Mind you, I apparently have an old-fashioned view about these things. I believe that two wrongs don't make a right.
That is an old-fashioned view. With modern global economics, you can take one of those wrongs and invest it in a company in a third-world country for a few weeks while bribing a few warlords with the other wrong to let that company succeed. Tell the warlords that each other stole the smaller wrong. Trade the inflated wrong investment to a small bank for a share in a mortgage debt, showing its rapid growth, then immediately sell the mortgage debt as a promise of future money in exchange for money now to another bank. Take your money, and fund a charity, then use the resulting good PR as a right.
And you still have a wrong left.
Alternatively, simply declare that attacking others is a basic human right. Then your wrongs are automatically right!
Not so much automatically, but I doubt it'd happen with much less frequency than our current system. Science is incomplete, and provably so. The inherent missing knowledge will always be exploited by the politicians with their agendas, but because the conclusions were reached using science, they're held as being more infallible.
Currently, laws are simply expected to be somehow wrong from the beginning, and politicians can always claim ignorance and change position with public opinion.
I chose the racism link specifically for you. At several times throughout history, the leading theories suggested a biological difference in races (beyond appearance), which was perverted by politicians to mean that one race was superior to others. In a think-tank legislature, I fear the suggestions of science lend credibility to untested conclusions, and we would see an equal amount of, if not more, ill-founded policies.
If the inevitable allegations of bribery, bias, inadequate research, and experimental failure can be avoided, that's a technocracy. It has its own failures.
We also have private citizens, with no law background, writing our laws. One of the biggest employers in my hometown didn't like the exact wording of a law being considered in the city council, so he sent a letter to a councilman with a suggested replacement that had the same effect in spirit, but with better side effects. That's lobbying. That's also shady and underhanded in some opinions, because the councilman was already an acquaintance of the employer. That's also corrupt in some opinions, because the letter eventually led to a lunch meeting (the employer bought) where they discussed the impact of the new wording and how it would affect local business. The end result was that neither the original nor the employer's wording was eventually passed, but the employer's concerns were addressed anyway.
All this for the width of a sidewalk.
This is exactly what the US was founded on. The people with interest in the laws should be represented by the lawmakers. They should be free to petition their representatives for what they want, but have no guarantee of getting their way.
If you want to gather a group of friends to work out a proposal for a law, and review existing history to determine the issue's precedent, and get the legal education to use the correct words to express the intended meaning, and make the phone calls and connections to get the representative's attention, you are absolutely free to do so. Good luck. You could, of course, also just hire a professional lobbyist who already knows the representatives personally, and has already scheduled meetings well in advance, and can do the work for you.
I've worked with regulators firsthand before, and I personally have seen more misinformation than actual corruption. Now, there is lots of money floating around, but there's so much from all sides that the money doesn't matter much. Rather, the important thing is how well a point is made during the lunch/dinner/lapdance that the various representatives are paying for.
Silly things like facts, numbers, and side-by-side comparisons are rarely seen. Science is left at the door. Instead, the party is surrounded by fallacies, lies, and appeals to emotion.
The move toward having smartphones as a primary mechanism for knowledge can't come fast enough, in my opinion.
Your agreement said that you couldn't perform the same job for six months after leaving.
For a direct competitor. Let's say I was a software developer for a photographic lab. I could go across the street and be a developer for a healthcare provider, with no contractual problems. The contract language was written so as to give a bit more protection against having someone poached because of the secrets they held, rather than their abilities. I think that's a reasonable goal.
BTW having now read TFA it clearly states that the anti-poaching agreements prevented the companies from hiring each others workers even if they voluntarily applied for the position.
And that's bad.
When they are trying to recruit the talent from the other company they are also offering them a higher salary. This results in increasing average salaries in that profession. That is good for pretty much everyone. If Initech is paying their employees a generous wage and benefit package then Initrode won't have much luck.
Which means that Microsoft, Apple, and Google are now untouchable, because they can offer far higher salaries than any small local company, without making much of a dent in their giant cash reserves. I'm not suggesting preventing companies from competing, but just force competition into the public space. I'd like regulation of no-poach agreements to encourage hiring based on a person's knowledge and expertise, rather than where they last worked. Competing companies can offer a higher salary for a position, but it should be advertised, and open to anyone qualified.
...force those employees to develop their skills but keep them at a salary in the ballpark of their entry level skill set even though they now possess a skill set worth far more.
