DigitMemo.com

Annoying someone via the Internet is now a federal crime.

It’s no joke. Last Thursday, President Bush signed into law a prohibition on posting annoying Web messages or sending annoying e-mail messages without disclosing your true identity.

In other words, it’s OK to flame someone on a mailing list or in a blog as long as you do it under your real name. Thank Congress for small favors, I guess.

This ridiculous prohibition, which would likely imperil much of Usenet, is buried in the so-called Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act. Criminal penalties include stiff fines and two years in prison.

Click for more on Create an e-annoyance, go to jail »

Not all features will get integrated, but still fun to check them out.

With Windows still managing to find its way to over 95 percent of the desktop computers sold each year, it’s not surprising that one can find plenty of people interested in giving their feedback about what future versions of Windows should be able to do. A few years ago, before Windows Vista had even shipped, Microsoft sent out a wish list form asking people what features they would like to see in the next version of Windows, currently code-named Windows 7. The top wished-for features in this list were recently leaked to the public and have popped up at various sites (e.g., Neowin). While anonymous sources at Microsoft tell us that they bear no relationship to the actual feature set Microsoft is currently writing for Windows 7, the list does provide interesting insight into what the Windows-using public most wants from Windows.

Click for more on Windows 7 "top feature request list" leaked to the public »

Although Apple is closing security holes with the update, hackers have kept opening up the devices.

Apple has released, only through their iTunes application, a 1.1.2 system update for the iPhone and the iPod Touch.

This addressed an “ImageIO” vulnerability that could allow the execution of malicious code through the viewing of a doctored TIFF image, according to Apple. The malicious TIFF image could cause a buffer overflow that could either crash an application or run code, according to Apple’s technical note on the issue. But in real life, its used to jailbreak iPod and iPhone.

Click for more on Apple Updates iPod Touch and iPhone »

A new Vista SP1 beta handed out to beta testers.

Mike Walker: To give you guys a sneak peek at the SP1 build. I just installed Vista SP1 with zero issues. The upgrade process seamless and took approx. an hour. There was only one concern however. My box was waiting for about 20 minutes to shut down. Other than that, all goodness.

I have noticed a huge difference in performance of my machine, it’s like someone injected an espresso into my Vista! This is my first day using so I’ll be sure to check back in to let you guys and gals know how things are going.
Some of these new features that are under the covers that screen shots will not be able to show you:

Click for more on Vista SP1 v.658 First Impressions »

Just like the good folks promised, the early look software development kit for Google’s soon-to-be huge phone OS has hit the streets… er, internet. From what we can tell, the OS is as comfortable on larger, VGA devices as it is on more traditional smartphone layouts. Oh yeah… and it plays Quake. Here’s what we know the software will support out of the box:

• Touchscreen
• 3G
• Webkit-based browser
• Optimized Java runtime layer (known as Dalvik Virtual Machine)
• Threaded text messaging
• MPEG-4, h.264, MP3, and AAC file formats
• Accelerated 3D graphics

Click for more on Google’s Android OS early look SDK now available »

Still few hours from the official release, Wired.com has managed to get the new Zune 2.

Microsoft was kind enough to drop off an 8GB and 80GB to Gadget Lab headquarters a few days ago and we’ve got all the unboxing photos for you to scope out. Scroll down to see ‘em all.

• Better building materials (glass screen instead of plastic.)
• Retooled controls (bye-bye scroll wheel, hello 4-way touchpad.)
• More native video codecs for h.264 and MPEG-4.
• Synchronization of video from your Media Center PC.
• Wi-Fi sync to a host computer.

Click for more on Zune 2 Has Landed: A First Look »

IBM Blue Gene takes the crown…again

A system created by IBM and the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore Lab hits 478.2 trillion calculations per second. IBM and the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif., took top supercomputer honors.

