powerful, and the bone-breaking animations may often make you squirm and make your enemies flinch.

You weren't planning on using your face for anything, were you?

But what sets Sleeping Dogs' combat apart from games with similar systems is the emphasis on environmental attacks. In most places where you find yourself needing to clobber some fools, you can drag enemies to certain objects around you and use these things to finish them off. These environmental finishers range from the relatively restrained old standby of tossing a thug into a dumpster, to the much more original and brutal attack that has Wei impaling an enemy on a swordfish head. There's a good assortment of these attack opportunities throughout the game, and a number of chances for you to make your own fun with the environment, too. Tossing an enemy from the upper level of a swanky club to the level down below isn't, strictly speaking, one of the game's contextual environmental attacks, but don't let that stop you from doing it. It's empowering and effective.

The early stages also introduce you to some of the atmospheric pleasures of this fictional Hong Kong. People believably appear to go about their business; cooks fry things up in restaurants, merchants hock their wares at the marketplace, and dancers perform at a street festival. What's absent from the behavior of non-player characters is almost as important as what's present. Strangers can sometimes be overheard discussing story events, but they don't constantly call out to you as if their existences revolved around you. (They do, of course, but it shouldn't seem like they do.) Unfortunately, close inspection can shatter the illusion. Character models look like plastic dolls when viewed up close, and some gestures characters make are rigid and unnatural.

You can purchase food and drinks for temporary benefits.

But Sleeping Dogs is more about wide-angle, big-picture atmosphere than about close-ups. The skyline gleams with towering skyscrapers. Neon signs hang from every available outcropping on busy streets, crowding the air above you with glowing Chinese characters. This city may not be accurately modeled on the real Hong Kong, but it nonetheless has a powerful identity, and while you're playing, you feel transported to this dangerous land. Collectibles scattered across the island make exploring it worthwhile as well as enjoyable; finding health shrines increases your maximum health, while blue lockboxes hidden all over the place reward you with cash and sometimes with new items of clothing.

Once you complete the first few missions, you're free to explore the island as you see fit. But Sleeping Dogs is an open-world game in which you're sure to enjoy the structured missions more than the opportunities for free-form mayhem. It's fun for a while to run around jump-kicking people to death, or fatally tossing them off of three-foot-high railings. However, unlike other games in the genre like Just Cause 2 and Saints Row: The Third, which reveled in giving you ways to wreak incredible havoc on your own, Sleeping Dogs is at its best when you're playing through the story. Missions typically string together a number of activities, switching from one type of action to another frequently enough to keep you on your toes and ensure that you never get tired of what you're doing.

Driving in Sleeping Dogs is great. The arcade-style handling makes it easy to hop into any vehicle and start drifting your way around turns in no time, and the physics-defying sideways shunt you can do to damage enemy vehicles or ram them off the road brings with it a satisfying sense of impact. Just as exciting as the many races and car chases that take place throughout Sleeping Dogs are the vehicular shoot-outs that start cropping up a bit later in the game. Taking aim at the tires of pursuing cars and disabling them isn't particularly challenging, but it's still thrilling to send your pursuers flying end over end as you speed along unscathed. Wei also has the ability to perform action hijacks, leaping from one vehicle to another and forcibly taking the driver's place. It's an outrageous move that lends Sleeping Dogs a bit more of that Hong Kong action movie feel.

Whether you're escaping from a big drug deal or just driving your gangster pal's fiancee on an errand, the music emanating from your car radio always makes for fitting accompaniment to your activities. The eclectic soundtrack includes hip-hop, sappy Chinese love songs, throbbing techno numbers, tunes by some of the greats of British rock-and-roll, and more. And of course, if you don't like the tune the game has lined up for your current situation, you can always change the station.

Guns aren't a constant in Sleeping Dogs as they are in many other open-world crime games--the story explains at one point that guns are something of a rarity in Hong Kong--but there's no shortage of gunplay on hand. Gun combat makes use of a standard cover system, and though it doesn't quite measure up to the bone-crunching impact of the melee combat, a few dramatic touches lend it some flair. While vaulting over tables or other objects, you can slip into a slow-motion aiming mode, taking enemies out as you speed forward. And melee combat and gunplay sometimes blend together, as when you use a learned technique to quickly disarm a thug and use his gun to take out others. One shoot-out takes place in a hospital and memorably evokes the climactic sequence from the film Hard Boiled. Another gives you a gun equipped with a grenade launcher, which makes taking out the cars your enemies are crouching behind an enjoyably pyrotechnic process.

But it's not all fast rides and big guns in the life of Wei Shen. Sometimes you need to do a bit of police work by calibrating bugs, hacking cameras, cracking safes, or tracking cell phone signals. These minigames are pleasant little diversions from the core action--particularly the hacking game, which involves code-breaking a la the board game Mastermind. Missions also occasionally find you hitting the clubs to sing some karaoke. This takes the form of an uninvolving minigame that has you moving an arrow up and down as green bars scroll along a track. Still, these rare sequences are good for a laugh; the way your character stands looking straight at the karaoke machine and ignoring his audience is amusing, and it's particularly funny if Wei Shen is singing while all bruised and bloody from some brawling or shooting he's just been involved in.

Those who take the time to explore Hong Kong will find many rewards.

You can seek out karaoke at any time if you want to hear Wei Shen try tobelt out a stirring rendition of "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" or one of the numerous other recognizable hits on offer. Singing karaoke is one way to increase your face level, which brings with it passive upgrades like increased bonuses from the food and drinks you can purchase from vendors and machines, or from the massages you can purchase in back-alley parlors. Raising your face level is also necessary before you can purchase some of the nicer clothes and more powerful vehicles available in the game.

Thankfully, singing karaoke isn't the only way to go about raising your face level. You can also do favors for people around town. These optional activities usually aren't very interesting, though. Many of them have Wei closely inspecting something just so a thief can run up behind him and make off with some of his money, starting a foot chase that ends with you fighting the thief. Other, more enjoyable favors find Wei playing the part of a getaway driver, or leading a criminal pursuer into a police trap.

Wei also earns cop experience and triad experience throughout the game by completing missions and by keeping property damage and innocent casualties to a minimum, with each type of experience opening up selections on limited skill trees. The triad skills primarily improve Wei's melee abilities, while the cop skills improve his prowess with guns and cars. Additionally, statues you find throughout your adventure can be returned to a martial arts school to learn new moves. All of this brings a pleasant sense of growth to Wei as you advance through the game.

The right combination of clothes can make a better man.

