Not having much background on the various sources of information here, I'm not going to say much about whether any given action in this video was or was not justified.
But I do have to question what you appear to be assserting here, which is that a journalist who chooses to move with a combat unit should somehow expect to be "more protected" than the soldiers around him or her. Consider the implications of that.
Want to make sure the enemy can't use heavy weapons against you? Travel with an embedded journalist so they'll fear the colateral damage. Want to make sure the enemy has to act and react more slowly? Same solution; can't shoot as fast when you have to constantly make sure you're not going to take out particular individuals in the formation you're targetting.
Better yet, dress your key personel up as journalists and hope nobody catches on until they've pulled the trigger.
An embedded journalist better know the score, because no enemy unit is going to make a priority out of keeping him or her safe. Even the unit in which he or she is embedded shouldn't be taking any particular risks on his or her behalf. In short, the front line really isn't a great place to hang out if you're a journalist, no matter how catchy the idea has become.
"So they'd do something like move the systems to another country and start redirecting their services there, to avoid Chinese censorship and spying?"
Of the many reasons you're wrong, the most important is: What Google did with the redirection to Hong Kong (not "another country", by the way) was not in violation of Chinese law; so no, that is not representative of what they would do if they didn't think China had laws.
What do you mean "Google doesn't think China has laws"? They made just as much a show of obeying China's laws when they operate there, as they make of obeying U.S. laws when they operate here.
They also made a show of disagreeing with the principles on which some of those laws were based, and in the case of China they made a business decision that it was no longer worth access to the Chinese market. Anyone who claims this was solely based on their alleged disagreement with the principles behind Chinese law is being naive, but that's beside the point.
If Google didn't think China had laws, they would continue operating there and evade Chinese efforts at censorship and spying.
The patent has nothing to do with automatic refactoring. The refactoring is done by the programmer by whatever means the programmer would do it today.
Keep or throw the modification based on the result of (2)
The patent describes a system that doesn't choose between keeping or throwing out the change. It keeps it in the human-maintained codebase, and may present the code to the compiler as though it had thrown it out (based on the result of (2)).
The fact that so many people commenting on this patent have not grasped that does suggest that there's some innovation involved. (It also suggests that the patent needs to be clarified, which isn't surprising since it's in a very early form.)
(I seem to have somehow attached this reply elsewhere to the wrong comment... So trying once again:)
Now that's a good point (though just for completeness, I should point out that the merit of the invention is different from the merit of the patent). This strikes me as a very dangerous optimization, especially once the refactored-but-not-refactored code starts undergoing further changes.
Now that's a good point (though just for completeness, I should point out that the merit of the invention is different from the merit of the patent). This strikes me as a very dangerous optimization, especially once the refactored-but-not-refactored code starts undergoing further changes.
Too bad the "only thing missing" is the crux of the patent; so when you said "I do indeed" you meant "No, I don't".
You mention that using your toolset the developer can just revert the change. Trouble is, once that's done the user-readable code no longer benefits from the cleaner, refactored version; the developer has to choose to give up that benefit to get the better performance. The patent discusses a scenario where you can get the best of both worlds; it doesn't revert the change in the user-readable code as you seem to think it does. (It doesn't, in short, "stomp all over the developer's work".) Instead, it presents the code to the compiler as though the refactoring weren't done.
Anyway, that is what sets your usage pattern of existing tools apart from the process described in the patent.
For a tool to qualify as an instance of a precompiler, I believe it would have to allow you to keep the refactoring in the human-readable code, while removing it from the version that the compiler sees. I don't know that you'd want to do that if the refactored version has greater complexity, but even if you wanted to I don't know of any tool that would facilitate it. Just detecting the increase in complexity isn't the crux of the patent.
"So here's a question: if I create an experimental branch in my local git repository, start a refactoring, decide the cyclomatic complexity of my refactored solution is too high when I get half-way through, and revert by simply dropping the branch without ever committing, would I be violating this patent (if it were granted)?"
No, I don't think the patent covers that.
You're talking about choosing between the "cleaner" refactored code, or the "somehow better" non-refactored code. The patent is talking about using a precompiler so you can have your cake and eat it too.
