Universe’s Tech Blog

“Hyped by a good deal of fanfare, outfitted with some new features, and now available for download, Firefox 2.0 has already passed 2 million downloads in less than 24 hours. However, a growing number of users are reporting bugs, widening memory leaks, unexpected instability, poor compatibility, and an overall experience that is inferior to that offered by prior versions of the browser. Expanding on these ideas, this list compiles nine reasons why it might be a good idea to stick with 1.5 until the debut of 3.0, skipping the “poorly badged” 2.0 release completely.” OK, maybe it’s 10 reasons. An anonymous reader writes, “SecurityFocus reports an unpatched highly critical vulnerability in Firefox 2.0. This defect has been known since June 2006 but no patch has yet been made available. The developers claimed to have fixed the problem in 1.5.0.5 according to Secunia, but the problem still exists in 2.0 according to SecurityFocus (and I have witnessed the crash personally). If security is the main reason users should switch to Firefox, how do we explain known vulnerabilities remaining unpatched across major releases?”

Bethesda announced its plans to publish Rogue Warrior, an authentic, tactical first-person shooter based on the best-selling book series by Richard (Dick) Marcinko, former U.S. Navy SEAL and founder of both SEAL Team Six and Red Cell. Rogue Warrior is being developed for the Xbox 360, the PLAYSTATION 3 and Windows by Zombie Studios in conjunction with Bethesda Softworks. Rogue Warrior is scheduled for a fall 2007 release. We have the first three in-game images so follow the screens tab above to get your first glimpse of the game.

We are very excited to be working on Rogue Warrior, which allows us the chance to bring Bethesda’s creative vision and development expertise to this brand, said Vlatko Andonov, president of Bethesda Softworks. This game marks our return to shooters since our highly successful Terminator series, and we hope to offer fans a true next-generation gameplay experience.

Rogue Warrior is a story-driven shooter that provides team-based tactical combat set in massive, contiguous levels using Unreal 3 streaming technology. Central to the game’s single and multiplayer experience is the idea of a freeform battlefield, where players are given the freedom to choose how to complete a given objective, allowing for creativity and surprises, rather than heavily scripted events and tightly contained spaces traditionally used in this genre.

An advanced AI system allows NPCs to react and fight realistically, see and hear others, and respond as a team. Rogue Warrior offers a new take on the multiplayer experience, with 10 gameplay modes and a system whereby maps are created using tiles that are selected by each team. Rogue Warrior’s tiling system allows users to experience over 200 maps in both day and nighttime settings. In addition, the campaign features solo and on-the-fly cooperative play for up to four players, where anyone can join or leave an existing campaign game at any time without having to go to menus or save progress.

Rogue Warrior is the game we’ve been waiting to make for years, said Mark Long, lead producer at Zombie Studios. We’re using terrific technology in a way that’s different from other games - we have a unique HUD and control system for your teammates, on-the-fly co-op play, and we’ve really focused our efforts on making multiplayer more fun and challenging by giving you lots of modes and hundreds of maps you can see and play. We’re thrilled to be working with Bethesda on this new initiative using a brand we know and love.

In Rogue Warrior, you play Dick Marcinko, leader of an elite SEAL unit trapped behind enemy lines in North Korea on a covert mission to assess the threat posed by North Korea’s nuclear arsenal. When war breaks out between North and South Korea, you must try to lead your team back into South Korea while greatly outnumbered and with no support and limited resupply. Your journey will take you through a variety of never-before-seen environments inside of North Korea, including submarine pens, shipbreaker yards, prison camps, and more.

A 30-year veteran with the U.S. Navy, Dick Marcinko served in both the Underwater Demolitions Team and Navy SEAL programs, was a military attache in Cambodia, and conceived, founded, and commanded SEAL Team Six, the U.S. Navy’s first counterterrorism unit. He later created and ran Red Cell, a unit created to test the Navy’s anti-terrorist capabilities for highly-secured bases, nuclear submarines, ships, and other purported “secure areas”, including Air Force One. Dick’s experiences as a Navy SEAL were captured in his New York Times best-selling autobiography, Rogue Warrior, and his Rogue Warrior fiction series.

I think this game has a lot going for it and I’m very excited to be a part of it, said Marcinko. You have input from my SEALs and me on everything from animations to equipment to artificial intelligence to tactics to ensure accuracy of the gameplay, plus a story that has lots of relevance with the current events in North Korea, and the expertise in making great games that comes from Bethesda and Zombie…I think it’s going to take names like only a SEAL can.

Ubisoft has announced that the PC version of Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Double Agent is now gold and will be on store shelves from 9th November, 2006.

In Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Double Agent you play as a double agent spy for the first time ever. Take on dual roles of covert operative and ruthless terrorist, where your choices of whom to betray and whom to protect actually affect the outcome of your game.

Experience the relentless tension and gut-wrenching dilemmas of life as a double agent. Lie. Kill. Sabotage. Betray. All to protect the innocent. How far will you go to gain the enemy’s trust? As covert operative Sam Fisher, you must infiltrate a vicious terrorist group and destroy it from within. You’ll need to carefully weigh the consequences of your actions. Kill too many terrorists and you’ll blow your cover. Hesitate and millions will die. Do whatever it takes to complete your mission, but get out alive.

Features Include:

- Double agent gameplay and branching storyline: Play both sides and decide between opposing NSA and terrorists objectives. You choose whose priorities to support, and whose to undermine. Your actions affect the story and gameplay, leading to shockingly different endings.
- Gadgets and weapons: As you progress, get access to prototype upgraded gadgets and weapons, like improved night vision, based on your choices and covert skills.
- Authentic double agent tactics: Use realistic tactics, based on testimonies of actual undercover agents, to sabotage the enemies’ plans.
- Don’t blow your cover: Steal, destroy, kill, and evade the authorities. Do whatever it takes to make your mark and gain their trust.
- A world of International espionage: Go from Shanghai and Cozumel to America itself, where New York City and Los Angeles are threatened by the terrorists’ agenda of destruction.
- All-new extreme gameplay situations: Conduct your missions underwater amid churning ice floes, in a blinding sandstorm, or even sheathed in dust and smoke.
- Innovative multiplayer: The critically acclaimed multiplayer mode are back with new innovations and exclusives for each platform. Get recruited and earn rank upgrades, and sabotage or spy for your team

Storage is expensive, slow, and eats up a great deal of power, according to famed writer Mark Stephens, more commonly known by his pen name, Bob X. Cringely. He believes a new start-up company he’s behind can change this.

Cringely labels the new hard drive technology ‘Metal Foil Drive’ (MFD) and it consists of using flexible titanium or stainless steel foil platters in place of the much thicker and rigid glass or aluminium substrate platters in present hard drives.

Claiming that the foil drive is faster than even that of present flash memory, he beams that an MFD-equipped “… 10-gigabyte 0.85-inch drive can spin up, read or write data, then shut down again, all in less time than it takes to perform the same task using flash while being just as resistant to shock damage and more resistant to heat.”

“That 10-gig drive will cost $24 compared to $240 for 10 gigs of flash,” he adds.

He was sure to send a hearty message to the upcoming hybrid drives that Vista will support. These use both platters and flash memory to increase the access time.

“The hybrid drive is dead,” Cringely recently declared to an audience at the University of Illinois. “This uses less power than the hybrid drive and it’s faster.”

MFD is also cheaper, he says, as hybrid drives “… cost more — a LOT more — just like Vista costs more than XP.”

In equal amounts and compared with existing platters the new required materials do cost more. Cringely assures, however, that “… the total material cost is substantially less,” as the platters consist of one-tenth the mass.

The foil material is treated with the same magnetic coating of present platters, but there is a big difference in manufacturing. Rather than individually coating and polishing each platter as is currently the practise, the MFD surface can be cheaply coated and treated while rolled out on sheets. From here, platters are simply punched-out.

As a result of thinner platters, Cringely claims MFD can greatly increase storage density. “The way we obtain greater storage density is simply by putting more platters in a drive (say 12-15 instead of 4-5 in an enterprise 3.5-inch drive) because they are much thinner and can be stacked closer together.”

Cringely suggests that 60GB iPods could now be reduced to the thickness of the thinner 30GB units.

In terms of power consumption, he says hard drives based on MFD use “… 70-95 percent less energy to run than the current state of the art.” He further adds “Our 3.5-inch drives can use the spindle motor from a 1-inch drive.”

These drives can run in temperatures of 100 degrees celcius. As such, spindle speeds of 30,000rpm can be made for the enthusiast crowd. Cars, which are infamously heat-prone, are also a possibility.

Tape storage is another of the many areas in which Cringely hopes to take on with foil drives, stating in his University speech that MFD will cost only three cents more per gigabyte than existing tapes at 20 cents (as opposed to 17 cents for tapes).

He cites the dramatically increased read and write speeds and lower power usage as reasons for why companies would switch from tapes over to the slightly more expensive medium.

Cringely says we should begin to see drives based on MFD technology “… under well-known brand names” as soon as this time next year, which suggests that production is already underway.

We aren’t aware of the manufacturers behind MFD, but Cringely mentions that Seagate hopes it dies.

Presumably, Seagate isn’t one such manufacturer.