There are other minor attractions throughout the Hong Kong of Sleeping Dogs. You can bet on cockfights, for instance, or sail out to a gambling barge for a bit of poker mahjong. And a social hub ranks you against your friends on mission performance as well as a host of other challenges, like longest bike jump and most cash earned by running down parking meters in rapid succession. Goofing around and pursuing high marks on these leaderboards is fun, but it's the atmospheric city and the varied story missions that make Sleeping Dogs an alluring adventure. It may have more violence than you'd want in a typical vacation, but this is still a fun-filled Hong Kong getaway that will leave you with many happy memories.

Review : Need For Speed Most Wanted 2

2012-12-08T00:52:00.000-08:00

The Good

Terrific handling makes driving a pleasure
Police chases are usually intense and enjoyable
Billboards make for satisfying asynchronous competition
Online multiplayer races are fast and exciting
Beautiful and varied city.

The Bad

In slower cars, police chases can be a frustrating ordeal
Repetitive police chatter
Lacks any sense of narrative motivation
Building up a car collection is unfulfilling
Inconsistent, sometimes dull online challenges.

Vehicles glide along invisible roads in the sky. Cars are borne out of twitchy, twisty clouds of darkness. Groups of police cruisers perform coordinated donuts, twirling about like dancers in a Busby Berkeley musical. In the creative and unusual pre-race sequences throughout Need for Speed: Most Wanted, you get the sense that the city of Fairhaven is a surreal land with dreamlike logic that might allow anything to happen at any moment. It's striking, then, that the actual game here is so typical and unsurprising, and that although it delivers plenty of the hard-hitting, white-knuckle racing Criterion is known for, it doesn't do so quite as well as some of the studio's earlier games.

The first game Need for Speed: Most Wanted may make you think of isn't a Criterion game at all; it's Need for Speed Most Wanted, the 2005 game with almost the same name. But while both games take place in open-world cities and involve plenty of police chases, the similarities aren't as significant as you might expect. One of the earlier game's most memorable elements was its hilariously over-the-top tale, told using some cheesy cutscenes, of a newcomer to the city of Rockport who has a personal vendetta against local street racer Razor Callahan. The premise gave you a terrific motivation for rising through the ranks of Rockport's street racing scene and taking Razor down.

Here, you also have the goal of defeating a number of street racers, but there's no narrative to back it up. The 10 racers on your list are identified only by their cars--they don't have names or faces or personalities--and without a personal investment in defeating them, doing so isn't nearly as satisfying here as it was in the 2005 game. It is merely a structural hoop to jump through; you do it simply because the game tells you that this is what you are supposed to do.

Well, that and the fact that driving, racing, and eluding the police are really enjoyable, for the most part. If you've played Criterion's earlier Need for Speed game, 2010's Hot Pursuit, the handling here will feel immediately familiar. Despite the stable of real-world cars, the driving isn't realistic. Cars have a great sense of weight and momentum to them, while still being extremely responsive, and as you'd expect from a Criterion racer, judicious use of the brakes and a bit of practice will have you blissfully drifting through corners at high speed.

It's time to prove you're not just another bolt-on wonderboy lookin' to get smoked.

Unexpectedly, cars don't start out with boost, but fear not; boosting is a big part of racing in Most Wanted. Each vehicle has five events associated with it, and by taking first place in the easiest of these, you unlock the burn nitrous mod for that car. This enables you to boost after you build up your nitrous bar by doing things like drifting, taking down cops and rivals, and driving in oncoming traffic. Victory in each of a vehicle's events nets you speed points, which you need to earn a set number of before you can challenge each of the most wanted racers. Winning events also gives you access to other mods, including chassis that make you more resistant to impacts, gears that increase your acceleration or top speed, and tires that reinflate if popped by spike strips.

Winning events and making a good car better is rewarding; curiously unrewarding is the process of building up your car collection. In Most Wanted, you don't buy cars, and with the exception of the 10 cars driven by the 10 most wanted racers, you don't earn cars by winning events or doing anything else of significance to advance through the game. You simply find them all over Fairhaven. They're easily spotted thanks to the illuminated headlights and the manufacturer logos that hover in the air above them; you just pull up to a drivable vehicle, and it's instantly added to your collection. After that, you can warp to its spawn point and get behind the wheel, no matter where you are. The fact that you can and will so easily find yourself with a sizable stable of cars simply by cruising around Fairhaven, without having to do anything to earn some of the game's fastest rides, means that car collecting in Most Wanted lacks the sense of accomplishment so many racing games instill by letting you gradually gain access to better vehicles.

The upside of having cars waiting at set points (called jack spots) across Fairhaven is that if you get the cops on your tail as you're roaming about the city, you can pull up on a car's jack spot and, provided that you've got a bit of distance between you and your police pursuers, hop into the other car, reducing your heat level a bit. Your heat level determines just how much effort the police are putting into bringing you down. At the lowest level, you might have a few cop cruisers on your tail. As it increases, the police start setting up roadblocks in your path, and more and better law enforcement vehicles join the fray. Heavy SUVs might try to ram you head-on, and Corvette Interceptors speed along in front of you, deploying spike strips that, if hit, can seriously diminish your car's handling.

Welcome to the future! Here's your flying car.

All is not lost, however; repair shops are all over the city, and driving through one instantly fixes up your car and gives you a fresh coat of paint to boot. Like using jack spots, speeding through these repair shops reduces your heat level. Your heat level increases automatically as a pursuit goes on, and taking down police cars with a satisfying shunt into oncoming traffic, a swift T-bone collision, or whatever aggressive, effective option presents itself, makes it go up significantly faster. If you get enough distance between you and your pursuers, you enter cooldown, during which your heat level declines. Stay in cooldown long enough, and the police call off the pursuit.

You earn speed points during police pursuits, but you get to keep them only if you eventually escape; if you get busted, you earn nothing, so the stakes can get quite high. Escape from the cops, and you feel great; see the speed points you earned over the course of several risky minutes disappear as you get busted, and you may be crestfallen. It's a good risk-vs.-reward system that leads to some extremely tense moments. Unfortunately, shaking off your pursuers can often feel as much a matter of luck as of skill. Police are tenacious in their pursuit of you--maybe a little too tenacious, because it sometimes seems as if no amount of changing direction, catching big air, going off-road, or anything else is enough to lose the cops. In the game's faster cars, speed can often be your savior, but in the more everyday models, it often feels like you don't have a fighting chance.