Typical response from a child. When told you should educate yourself about what you're trying to attack - something you really will need to do if you want your attacks on a patent to mean anything, so one would think a suggestion in your best interest - you respond by trying to ridicule the person giving the advice.
Anyway, interesting as your interpretation is, it's still wrong.
It's not "undoing things you 'try'". That would imply that after it's done, you lose the costs and benefits of your refactoring; you don't. The refactoring is not considered an error and is not discarded from the human-readable code base.
What's going on is, this optimizer is presenting the compiler with a view of your code as though you hadn't performed the refactoring action, so that you don't pay the performance cost even though you get to keep your "cleaner" code.
So I'll say again - if you wish to compose a sound argument why that shouldn't be possible, I really don't care; I have no opinion on the validity (or lack thereof) of this patent. But you're going to have to lose the whiny bitch attitude before you'll have any chance of doing so.
No, I ignored it because it lacks semantic value. Perhaps you haven't noticed how deluted emoticons have become.
More importantly, patents are an issue where a large pool of/. readership is routinely confused and misinformed. Sure, I could spot you the assumption that you understood what was really going on and just decided to play on the ambiguous wording. So what? I'm more concerned with making sure the truth of the matter is visible to those who would be all too happy to take your joke as validation of what they want to believe, than I am in respecting your joke.
You must have a pretty cool code repository if it tags which changes are refactoring and then evaluates the performance impact of those changes so that they can be automatically reversed prior to compilation if they have negative performance impact.
If you're going to comment on a patent, read the patent first.
"IBM appears to want to patent optimizing programs by trial and error"......except that isn't what the patent claims describe. I'll grant that if your expectations have been set to believe that's what the patent covers (as mine had been by the summary), then it's possible to interpret the claims in a way that conforms to that assumption; but if you actually read the entire patent to understand the claims in context, that isn't what they really say.
What they are trying to patent is a specific optimization - that of reversing refactorings that the programmer did. If you would like to debate why this is, or isn't, a valid thing to patent, go right ahead; but please don't waste the debate by talking about all the different code optimization schemes that don't do what the patent describes and pretending they are prior art.
What on Earth makes you think you know my emotional state?
"By writing "very first definition" you inadvertantly acknowledged that there are multiple definitions"
There was nothing inadvertant about it.
"But yet you ridiculed the guy for not using the definition you prefer..."
Wrong. I corrected him because he claimed that he gets to choose which definition the moderator has to use.
"pointing out that the definition you chose to embrace"
I didn't "choose to embrace" any definition. As busily as you're trying to make this situation symetric, it isn't. His claim was "the moderator was wrong for not using a particular definition". My claim is "the moderator is equally justified in using a different definition".
As an aside, while I am not claiming that "unnecessary" is the only acceptable definition of redundant for moderation purposes, I do consider it the better one, for reasons I'll point out in a moment.
"was entirely subjective"
So is the entire moderation system. Get over it.
"which means using your preferred definition you could call ANY comment redundant."
Actually, no, that is not what "subjective" means. That you would suggest this makes it laughable that you later suggest I should look the term up.
Subjective merely means that different people could come to different conclusions some of the time. No matter how much the baseball rulebook tries to define objective boundaries for the strike zone, on the field balls and strikes are subjective; however, that does not mean that you can call "any pitch" a ball.
More to the point, all of the moderation tags are subjective. Someone subjectively believes that I was trolling with my initial comment; factually I was not, but it's that moderator's opinion that I was. And you know what - that's why there's metamoderation. If the community at large agrees that the tag was misapplied, then that moderator's score will go down; if not, it will stay up.
And speaking of metamoderation, that points to why "unnecessary" really is the better definition to use for redundant when moderating. When you metamoderate, you don't see the whole thread, much less the order in which posts were made. You have to decide, by looking at the comment that was moderated and the moderation tag that was applied, whether the tag was fair. You cna't evaluate whether it was fair to say that another comment beat that one to the punch; you can evaluate whether it was fair to say that the comment was unnecessary.
And really, if two guys have the same thought and post at nearly the same time; or if one guy posts something and an hour later it's burried in 100 posts, so another guy posts something similar without seeing the first post; how much sense does it really make to penalize the later post in those situations?