The employee should realize that they're worth more, and should (in an ideal magical world of unicorns, happiness, and competent government officials) not be prevented from voluntarily going elsewhere with their valuable skills.
In my opinion, the agreements shouldn't prevent Apple from hiring a Google employee (or even offering a great deal)
Except... that's what they do.
And that's bad.
I'm not saying companies shouldn't have to keep employees happy, just that they shouldn't need to worry (much) about competitors attacking their talent directly and specifically. Attacks like that (mixed with overprotective managers, who may very well otherwise be decent managers) lead to environments with no email access, mandatory recorded phone conversations, excessive claims of trade secrets, and the like. I think it's better that a company make itself more attractive in public, because that means that issues besides salary become a bigger part of the hiring process. At the moment, there's a few organizations I'd work for below minimum wage, just because I like what they're working on and want to be a part of it.
I'd rather see regulation of no-poach agreements, to limit the attacks companies can launch against each other. I'd like the government to mandate that hiring is perfectly fine, regardless of any no-poach contract, but advertising jobs directly to a competitor is determined by the agreement.
As usual, I see two ways to approach the problem. There's the free-market solution, where everyone is expected to be selfish and nasty and the few who survive can't get strong enough to kill each other off. Then there's the regulation solution, where the government steps in and forces the corporate "children" to play nice and share. I prefer the latter, but it does assume responsible "parenting". I'm an optimist.
I'll define it by example, based on what I've seen firsthand: Initech was doing fairly well. Initrode wasn't doing so well, but had some new projects they were starting. Initrode sent letters to everybody they could contact as Initech, trying to recruit Initech's talent as their own. To me, that's the bad part of poaching, because it's clearly intended to specifically hurt competitors, and it cuts the public out of the chance to apply.
I personally haven't had much experience under non-compete contracts, but the ones I have used have been fairly limited in their scope. The widest one I've had prevented me from working in an equal role at any competitor in the same market. As that was explained to me, I could work tech support, database support, QA, or the like at a competitor, but not as a plain old "software developer". That agreement was also for only 6 months, so it didn't bother me much. Personally, I'm okay with contracts like that. I'm sure there are far worse out there, but I don't know how common they are.
Just like with unions, problems aren't a reason to reject the notion entirely. Regulate them, instead.
I'd like to see enforced regulation of no-poach agreements. Sure, you can prevent others from hiring people who quit your workplace - but you'll need to keep paying them after they leave, regardless of why they left. If your company's talent and secrets are worth enough that you'll screw up someone's career, they should be worth throwing a bit of money after.
Yes, it'll annoy the free-market crowd here, but I'm generally in favor of more regulation everywhere - as long as it's determined by competent regulators who understand the field they're working with.
The no-poach agreements reduce the stress on a company that has talent but, in the short term, isn't as desirable as somewhere else. In my opinion, the agreements shouldn't prevent Apple from hiring a Google employee (or even offering a great deal), but rather just from advertising jobs specifically to them because they're at Google. In the long term, employees who are dissatisfied enough will leave eventually. They know the jobs are out there.
That's one of those issues where whether it's liberal or not depends on your perspective on other things.
On the one hand, respect for personal liberty would mean that you should be free and unrestricted to use whatever substances you want on/in your own body. On the other hand, cigarettes and alcohol (abuse) raise healthcare and other costs for the rest of society. Some Democrats believe that personal liberty is more important, and some Democrats believe that a lower cost of living is more important. The same dilemma is present in the recent (and current) health insurance debates. Some Democrats believe the freedom to choose one's own insurance (or none) is more important, and some Democrats believe the lower costs for everyone (brought on by having a giant insurance group) are more important.
These are issues where the left-right political spectrum is ridiculously inadequate.
Agreed. The purpose of copyright is to encourage creation of artistic or literary works. If someone's already created something, they don't need further encouragement.
I should have been clearer. Below a certain threshold, nobody except crackpots thinks that radiation causes common, serious problems, of such severity that the general population should be concerned or significantly alter their daily lives to avoid such situations. It is exactly like water in the lungs, where a thimble-full can lead to complications that lead to more complications that lead to death. As the AC below mentions, the effects at low doses are only statistical.
The report states that there is no 100% safe level of radiation. That should be common sense. However, we still should not overreact to a slightly-radioactive apartment any more than we should overreact to the dangers of the sun exploding tomorrow.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another round of Feed The Trolls! Tonight's episode looks to be particularly entertaining, as we have what appears to be a pair of mating Anonymous Cowards teaming up against our host, Sarten X! Now, as is customary, we'll give the first-round advantage to the Troll team...
