If I unplug your DVD player's power cord, does it somehow become a different
machine? You say no, but it can't play DVDs on your TV anymore, right? Its
"apparent" functionality may have changed, but I say its still the same machine
that it always was, with the same _inherent_ functionality (the ability to play
DVDs, at least when properly powered and connected to your TV).
Similarly, a
general-purpose computer CPU is a machine with the _inherent_ functionality of
being able to execute any algorithm which is expressible as a program made up of
the instructions in that CPU's instruction set. Feeding a new program into it
may change the "apparent" functionality that the user sees, but it doesn't
actually _change_ what the machine is capable of. It is now capable of
executing that particular program for you, but it was _always_ capable of that.
In fact, it was always capable of executing _any possible program_ you could
write for it. That's the whole point of a general-purpose computer, it has been
clearly understood by computer scientists for more than 60 years, and things
were fine until idiot lawyers and judges who think they know everything came
along and started making up legal fictions about what computers are and how they
work, instead of just _asking_ the people who already knew! [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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