Obama Warns U.S. Teens of Perils of Facebook

President Barack Obama warned American teenagers on Tuesday of the dangers of putting too much personal information on Internet social networking sites, saying it could come back to haunt them in later life.

The presidential words of advice follow recent studies that suggest U.S. employers are increasingly turning to sites such as Facebook and News Corp's MySpace to conduct background checks on job applicants. Taking part in a question-and-answer session with a group of 14- and 15-year-old school students, Obama was asked by one pupil for some advice on becoming U.S. president. "Well, let me give you some very practical tips. First of all, I want everybody here to be careful about what you post on Facebook, because in the YouTube age, whatever you do, it will be pulled up again later somewhere in your life," Obama said. "And when you're young, you make mistakes and you do some stupid stuff. And I've been hearing a lot about young people who - you know, they're posting stuff on Facebook, and then suddenly they go apply for a job and somebody has done a search." Obama referred several times to "mistakes" he had made when he was at school but offered no specifics. He has previously admitted to drug use when he was younger.

A survey in June by careerbuilder.com found that 45 percent of employers used social network sites to research job candidates and that Facebook, which says it has 250 million users worldwide, was their site of choice. Some 35 percent of the employers surveyed said they had found content on the sites that had influenced them to reject a candidate. Examples included inappropriate photographs, information about the applicants' drinking or drug use, or bad mouthing of previous employers, co-workers or clients. The Obama White House frequently uses Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites to bypass the media and communicate directly to Americans.

Source: tech2

Intel Releases First Nehalem Chip for Desktop PCs

Intel Corporation has introduced several high-performance desktop and server processors today, bringing the next level of integration and intelligence to computers.

The new Intel Core i5 processor series, two new Intel Core i7 processors and the Intel Xeon processor 3400 series bring Intel’s latest Nehalem microarchitecture to mainstream desktop and entry server markets.

Formerly codenamed "Lynnfield", these new chips are based on Intel’s Nehalem microarchitecture and are designed for consumers who need top-notch performance for digital media, productivity, gaming and other demanding applications. These processors, along with the new Intel P55 Express Chipset, are available today.

All processors are lead- and halogen-free and feature Intel Exclusive Turbo Boost Technology. The top-of-the-line Core i7 processors also support Intel Hyper-Threading Technology

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The new chipset brings the most revolutionary design changes since the invention of the PCI bus in the early 1990s and sets the stage for Intel’s forthcoming 2010 compute platform. The Intel P55 Express Chipset will be the baseline building block component for motherboards worldwide, delivering new levels of performance and scalability for everyone from the retail buyer to the technically savvy do-it-yourselfer.

The new Core i7 and i5 processors are the first Intel processors to integrate both a 16-lane PCI Express 2 graphics port and two-channel memory controller, enabling all input/output and manageability functions to be handled by the single-chip Intel P55 Express Chipset. Previous Intel chipsets required two separate chips. A new Direct Media Interface (DMI) connects between the processor and chipset. The chipset supports 8 PCI Express 2.0 x1 Ports (2.5GT/s) for flexible device support. Dual graphics cards are supported in a "2x8" configuration. The chipset also supports 6 SATA 3 Gb/s Ports with Intel Matrix Storage Technology providing RAID levels 0/1/5/10. Up to 14 USB 2.0 Ports can be supported with the chipset’s integrated USB 2.0 Rate Matching Hub, along with Intel High Definition Audio for premium digital sound. The new processors are the first to be supported by the new Land Grid Array (LGA) 1156 package and socket technology.

Intel has also announced the Uber Gamer Championship in association with Zapak to mark the launch of the new Core i5 and i7 processors. The championship starting on the 11th of September will see India’s best gamers play knock out games of NFS Most Wanted, Crysis and FIFA 09. Click here for more details.

Source: www.tech2.com

Microsoft started working on Windows 8

With Windows 7 going to be released this year it seems that Microsoft has already starting working on the next version of Windows,Windows 8.

Here is the extract from the Microsoft Job posting site

Are you a talented SDE/T Lead looking for the next technical challenge on a key operating system component? Are you passionate about distributed systems, networking, file systems and want to be the leader of a cutting edge project? Are you looking for a team with abundant opportunities to grow? If so, we have the position for you!
DFSR is Microsoft’s premier file replication engine and is an integral part of our branch office strategy and File Server role. It can scale to thousands of servers and replicate hundreds of terabytes of data. We have shipped the technology that powers file sharing in Windows Live Messenger, Windows Meeting Spaces (Vista) and Branch Office replication in Windows Server 2008 which has strong customer deployment. DFSR technology saves MS-IT and our customers more than 80% WAN bandwidth by using advanced On-The-Wire differential compression.
For the upcoming version of Windows, new critical features are being worked on including cluster support and support for one way replication. The core engine is also being reworked to provide dramatic performance improvements. We will also soon be starting major improvements for Windows 8 where we will be including innovative features which will revolutionize file access in branch offices.

The last paragraph clearly states that they have started working on Windows 8.

We would be posting soon as and when more information is available

Potential Windows 8 design videos

With Windows 7 just coming close to completion,their has already been talk about Windows 8 in the blogosphere .Some videos has been posted on the net which possibly could be the design of the future Windows 8.Just take a look at the videos.

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Some amazing UI and design features here – and some good stuff about past present and future concepts…

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Windows 8 Server due in 2012

According to the Italian Windows Server presentation the next version of the Server would be available by 2012.The next server release is indeed going to be one of the major releases and as usual their is a three year gap between the current and the future Windows server release

Thanks to Stephen for the info