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Logging some related thoughts: | 179 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Logging some related thoughts:
Authored by: PolR on Saturday, March 16 2013 @ 10:26 AM EDT
I think your division in three level is useful.

A typical claim fuses the physical, logical and semantical level and the courts
don't have the concepts and vocabulary to sort things out. We should strive to
give them these concepts and vocabulary. Then they will work out out these these
are applied in legal context. I think your three levels are a useful addition to
what we already have. It is too late to introduce them in these documents, but I
keep the idea in mind for the next ones.

Perhaps we should seek a better word to describe the logical level. Computer
programmers will know what you mean, but judges and juries will interpret
"logical" in a sense related to ordinary logic.

I think the logical level is connected to the notion of universal algorithm. The
logical level is the algorithm the programmer wants to implement. The physical
level is what the computer does. They don't match because whatever the
programmer wants to do must be translated into the universal algorithm.

Perhaps it is better to talk about the "wanted algorithm" and the
"actual or physical algorithm". This will strike home the point that
we don't program a computer by physically configuring the electrical circuit.
This is the real message we want to send. The courts think the words in the
claim match what the computer physically does. They need to be told this is not
how it works.

Semiotics is useful in dealing with the non mathematical aspects of computing,
especially the semantical aspects and how semantics relate to the physical. But
when it comes to algorithm and the underlying math we need to talk about
computation theory and the stored program architecture. This is where the
distinction between physical and logical matters.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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