This discussion obviously falls within the context of caching. Now you're just being disingenuous.
Stating that the formula is obviously exponential decay is apparently requisite for showing that I know what I'm talking about. Showing that removal from a cache isn't always because of new items coming in is "disingenuous". That's a double standard, being used for not one, but two ad hominem attacks to shy away from the real issue stated in the original post: that this patent covers a specific caching algorithm, and has practically nothing to do with Martin Luther King, Jr.
They work such that something that shouldn't be patented somehow got a patent. That needs to change.
Misdirection at its finest. What grants you the unquestioned ability to determine whether something gets a patent? Where is the proof that this should not get a patent? Is there any prior art demonstrating a cache system where the decisions are based on a priority queue, where priorities are decided by the exponential decay function?
There can be more than one way to get to the grocery store yet I may choose one specific route. Doesn't mean I now deserve a patent.
Actually, it does, if your route involves something novel and non-obvious, like using a rocket-powered jetpack to avoid traffic. Sure, every aeronautics engineer knows the principles of rocketry. Most local folks can tell you which direction the grocery store is in. Combining the rocketry and navigation in a novel way and making it work is, according to every bit of patent-related legislation since around the year 1500, worthy of a patent.
Well, those trolls still look pretty hungry, but we'll have to wait and see if they come back for more. Tune in next week as Sarten X takes on the Reddit karma-whores, with his controversial argument that pug puppies' cuteness is, in fact, deniable.
I'll try in the future (defined as a segment commencing from the current position in temporal dimensions continuing in the most common direction of travel) to include (by use of parenthetical notes relating tangentially to the point of discussion) every detail, with little (though some, for the sake of clarity and brevity) regard (which is similar to consideration, but differing in perspective and decision-making weight) to relevance (relation to the main topic of discussion) when posting (or submitting, transmitting, or conveying) to Slashdot (a news feed and discussion forum operated by GeekNet, Inc. featuring a primarily green appearance and focus on the "nerd" (relating to technology, pop culture, and science) culture (or the people who associate themselves with the "nerd" (relating to technology, pop culture, and science) stereotype (a widely held but fixed and oversimplified (made generic, or reduced to the point of inaccuracy) image (metaphorically, as people are physical (tangible, being comprised of matter) objects, not photographic (relating to recorded (not to be confused with a record, which is recorded audio, or a recorder, which is a musical instrument) pictures) images) or idea of a particular type of person or thing)).
That's much clearer now that every irrelevant detail is repeated, right?
The purpose of the chart is the same as my post: perspective. 1.6mSv in three months is not deadly, not really even dangerous, and should be seen only as a notification that there's something worth investigating, which is exactly why the annual limit is so low: so special resources can be used to investigate anything higher.
If the infant had a medical reason to get a CT scan each year, that condition is far more dangerous that the radiation from the scan itself. I'd wager the doctor would say to do it in that case.
Why not? It's still far below the threshold for any conclusively increased risk of cancer, and certainly less dangerous than other activities like driving, showering, or even cooking. Heck, getting a regular CT scan could spot the first signs of many serious diseases, so you'd be even safer!
I grew up a few miles from a nuclear plant. The smoke detectors in my last home used radioactive material (though I haven't checked these yet... maybe I'll do that today). I've visited a few particle accelerators, and worn plenty of dosimeters in my life. Yes, I would live there.
When something gets removed from cache it's to make room for something new to enter into cache.
Or to shut down a cache server to lower costs, or to prepare for a major operation using shared resources, or because the old item is known to be unneeded.
I mean, I can't even recognize exponential decay.
I did recognize it, but it's irrelevant that the particular formula is exponential decay. It could have been anything, and my point still stands: The patent is specific to the use of one particular method. In fact, if the patent were just about that particular formula modeling exponential decay, that'd be worse, since patents can't cover mathematical truths. You can't patent that 1+1=2, or e^(i(pi))+1=0. That's one of the basic arguments about software patents, since software reduces to mathematical algorithms. To argue that this patent is obvious because the formula used is well-known is like claiming a machine can't be patented because it uses a gear, and every mechanical engineer knows what a gear is.
I should Google search exponential decay and caching. So I did...
