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.

Over the last couple days, Google has been the recipient of some interesting domain transfers. Remember GDrive? It is software currently being used by Googlers under the codename Platypus — giving them online storage for their files.

GDrive.us was transferred to Google on Thursday — I don’t understand why they are snapping up so many of these domains unless it will be available to the public eventually. They currently own Gdrive.com/org/biz/us/ca/co.uk/eu/de/jp and probably more.

Another interesting transfer on Wednesday was GoogleDashboard.com — it was previously registered to someone in New York. The only thing I can imagine this domain representing is Google ramping up development for Apple’s Dashboard on OSX — they already have a few dashboard widgets, maybe we will see more soon?

SED-TV is something that no amount of words can describe. It is something that must be SEEN to be believed; literally. SlashGear journey in to the world of SED-TV through an actual demo. But, what exactly is SED-TV? To unravel the mysteries of SED-TV, a history lesson is quite helpful.

55-inch SED Display with 100,000:1 contrast ratio exhibited at the “FPD International 2006” in Pacifico Yohohama convention center.

There’s nothing like a great rivalry between companies, especially if it’s over one product. The consumer decides who wins this tug of war, and in the process gets the best possible end result. Both companies strive to win over the customer, by any means necessary, whether it is a lower price, more extras, or just anything that takes that extra step to make us happy. This is what lies in store for the electronic giants Toshiba and Canon.

Canon began to visualize and develop SED-TV as early as 1986. In 1999, Canon joined forces with Toshiba in the development of this new technology. With the future looking so bright, the two started a joint venture company: SED Inc. However, fate has brought these two seemingly friendly corporations in to a battle for a better SED-TV. That’s right; SED-TV will be available from BOTH. Who will become the leading company to place their name on it? Well, that part is up to us.

So, now that the history lesson is done, you might be wondering what exactly SED-TV is. In many ways, SED-TV is the future of display as we know it. SED stands for “Surface-conduction Electron-emitter Display”, a name that those not blessed with “digi-genius” will be unable to comprehend. Simply put, this type of display takes the best parts of CRT monitors (the fat one’s), and puts it in to the body of flat panel one’s (skinny one’s).
For simpletons, this explanation will do, but for those who are brave, read on for more details on what will undoubtedly revolutionize display viewing.

For the tech junkies, here’s how SED-TV works. The display consists of two flat piece of glass, sealed with a vacuum in between. One of the glasses is covered with electron emitters, while the other is covered with phosphorus. These are both methods used in CRT televisions today. The vacuum in between the glasses is only half an inch thick, which allows for extremely thin monitors. Each electron emitter is matched up with a pixel on the monitor, allowing extreme precision in images! Imagine the clear concentration of each pixel, offered in an extremely thin package; this is essentially SED-TV.

So, the technology is brilliant, but what is the end result? Again, this is something that must be seen to believe, but a basic description is possible. With the extreme precision of SED-TV, visual quality is superior to anything we have seen on the market. For one, angle viewing is no longer a problem. With other flat panels, sitting on the side of the monitor at an angle, there is a significant loss of quality and view. This is not a problem with SED-TV, as everyone sees the same gorgeous images!

SED-TV is also so precise, that an object moving at high speed can still offer crisp clear letters! On any other TV, a blur would utter this impossible, but not with the SED-TV display. Colors are extremely vivid and unbelievably sharp, offering views that are as lifelike as it gets. Words do this display no justice; it must be viewed to fully comprehend what SED-TV is. Luckily, SlashGear offers an exclusive demo of SED-TV that you will not find anywhere else. So, click on that link, sit back, and enjoy viewing the mind-blowing quality.
It’s important to note, that the demo is running on 720p, and is a video, so the quality is a bit worse than the actual technology. The final product is slated to run on 1080p, which only adds to the solidity of the display. Also, the demonstration is running on a 36” monitor, but final products will be much larger, including an announced 55” version with 8600:1 contrast ratios! The final product should become available sometime in 2007 worldwide.
Now, wipe off your drool and face the facts. Such revolutionary technology doesn’t run cheap. Though no official word on price has been announced, think BIG. Most people will probably be unable to afford one of these 55” badboys in the living room. This product will most nearly be aimed at large companies that host big social events. For example, a big SED-TV monitor would be perfect for a movie-of-the-year premier.

