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Welcome to the Dark Side. | 756 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Welcome to the Dark Side.
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, July 20 2012 @ 11:47 AM EDT
A computer with any particular piece of software has no *capabilities* that the
same computer without that software has.

A car is pretty useless when it's in neutral, right? So it's an improvement to
put it in 5th?

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Welcome to the Dark Side.
Authored by: PolR on Friday, July 20 2012 @ 02:44 PM EDT
How many layers of abstraction do you have to go through before you are able to justify that conclusion to yourself?
All it needs is knowledge of some of the fundamental principles of computer science: the mathematical notion of algorithm and the stored program architecture.

Computers don't work according to your simplistic understanding. Computer science is what it is. Here you are arguing with some of the experts in the field dismissing the principles of computer science as "complex" and "many layers of abstraction". These arguments don't refute the facts of computer science.

You advocate a view where software works by "configuring" the hardware. It doesn't. Software is data given as input to an algorithm. It is not possible to be technically correct when calling software a configuration of the computer without simultaneously calling all data a "configuration" and dismissing the fact that data is changed billions of time per second while the computer is running. The technical evidence has been presented.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

How many layers of abstraction ...
Authored by: Wol on Monday, July 23 2012 @ 04:07 PM EDT
BUT THAT IS THE POINT.

ALL SOFTWARE IS AN ABSTRACTION.

ABSTRACTIONS ARE NOT PATENTABLE SUBJECT MATTER.

So installing software on a computer cannot be patentable, because
"patentable object + abstraction" != "new patentable
object".

Cheers,
Wol

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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