Yes, I did. I'm familiar with exponential decay. I'm familiar with caching. I have used both regularly in my 17 years of software engineering history. Until now, I have not monitored recent developments in the related theories, so there may very well be a famous paper from 2005 that I missed, that would describe this patented process specifically using decay to model growth. That would make this patent more obvious, but I see no such thing.
Stop guessing and hoping something sticks. It's not helping your position.
Stop being condescending and throwing ad hominem attacks like confetti. It's not helping your position.
At least show some indication that you put even a tiny bit of effort into knowing what you're talking about.
At least show some indication that you put even a tiny bit of effort into learning how patents work, and specifically that patents cover specific implementations, rather than just "use tool X on Y to get Z".
Stop further proving to us that those who hold your position are simply lazy and simply want to find ways to profit off of the hard work of others.
Stop further proving to us that those who hold your position are simply lazy and assume all patents are vague and obvious without understanding the specific implementation.
Google can't cache everything that gets searched, because that would drive up server costs. They can't just use the most recent queries, because some users will wait until the next commercial break, end of the show, or even the next morning at work to look it up. By following trends and (as the patent partially covers) assigning priorities to terms based on recent popularity, they can serve the fastest results to the most users.
Claims 1, 14, and 15 cover adding to the cache based on a priority queue, where the priority is determined partially by the event count from the formula. Eviction isn't mentioned in the claims, except as claim 13 where it is also stated that the implementation may or may not support removal from the priority queue used.
Short and simple, here's how the patented algorithm works:
Maintain a list of search terms. Each term has an event history.
When an event (search query) happens, add to the history, and recompute the cache priority. Priority follows the decay function.
Maintain a priority queue, where each term's place in the queue is determined by its computed priority.
Select a set of the top terms, and cache those.
It does not mention anything about maintaining a constant cache, removing old trends as they fall off, or reaching some threshold of being "already big". It is a specific method for assembling a cache from an event history according to a particular formula, which happens to be exponential decay.
A different formula (such as one that predicts rising trends, such as annual events or election terms) may be a further improvement, which would not be covered by this patent. If that resultant system were patented, though, it should likely include this patent as a reference, because they are so similar and the later work would be clearly based on this one.
Slashdot Mirror
Mind you, I apparently have an old-fashioned view about these things. I believe that two wrongs don't make a right.
That is an old-fashioned view. With modern global economics, you can take one of those wrongs and invest it in a company in a third-world country for a few weeks while bribing a few warlords with the other wrong to let that company succeed. Tell the warlords that each other stole the smaller wrong. Trade the inflated wrong investment to a small bank for a share in a mortgage debt, showing its rapid growth, then immediately sell the mortgage debt as a promise of future money in exchange for money now to another bank. Take your money, and fund a charity, then use the resulting good PR as a right.
And you still have a wrong left.
Alternatively, simply declare that attacking others is a basic human right. Then your wrongs are automatically right!
Why would anyone ever have to "share" backup files with anyone else.
Because it was really useful for collaborative projects.
Not so much automatically, but I doubt it'd happen with much less frequency than our current system. Science is incomplete, and provably so. The inherent missing knowledge will always be exploited by the politicians with their agendas, but because the conclusions were reached using science, they're held as being more infallible.
Currently, laws are simply expected to be somehow wrong from the beginning, and politicians can always claim ignorance and change position with public opinion.
I chose the racism link specifically for you. At several times throughout history, the leading theories suggested a biological difference in races (beyond appearance), which was perverted by politicians to mean that one race was superior to others. In a think-tank legislature, I fear the suggestions of science lend credibility to untested conclusions, and we would see an equal amount of, if not more, ill-founded policies.
If the inevitable allegations of bribery, bias, inadequate research, and experimental failure can be avoided, that's a technocracy. It has its own failures.
We also have private citizens, with no law background, writing our laws. One of the biggest employers in my hometown didn't like the exact wording of a law being considered in the city council, so he sent a letter to a councilman with a suggested replacement that had the same effect in spirit, but with better side effects. That's lobbying. That's also shady and underhanded in some opinions, because the councilman was already an acquaintance of the employer. That's also corrupt in some opinions, because the letter eventually led to a lunch meeting (the employer bought) where they discussed the impact of the new wording and how it would affect local business. The end result was that neither the original nor the employer's wording was eventually passed, but the employer's concerns were addressed anyway.
All this for the width of a sidewalk.