SED-TV is the future of digital image displays; it’s as simple as that. There is currently nothing on the market that comes remotely close to Canon’s offering. Now, the question remains, how will Toshiba respond to Canon’s extremely successful debut of SED-TV technology? Either way, we are all in for a great treat as this technology becomes more widespread. Well, that’s enough text about SED-TV, go ahead and click on the videos, and see the breathtaking future in action.

Bye-bye click wheel?

If a recent patent filing is any indication, Apple Computer may abandon the iconic wheel that has become virtually synonymous with its popular iPod music players.

The company had previously explored replacing the click wheel with a virtual one as part of a touch-sensitive display. But now Apple appears to be looking at a third option: a touch-sensitive frame surrounding the display. Rather than click a physical button or press a virtual one on the screen, users would touch an area on the frame to operate their iPod.

IPod designers face a challenge in trying to create a device with as large a screen as possible while still providing an array of functions and an easy way to access them, Apple noted in the patent application, filed in June but not published on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s Web site until Thursday. The problem with touch-sensitive screens is that they usually generate virtual buttons or windows that “overlay the content being displayed,” the company said. This new approach may solve that problem.

Apple representatives did not return calls seeking comment on the patent filing.

It’s not surprising that Apple is exploring different interfaces for a device that would probably be first and foremost a video player, said Van Baker, an analyst with research group Gartner. Because movies and TV shows typically run much longer than songs, users wouldn’t need to interact with the iPod as often, Baker noted.

“The need for having that navigation available is not as significant,” he said.

But don’t mourn the click wheel’s passing yet, Baker and other analysts say. An iPod with a touch-sensitive frame or even one with a full screen may never see the light of day, they said.

“Apple files patents for a lot of products that never make it to market,” said Tim Bajarin, an analyst with Creative Strategies, an industry consulting firm. “You really can’t read too much into their patent filings without understanding that is part of their normal business procedure.”

And even in the patent application, Apple didn’t completely jettison the click-wheel idea. One of the diagrams in the filing explores the possibility of a hybrid that would have both a touch-sensitive frame and a virtual wheel.

Click wheel or no, Apple’s filing also hints at another interesting feature in this full-screen iPod: a sensor that would determine whether to display images and text vertically or horizontally depending on how the user was holding the gadget. The touch-sensitive controls would also change based on the device’s orientation.

It was unclear from the filing whether Apple would use the touch-sensitive frame in all of its iPods or just the rumored replacement for its top-of-the-line video-playing one. And the patent filing is only the latest in a number of related ones that have fueled speculation Apple will soon release a full-screen iPod to play movies and TV shows downloaded from its iTunes store.

Introducing the next generation of webmail. With its smart use of the latest web technology, the new .Mac webmail will remind you of the Mail application on your desktop. You’ll feel right at home with its simple and elegant interface, drag-and-drop capability, built in Address Book, and more.

WE MANAGED TO learn the official NDA expiry date and the launch of AMD’s quad core offering. Or, should we say, its dual die dual socket chip.

After AMD laughed off Intel’s dual core and upcoming quad core microprocessors as “not true multicore”, with the main reason they physically share two dies, it seems to have done the same thing. Intel’s Pentium D “Presler” consisted of two Cedar Mill cores, Core 2 Extreme “Kentsfield” features two Conroe cores and shared the front side bus.

Quadfather or the 4×4 as AMD marketeers have it, is actually a dual die quad core chip, using the Opteron processor socket and will launch on November 14th. The nForce 680a, the launch chipset is proof that the AMD-Nvidia strategic alliance still has four legs.

The launch line up was revealed, but the pricing has been “re-constructed” severely downwards, with the fastest CPU pack now matching the price of Intel’s Kentsfield.

INTEL decided to paper launch its upcoming CPU, but the space between launch and availability isn’t that long.

The company told the world+dog that reviews of Intel Core 2 Extreme Quad Core Processor QX6700 will hit the wires on November 2nd 6AM time in continental Europe. This long name is the official one that Intel picked for this dual core baby.

These CPUs will be available on the November 14th and this includes retail and etail for systems based on it.

The Xeon 5300 reviews should arrive on November the 14th UK time and available that day too. Quad Core samples have already been out for a while but there is no gaming improvement what soever, it runs the same as dual Core 6700 CPU but it performs great for rendering and multimedia.