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Re:Judge Says Mathematical Algorithms Can’t Be Patented by SilasX on Thursday March 28, 2013 @03:22PM (#5457065)
>Good thing all source code is just very convenient mathematical notation describing an algorithm

Only really true for pure functions (i.e. same input -> same output + side effects), I think. A lot of the code in actual practice is stuff like "update this bit of object state", "set this server variable so that it does this"; and it really doesn't generalize beyond a very specific platform.

Those may still technically count as algorithms, but not in the sense people normally think of them.

Although the ones they try to patent generally are of the "pure function" type, so it may be a distinction without a difference.

Re:Judge Says Mathematical Algorithms Can’t Be Patented by betterunix on Thursday March 28, 2013 @07:25PM (#5458302)
Funny thing about that:

http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/Turing_Paper_1936.pdf

Program code has been abstract math since the very beginning of computer science.

Re:Judge Says Mathematical Algorithms Can’t Be Patented by dinkumthinkum on Friday March 29, 2013 @03:38AM (#5459683)
It's the "technically" that matters, though.