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Correcting Microsoft's Bilski Amicus Brief -- How Do Computers Really Work? - Updated 2Xs
Saturday, October 31 2009 @ 08:55 PM EDT

Groklaw member PolR sent me some observations on Microsoft's Bilski amicus brief [PDF; text] submitted to the US Supreme Court in the case In Re Bilski. Oral argument will be on November 9th. Presumably their arguments will be before the court. But are they technically accurate? PolR thinks they are not, and he decided to correct some materials in it, both some historical facts and the description of how computers today work.

Is it true, as Microsoft wrote in its brief, that computers are at heart just a "collection of tiny on-off switches--usually in the form of transistors"? Or that "The role of software is simply to automate the reconfiguration of the electronic pathways that was once done manually by the human operators of ENIAC"? Are computers just a modern equivalent to the telegraph or the Jacquard loom, a series of on-off switches, as the brief asserts?

Or is that hyberbole, and technically inaccurate hyperbole? How do modern computers really work? What impact did the discovery of the universal Turing machine have on how computers work, compared to prior special-purpose computers like ENIAC? What are the differences between how analogue and digital computers work? We have heard from the lawyers, but what about from those whose area of expertise is the tech? I think you'll see how this technical information ties in with the questions the US Supreme Court would like answered -- presumably accurately -- as to whether or not software should be patentable and whether computers become special purpose machines when software is run on them. Po1R's collected some very useful references from experts. Feel free to add more references in your comments.

Update: Groklaw user fncp sent us urls demonstrating that the ENIAC was doing symbolic manipulations. It didn't perform calculations in the manner of a differential analyzer:

Official history of the ENIAC

The ENIAC on a chip project

The ENIAC was one of the first electronic devices able to do symbolic manipulations. What it didn't do is store programs in the same memory as data. This is the crucial step that was missing to incorporate the principles of an universal Turing machine into an actual device. It is only when this step was accomplished that the possibility of programs manipulating or generating other programs becomes possible. Research on how to implement this possibility led to the development of what is now known as the Von Neumann computer architecture.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy writes on this history:

In 1944, John von Neumann joined the ENIAC group. He had become ‘intrigued’ (Goldstine's word, [1972], p. 275) with Turing's universal machine while Turing was at Princeton University during 1936–1938. At the Moore School, von Neumann emphasised the importance of the stored-program concept for electronic computing, including the possibility of allowing the machine to modify its own program in useful ways while running (for example, in order to control loops and branching). Turing's paper of 1936 (‘On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem’) was required reading for members of von Neumann's post-war computer project at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University (letter from Julian Bigelow to Copeland, 2002; see also Copeland [2004], p. 23). Eckert appears to have realised independently, and prior to von Neumann's joining the ENIAC group, that the way to take full advantage of the speed at which data is processed by electronic circuits is to place suitably encoded instructions for controlling the processing in the same high-speed storage devices that hold the data itself (documented in Copeland [2004], pp. 26–7). In 1945, while ENIAC was still under construction, von Neumann produced a draft report, mentioned previously, setting out the ENIAC group's ideas for an electronic stored-program general-purpose digital computer, the EDVAC (von Neuman [1945]). The EDVAC was completed six years later, but not by its originators, who left the Moore School to build computers elsewhere. Lectures held at the Moore School in 1946 on the proposed EDVAC were widely attended and contributed greatly to the dissemination of the new ideas.

Von Neumann was a prestigious figure and he made the concept of a high-speed stored-program digital computer widely known through his writings and public addresses. As a result of his high profile in the field, it became customary, although historically inappropriate, to refer to electronic stored-program digital computers as ‘von Neumann machines’.

Update 2: A comment by Groklaw member polymath is worth highlighting, I think:

Reducto ad absurdum
Authored by: polymath on Sunday, November 01 2009 @ 11:04 AM EST

The last extract reveals that Microsoft's brief fails even on its own terms.

While Morse's telegraph was patentable the sequence of 1's and 0's used to send any given message was not patentable. While Jacquard's loom was patentable the arrangement of holes on the cards that produced cloth was not patentable. While the machines for manipulating Hollerith cards were patentable the arrangement of holes representing the information was not patentable. Even a printing press is patentable subject matter but the arrangement of type to produce a story is not patentable. Likewise computer hardware may be patentable subject matter but the pattern of transistor states that represent programs and data are not patentable.

All of those patterns are the proper subject matter of copyright law. Neither patents nor copyright protect ideas or knowledge and we are free to create new implementations and/or expressions of those ideas.

To allow a patent on a program is akin to allowing a patent on thank you messages, floral fabric designs, census information, or vampire stories. It is simply nonsense.

