The requested URL /results.php?textfield=THREE+MONTHS&select=Search+News was not found on this server.Security CheckCan't read the text above?Try another textText in the box:What's this?Web Design and Content Copyright 2007 - 2015 SHTF Plan - When It Hits The Fan, Don't Say We Didn't Warn You - All Rights Reserved Our Supercharged Intel Xeon E5-2620 v4 Octo-Core Dual Servers are Powered By Liquid Web Dedicated IP Address: 69.167.174.108 The content on this site is provided as general information only. The ideas expressed on this site are solely the opinions of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the opinions of sponsors or firms affiliated with the author(s). The author may or may not have a financial interest in any company or advertiser referenced. Any action taken as a result of information, analysis, or advertisement on this site is ultimately the responsibility of the reader.Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives.

Police forces increasingly are taking advantage of the technology behind military equipment initially designed for combat.Sometimes, though, the police might be coy about which of these gadgets they use to protect and serve.USA Today reports that, for a couple of years now, some police forces have been using a device that can determine whether a building is occupied -- without having to enter the premises. However, this information only came to light when a police officer at a suppression hearing in a Denver court said that he'd used a Range-R. He described the Range-R as a "hand-held Doppler radar device." He added: "It picks up breathing, human breathing and movement within a house." In the Denver case, police were trying to apprehend someone who allegedly had violated his parole.The Range-R's manufacturers explain that the device is to be held against a wall. Users then push a couple of buttons that send radar pulses through the wall to detect if anyone is inside. The device covers a conical view of 160 degrees.

It works in a range of around 50 feet.Though it "will penetrate most common building wall, ceiling or floor types -- including poured concrete, concrete block, brick, wood, stucco glass, adobe, dirt" -- the Radar-R does not work through metal. macdev drone dx quad modMoreover, if a wall is saturated with water, this also may reduce the device's effect. parrot ar drone super bright blue led ufo light kitThe device costs around $6,000.Clearly, though, those who still value their privacy will be concerned. macdev drone dx canadaWhat's to stop any member of law enforcement from placing one against anyone's wall just to see if they're home? parrot ar drone hong kong price

That said, in 2013, the Supreme Court heard the case of Florida vs Jardines. Here, police led a drug-sniffer dog to a suspect's porch. The dog detected marijuana plants. The suspect was arrested. The court suppressed that evidence. ar drone 2 battery packCiting the Fourth Amendment, the court argued for "the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion." drone camera for sale in pakistanIt added that the area immediately surrounding the home "is part of the home itself for Fourth Amendment purposes." With the Range-R, you may not even know the intrusion is happening.I have contacted Range-R's manufacturers, L-3 Communications, to ask how many police forces are supplied with this equipment. I will update, should I hear.I also have contacted some police forces to ask whether they might use a Range-R occasionally.

Again, I will update, should they confess.It's entirely understandable that police forces would want to use the most updated equipment. Their reticence about admitting the technology's use is, again, understandable -- but is it right? There's inevitably the temptation to use gadgets such as Range-R without a warrant. In the case with so-called Stingrays -- devices that mimic cell-towers to capture phone data -- the FBI has argued that warrants aren't necessary at all.As technology becomes more and more intrusive -- and surreptitiously so -- the idea of your home being a safe haven begins to seem wistful at best.Also in the first-person-with-RPG-elements mould is Far Cry 3. As we've come to expect from Far Cry titles, it looks gorgeous. The setting this time is an island in the South Pacific, and it's all lush jungles, crystal clear lakes, beautiful skies and more. Far Cry 2, set in Africa, had a compelling story, placing you in the middle of a civil war and examining the ethics of weapons dealing.

Far Cry 3 instead has drivel. You play as Jason, a twenty-something prick with a bunch of overprivileged friends who's on an extreme sporting vacation when, oh dear, his skydiving goes wrong and he ends up getting captured by the glorious deranged Vaas, a lunatic thug who serves as right-hand man and enforcer to drug dealer and people trafficker Hoyt Volker. You escape from Vaas with your ex-military brother. In the ensuing chase, your brother gets shot, leaving only the wastrel Jason to fight back against Vaas and liberate your friends. Along the way, you meet various islanders who help you—or exploit you—as they too wish to be rid of Vaas. Chief among them is Citra, revered as some kind of priestess and leader of the island's native Rakyat warriors. The islanders give you a magical tattoo that grows more ornate as you gain XP and unlock new skills, such as faster healing, silent machete takedowns of enemies, and holding your breath underwater for longer. The progression is well-balanced;

you become a more capable, better-rounded warrior as you progress, but never to the extent that you become overpowered. The gunplay is solid, with a good variety of weapons. Generally a range of play styles are accommodated. You can go in stealthily, using only takedowns, silenced pistols, and bows and arrows, or pack a light machine gun and mow down the bad guys like a frat boy John Rambo. A crafting mechanism allows the collection of plants and animal skins to build new items such as ammo pouches, and concoct potions, such as healing remedies, again making you a more capable warrior. The major problems with Far Cry 2—the non-existent fast travel system, and enemy checkpoints that respawn minutes after being cleared out—have been addressed, and addressed well, in the new game. Enemy checkpoints still exist, but if you clear them of enemies you capture them and turn them friendly, at which point they function as fast travel locations. It's a good system that works effectively.

