Author: M3 Sweatt

MSNBC has a series on “The Digital Life” (note: it does not feature any hotel heiress TV icons), a look at new technology for the home, from your garage to the kitchen and the backyard.

This week the installment is on the digital bath, and although it doesn’t offer any helpful information or recommendations on how to wire your room with sound coming from a streaming media player in the living room, it does offer a look at how you might get a snide comment or two from small appliances:

“Connected via the Internet, the [health monitor] devices have small LCD screens that ask questions — “How are you feeling today?” — and then prompt the patient through whatever testing procedure is appropriate, such as taking blood sugar or testing lung function. The device asks more questions about how the patient is feeling and then sends on the results of the “visit” to the doctor for follow up.”

Oh, well.

EWeek has an interesting article on the Secret Service’s Operation Rolling Stone, the fed’s latest effort to fight cyber-crimes.

One of the things that the article highlights is that it’s not just high-tech investigative techniques that crack the case: often, it’s the crook’s own stupidity that helps the investigators.

For instance, the feds convinced one suspect to be paid by Western Union rather than PayPal, tagging them for wire fraud. And another suspect provided his real name for payment.

“… another defendant who went through great pains to keep his credit card creation company efforts secret, but proceeded to buy much of his equipment publicly on eBay—using the same name he used for deceptions. Correction: He changed one letter. (Second note to cyber-bandits in training: This is not a job for the lazy.)”

Click here to read more about Operation Rolling Stone.

Tom’s Hardware Guide posted an article today on “How capable is a ‘Vista-capable’ PC?” In it, the author collected information from various reports and specs from across Microsoft and outlines the hardware requirements for different Windows Vista hardware configurations that meet the logos requirements:

Tom’s reported…

“The Windows Vista Capable PC Program,” a spokesperson for Microsoft told TG Daily late yesterday, “is a program that will provide information to customers about PCs they can buy today that will be able to run the next version of Microsoft Windows operating system.  PCs with the Windows Vista Capable logo will ensure the best possible computing experience today, while helping create a seamless transition to Windows Vista.”

As I mentioned over the weekend re: the Windows Vista Capable PC Program, I’ll stick by my plans for new machines, but add an additional 1GB of RAM and at a minimum a 128MB graphics card that supports DirectX 9.0L… ‘though I’ll consider a reasonable 256MB card. 

Tags: Microsoft, Windows, Vista.