This is exactly what the US was founded on. The people with interest in the laws should be represented by the lawmakers. They should be free to petition their representatives for what they want, but have no guarantee of getting their way.
If you want to gather a group of friends to work out a proposal for a law, and review existing history to determine the issue's precedent, and get the legal education to use the correct words to express the intended meaning, and make the phone calls and connections to get the representative's attention, you are absolutely free to do so. Good luck. You could, of course, also just hire a professional lobbyist who already knows the representatives personally, and has already scheduled meetings well in advance, and can do the work for you.
I've worked with regulators firsthand before, and I personally have seen more misinformation than actual corruption. Now, there is lots of money floating around, but there's so much from all sides that the money doesn't matter much. Rather, the important thing is how well a point is made during the lunch/dinner/lapdance that the various representatives are paying for.
Silly things like facts, numbers, and side-by-side comparisons are rarely seen. Science is left at the door. Instead, the party is surrounded by fallacies, lies, and appeals to emotion.
The move toward having smartphones as a primary mechanism for knowledge can't come fast enough, in my opinion.
Your agreement said that you couldn't perform the same job for six months after leaving.
For a direct competitor. Let's say I was a software developer for a photographic lab. I could go across the street and be a developer for a healthcare provider, with no contractual problems. The contract language was written so as to give a bit more protection against having someone poached because of the secrets they held, rather than their abilities. I think that's a reasonable goal.
BTW having now read TFA it clearly states that the anti-poaching agreements prevented the companies from hiring each others workers even if they voluntarily applied for the position.
And that's bad.
When they are trying to recruit the talent from the other company they are also offering them a higher salary. This results in increasing average salaries in that profession. That is good for pretty much everyone. If Initech is paying their employees a generous wage and benefit package then Initrode won't have much luck.
Which means that Microsoft, Apple, and Google are now untouchable, because they can offer far higher salaries than any small local company, without making much of a dent in their giant cash reserves. I'm not suggesting preventing companies from competing, but just force competition into the public space. I'd like regulation of no-poach agreements to encourage hiring based on a person's knowledge and expertise, rather than where they last worked. Competing companies can offer a higher salary for a position, but it should be advertised, and open to anyone qualified.
...force those employees to develop their skills but keep them at a salary in the ballpark of their entry level skill set even though they now possess a skill set worth far more.
The employee should realize that they're worth more, and should (in an ideal magical world of unicorns, happiness, and competent government officials) not be prevented from voluntarily going elsewhere with their valuable skills.
In my opinion, the agreements shouldn't prevent Apple from hiring a Google employee (or even offering a great deal)
Except... that's what they do.
And that's bad.
I'm not saying companies shouldn't have to keep employees happy, just that they shouldn't need to worry (much) about competitors attacking their talent directly and specifically. Attacks like that (mixed with overprotective managers, who may very well otherwise be decent managers) lead to environments with no email access, mandatory recorded phone conversations, excessive claims of trade secrets, and the like. I think it's better that a company make itself more attractive in public, because that means that issues besides salary become a bigger part of the hiring process. At the moment, there's a few organizations I'd work for below minimum wage, just because I like what they're working on and want to be a part of it.
I'd rather see regulation of no-poach agreements, to limit the attacks companies can launch against each other. I'd like the government to mandate that hiring is perfectly fine, regardless of any no-poach contract, but advertising jobs directly to a competitor is determined by the agreement.
As usual, I see two ways to approach the problem. There's the free-market solution, where everyone is expected to be selfish and nasty and the few who survive can't get strong enough to kill each other off. Then there's the regulation solution, where the government steps in and forces the corporate "children" to play nice and share. I prefer the latter, but it does assume responsible "parenting". I'm an optimist.
I'll define it by example, based on what I've seen firsthand: Initech was doing fairly well. Initrode wasn't doing so well, but had some new projects they were starting. Initrode sent letters to everybody they could contact as Initech, trying to recruit Initech's talent as their own. To me, that's the bad part of poaching, because it's clearly intended to specifically hurt competitors, and it cuts the public out of the chance to apply.
I personally haven't had much experience under non-compete contracts, but the ones I have used have been fairly limited in their scope. The widest one I've had prevented me from working in an equal role at any competitor in the same market. As that was explained to me, I could work tech support, database support, QA, or the like at a competitor, but not as a plain old "software developer". That agreement was also for only 6 months, so it didn't bother me much. Personally, I'm okay with contracts like that. I'm sure there are far worse out there, but I don't know how common they are.