Additionally, some parts of the city don't have many areas that are off the beaten path; you might enter cooldown but find yourself with nowhere to hide from patrolling police who soon spot you and reinitiate the pursuit. The balance between making it very possible for you to be spotted again during cooldown and giving you good options for eluding the police was better handled in 2005's Most Wanted, which provided you with more spots that cops on the hunt for you might or might not investigate. That earlier game also did a better job with police chatter; here, the police are irritatingly repetitive. Several times during the same pursuit, you might hear cops, awed by your driving prowess, come to the realization that they're "not dealing with joyriders."

Now this is more like it.

The available events for each car come in a few varieties. There are standard checkpoint races against other cars, which sometimes attract the attention of the police. In speed runs, you try to maintain the highest possible average speed on a course. And ambushes start with you surrounded by cops; your goal is to lose them in as little time as possible. Though fun in faster cars, ambushes can be maddening in the game's more ordinary autos.

And then there are the 10 one-on-one showdowns against the most wanted. These races always involve the police, and always follow great routes that have you speeding on numerous surfaces through varied parts of the city. In addition to racing on the road, you might find yourself speeding across dirt, gravel, or rickety beach boardwalks. Your opponents are skilled but fallible, and you never quite know what's going to happen. You might be approaching the finish in first place, only to have victory snagged from your grasp as a police car takes you down, but conversely, you might be trailing behind your opponent when a police car does you the favor of taking him out, leaving you home free. These elements of luck don't diminish the sense of accomplishment that comes with winning; they just add some unpredictability to these races. You must still drive skillfully if you're to have any hope of winning.

Winning the race against a most wanted driver isn't the end of the struggle, though. You must then do a takedown on the car to add it to your collection. This sounds like a satisfying way to cement your victory, but it usually doesn't play out that way. As soon as you've won a race against a most wanted car, it starts driving incredibly poorly, often wrecking itself in head-on collisions in its attempts to stay away from you. As a result, what should have been a tense game of cat and mouse frequently turns into you waiting for your suicidal quarry to respawn after a wreck and then hoping that this time you can destroy it before it destroys itself yet again.

If you see your own gamerpic on a billboard, all of your friends who have smashed that billboard will see it too.

Some of the most fun you can have in Fairhaven happens not during events, but just when you're cruising around town. Cameras all over the city track the highest speed at which you zoom past them and show you how your top speed measures up to your friends' top speeds, but these are too inconspicuous and ubiquitous to make dominating any one of them, or all of them, worth caring about. The smashable billboards all over town, however, you will almost certainly care about. Fairhaven is filled with billboards that have the names of EA game studios on them, at least until you drive through them. After that, they become notices about one of the city's most wanted drivers.

If you get more air when crashing through a billboard than any of your friends have gotten, you can take pride in seeing your own gamerpic or avatar gracing the sign. However, if one of your friends has soared farther than you when destroying that billboard, it will be him or her you see displayed, and few things are more motivating than the prospect of smashing your friends' faces and their records, and claiming those little pieces of Fairhaven as your own. If you crave more competition, you can always easily access Autolog recommendations, which keep you apprised of events that friends have bested you at, or that you haven't tried yet, so opportunities for friendly competition are never in short supply.

You can also hop online with friends or strangers for traditional, simultaneous multiplayer competition, but this is frustratingly uneven. Of course, it's fun to host or join a game with friends and just roam around the city, smashing billboards and taking each other down. You can participate in races, team races, speed tests, and challenges, though you can't just start one of these events as a one-off. Oddly, you must do events in groups of five, which are called speedlists. In public games, speedlists are initiated automatically; in friends games, the host can use premade Criterion speedlists, or build his or her own. Particularly in public games with players who are more interested in messing around than completing objectives, a single five-event playlist can drag on for 45 minutes.

Take down another player online and they'll see your personalized license plate.

Traditional races are great, though the absence of police in online play feels like a missed opportunity, since dodging spike strips, finding the gaps in roadblocks, and taking out cops are defining aspects of the single-player experience. Challenges leave a lot to be desired, however. Though they were great fun in Burnout Paradise, here, their design often makes them a chore. You might head to a specific location only to find that your goal is nothing more interesting than speeding off a cliff a certain number of times, and vague instructions sometimes result in your spending a few minutes just trying to figure out exactly what it is you're supposed to do. Of course, some challenges make coordinating with friends to pull off a strange feat (20 near misses on a bizarre, loopy art installation, for instance) enjoyable, but like the proverbial box of chocolates, until you try one, you never know what you're gonna get.

Despite its inconsistencies and disappointments, there's a lot to like about Need for Speed: Most Wanted. Fairhaven is a lovely and varied city that looks gorgeous no matter how fast or slow you're going. Police chases provide plenty of reckless, high-speed thrills, and seeing friends dominate the billboards in your city fans the flames of friendly competition in an innovative and very effective way. Need for Speed: Most Wanted isn't quite a return to the racing paradise of some earlier Criterion games, but it's a mostly exciting ride nonetheless.

Windows 8 : Boon or Bane

2012-11-30T23:02:00.005-08:00

Well First of all let me tell you Windows 8 is completely different than the Developer's Preview.
The Start Button, which gave Windows its fame and the reason Windows became historical, has been removed from Windows 8.

The lack of a Start Button has been overcome by the new Metro.

At first sight we think it is like a smartphone interface. It loses its PC essence. But it promises a lightning fast boot with a creative new GUI.Windows was always known for its User-Friendliness which it is still known for. The new Metro UI promises a much more accessiblilty.

Now the question arrives : Why should I upgrade to Windows 8 from Windows 7?

Well there are many possible answers to this question. Technoholics like me would say : PLEASURE.

Others might say : I upgraded to see why Microsoft is promoting it this much.

But if I changed my perception to what a common man would have I would say that Windows 8 follows the same old simplicity and classy looks as its former - Windows 7. The one and only difference is the Metro UI

and the lightning fast boot.

Therefore in jist, we can say

Windows 8 is not worth what it costs right now ( if you want to upgrade from Windows 7) but it sure does have a whole lot of potential in it!

