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Authored by: PolR on Tuesday, May 08 2012 @ 10:25 PM EDT |
There are two different legal tests. One test is for infringement. It asks
whether what Google does is what the patent says it claims. The other test is
for novelty. It asks whether there is prior art that did what the patent claims
and is old enough to invalidate the patent. Either test should be good enough to
clear Google if the jury agrees that it is passed.
There are also other tests for obviousness, patentable subject matter,
definiteness, enablement etc which will likewise work for Google if passed (or
failed depending on the point of view). But the tests of infringement and
novelty are the ones which are relevant to your comment.
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Authored by: greed on Tuesday, May 08 2012 @ 11:23 PM EDT |
Java doesn't have pointers-to-generic-data like C does.
But all objects are handled by C pointers inside the JVM.
Any data structure which cannot fit in a machine register must be handled this
way. It is a fundamental truth of [nearly] all CPU designs. (Skipping over
register combining....)
So, typically, any data structure larger than the native word-width can only
"passed" by pointer.
Within a given part of the program, some of the elements of the data structure
will be in hardware registers. But when, say, I want to pass that
java.lang.String to java.lang.System.out.println, it works just like anything
else: put the address of the parameter on the stack and jump to the subroutine.
(In Dalvik, you'd put the address of the parameter in a register.)
The reason why we call "high-level languages" high-level is because of
the depth of abstraction between the programmer and the hardware. In C, there's
very little abstraction--that's why it's so good as a systems language. And so
dangerous as an application language. (What, you didn't want to shoot your foot
off? Then why did you aim the destination pointer at an undersized buffer?)
Java is a fairly high-level language. You don't ever get to fiddle with
hardware addresses--even if you want to. Should you need to do so, you need to
call out to a native method via the JNI.
Heck, it's designed to target a virtual machine with a virtual CPU: how much
more abstract from the physical hardware can you get?
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