Intel unveils Core 2 Duo processors

Intel unveils Core 2 Duo processors
CRN Network, July 27, 2006

Intel Corporation has unveiled 10 Intel Core 2 Duo and Intel Core 2 Extreme processors for consumer and business desktop and laptop PCs and workstations.

Charlotte Lamprecht, director, Digital Home Brand Management, Intel Corporation, said, "The Core 2 Duo processors are simply the best processors in the world. Not since Intel introduced the Pentium processor has the industry seen the heart of the computer reinvented like this."

Ramamurthy Sivakumar, managing director, Sales and Marketing (South Asia), Intel further added, "The Core 2 Duo desktop processor is an energy-efficient marvel, packing 291 million transistors yet consuming 40% lower power, while delivering the performance needed for the applications of today and tomorrow."
 
The company says that the highly anticipated processor family already has very broad support with more than 550 customer system designs underway - the most in Intel's history. Ultimately, tens of thousands of businesses will sell computers or components based on these processors.

The Intel Core 2 Duo processors are built in several of the world's most advanced, high-volume output manufacturing facilities using Intel's leading 65-nanometer silicon process technology. The desktop PC version of the processors also provide up to a 40% increase in performance and are more than 40% more energy efficient versus Intel?s previous best processor. According to multiple independent review organizations, the processors win more than nine out of 10 major server, desktop PC and gaming PC performance benchmarks.

The Intel Core 2 Duo processor family consists of five desktop PC processors tailored for business, home, and enthusiast users, such as high-end gamers, and five mobile PC processors designed to fit the needs of a mobile lifestyle. Intel Core 2 Duo processor-based workstations will also deliver industry-leading performance for such areas as design, content creation and technical computing.
 
The processor family is based on Intel Core microarchitecture, designed to provide powerful yet energy-efficient performance. With the power of dual cores, or computing engines, the processors can manage numerous tasks faster. They also can operate more smoothly when multiple applications are running, such as writing e-mails while downloading music or videos and conducting a virus scan.

Consumers and businesses will have the option to purchase Intel Core 2 Duo processors as part of Intel's premier market-focused platforms, which are made up of Intel hardware and software technologies tailored to specific computing needs, including Intel vPro technology for businesses, Intel Centrino Duo mobile technology for laptops, and Intel Viiv technology for the home.

Initial Intel Core 2 Duo processor-based systems are now available from system manufacturers, resellers and integrators, including Intel Channel Partner Program members. Intel Core 2 Duo desktop processor-based systems will be available beginning in early August. Intel Core 2 Duo processor-based notebooks will be available at the end of August. Intel Core 2 Extreme processor X6800 is priced at $999, Core 2 Duo processor E6700 is available at $530, E6600 at  $316, E6400 at $224 and E6300 at $183.

Read more at : Computer Reseller News - For Providers of Information Technology Solutions

Saina Nehwal — female version of Gopi Chand

Saina Nehwal — female version of Gopi Chand
Stan Rayan, Jul 20 2006

KOCHI: As she enters the court, you can see the respect and fear in her opponent's eyes. Saina Nehwal, Indian badminton's wonder girl, scares the living daylights out of her rivals. A good number of her matches in the Indian circuit last just fifteen minutes and twenty at the most.

Given her awesome performances, one begins to wonder whether she is the female version of Gopi Chand.

"She may be better than that," says Thomas John, the India-born British coach at Gopi Chand's new academy in Hyderabad where Saina trains.

"Watch her, she'll win all the three National titles (sub-junior, junior and senior) this season. And if she works hard, she may win the Commonwealth Games crown in Melbourne next year," predicts Thomas.

But Saina has higher ambitions. "I want to win an Olympic gold," she says.

Given her hunger, she is in the right hands. Her idol Gopi Chand, who shocked the badminton world by lifting the All-England title a few years ago, frequently monitors her training sessions at his academy.

The 15-year-old Saina is already the country's junior champion and a runner-up in the Senior Nationals, losing to Aparna Popat who is World No. 27 and a former Junior World silver medallist.

At the international level, she won the Junior Czech Open two years ago and was a leading member of the Indian team which bagged the Commonwealth Youth Games silver in Bendigo, Australia, last year.

Saina fought well against host Korea's top-seeded Ha Jung Eun in the girls' second round of the Junior Asian championship last year before losing in three games. And she was in the Indian team for the Uber Cup qualifiers, the youngest-ever to do so.

The teen wonder has badminton in her blood. Her parents Harvir Singh, a scientist at the Directorate of Oilseeds Research, and Usha Rani were former State champions in Haryana and it did not take long for Saina to start swinging the racquet.

Working on weaknesses

She moved to Hyderabad seven years ago and was trained by Dronacharya Awardee S.M. Arif for two years till his retirement from the SAI last year.

