lotzmana - Slashdot User

Realtek's Wireless Driver Drives Thoughts of an Apple Netbook 136

Posted by timothy on Tuesday December 16, 2008 @10:47AM from the can't-get-there-from-here-in-cupertino dept.

Slatterz writes "With Macworld 2009 mere weeks away, one rumour that seemingly won't die is the idea of a Mac OS X Netbook PC. Asking a company to provide OS X drivers for their netbooks has, up until now, been met with silence, and probably a little quaking on the vendor side as they wait for the heavy footsteps of Apple's army of lawyers. It seems, however, that Realtek, who provide the WiFi chip found in the MSI Wind U100, are dipping their toes into the legally iffy world of the Hackintosh. Forum users at MSIWind.Net asked politely for drivers, and after a lot of patience, Beta drivers were provided."

Comment it doesn't have to be covered by the government (Score 1) 607

by lotzmana on Tuesday August 05, 2008 @04:01PM (#24485627) Attached to: Your Medical Treatment History Is For Sale

System could be set up which is not part from the government. It has to have element of solidarity, this doesn't inherently come from it being the government: sicker people are subsidized by healthier individuals. Every body pays into this system and it can be separate from government taxes. This could be a solid finance base on top of which one can impose voluntary insurance for extra benefits -- getting better room, color TV, etc. while in hospital.

If it is separate is could be better managed. And there could be more focused pressure on eliminating waste and demanding better prices from hospitals and other providers. I feel it will be less so if money come from the general pool of collected taxes. It will also be more cleanly delineated on your pay check as a separate item.

Submission + - KDE 4.0 Beta 1 Released (kde.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 02, 2007 @04:22PM

An anonymous reader writes: August 2, 2007 (The INTERNET). The KDE Community is happy to announce the immediate availability of the first Beta release for KDE 4.0. This release marks the beginning of the integration process which will bring the powerful new technologies included in the now frozen KDE 4 libraries to the applications. Almost two months after the foundations of KDE 4 have been laid with the first alpha, KDE enters the stage of a full freeze of the library interface. From now on, the applications will focus on integrating the new technology refined during the last months, and the library developers will try to fix all bugs found during this process. No new applications will enter the official KDE modules and usability and accessibility work is of course an ongoing process. In the following weeks KDE developers will be able to add features to their applications until the next beta is released and the application features will be frozen as well.

Submission + - Amazon documents delivered in 1-Click patent fight

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 14, 2007 @04:48PM

An anonymous reader writes: The Campaigner behind attempts to invalidate Amazon.com's controversial '1-Click' payment patent has gained access to Amazon's filings at the US Patent Office and still believes he has a case."According to the Code of Federal Regulations Amazon.com are supposed to give me a copy of everything they file-but they have made a habit of not doing so," said Calveley on his blog. "I had to call the USPTO and persuade them to remind Amazon of the rules so finally Amazon mailed me a copy of the documents." "Amazon have also filed a number of documents attesting to the commercial effectiveness and advantages of 'One click shopping'," wrote Calveley. "Perhaps they are intending to make some of the old arguments along the lines of: 'Nobody thought it would be successful — but it was — so it must be non-obvious!' and 'Look how commercially successful it is — it must be non-obvious!' etc." "I thought they might try some of these tactics, so in my request for re-examination, I have already pointed out that there were a lot of other reasons Amazon had commercial success — its customization features (for which Pinpoint Incorporated unsuccessfully sued Amazon for patent infringement), the number of books in stock, the general growth of the Internet and e-commerce etc." Calveley also discovered that Amazon had included in its submissions definitions backing its arguments that were not only gathered years after the relevant period, but from an unreliable source, collaborative encyclopaedia Wikipedia. Amazon's patent filing dates from 1997, and Calveley says that he has evidence from the press that the DigiCash and other systems were up and running before that. If 'prior art' — technology or inventions performing the function of a patent before the registration of that patent — is found then a patent becomes invalid.

Submission + - Linux reversible debugger achieves 2.0 release

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 14, 2007 @04:44PM

An anonymous reader writes: UndoDB is a debugger for Linux that can step programs backwards as well as forwards. A powerful concept, but it has only now gained support for programs that use threads and signals. Jacob Rideout, a KDE developer, says of his experience using UndoDB: "I found the idea of [the] product amazing and a boon to my productivity ... I already have been able to fix a deadlock that was driving me crazy for a week in only 10 minutes". Full story on linuxdevices.com. The software isn't open source, but it can be used for free (as in beer) for non-commercial use.

Slashdot Top Deals