The IBM Blue Gene/L system installed at the DOE research facility, runs at 478.2 teraflops or 478.2 trillion calculations per second, earning it the most powerful system on the Top 500 Super Computer list, which is published twice annually by the University of Mannheim, Germany, the University of Tennessee and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center’s Lawrence-Berkeley National Laboratory. It was released at the International Supercomputer Conference’s in Reno, Nev.

Click for more on IBM Takes Top Supercomputer Honors Again »

The planned launch of Intel’s Penryn processors on Monday is the first blow in a one-two punch that might stagger AMD heading into 2008.

Just a few months after the launch of AMD’s quad-core Barcelona chips, Intel is hitting back with Penryn, now known as the Xeon 5400 family of processors. A total of 15 server chips are set to launch Monday as well as a new Core 2 Extreme desktop processor, with Penryn chips for mainstream desktops and notebooks scheduled to launch in the first quarter of next year.

Penryn is essentially a shrink of the Core architecture that brought Intel out of the woods in 2006. But these are also the company’s first chips to use Intel’s 45-nanometer manufacturing technology, and they will usher in the first change to the basic properties of the transistor since the 1960s.

Click for more on Penryn released: Intel Unveils 16 45nm Processors »

Dream finally becomes reality: use vanilla OS X kernel on normal PCs.

This might not be sth. new to some readers as the patch was initially released few days ago. The newest version as of today is v5.1, which includes various bug fixes and multiboot support.  Again, as the previous installation guide, this is also based my very own experience and not a simple duplication of the readme.

All credits go to netkas(who made this patch), def(for multiboot), Turbo and everyone works on the osx86 scene.

Update 1: Fixed a mistake in the tutorial  which will cause “endless reboot loop”. Sorry for everyone who encounter this issue!

Update 2: The EFI patch has been confirmed to work with current 10.4.11/10.5.1 update. Many hackintosh users have enjoyed the same update experience as genuine MAC users.

Update 3: Download in this guide updates to the latest pc_efi version, which is v5.1 as of today(11/17). Link to ToH kernel is also updated.

What is EFI and why is this “patch”?

The Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) is a specification that defines a software interface between an operating system and platform firmware.

EFI is intended as a significantly improved replacement of the old legacy BIOS firmware interface historically used by all IBM PC compatible PCs. But as of today, most PCs running Microsoft Windows still rely on BIOS, while Intel based Macs, since the day one, are using EFI. Despite the technical advantage, this is more like an artificial barrier to prevent normal PCs running OS X.

Ironically, Microsoft Windows support BIOS only, and Apple makes Boot camp to fill the gap. The EFI patch works in a similar approach: it emulates EFI data for normal BIOS-based PCs and let OS X treat them as genuine EFI-based Macs.

The EFI emulation is a long dream in OSX86 community, but prior to this, thanks the Apple’s open source Darwin Project and those Hackintosh gurus, we can still enjoy OS X on normal PCs, with patched kernels/kernel modules which just bypass EFI. Now with the EFI patch, the hackintosh can boot off VANILLA UNMODIFIED OS X kernel and use  vanilla kexts, which gives a more clean room and great peace of mind for future system updates.

Click for more on HowTo: Install EFI patch and Use Unmodified OS X Kernel in Hackintosh »

Backup over NAS

Although we’ve been mostly happy with Leopard, one of the features we were most looking forward to was the ability to set Time Machine to use a NAS volume like Airport Disk, thus making laptop backups wireless and sexy (well, sort of sexy) instead of wired and cumbersome. Sadly, Apple cut the feature at the last minute, but as with all things OS X, nirvana is usually just a defaults write command away, so just pop open a terminal window and enter:



defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

and you should be able to select NAS volumes in the Time Machine prefs. Of course, you should only re-enable this for giggles — we don’t know why Apple turned it off to begin with, and it could very well be full of bugs and hose your data. Considering some of the other glitches that have cropped up in Time Machine, we’d actually recommend staying well away from this one.