So that's my opinion of what the tag "should" mean, but again that's really beside the point. The point is, the moderator decides which definition the moderator is using; "unnecessary" is a valid definition; so it is absurd to claim that the first post cannot be redundant.
Let me get this straight - you think the moderation tags are based on objective definitions? LOL
The tags mean what the moderator who uses them means by using them. If you think you get to single out which definition of redundant you like, and tell the moderator they're wrong for using it when that definition doesn't apply, then the problem is with you, not the moderator.
For the record, the definition I gave is indeed a complete definition of redundant. There are other definitions, but that does not make that definition incomplete.
You said that it was a "myth" that people believed the War of the Worlds broadcasts were real, and implied that nobody hearing them could possibly believe that.
Your citation only says that some reports of fear were overstated by newspapers with an agenda, and yet it acknowledges that "hundreds of thousands were frightened" (compared to a U.S. population of about 130M at the time).
Well, let's see... the very first definition of redundant is "exceeding what is necessary or normal". What makes you think the very first post of a story can't be redundant?
Re:What about when Novell starts abusing their
on
Novell Wins vs. SCO
·
· Score: 1
"I know the differences between copyrights and patents"
Then you should be able to answer the question I asked you: How would invalidation of software patents affect Novell's ability to use or abuse the IP that the courts just affirmed they own, which are copyrights?
You can say that you know the difference, but your comments suggest that this is not true.
And yes, I am quite familiar with the differnces between copyright and patent myself; feel free to have a look through my post history.
Ah, but your premise is incorrect; you will indeed be shut down by the police. In a drug ring they will use words like "conspiracy". In a copyright context they'll use words like "contributory infringement". In both cases it means "you can't legally profit from helping others to commit crimes".
Slashdot Mirror
Not having much background on the various sources of information here, I'm not going to say much about whether any given action in this video was or was not justified.
But I do have to question what you appear to be assserting here, which is that a journalist who chooses to move with a combat unit should somehow expect to be "more protected" than the soldiers around him or her. Consider the implications of that.
Want to make sure the enemy can't use heavy weapons against you? Travel with an embedded journalist so they'll fear the colateral damage. Want to make sure the enemy has to act and react more slowly? Same solution; can't shoot as fast when you have to constantly make sure you're not going to take out particular individuals in the formation you're targetting.
Better yet, dress your key personel up as journalists and hope nobody catches on until they've pulled the trigger.
An embedded journalist better know the score, because no enemy unit is going to make a priority out of keeping him or her safe. Even the unit in which he or she is embedded shouldn't be taking any particular risks on his or her behalf. In short, the front line really isn't a great place to hang out if you're a journalist, no matter how catchy the idea has become.
You on a mission, son? Good luck.
"So they'd do something like move the systems to another country and start redirecting their services there, to avoid Chinese censorship and spying?"
Of the many reasons you're wrong, the most important is: What Google did with the redirection to Hong Kong (not "another country", by the way) was not in violation of Chinese law; so no, that is not representative of what they would do if they didn't think China had laws.
What do you mean "Google doesn't think China has laws"? They made just as much a show of obeying China's laws when they operate there, as they make of obeying U.S. laws when they operate here.
They also made a show of disagreeing with the principles on which some of those laws were based, and in the case of China they made a business decision that it was no longer worth access to the Chinese market. Anyone who claims this was solely based on their alleged disagreement with the principles behind Chinese law is being naive, but that's beside the point.
If Google didn't think China had laws, they would continue operating there and evade Chinese efforts at censorship and spying.
And yet another moderator thinks "Troll" means "Written in a tone I don't like". What a shocker.
Must've pressed the wrong Reply button. Bleh. You can find the parent comment reproduced where it belongs, as a reply to the GP comment's sibling.
Ok, but that is not what the patent describes.
Do [X] automatically to the code
The patent has nothing to do with automatic refactoring. The refactoring is done by the programmer by whatever means the programmer would do it today.
Keep or throw the modification based on the result of (2)
The patent describes a system that doesn't choose between keeping or throwing out the change. It keeps it in the human-maintained codebase, and may present the code to the compiler as though it had thrown it out (based on the result of (2)).
