decoration decoration
Stories

GROKLAW
When you want to know more...
decoration
For layout only
Home
Archives
Site Map
Search
About Groklaw
Awards
Legal Research
Timelines
ApplevSamsung
ApplevSamsung p.2
ArchiveExplorer
Autozone
Bilski
Cases
Cast: Lawyers
Comes v. MS
Contracts/Documents
Courts
DRM
Gordon v MS
GPL
Grokdoc
HTML How To
IPI v RH
IV v. Google
Legal Docs
Lodsys
MS Litigations
MSvB&N
News Picks
Novell v. MS
Novell-MS Deal
ODF/OOXML
OOXML Appeals
OraclevGoogle
Patents
ProjectMonterey
Psystar
Quote Database
Red Hat v SCO
Salus Book
SCEA v Hotz
SCO Appeals
SCO Bankruptcy
SCO Financials
SCO Overview
SCO v IBM
SCO v Novell
SCO:Soup2Nuts
SCOsource
Sean Daly
Software Patents
Switch to Linux
Transcripts
Unix Books

Gear

Groklaw Gear

Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog.


You won't find me on Facebook


Donate

Donate Paypal


No Legal Advice

The information on Groklaw is not intended to constitute legal advice. While Mark is a lawyer and he has asked other lawyers and law students to contribute articles, all of these articles are offered to help educate, not to provide specific legal advice. They are not your lawyers.

Here's Groklaw's comments policy.


What's New

STORIES
No new stories

COMMENTS last 48 hrs
No new comments


Sponsors

Hosting:
hosted by ibiblio

On servers donated to ibiblio by AMD.

Webmaster
What, exactly, has been changed? | 756 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
What, exactly, has been changed?
Authored by: Imaginos1892 on Friday, July 20 2012 @ 05:00 PM EDT
Now THAT's a distinction worth making. What actually happens
when you "install" software on your computer, say from a DVD?
The DVD-R drive spins the disk, shines a laser on it, and generates
some ephemeral signals from the reflected light, encoded as changes
in voltage. Those signals are conveyed to the hard drive, or some
other device (FLASH?) by a pretty complex process that changes
the states of some "bits" so that an accurate representation can be
reproduced at some later time.

None of this changes the physical structure of the computer in any
way, even though some ignoramus believes that you must have put
"something in there" because things happen that didn't useta. The
circuits within which the bits are expressed were already there; all
"installing" the data did was temporarily change some voltages and/or
currents. It doesn't matter to the computer whether those changed
signals represent a program, an image, or a digitized sound.

What PHYSICAL actions took place? The user moved a mouse,
maybe typed on a keyboard, and a disk spun. NOTHING CHANGED.
-----------------------
I used to think I was paranoid.
I was afraid people were out to get me.
Now I know the truth -- they ARE out to get me.
I feel so much better.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Groklaw © Copyright 2003-2013 Pamela Jones.
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners.
Comments are owned by the individual posters.

PJ's articles are licensed under a Creative Commons License. ( Details )