It is time to upgrade to something for  modern and secure…

Leading social networking website, Facebook has announced that it is going to end support for Internet Explorer 6. Though only the chat function will be affected, this move is an indication as to why it is time to upgrade to something more secure–Internet Explorer 7, 8 or Firefox 3.X.

Facebook made the announcement on the official blog. Many new web technologies make use of the features supported by modern browsers. These may not work properly on older browsers. Facebook came to the decision after evaluating alternative options and concluding that the best chat experience would be possible only with modern browsers.

Many users still use Internel Explorer 6–which is almost 10 years old. Internet Explorer 8 was launched around 18 months ago and has become the most widely used browser. IE6 is at the second place, but its use is slowly declining as users are upgrading their browsers or buying new computers with Windows 7.

The main reason why you should upgrade to newer browsers from IE6 is not because its lack of support for modern technologies, but because it has security vulnerabilities. IE6 was designed almost 10 years ago when the computer-security scenario was completely different. IE6 lacks modern security features such as Data Execution Prevention (DEP) and Protected Mode (PMIE). This makes IE6 more vulnerable to intrusion attacks.

Microsoft is getting ready to launch the next version of Internet Explorer–IE9. A beta version will soon be available. Facebook has announced its support for the new version of IE which comes with better security and other features.

A study indicates that teenagers who are addicted to the Internet are more likely to suffer from depression. Pathological Internet use has been associated with mental problems ever since the Internet became a popular medium in the 1990s. However, conclusive studies were lacking to prove this.

The study was conducted by Lawrence Lam of the School of Medicine, Sydney and Zi-Pen Weng of the Ministry of Education and Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou. It involved 1000 teenagers who were assessed for mental depression and anxiety-related disorders.

Around 6% or 62 teenagers were found to be pathologically addicted to the Internet. After 9 months, they were reassessed for depression and anxiety-related issues. It was found that depression and anxiety-related issues were two and a half times more likely in teenagers who were addicted to the Internet.

The results of the study were published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

VIA: Times of India/The Daily Mail

India has unveiled its latest supercomputer—‘Annapurna’ at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMSc), Chennai. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) Chairman Srikumar Banerjee unveiled ‘Annapurna’ at a function at the IMSc.

The supercomputer is India’s third faster high-performance computation cluster with 1.5 TB of memory and 30 TB of storage capacity. The other two Indian high-performance supercomputers are located at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai.

If you are thinking of buying a virtual puppy on Facebook, you better do it fast because Facebook has announced that it soon be closing the Gift Shop on August 1st.

Users who have already received gifts purchased from the store will still see them on their profiles after the shop is shutdown, but new gifts will no longer be available. Facebook believes that this move will encourage developers to concentrate on the next generation of site features.

Jared Morgenstern,  product manager for games and credits at Facebook, stated:

"Closing the Gift Shop may disappoint many of the people who have given millions of gifts, but we made the decision after careful thought about where we need to focus our product development efforts. We’ll be able to focus more on improving and enhancing products and features that people use every day, such as Photos, News Feed, Inbox, games, comments, the “Like” button and the Wall."

Facebook will definitely lose some revenue from the move. Back in 2008, the virtual gift shop fetched the company $35 million. Facebook will probably introduce some other features that will compensate for the revenue loss. The global market for virtual items will reach $10 billion this year. And so this move may sound surprising to some.