Just like with unions, problems aren't a reason to reject the notion entirely. Regulate them, instead.
I'd like to see enforced regulation of no-poach agreements. Sure, you can prevent others from hiring people who quit your workplace - but you'll need to keep paying them after they leave, regardless of why they left. If your company's talent and secrets are worth enough that you'll screw up someone's career, they should be worth throwing a bit of money after.
Yes, it'll annoy the free-market crowd here, but I'm generally in favor of more regulation everywhere - as long as it's determined by competent regulators who understand the field they're working with.
Personally, I'm inclined to agree.
The no-poach agreements reduce the stress on a company that has talent but, in the short term, isn't as desirable as somewhere else. In my opinion, the agreements shouldn't prevent Apple from hiring a Google employee (or even offering a great deal), but rather just from advertising jobs specifically to them because they're at Google. In the long term, employees who are dissatisfied enough will leave eventually. They know the jobs are out there.
That's one of those issues where whether it's liberal or not depends on your perspective on other things.
On the one hand, respect for personal liberty would mean that you should be free and unrestricted to use whatever substances you want on/in your own body. On the other hand, cigarettes and alcohol (abuse) raise healthcare and other costs for the rest of society. Some Democrats believe that personal liberty is more important, and some Democrats believe that a lower cost of living is more important. The same dilemma is present in the recent (and current) health insurance debates. Some Democrats believe the freedom to choose one's own insurance (or none) is more important, and some Democrats believe the lower costs for everyone (brought on by having a giant insurance group) are more important.
These are issues where the left-right political spectrum is ridiculously inadequate.
Agreed. The purpose of copyright is to encourage creation of artistic or literary works. If someone's already created something, they don't need further encouragement.
I should have been clearer. Below a certain threshold, nobody except crackpots thinks that radiation causes common, serious problems, of such severity that the general population should be concerned or significantly alter their daily lives to avoid such situations. It is exactly like water in the lungs, where a thimble-full can lead to complications that lead to more complications that lead to death. As the AC below mentions, the effects at low doses are only statistical.
The report states that there is no 100% safe level of radiation. That should be common sense. However, we still should not overreact to a slightly-radioactive apartment any more than we should overreact to the dangers of the sun exploding tomorrow.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another round of Feed The Trolls! Tonight's episode looks to be particularly entertaining, as we have what appears to be a pair of mating Anonymous Cowards teaming up against our host, Sarten X! Now, as is customary, we'll give the first-round advantage to the Troll team...
This discussion obviously falls within the context of caching. Now you're just being disingenuous.
Stating that the formula is obviously exponential decay is apparently requisite for showing that I know what I'm talking about. Showing that removal from a cache isn't always because of new items coming in is "disingenuous". That's a double standard, being used for not one, but two ad hominem attacks to shy away from the real issue stated in the original post: that this patent covers a specific caching algorithm, and has practically nothing to do with Martin Luther King, Jr.
They work such that something that shouldn't be patented somehow got a patent. That needs to change.
Misdirection at its finest. What grants you the unquestioned ability to determine whether something gets a patent? Where is the proof that this should not get a patent? Is there any prior art demonstrating a cache system where the decisions are based on a priority queue, where priorities are decided by the exponential decay function?
There can be more than one way to get to the grocery store yet I may choose one specific route. Doesn't mean I now deserve a patent.
Actually, it does, if your route involves something novel and non-obvious, like using a rocket-powered jetpack to avoid traffic. Sure, every aeronautics engineer knows the principles of rocketry. Most local folks can tell you which direction the grocery store is in. Combining the rocketry and navigation in a novel way and making it work is, according to every bit of patent-related legislation since around the year 1500, worthy of a patent.
Well, those trolls still look pretty hungry, but we'll have to wait and see if they come back for more. Tune in next week as Sarten X takes on the Reddit karma-whores, with his controversial argument that pug puppies' cuteness is, in fact, deniable.