The fact that so many people commenting on this patent have not grasped that does suggest that there's some innovation involved. (It also suggests that the patent needs to be clarified, which isn't surprising since it's in a very early form.)
(I seem to have somehow attached this reply elsewhere to the wrong comment... So trying once again:)
Now that's a good point (though just for completeness, I should point out that the merit of the invention is different from the merit of the patent). This strikes me as a very dangerous optimization, especially once the refactored-but-not-refactored code starts undergoing further changes.
Now that's a good point (though just for completeness, I should point out that the merit of the invention is different from the merit of the patent). This strikes me as a very dangerous optimization, especially once the refactored-but-not-refactored code starts undergoing further changes.
Too bad the "only thing missing" is the crux of the patent; so when you said "I do indeed" you meant "No, I don't".
You mention that using your toolset the developer can just revert the change. Trouble is, once that's done the user-readable code no longer benefits from the cleaner, refactored version; the developer has to choose to give up that benefit to get the better performance. The patent discusses a scenario where you can get the best of both worlds; it doesn't revert the change in the user-readable code as you seem to think it does. (It doesn't, in short, "stomp all over the developer's work".) Instead, it presents the code to the compiler as though the refactoring weren't done.
Anyway, that is what sets your usage pattern of existing tools apart from the process described in the patent.
For a tool to qualify as an instance of a precompiler, I believe it would have to allow you to keep the refactoring in the human-readable code, while removing it from the version that the compiler sees. I don't know that you'd want to do that if the refactored version has greater complexity, but even if you wanted to I don't know of any tool that would facilitate it. Just detecting the increase in complexity isn't the crux of the patent.
"So here's a question: if I create an experimental branch in my local git repository, start a refactoring, decide the cyclomatic complexity of my refactored solution is too high when I get half-way through, and revert by simply dropping the branch without ever committing, would I be violating this patent (if it were granted)?"
No, I don't think the patent covers that.
You're talking about choosing between the "cleaner" refactored code, or the "somehow better" non-refactored code. The patent is talking about using a precompiler so you can have your cake and eat it too.
Typical response from a child. When told you should educate yourself about what you're trying to attack - something you really will need to do if you want your attacks on a patent to mean anything, so one would think a suggestion in your best interest - you respond by trying to ridicule the person giving the advice.
Anyway, interesting as your interpretation is, it's still wrong.
It's not "undoing things you 'try'". That would imply that after it's done, you lose the costs and benefits of your refactoring; you don't. The refactoring is not considered an error and is not discarded from the human-readable code base.
What's going on is, this optimizer is presenting the compiler with a view of your code as though you hadn't performed the refactoring action, so that you don't pay the performance cost even though you get to keep your "cleaner" code.
So I'll say again - if you wish to compose a sound argument why that shouldn't be possible, I really don't care; I have no opinion on the validity (or lack thereof) of this patent. But you're going to have to lose the whiny bitch attitude before you'll have any chance of doing so.
No, I ignored it because it lacks semantic value. Perhaps you haven't noticed how deluted emoticons have become.
More importantly, patents are an issue where a large pool of /. readership is routinely confused and misinformed. Sure, I could spot you the assumption that you understood what was really going on and just decided to play on the ambiguous wording. So what? I'm more concerned with making sure the truth of the matter is visible to those who would be all too happy to take your joke as validation of what they want to believe, than I am in respecting your joke.
You must have a pretty cool code repository if it tags which changes are refactoring and then evaluates the performance impact of those changes so that they can be automatically reversed prior to compilation if they have negative performance impact.
If you're going to comment on a patent, read the patent first.
"IBM appears to want to patent optimizing programs by trial and error"... ...except that isn't what the patent claims describe. I'll grant that if your expectations have been set to believe that's what the patent covers (as mine had been by the summary), then it's possible to interpret the claims in a way that conforms to that assumption; but if you actually read the entire patent to understand the claims in context, that isn't what they really say.
What they are trying to patent is a specific optimization - that of reversing refactorings that the programmer did. If you would like to debate why this is, or isn't, a valid thing to patent, go right ahead; but please don't waste the debate by talking about all the different code optimization schemes that don't do what the patent describes and pretending they are prior art.
