Hurd, Matthew wrote:
Jonathan Turkanis wrote:
Robert Ramey wrote:
I just came upon an incredible thing.
It seems that microsoft has filed a U.S. Patent Application for XML serialization.
It's hard to take it seriously ;-)
<quote> [0019] The serialized data of an object may be thought of as a "dehydrated object" where all of the water (object functions in this metaphor) has been squeezed out of the object. This leaves only dry potato flakes (the data). Later, a hungry person wishes to have mashed potatoes (the object with the data), the potato flakes may be rehydrated. To "add water" to a dehydrated object, an empty object is created and the stored data is inserted therein. </quote>
Hah! I didn't realize objects were mostly water. Maybe we should keep them dehydrated most of the time to save space. Jonathan