***Did you know :- Apple got its name when Steve Jobbs saw his son eating an apple at 5 PM***

Life of Pi

2012-11-27T07:32:00.002-08:00

Well at first you'd think..."why Pi". Well it's after Piscine Molitor which is a swimmimg pool in France.
Named by his uncle Piscine was bullied in school by his friends who told "Pissing ManEater Patel".
Tired of this the young boy took revenge by explaining it to the whole class that he would be called Pi.
The 6th alphabet of the Greek alphabets and the ratio between the circumference and diameter of a circle. He transformed from Piscine to Pi and came to be a legend by writing and filling the whole blackboard by what 3.14 would follow.
His father sells his hotel and makes a zoo. The young Pi very fondly likes one tiger..called Richard Parker.
His journey begins at a shipwreck where he loses his family stuck all alone in a life boat with a zebra, an orangutan, a hyena and the tiger Richard Parker. Eventually all the other animals die except the tiger and Pi.
Soon they find out that to survive they need each other therefore they collaborate. Soon they reach a floating island which turns out to be carnivorous by night.
They head out of the island and the two of them soon start adapting to their ways and they then know that without the other they wont survive.
Finally they reach the Mexican coast where Pi faints and sees Richard Parker for the last time.

FOR FINDING OUT MORE Click Here

Review : Assassin's Creed III

2012-11-24T02:36:00.003-08:00

The Good

Enthralling, thematically rich storytelling
Tense and atmospheric sea battles
It's a joy to watch your homestead develop
Amazing attention to historical and visual details
Lots of rewarding missions to undertake.

The Bad

Too many bugs and glitches
Hunting mechanics go largely undeveloped
Parkour and stealth inconsistencies.

Who is Ratonhnhaké:ton? He's the son of a British father, raised by his Mohawk mother and caught in a struggle between his own people and the colonists spreading through the American Northeast. He's an assassin who, like those before him, believes in the people's right to be free and make their own choices. He's also known as Connor, and he stars in Assassin's Creed III, the most thematically rich game in this ambitious and freewheeling series.Comment on this video f

In some respects, Connor is a vessel for ideas more than a force of nature in his own right, though few heroes could hope to outshine the charming and worldly star of Assassin's Creed II, Ezio Auditore. Noah Watts' unsure voice acting keeps Connor at arm's length, emotionally--though in some respects, the distance is appropriate, given Connor's uncertain path through a complex political landscape. It's the time of the American Revolution, and Connor finds himself a key figure on and off the battlefield. He fires cannons, commands troops, and jams his tomahawk into loyalist flesh. He rides with the delightful Paul Revere and conspires with Samuel Adams, thus allowing you to participate in some of the time period's most renowned events: the Boston Tea Party, the Battle of Bunker Hill, and so forth. Assassin's Creed games are well known for their incredible attention to historical detail, and Assassin's Creed III is no exception. Major and minor figures are depicted; the cities of Boston and New York are exquisitely re-created; and even minutiae like the lines of The Beggar's Opera are presented with fine accuracy.

Yet Assassin's Creed III is less about history and more about the broader themes of the franchise. The Assassin vs. Templar conflict deepens here. You've heard the Templar point of view before, often via the soliloquies of dying men who pleaded the good intentions of a philosophy that nonetheless paved an apparent road to hell. Now, the truth, such as it is, isn't so cut-and-dried. You hear the sincere and convincing words of the men you've assumed represent the wrong side of morality, and must wonder: are the ideas of good and bad so absolute after all? Are the men you cradle in your arms as they gasp their dying breaths necessary casualties, or do they whisper ideas worth hearing and understanding? As one character insists, "There is no one path through life that's right or fair."

Connor is just as at home among the branches as he is below them.

Of course, Connor's dilemma is one of the past; in the present day, series constant Desmond Miles plays his own role, making his legend by carving his way through the here and now. Connor fights for the rights of his people; Desmond holds the fate of the world in his hands. Assassin's Creed III draws important parallels between the two men, both of whom navigate a thorny relationship with an estranged father. Surprisingly, given the series' past, Desmond's story tugs at the heart, not because of his newfound relationship with his aloof father, but because he learns more of the First Civilization, and their futile attempts to ward off the disaster that annihilated them.

The Desmond portions are even more fleshed out than before, allowing the former bartender to at last exercise his own stealth, parkour, and assassination skills, hinting at the possibility of full-fledged modern-day adventuring--though never quite arriving there. There does come an important revelation, however: the typically surprising finale that leaves you scratching your head, and in this case, forces you to consider an unpleasant truth about the nature of humanity. The finale lacks punch and falls short of Assassin's Creed II's jaw-dropping conclusion. But the inconclusive ending is designed to have you guessing, and you will ponder the implications over and over, trying to weave a tapestry of truth out of the conspiracies that have always buoyed the series' self-serious stories.

It takes time to reach that conclusion, or indeed, to experience the parkour flights of fancy that represent Assassin's Creed III at its best. In fact, it takes time for you to even meet its hero, though it's better to discover just how the game handles that introduction on your own. Suffice it to say: the opening hours are unexpectedly protracted as you discover that this is, indeed, a different kind of Assassin's Creed. It's no less joyous, once the stops are ultimately pulled out, but the game takes its time, trusting you to be patient with a slow-paced prologue that is concerned more with establishing tone and backstory than with allowing you free rein of its bustling cities.

Connor takes to the high seas. Thar be treasure out there!

As you play that opening, it's hard not to wonder: when does the fun stuff come? In retrospect, however, the slow pace makes sense. This is the biggest game in the series by a notable margin, and once the beginning is put in context, you'll be glad for the character development, and glad that you had time to discover some of what makes Assassin's Creed III different from its predecessors. You'll also be glad of the narrative twist that reshapes your expectation as you transition into the larger part of the game, reminding you that the series has rarely shied from playing with your mind.

ust what are the most notable gameplay differences in Assassin's Creed III? Well, the parkour has changed, for starters. The control scheme is simpler, but this change is ultimately sensible considering it streamlines Connor's singular ability to bound from tree to tree just as brilliantly as he can scale walls and leap across roofs.

You spend more time on horseback in Assassin's Creed III than ever before in the series.

It takes some time to get accustomed to the rhythms of tree-jumping, which can be finicky and unpredictable. Though you can more or less speed across Boston and New York as if the buildings were your own personal jungle gyms, when seeking to fly through the frontier, you must keep your eyes peeled for the telltale signs of a climbing opportunity. You use a fallen tree much as a plane uses an airport runway, gaining momentum and then soaring. There are those moments that slow you down; you might not be positioned quite right and thus swing impotently rather than flow smoothly toward the next branch. You might even make an inadvertent leap of faith into a leaf pile below that you didn't notice until the game decided you were trying to fall into it. But then there are those moments in which it all comes together, and you fly with abandon across the unique architecture of the forest canopy.