Unlike many Indian girls, Saina relies on ruthless power to subdue her opponents. She used to be a little suspect in her net play and mobility, but a recent look proved that the Andhra Pradesh star has worked on these aspects.

Having ironed out many of her physical flaws she now has to work on her mental make-up, especially when it comes to the international circuit. Often, after gaining huge leads, Saina has been unable to hang on to them and finish the job.

The Gopi Chand Academy has plans to send her to Holland or Denmark for training soon. That's the best thing that can happen to her career at the moment.

Read more at : The Hindu : Sport / Olympic Games : Saina Nehwal — female version of Gopi Chand

Udit admits Ranjana is his first wife, duo patches up

Udit admits Ranjana is his first wife, duo patches up
Bureau Report, Zee News

Patna, July 28: Noted Bollywood singer Udit Narayan today admitted for the first time that Ranjana Jha was his first wife as he appeared before the Bihar Women`s Commission. In a clear indication of reconciliation with her husband, Ranjana too stated that she has no problems with his second wife Deepa. Udit, however, avoided taking to media.

Udit Narayan, who had been evading the appearance before the panel, was given 15-day ultimatum by the commission to solve the matter. Today, he gave a written assurance to the Commission that he recognised Ranjana as his first wife.

Udit Narayan had flown to Patna on June 30 for a reconciliation with Ranjana after the commission had threatened to have an arrest warrant issued against him if `meaningful reconciliation` was not achieved.

As Ranjana had told the commission following the meeting that talks were moving in the right direction, it had asked the singer to appear before it. Ranjana after about two-and-a-half hours of talks with Narayan at the airport lounge here on June 30 had told the media that talks had proceeded in the `right direction` and claimed that the singer had accepted her as his first wife.

A high-voltage drama was enacted on April 21 in a posh hotel here when Ranjana staged a sit-in in front of the door of the hotel suite in which Narayan was staying with Deepa Narayan, with whom he is living at present.

The commission had on the basis of the photographs and statement of people who had attended the marriage in 1984 prima facie accepted Ranjana`s claim of marriage with Narayan and had asked the singer to appear before the panel to record his version and also clarify his relationship with Deepa.

Deepa blames media, says it is family matter

While the high-voltage drama between Udit and Ranjana seemed to be dying down, Udit’s second wife Deepa took a U-turn today and blamed the media for “unnecessarily creating troubles for the family over what she termed as “internal matter”. She insisted that she had full knowledge of Udit’s first wife Ranjana before marrying him in 1982.

Deepa said that she has no problems with Ranjana.

Read more at : Zee News - Udit admits Ranjana is his first wife, duo patches up

Suspects in Mumbai Bombings Confess Ties to Pakistani Militants

Suspects in Mumbai Bombings Confess Ties to Pakistani Militants
By ANAND GIRIDHARADAS and SOMINI SENGUPTA, July 28, 2006

MUMBAI, July 28 — Suspects in the serial bombings on July 11 of the city’s commuter train network have confessed they went to Pakistan for training in arms and explosives, the police in India said today, and at least one has testified that he received instructions from an operative of a banned terrorist organization operating across the border.

The statements by senior police officials represent the first glint of evidence of complicity by the Pakistani-based militant group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, that Indian officials have blamed repeatedly for terror attacks on Indian soil. The chief of the Mumbai police antiterrorist squad, K. P. Raghuvanshi, said today that six of the eight suspects confessed to having gone for military training in Pakistan.

The police have not described precisely how the 8 men are linked to each other or, more importantly, to the blasts, which killed 183 people during the evening rush hour.

The Pakistani Foreign Office spokeswoman, Tasnim Aslam, said by telephone from Islamabad that her government had offered to cooperate with the investigation into the bombings, but had yet to receive evidence from the government in New Delhi. “If they have something, they should share it with us and we will cooperate with them,” she offered, noting that Britain and the United States had turned to Pakistan to help track down terror suspects.

The Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Navtej Sarna, countered that no evidence offered to Pakistan in the past had yielded results.

To what extent today’s revelations will affect the bruised peace process between the two countries remains to be seen. Shortly after the July 11 blasts, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India accused Pakistan of failing to rein in terrorists operating on its soil. The Pakistani president, General Pervez Musharraf, called the accusation “unsubstantiated.”

The senior inspector of the Mumbai police, J. K. Hargude, who interviewed five of the eight suspects, described them as having possible links to Lashkar-e-Taiba. Among them is an apparently influential leader of Lashkar’s local chapter here, Faisal Shaikh, 30, and his younger brother, Muzamil, 23, a software engineer who, the police said, had recently begun to work with the American software company, Oracle.

