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by larrys 3927 days ago
This is actually pretty scary. It's as if they are stretching the truth for their own political purposes. Kind of like politicians do all of the time. Kind of like Rolling Stone does when playing loose and fast with the facts. It's unfortunate (assuming you and the gp comment are correct I didn't read the documents) that EFF is doing this type of thing.
2 comments
throwawaykf05 3927 days ago
This is not new behavior for the EFF. Some previous comments calling this out:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9472613

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7974446

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jegutman 3927 days ago
N is an integer multiple of N. The integer multiples of N are ... -3N -2N -1N 0 1N 2N 3N... much like the integers are ... -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 ...
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pdpi 3927 days ago
Out of context? Sure. But given this amount of context, while I still feel inclined to disagree with their reading that n > 1, in my mind it's now gone from completely preposterous to a reasonable discussion.

The part that really bothers me in all this is that, reading the EFF article, I was wondering why they kept going on about how absurd it is to argue that 1 isn't an integer, but then never specified how the patent trolls came to make that claim. It's now pretty clear to me: because if they had explained it, people might actually have thought it to be a reasonable argument.

I held the EFF in pretty high regard before. After this? I'm not so sure any more.

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Natsu 3927 days ago
Well, the thing about that is that the patent holder first said it covers N=1 and then that it doesn't cover that.

N=1 is hardly an unreasonable multiple to choose for a time interval. If they meant something other than the mathematical definition, they should have properly defined it.

We would never say that the compiler should have known from context that I obviously meant unsigned int when I wrote signed int. Patents are also written in formal language.

No one should have to guess about what they might or might not cover when there are huge financial penalties for being wrong, or even being close enough to being wrong to wind up in court.

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