While the trees that dot the main cities are sometimes there for climbing, most of the elms and birches you crisscross are within the frontier, as well as in the broad patch of land that functions as your homestead. The homestead is to Connor what Monteriggioni was to Ezio, but on a much broader scale. Your manor isn't fully your own--it belongs to Achilles Davenport, a former assassin who one day finds a persistent Ratonhnhaké:ton knocking at his door. Achilles is one of Assassin's Creed III's best characters, and it's a pity he doesn't get more screen time; his tough love balances Connor's naivete, but the bulk of Connor's training time is left only to your imagination.

Connor makes his great escape.

The homestead is more than just a place for Connor and Achilles to banter and argue--it's the central element of Assassin's Creed III's economy. Like much of Assassin's Creed III, the homestead-focused facets are purely optional, yet they are worth exploring. The homestead is about building: building a village, building a future, and building relationships. By performing related missions, you befriend craftspeople, gatherers, hunters, and more, all of whom might find a place on the homestead. In turn, they can craft items that you sell via caravan for profit. (You discover recipes in treasure boxes throughout the world, some of which must be opened by performing a lock-picking minigame.) The homestead missions are varied, having you protect a miner as he scavenges for ore, search Boston for a drunken doctor, or break up a fisticuffs. In turn, your income grows, you meet new and interesting characters, and the homestead becomes, well, a home.

Meanwhile, out on the frontier, you can supplement your storehouse by trapping or attacking wild animals and then skinning them, leaving their carcasses behind. There's rarely a pressing reason to go hunting, just as there has never been a pressing reason to use smoke bombs to facilitate an easy escape when you can just dispatch your foes with a sword or an axe. But there's something enjoyably bizarre about perching on a tree branch and then assassinating a bunny rabbit from above. You can examine various clues--the signs of a foraging deer, for instance--to identify the location of a nearby animal. Hunting isn't a necessary aspect of Assassin's Creed III, though, but more of a toy for tinkering with, unless you grow deeply invested in the homestead's economy.

The day/night cycle is just one of many visual touches that make the world come alive.

You stumble upon guarded redcoat convoys to attack and loot out on the frontier, but cities are home to most of the action. Even outside of story missions, there's plenty to do in Boston and New York. Ben Franklin's missing almanack pages float in the sky, giving you a reason to take to the rooftops and prance about. (You're rewarded with excerpts from the famousPoor Richard's Almanack, which are full of clever wordplay.) Liberation missions have you rescuing townsfolk from British soldiers, burning diseased blankets, and protecting farmers from rampaging redcoats. In almost every location, frontiersmen tell tall tales of flying saucers and the sasquatch, and the truths you discover if you follow these leads make for an interesting thematic twist.

Your exploits have you making direct contact with guards and soldiers, though combat has been tweaked so that it resembles that of Batman: Arkham Asylum more than ever. You counter by pressing the proper button when an indicator appears over an enemy's head, and you no longer have to manage a lock-on mechanic. Battles are fluid and bloody, as Connor chops, slashes, and somersaults about, though as always, you couldn't accuse combat of being especially difficult. Musketeers take aim, but if there's a nearby enemy, you can grab him and use him as a human shield, which protects you and dispatches a guard in a single move. Notably, Assassin's Creed III abandons health items and embraces regenerating health, though considering the previous few games' abundance of health items, there's no appreciable loss--or gain--of challenge.

There are chances to go stealthy too; Connor crouches automatically in tall grass, and can even press against corners and peek around. Hiding in grass is handy a number of times, though peeking around corners is an inconsistent proposition, since not every object has a "peekable" edge. In fact, inconsistencies occur within the parkour elements too, particularly out on the frontier, where you can scale rocky cliffs. Some cliffsides you can climb, and some you can't, even when it seems you should be able to grab hold and begin your ascent. And several chase sequences seem designed to annoy, such as one near the end of the game in which keeping up with your quarry is only frustrating and never fun.

Read it and weep!

But the inconsistencies run deeper than these little inconveniences. Assassin's Creed III is the buggiest game in the series, with glitches running the gamut from minor messiness to bigger foibles. Animals running into rocks and then continuing to run in place is silly but inconsequential. Ditto for minor technical snafus: the occasionally problematic combat camera angles, distracting animation hitches, citizens that suddenly pop into view, and so forth. But then there's that bear that could clip into a cave wall and render a side mission incompletable, or that scripting error that allows you to open a door by standing on the roof above, bypassing a battle and thus causing improper overlapping dialogue when you leave the building. There's an air of sloppiness here that was kept to a minimum in previous installments.

Assassin's Creed III's pure breadth offsets these issues to a great degree, however. The expanses are vast, and the atmosphere is palpable. In place of the golden aura of previous games is a more muted look, in keeping with the muddy trails of the wilderness and the rustic homes that sometimes line them. In New York, you see the remnants of the great fire of 1776, the ravages of which contrast greatly with the sunny opulence of Assassin's Creed II's Venice, and the Constantinople of Assassin's Creed: Revelations. It's hard not to admire the fantastic animations as Connor scales walls and trees, his hands authentically grabbing crevasses and his feet resting on outcroppings.

There will be blood.

The presentation shines when Connor goes to sea, as well. Connor is not just an assassin but a captain too, and a series of (usually) short side missions have you getting behind the helm and facing the tumult of the open ocean. The visual details are marvelous, capturing the controlled chaos of an eager crew hard at work, and impressing upon you the madness of the roiling waves, which you can never hope to tame. Sailing is evenly paced but often super tense as you maneuver into just the right spot to unleash cannons on the ships that endanger you, while avoiding the cannonballs that whoosh your way. You occasionally finalize sea battles by ramming enemy ships and boarding them, finishing off the crew in a bloody melee showdown. You can purchase ship upgrades, some of which are very expensive and might have you heading back to the homestead to finagle ways of enhancing your income.

The multiplayer first introduced in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood makes a return, and with it, the rising tension and brutal release of assassinating other players while simultaneously avoiding the watchful eyes of your opponents. There are a number of modes in which to exercise your skill, but in most cases, the goal is to blend into the crowds, preferably with groups including carbon copies of your own character model. And as before, you level up and earn skills to perform in battle, like throwing poison darts, as well as various passive perks. Unlike before, however, you can spend real money on various upgrades as well as in-game currency. There are loads of customization options in front of you, and it's tempting to drop the cash, whether it be to change various characters' looks or to feel like a greater asset to your team. It's one of the most extensive attempts to monetize a retail game ever seen, and comes across as particularly shameless, even in light of similar schemes in other games, such as Mass Effect 3.