[citation needed]
I'll try in the future (defined as a segment commencing from the current position in temporal dimensions continuing in the most common direction of travel) to include (by use of parenthetical notes relating tangentially to the point of discussion) every detail, with little (though some, for the sake of clarity and brevity) regard (which is similar to consideration, but differing in perspective and decision-making weight) to relevance (relation to the main topic of discussion) when posting (or submitting, transmitting, or conveying) to Slashdot (a news feed and discussion forum operated by GeekNet, Inc. featuring a primarily green appearance and focus on the "nerd" (relating to technology, pop culture, and science) culture (or the people who associate themselves with the "nerd" (relating to technology, pop culture, and science) stereotype (a widely held but fixed and oversimplified (made generic, or reduced to the point of inaccuracy) image (metaphorically, as people are physical (tangible, being comprised of matter) objects, not photographic (relating to recorded (not to be confused with a record, which is recorded audio, or a recorder, which is a musical instrument) pictures) images) or idea of a particular type of person or thing)).
That's much clearer now that every irrelevant detail is repeated, right?
The purpose of the chart is the same as my post: perspective. 1.6mSv in three months is not deadly, not really even dangerous, and should be seen only as a notification that there's something worth investigating, which is exactly why the annual limit is so low: so special resources can be used to investigate anything higher.
If the infant had a medical reason to get a CT scan each year, that condition is far more dangerous that the radiation from the scan itself. I'd wager the doctor would say to do it in that case.
Why not? It's still far below the threshold for any conclusively increased risk of cancer, and certainly less dangerous than other activities like driving, showering, or even cooking. Heck, getting a regular CT scan could spot the first signs of many serious diseases, so you'd be even safer!
I grew up a few miles from a nuclear plant. The smoke detectors in my last home used radioactive material (though I haven't checked these yet... maybe I'll do that today). I've visited a few particle accelerators, and worn plenty of dosimeters in my life. Yes, I would live there.
It ran to its room crying about how I'm unfair because I won't let it have unrestricted access to my wallet.
When something gets removed from cache it's to make room for something new to enter into cache.
Or to shut down a cache server to lower costs, or to prepare for a major operation using shared resources, or because the old item is known to be unneeded.
I mean, I can't even recognize exponential decay.
I did recognize it, but it's irrelevant that the particular formula is exponential decay. It could have been anything, and my point still stands: The patent is specific to the use of one particular method. In fact, if the patent were just about that particular formula modeling exponential decay, that'd be worse, since patents can't cover mathematical truths. You can't patent that 1+1=2, or e^(i(pi))+1=0. That's one of the basic arguments about software patents, since software reduces to mathematical algorithms. To argue that this patent is obvious because the formula used is well-known is like claiming a machine can't be patented because it uses a gear, and every mechanical engineer knows what a gear is.
I should Google search exponential decay and caching. So I did...
Yes, I did. I'm familiar with exponential decay. I'm familiar with caching. I have used both regularly in my 17 years of software engineering history. Until now, I have not monitored recent developments in the related theories, so there may very well be a famous paper from 2005 that I missed, that would describe this patented process specifically using decay to model growth. That would make this patent more obvious, but I see no such thing.
Stop guessing and hoping something sticks. It's not helping your position.
Stop being condescending and throwing ad hominem attacks like confetti. It's not helping your position.
At least show some indication that you put even a tiny bit of effort into knowing what you're talking about.
At least show some indication that you put even a tiny bit of effort into learning how patents work, and specifically that patents cover specific implementations, rather than just "use tool X on Y to get Z".
Stop further proving to us that those who hold your position are simply lazy and simply want to find ways to profit off of the hard work of others.
Stop further proving to us that those who hold your position are simply lazy and assume all patents are vague and obvious without understanding the specific implementation.
Thank you, thank you. I'll be here all... day, I guess. Back to work tomorrow.
Google can't cache everything that gets searched, because that would drive up server costs. They can't just use the most recent queries, because some users will wait until the next commercial break, end of the show, or even the next morning at work to look it up. By following trends and (as the patent partially covers) assigning priorities to terms based on recent popularity, they can serve the fastest results to the most users.
Claims 1, 14, and 15 cover adding to the cache based on a priority queue, where the priority is determined partially by the event count from the formula. Eviction isn't mentioned in the claims, except as claim 13 where it is also stated that the implementation may or may not support removal from the priority queue used.
Short and simple, here's how the patented algorithm works:
It does not mention anything about maintaining a constant cache, removing old trends as they fall off, or reaching some threshold of being "already big". It is a specific method for assembling a cache from an event history according to a particular formula, which happens to be exponential decay.
A different formula (such as one that predicts rising trends, such as annual events or election terms) may be a further improvement, which would not be covered by this patent. If that resultant system were patented, though, it should likely include this patent as a reference, because they are so similar and the later work would be clearly based on this one.