*********************

An Observation On the Amicus Curiae Brief from Microsoft, Philips and Symantec

~ by PolR

I have noticed something about PDF the amicus brief from Microsoft, Philips and Symantec submitted to the US SUpreme Court in the In re Bilski case. This amicus brief relies on a particular interpretation of the history of computing and on its own description of the inner workings of a computer to argue that software should be patentable subject matter. I argue that both the history and the description of the actual working of a computer is inaccurate.

I note that the authors of the brief are lawyers. They are not, then, presumably experts in the history of computing. The statements from the brief are in direct contradiction with information found at expert sources I've collected here.

How Do Computers Work According to the Brief?

Here is how the brief describes how computers work:

The fantastic variety in which computers are now found can obscure the remarkable fact that every single one is, at its heart, a collection of tiny on-off switches--usually in the form of transistors. See generally David A. Patterson & John L. Hennessy, Computer Organization and Design (4th ed. 2009); Ron White, How Computers Work (8th ed. 2005). Just as the configuration of gears and shafts determined the functionality of Babbage's computers, it is the careful configuration of these on-off switches that produces the complex and varied functionality of modern computers.

Today, these on-off switches are usually found in pre-designed packages of transistors commonly known as "chips." Thin wafers of silicon, chips can contain many millions of transistors, connected to one another by conductive materials etched onto the chip like a web of telephone lines. They are organized such that they can be turned on or off in patterned fashion, and by this method, perform simple operations, such as turning on every transistor whose corresponding transistor is off in the neighboring group. From these building blocks, mathematical and logical operations are carried out. Patterson & Hennessy, supra, at 44-47 & App. C.

The challenge for the inventor is how to use these transistors (and applying the principles of logic, physics, electromagnetism, photonics, etc.) in a way that produces the desired functionality in a useful manner. Computer programming is an exercise in reductionism, as every feature, decision, and analysis must be broken down to the level of the rudimentary operations captured by transistors turning on and off. This reductionism is matched by the detail with which transistors must be configured and instructed to carry out the thousands or millions of operations required by the process.

Early electronic computers were "programmed" by laboriously rewiring their electrical pathways so that the computer would perform a desired function. ENIAC--the first general-purpose electronic digital computer, functioning at the mid-point of the Twentieth Century -- could take days to program, with operators physically manipulating the switches and cables. Patterson & Hennessy, supra, at 1.10. [ed: graphic of ENIAC]

Fortunately, this is no longer the case. Transistors, packaged onto silicon chips, permit electronic manipulation of the pathways between them, allowing those pathways to be altered to implement different processes without direct physical manipulation. The instructions for this electronic reconfiguration are typically expressed in computer software. See Microsoft Corp. v. AT&T Corp., 550 U.S. 437, 445-46 (2007) (noting that, inter alia, Windows software renders a general-purpose computer "capable of performing as the patented speech processor"). To allow more sophisticated control over the millions of transistors on a chip, inventors rely on a multi-layered scheme of pre-designed software "languages" that help bridge the gap between the on-off language of the transistor and the words and grammar of human understanding. These allow control of the transistors on a chip at various levels of specificity, ranging from "machine language," which allows transistor-level control, to "programming languages," which allow operations to be defined through formal syntax and semantics that are more easily understood by humans. Each language pre-packages the mathematical and logical operations that are most useful for the users of that particular language. See Patterson & Hennessy, supra, at 11-13, 20-21, 76-80.

Using these languages, the inventor can create "software" that defines the operations of semiconductor chips and other hardware. These operations are the steps of a computer-implemented process. The role of software is simply to automate the reconfiguration of the electronic pathways that was once done manually by the human operators of ENIAC.

What is the Glaring Error in this Description?

The brief fails to mention a most important mathematical discovery -- the universal Turing machine -- and how it influenced the development of the computer. The ENIAC didn't use this mathematical discovery, while computers built afterwards use it. Because of the discovery of Turing, the programming of modern computers doesn't operate under the same principles as the ENIAC.

An article titled "Computability and Complexity", found on The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's website, describes the contribution of universal Turing machines to the development of computers:

Turing's construction of a universal machine gives the most fundamental insight into computation: one machine can run any program whatsoever. No matter what computational tasks we may need to perform in the future, a single machine can perform them all. This is the insight that makes it feasible to build and sell computers. One computer can run any program. We don't need to buy a new computer every time we have a new problem to solve. Of course, in the age of personal computers, this fact is such a basic assumption that it may be difficult to step back and appreciate it.
What, In Contrast, Was the Operating Principle of the ENIAC?