In multiplayer, standing still can be just as intense as making chase.

Nevertheless, there's great satisfaction in pulling off a silent kill--and great heartache in axing a civilian to death because you mistake her for an opponent. If you feel more cooperative than competitive, you can try Assassin's Creed III's Wolfpack mode, which takes the competitive mechanics but pits up to four players against the AI and pushes you to rack up points as quickly as you can to add seconds to the countdown timer and progress from one sequence to the next. It's an action-focused mode in a franchise whose multiplayer modes usually rely more on building suspense, though the pressure of the countdown timer gives the mode a welcome sense of urgency.

Assassin's Creed III is a big game that gives you a lot to do, some of which is fleshed out relatively well, and some of which isn't. It is not, however, content to rest on the series' laurels. It takes chances with its opening, with its story, and with its characters. It expands the series' gameplay in enjoyable and sensible ways. As with many ambitious games, not every arrow fired hits the bull's-eye, yet this big, narratively rich sequel is easy to get invested in. Other games stimulate emotion with manipulative music and teary monologues; Assassin's Creed III rouses your mind and your heart by giving you a glimpse into its characters' souls and letting you judge them on their own merits.

Hello to all those Technoholics!!!

2012-10-05T21:45:00.001-07:00

Hey guys. Sorry i wasnt able to post for a long time. BUT...now I'm Back!!!
Last Saturday I got bored so I started doing Python and C++ but then I thought...WHY NOT DO IT ONLINE!
Then I met this online Python Competition and I logged in! Guess what! I won! They told that since I won they could feature my page/pages/blogs on their magazine! Today I got one copy of the magazine and guess what? My Blogs/Sites featured on the last page in very small print (though it was legible) and I dont think it could attract any traffic. So now I started Blogging once more!

Review : Diablo 3

2012-09-28T04:14:00.003-07:00

The Good

Powerful abilities and tight controls make combat enjoyable
Flexible, customizable character classes
Endless, alluring loot
Varied locations that cry out to be explored
Harder difficulty levels change up the game significantly.

The Bad

Online connection requirement can cause some serious frustrations
Weapon system flies in the face of traditional RPG logic.

Once upon a time, the Diablo series defined the hack-and-slash action role-playing game, setting the standard by which all games in the genre were measured. Now, Diablo III feels more familiar than genre-defining, relying on refining the same hooks that have always made this series so compelling. But what a refinement it is. The controls are responsive and pleasurable; the diversity of character classes and skill customization options is impressive; and the constant stream of gold and treasure you earn is irresistible. Blizzard has the recipe for crafting a habit-forming loot-driven action RPG down to a science, and in Diablo III, the results of that recipe are more exciting and more addictive than they've ever been.

You begin your quest just after what appears to be a flaming star falls from the heavens and crashes into the cathedral in Tristram, the doomed town where the events of Diablo took place. This cosmic occurrence has the unfortunate side effect of reanimating the dead, and the people of New Tristram find themselves besieged by corpses long ago put to rest. Diablo III's story is unremarkable, but it weaves in plenty of references to and appearances by characters from earlier games and enriches the established lore of the series. Fans of Diablo and Diablo II will immediately feel drawn into this world.
You certainly don't need any familiarity with the series to jump right into Diablo III, however. If you've played earlier games, you'll likely get even more out of Diablo III--the music that plays in the New Tristram area may send nostalgic shivers down your spine--but the gameplay is welcoming and easy to grasp for vets and newcomers alike. You choose one of five character classes, and though they become quite distinct at later levels, they all start with nothing but basic offensive skills that are performed with clicks of the mouse.

Let no barrel survive!

That may sound dull, but in fact the rate at which you acquire new skills is part of what makes Diablo III so hard to pull yourself away from. You very quickly open up slots for new types of abilities; if you're playing as a demon hunter, for instance, you begin with a basic archery attack, but you can soon supplement this with resource-draining skills like a rapid fire ability, enemy-slowing caltrops, acrobatic somersaults that can get you away from enemies, and other techniques.
These skills are divided into distinct categories--primary, secondary, defensive, and so on--and by default, you can have only one skill from each category equipped at a time. This is a sensible restriction if you're a novice player, because it helps ensure that your character is well rounded, with a complementary assortment of abilities. However, if you prefer a greater level of character customization, you can turn on what's called elective mode. With this on, you can opt to equip whichever skills you want in your available slots, rather than being limited to choosing one from each category. But if you do this, be mindful of your character's resource pool. If you select two monk skills that cost spirit (the monk's resource) and no skills that generate spirit, you're going to have some trouble slaughtering the legions of hell spawn you encounter.

Maybe his life would have turned out differently if his parents hadn't named him Tyrant.

Choosing one skill always means not choosing another, since your number of available key bindings is always equal to the number of active skill categories you've unlocked. (Once you've unlocked all six skill categories for your class, for instance, you have just six bindings to which you can link skills.) But you can change your selected skills at any time, giving you free rein to tinker with your abilities until you find a combination you're happy with.
You never sink points into skills to make them more effective, so you never have to worry that you're not making the best choices. Rather, as you level up, you unlock both new skills and new runes you can apply to existing skills. From level 13 on, for instance, witch doctors can apply the numbing dart rune to their poison dart attack, which adds a slowing effect to this offensive ability. You can eventually unlock a total of six runes for each active ability, though you can have only one rune at a time activated on any ability. This system prevents you from squandering your character's growth by sinking points into skills that leave you ill-equipped for challenges to come, and lets you customize your abilities on the fly to better tackle the challenges you're currently facing.

It's not all about unlocking skills, however. It's about employing those skills to slaughter the monsters you encounter as you travel the world, and collecting the loot the fiends drop. This is where Diablo III's habit-forming pleasures lie. The randomly generated environments encourage exploration; you never know what treasure (or what powerful foe) you might find down each cathedral hallway or desert trail. Enticing art design draws you into these realms. In and around New Tristram, a foreboding mist hangs in the air, and ancient ruins crumble as you visit places long undisturbed. In the lands around the elegant city of Caldeum, you traverse stark landscapes of cracked earth and bone.