A single play-through that takes in most of the side missions and unlocks all of the weapons will take probably 20-25 hours. I think this is more than fair value for money. There are some glorious moments in the game. You get high as a kite as you torch the drug lord's marijuana fields to a booming reggae soundtrack, and there is a splendidly sarcastic rendition of Ride of the Valkyries. These are moments worth savoring. However, having played the game once, I don't think I'll ever touch it again. Although it has a large open world, the story itself is, as with Borderlands 2, almost entirely linear, with a single solitary (and utterly absurd) decision point at the very end of the campaign. Unlike Borderlands 2 it does not offer the variety of playable characters, so play it once and you really have seen it all. That absurd decision point also made me almost alt-F4 the game in disgust. There is not enough room in this margin for a full analysis of the Far Cry 3 story, but it's deeply flawed.

There are two compelling, fascinating characters—the deranged Vaas and the rapey Buck—but the rest is a mess of ambition that far exceeds the grasp of the writers. The final big-name FPS to be released this season was something of a revelation. Imagine a game with a coherent storyline, a game with sympathetic bad guys, a game with a morally ambiguous storyline, and a story that offers multiple diverse outcomes through seamlessly integrated choices. And then imagine that the game was part of the Call of Duty franchise. Call of Duty games are the archetypal linear first-person shooters. They're simply random aggregations of set pieces that borrow heavily from the Hollywood blockbuster. The narrative, such as it is, exists only to move you from location A to location B so that you can marvel at the next set of nuclear explosions and other calamities. Black Ops II does not totally get away from this. There would probably be riots if it did. A Call of Duty title has certain expectations that it has to meet.

The game is a loose sequel to the first Black Ops title. A couple of characters are related and there are some brief allusions to the brainwashing and hallucinations of the first game. In all honestly, it would have been better to be an even looser sequel; the callbacks added nothing, and the game stands alone. As is traditional in Call of Duty titles, you leap between several different named characters. This time you also leap across time, between historic missions in the 1980s and "present day" missions in 2025. The Big Bad in Black Ops II is Raul Menendez, a Nicaraguan gun-runner and terrorist. A series of run-ins with American troops operating in South America in which he loses both his right eye and his sister leads Menendez to, not unreasonably, develop an intense dislike for the US. He leads a populist movement called Cordis Die which promises to give power to the victims of economic inequality and a second Cold War between the US and China. To the traditional Call of Duty first-person shooter gameplay, Black Ops II adds a number of new elements to introduce nonlinearity.

There are seamless, un-signposted choices at various points in the game. For example, at one point when driving a boat you can get caught in an explosion if you take a particular route. Whether you get caught in the explosion doesn't alter the outcome of the mission, but it does alter whether one of the characters gets burned and, hence, scarred through the rest of the game. Some decisions are more overt, with quick time events to pick an outcome. Finally, there are a number of permanently failable missions called Strike Missions. These offer a mix of a top-down real-time strategy-type perspective, in which you can direct ground units to various points on a map, with traditional first-person shooter elements to enable you to more directly control events. These missions can only be retried a finite number of times. If you fail, the story will proceed, but those failures will have repercussions down the line. The Strike Missions are not flawless in their execution. The AI of friendly units is notable by its almost total absence, so you'll probably find yourself switching to the first-person mode most of the time.

The top-down controls are also annoying to use, a consequence of being designed to be compatible with the constraints imposed by console controllers. There are some rough spots in the rest of the game, too. At one point you ride around on hybrid horse-tanks. In the game environment, they're just regular horses. But they're really not; They control like tanks, rotating around their midpoint to turn, and they can be used to run enemies over as effectively as a tank. You don't ride these horses; There's also a stage in the game where you fly a plane, and the controls are execrable, with turns that are astonishingly hard to make unless you have your mouse sensitivity set extremely high. Nonetheless, these are minor gripes. This is the first ever Call of Duty to actively reward multiple play-throughs. It's still a fairly short game, perhaps 8-10 hours for a single run-through, but it actually works to justify playing it two or three times. That it manages to do this without relying on clearly delineated quick time events to make each decision is even better.

You don't know you're making choices—but you are. Even the story and characterizations are unusually good, though whether this is by accident I cannot say. Menendez is in many ways a tragic character, and the cause he is fighting for is not a bad one. It's hard to know whether the writers intended it this way, but the playable characters, while fighting for mom and apple pie and all those good things, are not unambiguously good. The game also offers an implicit commentary on, and criticism of, the proliferation of drone warfare that allows wars to be conducted and lives to be taken at arm's length, as if the bloody business of conflict could be clean and precise. There are ways of beating the game in which Menendez' revolution succeeds. You win the game without winning the war. Black Ops II should represent the future of military first-person shooters. Whether by accident or design, Treyarch has reinvented Call of Duty and with a little more spit and polish could reinvigorate the franchise and military shooters as a whole.

Call of Duty: Black Ops II and Far Cry 3 both offer competitive multiplayer (as does Medal of Honor: Warfighter, but the less said of that the better). Both modes are twitch shooter snoozefests, and last year's Battlefield 3 remains the best current multiplayer first-person shooter experience. Its recent Aftermath expansion pack has some of the most interesting, three-dimensional maps of any military shooter, further extending the life of the title. Any fan of the first-person genre—which is to say, any true computer game fan—will find something to enjoy in each of these games. Borderlands 2 offers the broadest appeal, and while its co-op mode has its flaws, it offers the most scope for bonding experiences. Far Cry 3 draws you in to its luscious world, but once it's spat you out you'll have no desire to go back, weakening its appeal. Call of Duty: Black Ops II offers a compelling taste of the future of first-person shooters that any hardcore gamer will enjoy. Overall, this leaves Borderlands 2 as the pick of the year, with Far Cry 3 and Call of Duty: Black Ops II tied in the number two spot.