According to Martin Davis, Professor Emeritus, Department of Computer Science Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences New York University, described here as one of the greatest living mathematicians and computer scientists, and who is interviewed here, in his book Engines of Logic: Mathematicians and the Origin of the Computer, in Chapter 8, page 181, here's how ENIAC worked:

An enormous machine, occupying a large room, and programmed by connecting cables to a plugboard rather like an old-fashioned telephone switchboard, the ENIAC was modeled on the most successful computing machines then available -- differential analyzers. Differential analyzers were not digital devices operating on numbers digit by digit. Rather numbers were represented by physical quantities that could be measured (like electric currents or voltages) and components were linked together to emulate the desired mathematical operations. These analog machines were limited in their accuracy by that of the instruments used for measurements. The ENIAC was a digital device, the first electronic machine able to deal with the same kind of mathematical problems as differential analyzers. Its designers built it of components functionally similar to those in differential analyzers, relying on the capacity of vacuum-tube electronics for greater speed and accuracy.

Davis, according to Wikipedia is also the co-inventor of the Davis-Putnam and the DPLL algorithms. He is a co-author, with Ron Sigal and Elaine J. Weyuker, of Computability, Complexity, and Languages, Second Edition: Fundamentals of Theoretical Computer Science, a textbook on the theory of computability (Academic Press: Harcourt, Brace & Company, San Diego, 1994 ISBN 0-12-206382-1 (First edition, 1983). He is also known for his model of Post-Turing machines. Here is his Curriculum Vitae [PDF], which lists his many other papers, including his famous article, "What is a Computation?" published in Mathematics Today, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Houston, January 1979 [elsewhere referenced as "What is a Computation?", Martin Davis, Mathematics Today, Lynn Arthur Steen ed., Vintage Books (Random House), 1980].

What is a Differential Analyzer?

Here is an explanation, complete with photographs at the link:

There are two distinct branches of the computer family. One branch descends from the abacus, which is an extension of finger counting. The devices that stem from the abacus use digits to express numbers, and are called digital computers. These include calculators and electronic digital computers.

The other branch descends from the graphic solution of problems achieved by ancient surveyors. Analogies were assumed between the boundaries of a property and lines drawn on paper by the surveyor. The term "analogue" is derived from the Greek "analogikos" meaning by proportion. There have been many analogue devices down the ages, such as the nomogram, planimeter, integraph and slide rule. These devices usually perform one function only. When an analogue device can be "programmed" in some way to perform different functions at different times, it can be called an analogue computer. The Differential Analyser is such a computer as it can be set up in different configurations, i.e. "programmed", to suit a particular problem.

In an analogue computer the process of calculation is replaced by the measurement and manipulation of some continuous physical quantity such as mechanical displacement or voltage, hence such devices are also called continuous computers. The analogue computer is a powerful tool for the modelling and investigation of dynamic systems, i.e. those in which some aspect of the system changes with time. Equations can be set up concerned with the rates of change of problem variables, e.g. velocity versus time. These equations are called Differential Equations, and they constitute the mathematical model of a dynamic system.

How Do Universal Turing Machines Differ from the ENIAC?

The previous explanation spelled out the differences between a digital computer and an analog computer. But what is the unique characteristic of a digital computer? The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's The Modern History of Computing describes the programming of a universal Turing machine as the manipulation of symbols stored in readable and writable memory:

In 1936, at Cambridge University, Turing invented the principle of the modern computer. He described an abstract digital computing machine consisting of a limitless memory and a scanner that moves back and forth through the memory, symbol by symbol, reading what it finds and writing further symbols (Turing [1936]). The actions of the scanner are dictated by a program of instructions that is stored in the memory in the form of symbols. This is Turing's stored-program concept, and implicit in it is the possibility of the machine operating on and modifying its own program.

The ENIAC was manipulating current and voltages to perform the calculation in the manner of a differential analyzer. But symbols are different. They are the 0s and 1s called bits. They are like letters written on paper. You don't measure them. You recognize them and manipulate them with precisely defined operations. This is a fundamental insight that the program is data. It is what makes it possible to have operating systems and programming languages because when program is data, you can have programs that manipulate or generate other programs.