You explore ornate, musty manors and spider-infested caves. You make your way through rat-infested sewers and emerge into a dusky, teeming oasis. And though the inspiration it draws from The Lord of the Rings is a bit obvious, a setting in the game's fourth act effectively makes you feel like part of a desperate, large-scale war between humanity and the forces of hell. Just when you've had your fill of one region, it's time to move on to another, and each location is so different from the one that preceded it that you feel as if your quest to rid the land of evil is taking you across a vast and varied land.
As diverse as these locations are, they all have one thing in common: they're crawling with monsters. In the early stages of your quest, most monsters fall to your attacks without putting up much of a fight, though if you get swarmed, you might still need to keep an eye on your health. (Unlike in Diablo II, you can't spam health potions to immediately counter any damage you suffer; potions have a cooldown timer, requiring you to play a bit more cautiously.) Your attacks look mighty and effective, which makes the simple act of unleashing them feel empowering. The demon hunter's huge chakrams weave through the air, blades spinning; the barbarian's hard-hitting attacks can send foes flying.

After your time in gloomy New Tristram, the city of Caldeum is bright and inviting.

Without fail, you're rewarded for mowing down monsters with gold and gear. This is typical of the series and the genre, but it's handled here as well as it's ever been. You never feel like you're being showered with riches and items you haven't earned, nor that you're having to slog through too many foes to earn anything significant. Loot is doled out at a pace that makes your victories fulfilling and makes fighting the next group of foes lurking in the shadows ahead nigh irresistible.
The way your rewards emerge into the world is rewarding in itself; slay an elite monster, and coins and items pour onto the ground, making you feel like you've just won a jackpot in Vegas. Sometimes, the gear is junk so low in value that it's not even worth picking up. But you never know when you're going to stumble on a weapon or piece of armor that's superior to your current equipment, making you more capable of facing the coming hordes. Even if something isn't worth using, it's often worth grabbing, either to sell or to have it salvaged by the blacksmith in town for materials that can be used to craft other items.
Weapons function in Diablo III a bit oddly, though, and that may take some getting used to. Often, you may elect to have your primary skill be something that isn't weapon-based. You may choose the demon hunter's grenade attack, for instance, or the wizard's magic missile spell. Although these skills don't involve your characters actually using whatever weapons they're holding in their hands, the damage of your equipped weapon still comes into play. In other words, all other things being equal, a wizard's magic missile spell does more damage if she's holding a club that does 12 damage than if she's holding a dagger that does 10 damage. It's a system that makes more gear useful to more classes, but that usefulness comes at the expense of typical fantasy RPG logic.

Scrolls of Town Portal are gone, replaced by a spell you can cast at any time.

If you haven't yet found the perfect helm, boots, or crossbow for your character, you may opt to have the blacksmith craft you items. As with the stuff you find in the wild, the magic properties on gear he crafts are random, so there's often no guarantee that something he creates for you will suit you better than your current equipment, but odds are that sometimes he'll craft something that's ideal for you.
Unfortunately, you need to spend a good deal of gold on training him to level him up so that he can craft higher-level gear for you, and early on, it can feel as if you're sinking all your gold into this and reaping little reward. The rewards do come eventually, though, and all your characters in a given mode share the same craftsmen (the blacksmith and, later, a jeweler), so once the money is spent on training, you don't need to worry about spending it again.

The cycle of combat and loot and more combat is addictive, but without peril, it would eventually become unfulfilling. Thankfully, the hosts of hell become increasingly dangerous over time. Boss fights are numerous and frequent, and those that bring each act to a close can be challenging. They also offer more traditional action-game mechanics than the series has seen before. An early boss charges into walls, for example, leaving him stunned and giving you a chance to attack safely.

After you complete the game on the normal difficulty setting, you can continue on to nightmare, which is much more than just playing the same game again against more resilient foes. Nightmare changes things up by giving enemies powerful new abilities and placing challenging enemies in places where they didn't previously appear. Conquer nightmare and yet another, even more challenging difficulty becomes available. Whether you want a relatively easy, rewarding experience that you can pleasantly click your way through or an incredibly stiff challenge, Diablo III has what you're looking for. And for that added element of risk, you can play in Hardcore mode, where death is permanent.
Each class has the offensive capabilities to take on the forces of darkness alone, and the three AI companions you can choose from offer a helping hand and a sense of camaraderie to solo adventurers. But joining with up to three other players makes for a far more interesting dynamic. Freezing enemies in place when you're playing solo as a wizard is useful, but when doing so aids a team of players who are working together, it's much more fulfilling. Similarly, activating a mantra of healing as a monk just when your party is in dire need of a health boost is far more rewarding than just using this ability to save yourself.

Witch doctors can summon packs of zombie dogs. This is useful in battle and for scaring friends at parties.

It's extremely easy to invite friends to your game or to jump into their games, or to text chat with friends who are going about their own adventures in their own realms. But be warned: as players join your game, the forces of evil become more powerful, and if you don't stay close to each other and work together, you might find that enemies who were previously pushovers are suddenly quite dangerous. This added challenge encourages teamwork; a friend who joins your game and then runs ahead to take on monsters alone is no friend at all. For all its focus on teaming up with friends, though, it's odd that Diablo III doesn't have built-in support for voice chat. Speaking to your friends to coordinate tactics on the fly is helpful, but you'll need to resort to third-party software in order to do it.
Unfortunately, though Diablo III often feels like a well-oiled machine of adventure and reward, it does occasionally sputter. You're required to be online at all times, even if you're playing solo, so if you don't have a reliable internet connection, you simply cannot play Diablo III. The servers go down periodically for maintenance, so you might find the game unavailable to play at times that you want to play it. Additionally, even when the game is up and running, you may experience the rare bout of knockback lag. When enemies and attacks fill the screen (as they often do), you may encounter some severe slowdown. And for all its refinement, there's the occasional rough edge to the action. The monk can teleport to enemies and attack them, for instance, but this effect is abrupt and jarring.

There is unrest in the forest. There is trouble with the trees.

But these problems and frustrations are dwarfed by the pleasures Diablo III offers. There's a good chance you've played games a lot like Diablo III before, and at no point does it dare to surprise you by tinkering with its tried-and-true formula. But it creates such an enticing world and offers up such enjoyable abilities that it makes that formula feel fresh again. You may ultimately be victorious at vanquishing the forces of hell, but if their true mission is to give you a compelling reason to sacrifice sleep as you keep clicking your mouse into the wee hours of the night, then they have won a decisive victory.

