A new Battlefield 2142 patch has made its debut, ushering in two new maps, modes and other features.
Patch 1.5 adds the Wake Island 2142 and Operation Shingle maps, as well as the ability to use widescreen resolutions in the game. Two new modes, No Vehicles and Conquest Assault, are also now available in the game.
For a full list of changes and additions, check out the full patch notes.
The title might sound impossible, but Sapphire Energy, a California-based company, has been working away to create actual gasoline from a renewable, carbon neutral source: algae. While we've heard of many different processes for making fuels from algae, this one certainly tops the list. They've managed to produce 91-octane, ASTM certified gasoline, ready to be pumped into your car. They stress that it is not ethanol, and not biodiesel.
Move over Brent Crude, it's Green Crude's turn.
The company, they say, started with 3 friends discussing a very interesting question: "Why is the biofuel industry spending so much time and energy to manufacture ethanol — a fundamentally inferior fuel?" A very good question indeed, and one they sought to answer on their own terms. The friends - a bioengineer, a chemist, and a biologist - set out to recruit the best minds they could find to collaborate with them on the project, and the results are staggering. "The company has built a revolutionary platform using sunlight, CO2 and microorganisms such as algae" to produce the fuel, without the use of arable land, and while we haven't yet seen any data, they claim it to be very water efficient.
They also announced that they raised $50 million from Arch Rock Ventures, Venrock, and the Wellcome Trust. It is evident that Sapphire will become a major player in the coming years for alternative fuel production, and one cannot help but be inspired with confidence when Arch Rock says: "We realized at that point we could change the world, so we sat them down and told them, 'the checkbook is completely open; tell us what you need'." Not a statement you hear everyday from a venture capital firm.
We will have more on this story as it develops; we are eager for more info and will pass it on as soon as we get it.
Seagate says it will target enterprise customers with its first SSD
Seagate doesn’t currently have any drives in the SSD market. Seagate currently is one of the largest makers of traditional hard drives and while it foresees a time when the solid state drive (SSD) is a better value than traditional HDDs; that time is not now.
Seagate announced that next year it will double its highest capacity traditional HDD to 2TB and will introduce its first SSD. CEO Bill Watkins says Seagate will first target enterprise customers with its SSDs where the benefits of lower power consumption and faster data access will be most welcome. The enterprise environment will also be willing to pay the premium SSDs will still demand whereas the majority of the consumer market is not willing to pay the premium at this time says Seagate.
PC World quotes Watkins saying, “SSDs are not price-competitive yet.” The cost per gigabyte for SSDs isn’t expected to come down for several years. Watkins believes that SSDs will become a focus for Seagate when the cost per gigabyte of SSD storage is around $0.10.
Currently, the cost per gigabyte for the average SSD is about $3.58 per gigabyte according to Krishna Chander, an analyst at iSuppli. There are problems with SSDs to be tackled over the next few years other than price. The typical SSD still has a storage capacity too low for most users and the SSD lifespan is short compared to a traditional HDD.
The answer to the problem of durability may lie in using the SSD for data reading and fast access to commonly used files and having less frequently used stuff moved off to a HDD for more permanent storage according to some. Despite the fact that Seagate doesn’t currently sell SSDs, it does own several patents that cover technology currently used in many SSDs on the market.
In April 2008 Seagate announced it was going to begin filing patent infringement suits against SSD makers who were using its patented technology in their products with the first suit filed against STEC.
DailyTech - Seagate CEO Says 2TB HDD and Its First SSD Coming Next Year