That much easier to be dismissive and patronizing than to actually look at an alternative point of view, eh?
Sheep.
Hmmmm, then maybe the cute analogy was nothing more than a flaming turd after all.
"relax"
What on Earth makes you think you know my emotional state?
"By writing "very first definition" you inadvertantly acknowledged that there are multiple definitions"
There was nothing inadvertant about it.
"But yet you ridiculed the guy for not using the definition you prefer..."
Wrong. I corrected him because he claimed that he gets to choose which definition the moderator has to use.
"pointing out that the definition you chose to embrace"
I didn't "choose to embrace" any definition. As busily as you're trying to make this situation symetric, it isn't. His claim was "the moderator was wrong for not using a particular definition". My claim is "the moderator is equally justified in using a different definition".
As an aside, while I am not claiming that "unnecessary" is the only acceptable definition of redundant for moderation purposes, I do consider it the better one, for reasons I'll point out in a moment.
"was entirely subjective"
So is the entire moderation system. Get over it.
"which means using your preferred definition you could call ANY comment redundant."
Actually, no, that is not what "subjective" means. That you would suggest this makes it laughable that you later suggest I should look the term up.
Subjective merely means that different people could come to different conclusions some of the time. No matter how much the baseball rulebook tries to define objective boundaries for the strike zone, on the field balls and strikes are subjective; however, that does not mean that you can call "any pitch" a ball.
More to the point, all of the moderation tags are subjective. Someone subjectively believes that I was trolling with my initial comment; factually I was not, but it's that moderator's opinion that I was. And you know what - that's why there's metamoderation. If the community at large agrees that the tag was misapplied, then that moderator's score will go down; if not, it will stay up.
And speaking of metamoderation, that points to why "unnecessary" really is the better definition to use for redundant when moderating. When you metamoderate, you don't see the whole thread, much less the order in which posts were made. You have to decide, by looking at the comment that was moderated and the moderation tag that was applied, whether the tag was fair. You cna't evaluate whether it was fair to say that another comment beat that one to the punch; you can evaluate whether it was fair to say that the comment was unnecessary.
And really, if two guys have the same thought and post at nearly the same time; or if one guy posts something and an hour later it's burried in 100 posts, so another guy posts something similar without seeing the first post; how much sense does it really make to penalize the later post in those situations?
So that's my opinion of what the tag "should" mean, but again that's really beside the point. The point is, the moderator decides which definition the moderator is using; "unnecessary" is a valid definition; so it is absurd to claim that the first post cannot be redundant.
Uh, yeah. Again, citation needed.
Let me get this straight - you think the moderation tags are based on objective definitions? LOL
The tags mean what the moderator who uses them means by using them. If you think you get to single out which definition of redundant you like, and tell the moderator they're wrong for using it when that definition doesn't apply, then the problem is with you, not the moderator.
For the record, the definition I gave is indeed a complete definition of redundant. There are other definitions, but that does not make that definition incomplete.
Well, let's see...
You said that it was a "myth" that people believed the War of the Worlds broadcasts were real, and implied that nobody hearing them could possibly believe that.
Your citation only says that some reports of fear were overstated by newspapers with an agenda, and yet it acknowledges that "hundreds of thousands were frightened" (compared to a U.S. population of about 130M at the time).
Nope, not enough citation for your claim.
Well, let's see... the very first definition of redundant is "exceeding what is necessary or normal". What makes you think the very first post of a story can't be redundant?
"I know the differences between copyrights and patents"
Then you should be able to answer the question I asked you: How would invalidation of software patents affect Novell's ability to use or abuse the IP that the courts just affirmed they own, which are copyrights?
You can say that you know the difference, but your comments suggest that this is not true.
And yes, I am quite familiar with the differnces between copyright and patent myself; feel free to have a look through my post history.
Ah, but your premise is incorrect; you will indeed be shut down by the police. In a drug ring they will use words like "conspiracy". In a copyright context they'll use words like "contributory infringement". In both cases it means "you can't legally profit from helping others to commit crimes".