Faisal Shaikh, the police said, appears to have organized the passage of the others to Pakistan for military training. Muzamil Shaikh, on the other hand, while keen to follow his brother into the radical Islamist group, seems to have had second thoughts after being offered the job at Oracle. He was employed on a contract basis, said a police officer who was part of the interrogations, pending the completion of company training. “He was very hopeful of a good career,” said the police officer, who was not authorized to speak to the news media. Both Muzamil and Faisal traveled to Pakistan through Iran, the police said.

The arrests of the two brothers on Thursday follows the capture of 6 others, including Zameer Shaikh, 31, a keymaker in central Mumbai; Sohail Shaikh, 30, from the nearby city of Pune; and Tanvir Ansari, 32, a doctor and practitioner of the alternative medicine known as Unani.

The police refused to saytoday how the men were connected to each other, or whether they had any direct links with the July 11 bombings.

Clearly, Faisal Sheikh has emerged as their biggest catch. Mr. Hargude said he joined the radical Students Islamic Movement of India by 2001, and resolved, as Mr. Hargude put it, to “do something for Islam.” He first traveled to Pakistan in 2002. He obtained a visa by saying he wanted to visit relatives in Lahore, but ended up meeting a number of extremists, including a Lashkar operative named Azam Cheema.

It was a fruitful exchange, as Mr. Hargude described it: Lashkar plied Mr. Shaikh with $750 to $900 a month through informal money transfer networks, while Mr. Shaikh sent potential Indian recruits for training. Mr. Hargude said all five men confessed to meeting Mr. Cheema between 2002 and 2005 at a training camp near the town of Bahawalpur.

Anand Giridharadas contributed reporting from the International Herald Tribune for this article.

Read more at : Suspects in Mumbai Bombings Confess Ties to Pakistani Militants - New York Times

India may decline Negroponte's $100 laptop program

India may decline Negroponte's $100 laptop program
John Ribeiro

India may not go in for the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program led by Nicholas Negroponte, which aims to deliver laptops priced at US$100 to school students, according to reports this week in Indian media.

India's education secretary Sudeep Banerjee is reported to have written last month to the country's Planning Commission that the case for giving a computer to every single child is pedagogically suspect, and may actually be detrimental to the growth of creative and analytical abilities of the child, according to a report this week in The Times of India, the country's largest newspaper.

Banerjee was not available to comment on these reports as he is currently "on tour".

In the letter to the Planning Commission, cited by the newspaper, Banerjee wrote that if the Planning Commission has the kind of money that would be required for the OLPC scheme, it would be appropriate to utilize it for spreading secondary education in the country, for which a concept paper has been lying with the Planning Commission for approval since November last year.

"We need classrooms and teachers more urgently than fancy tools," Banerjee wrote. This is a view held by a number of government agencies and nongovernmental organizations (NGO) who hold that the focus on taking technology to India's poor overlooks other key requirements like water, food, and basic education of the country's deprived sections.

The OLPC is a nonprofit organization in Cambridge, Massachusetts, set up to research and develop a $100 laptop that is to be distributed to children through government initiatives. The low-cost Linux laptop initiative was first announced by Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of the OLPC, in January last year, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Negroponte is on leave from his position as director of the MIT Media Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

If India backs out of the OLPC project, this will be the second time Negroponte encounters a set back in India. In 2003, MIT Media Laboratory pulled out of Media Laboratory Asia, set up in 2001 in collaboration with the Indian government to take technology to India's rural masses. The Indian government cited differences of opinion over the focus of the lab.

Read more at : India may decline Negroponte's $100 laptop program

Kurukshetra kid fights for life on B'Day : HindustanTimes.com

5-year-old boy falls into pit in Kurukshetra
Press Trust of India, Kurukshetra, July 23, 2006

As little Prince fights to keep alive more than 40 hours after he fell into a 60-feet-deep pit in this Haryana district, he is unaware that Sunday happens to also be his birthday.

Prince turns five on July 23, his anxious mother Karamjit said as rescuers tried frantically to dig a parallel tunnel to bring out the boy.

"I don't know when this ordeal will end," she said. Prince fell into the one-foot-wide pit on Friday evening while playing with friends

Karamjit said she was anxiously waiting for her son to come back.

It would be like a re-birth for him once he is rescued, said a villager, one of the hundreds who have gathered at the site at Hatheri village near Shahbad town of Kurukshetra to witness the mammoth rescue efforts.

A team of eight doctors is monitoring Prince's health through a closed-circuit TV camera lowered into the pit with a rope.

The doctor in-charge of the medical team said that the boy seemed fine despite being trapped for over 41 hours. He said that the boy was able to eat and drink Sunday morning and that was a positive sign.

With the news of the rescue operation spreading like wild fire, nearly 10,000 people, mostly from adjoining villages, reached the spot.

The police had to resort to mild cane charge to keep people at bay as they tried to get closer to the well where the boy was trapped.

Read more at : Kurukshetra kid fights for life on B'Day : HindustanTimes.com