Variants	Transmission	Engine Description	Mileage		Power	AC	Power Steering	Central Locking
Variants	Transmission	Engine Description	City	Highway	Power	AC	Power Steering	Central Locking
4.2 FSI quattro (Petrol)	Automatic	4163cc 8 Cylinder 32 Valve	7.0	8.5	423.8bhp @ 7900rpm	Standard	Standard	Standard
5.2 FSI (Petrol)	Automatic	5204cc 10 Cylinder 40 Valve	4.5	9.0	517.6bhp @ 8000rpm	Standard	Standard	Standard
Spyder (Petrol)	Automatic	5204cc 10 Cylinder 40 Valve	9.6	13.5	517.6bhp @ 8000rpm	Standard	Standard	Standard
V10 Plus (Petrol)	Automatic	5204cc 10 Cylinder 40 Valve	4.5	9.0	542.5bhp @ 8000rpm	Standard	Standard	Standard

Variants	New Delhi	Bangalore	Mumbai	Chennai	Pune	Hyderabad	Kolkata
4.2 FSI quattro (Petrol)	1,34,55,000	-	1,29,36,000	1,34,55,000	-	-	1,38,26,000	Get On Road Price
5.2 FSI (Petrol)	1,57,88,000	-	1,51,49,000	1,57,88,000	-	-	1,62,23,000	Get On Road Price
Spyder (Petrol)	1,73,55,000	-	1,66,71,000	1,73,55,000	-	-	1,78,34,000	Get On Road Price
V10 Plus (Petrol)	2,05,00,000	-	-	-	-	-	-	Get On Road Price

Eat, Sleep and Dream TECH!

Linkin Park's Recharged : What the heck is wrong with LP?

FIFA 13 Crash after appearance of EA Logo Fix! FINALLY!

FINALLY A LEGITIMATE HACKING APPLICATION!

GET READY FOR A NEW GALAXY!

A Little Hint on JAVA

STEPS:~

CONCEPT:~

Dream Theater fans....GET READY!

Deutsch! Up and at 'em!!!

1 Year COMPLETION! Yipee!

X-Box 720 or PS4? The next BIG thing!

DmC : Devil May Cry 5 Review

The Good

The Bad

Vedic Mathematics

IntelliJ Idea Community Edition 12.1.1

Together with the IDEA 12 release Scala plugin brings a brand new Scala compilation subsystem. Here are the main updates:

The compilation is now “external”.

Incremental compilation is now handled by SBT (instead of IDEA itself).

Compile server is now implemented via Nailgun (instead of FSC).

Of course, a lot of explanations is needed to clarify all the details.

External build

External build is a one of the major features of IntelliJ IDEA 12.

External build implies that all compilation tasks (including project model interpretation) are performed in a separate process, fully isolated from the main IDE’s process.

As a result, we can:

lower IDEA memory consumption and free its garbage collector;

reduce load on IDEA’s code model (PSI) and virtual file system (VFS);

speedup compilation (according to this and that).

Now we can compile IDEA projects without running IDEA itself, e. g. from command line or from build tools (like Ant, Maven, etc.).

An additional benefit is an ability to use an automatic background compilation, so that your project will be kept in compiled state all the time.

Background compilation can be also used as a means to reveal code errors when type-aware highlighting can’t keep up with code complexity.

For more information on external build you may check the Brand New Compiler Mode in IntelliJ IDEA 12 blog post.

SBT compiler

Although “SBT compiler” sounds like a completely new kind of Scala compiler, that is not really so. To see what SBT compiler is and how it fits into Scala compilation, let’s start with a “big picture”.

Here are the main tasks we need to perform during Scala project compilation:

So, bytecode is still generated by Scalac (and Javac), project format is still IDEA’s, but incremental compilation is now handled by SBT instead of IDEA (so, we don’t use SBT project model, only SBT compiler, that acts as a wrapper around Scalac).

What’s the point of such an update? – Because there is a qualitative difference between how IDEA and SBT discover dependencies and process changes.

IDEA analysis is bytecode-based and language-agnostic. While it’s a very fine-grained, robust and time-proved method, there may be some rare unexpected glitches, specific to Scala code.

For example, let’s define a class C (in C.scala): and then “add” a method name via an implicit conversion (in Main.scala): After we compile and run the main method, we will see that the output is “foo”, and that’s what we expect it to be.

Then, let’s add a “real” method name to the class C: After the next compilation, we will discover that the output is … still “foo”, and that is is not what we expected… Why so? – Because, in terms of the bytecode, there’s no need to recompile Main class yet.

There are many additional cases (for example, related to named- and default parameters) which demonstrate, that bytecode analysis is not enough for proper incremental compilation of Scala code.

As a bonus, because SBT uses a so-called compiler interface layer to communicate with the Scala compiler, we can now run multiple versions of in-process Scala compilers in the same JVM. That’s how we can:

reap the benefit of JIT compilation (either during compilation of multiple modules or when using a compile server),

avoid creation of temporary files (with compiler arguments),

avoid compiler output parsing,

make compiler JVM parameters (in Scala facet) obsolete.

For more information on SBT compiler you may check Understanding Incremental Recompilation article in SBT documentation.

New compile server

How all this is related to Zinc

Summary

New Hacker discovered!

Sudden Interest in Java

Audi : The Commute to never tire you!

Audi R8

Overall

Audi R8 Models

Audi R8 Models

Audi R8 Mileage

Power of Audi R8

Acceleration & Pick-Up

Audi R8 Interior

Braking & Handling

Handling & Safety

Pros & Cons

Audi R8 Pros : Excellent speed and control at road Audi R8 Cons : Space for luggage and sitting capacity

Audi R8 Specifications

Audi R8 Price

Audi R8 Variants Price

Exams : The FEAR!

Sorry guys...my exams were on and therefore I couldn't blog much. Anyway if YOU find exams to be a pain...then read on! WELL EXAMS ARE NOT A PAIN!

Exam Techniques, Tips and Tricks

Part A) Preparing for an Exam

1) Revise actively.

2) Plan revision.

3) Do past papers – as many as you can lay your hands on.

4) Question-spotting.

5) If you can’t do the past papers – ask someone for help.

6) If you just can’t understand something, learn it parrot-fashion.

Part B) The Last 24 Hours

For example, let’s define a class C (in C.scala):

and then “add” a method name via an implicit conversion (in Main.scala):

After we compile and run the main method, we will see that the output is “foo”, and that’s what we expect it to be.

Then, let’s add a “real” method name to the class C:

After the next compilation, we will discover that the output is … still “foo”, and that is is not what we expected… Why so? – Because, in terms of the bytecode, there’s no need to recompile Main class yet.

Audi R8 Pros :
Excellent speed and control at road

Audi R8 Cons :
Space for luggage and sitting capacity