World: r3wp

I think I can help here (I'm about to have another patent awarded 
in fact that touches on this same area).


First, we all have to laugh here that what the patent covers is that 
data is sent in a format that is OPEN and STANDARD.  XML falls under 
this definition.


From the description “Any program or procedure which needs to format 
or understand the document must know all of the special codes and 
be able to correctly separate them from the content. All routines 
which work with the document must have exactly the same model of 
how the embedded codes are formatted or placed. If any operation 
misinterprets the code sequence even slightly, or mistakes content 
for formatting, the document or a part thereof will be reduced to 
meaninglessness. “


In other words guys, this group is suing Microsilly for FINALLY playing 
nice with everyone else.   This is the purist form of irony ever, 
and I love it.


I agree with the judge.   The problem now is...is there prior art? 
 This is 1994.  Permit me to make something clear, they are not claiming 
that showing something like XML is the scope of the patent, even 
WordPerfect would should you something like XML if you asked to “reveal 
codes”, but in fact it was stored internally in some odd format (just 
like word).  The move to storing the data in this standardized way, 
and showing it in the same way, might indeed by unqiue.  The language 
for storing it has to be standard itself, this self referencing part 
is what makes this tricky.

My understanding of it is they had some black beads and some red 
beads mixed in a pile. The "invention" was to separate the red beads 
and the black beads.

so, is this like combining an XSD with an XML document ?

separately they're okay?

I wish MS would become against software patents just because of this... 
and then we finally get rid of them. ;) (or, make them work correctly 
- patent lasts 5 years, MUST include working source code, and when 
patent expires that source code becomes "free")

I suspect this case might have been set up by Microsoft, to justify 
changing format of their docs. Surely if MS wanted to win this one 
they could have.

... a conspiracy theory? :-)

A conspiracy theory.

Catch it 8) , twitter's rebol news http://toriseye.quodis.com/#rebol

http://www.yikebike.com/

expensive bikes !

can a bike be called "revolutionary" ??

Lovely! 8))

yeah. what happens if you have to brake hard?

See the FAQ

Intertesting idea -- hope it succeeds, and the price drops by an 
order of magnitude!

Max speed is stated as 20KPH -- not a very high speed for a bicycle. 
So hard braking unlikely to be a problem.

Needing to use a backpack (no attachable panniers) will be a drawback 
for commuters / shoppers.

Interesting looking, but their FAQ is a bit off in at least one place: 
 20 KPH (about 12 MPH) might be slow, but it is fast enough for wind 
resistance to become an issue because your entire torso is spread 
sitting up, making it catch much more air.  Also, since sitting up 
gives you a higher center of gravity than leaning forward as on a 
normal bike, it seems less stable to me...


Then again, I rollerblade rather than bike, so I don't know much 
about the Center of Gravity on bikes, but my wind resistance comment 
comes from leaning forward at around 15 MPH and still having issues 
with the wind throwing my balance.

Nothing to stop you from curling up .... but this mode of transport 
seems designed for urban use.

BTW, I think "yike" is short for "Yikes!!" which is what you say 
when you see the price :)

..............uh.............. so who exactly is this bike for...

Have any of you been OUTISDE and looked around?

http://www.thegiantnapkin.com/images/fatpeople walking.jpg

It's priced in Euros ... let me see ... where do they use Euros ?

Looks like they'll also be sellng in NZ too.  I wonder if my dog 
would mind if I used a NZ$7000 bike to '"walk" him ...

so it's the beginning of how people end up in Wall-E.

I guess on the one hand, it's a replacement for scooters - they look 
nimble and the fold-up feature is convenient (no parking!). As a 
cyclist, I appreciate the exercise, but sometimes miss the convenience 
of being lazy - I'd give it a try as a backup, but I think in the 
'States a scooter offers more range, versatility and presence...

This device will be never successful, and is even dangerous. Normally, 
when you drive, you have your hands in front of you, not behind of 
you. When there will be any road-block in front of you, you will 
reflectively put your hands in front of you, to cover your head, 
body, whatever. This is really only a jewelery, not a real bike ....

Having read the FAQ now,  this looks critical:
    <Currently the YikeBike can travel a distance of 9 - 10 Km.>
That's way too short to be of use to many people.

Making it really a urban city transport. How far can the Segway travel?

Did you notice the Green slogan? How does it gets its power? ;-)

I'm not so worried about travel distance for most electric vehicles. 
The cool thing is that it won't take much to replace the batteries 
with better ones eventually. The motor remains the same. With the 
development of graphene batteries, it sounds like we can increase 
battery life to at least twice as much, perhaps 4 times.

I am an urban city bicycle commuter.

I'd need a minimum range of 15Km a day.  And I'd want 30km for flexibility.

Also, I suspect the range is dependent on the weather [FAQ says <the 
YikeBike works best in mild climates>] so the actual range would 
be less than the quoted 9-10km for anyone outside of summer conditions. 
That's one of the issues that sunk the Sinclar C5.


Power ..... The FAQ implies it is powered from the electicity mains. 
Average cost EUR0.10 per recharge. Now, if you could set it up as 
a static bike and recharge it by pedalling....

So unless the electric power come from a windmill or similar, it's 
not really green.

What sunk the C5 was that they were invisible!  Too low in the road.

It's like the danish "Ellert":
http://www.ellert.info/


I see them a seldom time on the danish roads. They're not a big success.

They should concentrate on this:
http://www.moller.com/
;-)

http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2009/Sep/0039.html

Vista/Win 7 users should probably read this.

-> Humour ;-)

Well Win-7 is not yet there, so use-on-own-risk but Vista is there. 
That's really a cool one.

Haiku OS alpha 1 released. So when is R3 going to be ready for it? 
:-)

http://www.haiku-os.org/

runs pretty OK. seems similar to BeOS, but not much new.

ClarkConnect (some of us use it) renamed to ClearOS - http://www.clearfoundation.com/ClearOS-Overview/clearos-overview.html

Google releases Chrome 3.0 - http://www.osnews.com/story/22170/Google_Releases_Chrome_3

Funny, I have and have been using v3 and did not know...atleast I 
did not notice any big differences or know when it was updated..

you see, chrome's release channel system is EXACTLY what I explained 
R3's should be.  separate channels releasing versions independently.

ah, I thought that Max could support the model :-) But - some users 
do ask - what's really new? Google adding few tidbits and raising 
product main version number?

new "whole" versions are often changes deep inside the kernel and 
invisible on the surface.  they probably added support for things 
like html 5 and video, etc.

like FF 3.5

but I'm just speculating.

the iphone can now bragg about having bad applications  :-)

http://www.osnews.com/comments/22161

Google is doing the continuous improvement model, a good one if you 
can afford to autoupdate without prompting. We can't.

Maxim, they already do brag about having bad applications, except 
they call them "apps" for short :)

hahaha