Martin Davis, in the same book previously quoted, on page 185, explains the role of symbols:

It is well understood that the computers developed after Wold War II differed in a fundamental way from earlier automatic calculators. But the nature of the difference has been less well understood. These post-war machines were designed to be all-purpose universal devices capable of carrying out any symbolic process, so long as the step of the process were specified precisely. Some processes may require more memory than is available or may be too slow to be feasible, so these machines can only be approximations to Turing's idealized universal machine. Nevertheless it was crucial that they had a large memory (corresponding to Turing's infinite tape) in which instructions and data could coexist. This fluid boundary between what was instruction and what was data meant that programs could be developed that treated other programs as data. In early years, programmers mainly used this freedom to produce programs that could and did modify themselves. In today's world of operating systems and hierarchies of programming languages, the way has been opened to far more sophisticated applications. To an operating system, the programs that it launches (e.g. your word processor or email program) are data for it to manipulate, providing each program with its own part of the memory and (when multitasking) keeping track of the tasks each needs carried out. Compilers translate programs written in one of today's popular programming languages into the underlying instructions that can be directly executed by the computer: for the compiler these programs are data.

Does This Mean That It Is Possible for Computer Algorithms to be Generated by Programs as Opposed to Being Written by Humans?

Absolutely. For example, consider the language SQL that is used to access information stored in a relational database. We can write in SQL something like:

select name from presidents where birthdate

This statement may be used to retrieve the names of all presidents whose date of birth is prior to January 1, 1800, assuming the database contains such information. But the language SQL doesn't specify the algorithm to use to do so. The language is free to use the algorithm of its choice. The language may read all presidents in the database one by one, test their birth date and print those that pass the test. Or the language may as well read an index of the presidents that lists the presidents in the order of their birth date and print only the first president in the list until it find one born past January 1, 1800. Which algorithm is best will depend on how the database has been structured, and the choice is left to the language discretion.

Why Does a Program Require Setting Transistors on a Modern Computer?

This is because the RAM memory of modern computers where the program symbols are stored is made of transistors. They are required only to the extent the symbols will not be remembered by the computer if the transistors are not set. If the computer memory is not made of transistors, a program can be loaded in memory without setting any transistors. This was the case with some early models of computers, as is reported by Martin Davis, in the same book, on page 186:

In the late 1940s, two devices offered themselves as candidates for use as computer memory: the mercury delay line and the cathode ray tube. The delay line consisted of a tube of liquid mercury; data was stored in the form of an acoustic wave in the mercury bouncing back and forth from one end of the tube to another. Cathode ray tubes are familiar nowadays in TVs and computer monitors. Data could be stored as a pattern on the surface of the tube.
Today the symbols may be represented by transistors in silicon chips, but also as grove patterns on optical disk, magnetic pattern on magnetic hard drives or tapes, wireless electromagnetic signals, optical waves etc. There is a diversity of media that is possible. Symbols are information like ink on paper except that computers use media other than ink. Programs may be downloaded from the Internet. During the transit the same symbols may take any of these forms at a point or another. The symbols are translated from one form to another as the information is transferred from one piece of equipment to another. At each step the meaning of the information is preserved despite the change in physical representation. It is this symbolic information that is used to program the computer.

Why Does the Amicus Brief Argue That the Setting of Transistors is Relevant to Patentability of Software?

It is because they argue that it makes software similar or comparable to some industrial-age patentable devices. From the brief pp. 14-17:

In this respect, modern computer-related inventions are no different from other patent-eligible innovations that have produced a new and useful result by employing physical structures and phenomena to record, manipulate, or disseminate information.

Perhaps the most celebrated example of such technological innovation is Samuel Morse's invention of the electric telegraph, which (like modern computers) employed binary encoding in conjunction with the sequential operation of switches. Although petitioners focus almost exclusively on the Court's rejection of his eighth claim (on which more below), the Court allowed a number of other claims, including the fifth. O'Reilly v. Morse, 56 U.S. 62, 112 (1854). That claim was for "the system of signs, consisting of dots and spaces, and of dots, spaces and horizontal lines." Id. at 86. This system, an early version of Morse Code, was nothing other than a system for manipulating an on-off switch -- the telegraph key in a prescribed manner to produce the useful result of intelligible communications between two parties. Indeed, although much less complex, the telegraph system -- a web of interconnected switches spreading around the globe, enabling binary-encoded communication -- was comparable to the modern Internet.

The Industrial Age also knew software and hardware in a literal sense; the core concepts in computer design and programming were developed in this period. The principle of encoded instructions controlling a device found application at the opening of the Nineteenth Century, with the famous Jacquard loom, a device (still in use today) that adjusts the warp and weft of a textile in response to "programming" contained on punch cards. The loom's control apparatus consists of a series of on-off switches which are controlled by the pattern of holes punched in the cards, just as the pattern of microscopic pits and lands on the surface of a CD can be used to control the transistor switches inside a computer. Hyman, supra, at 166; Patterson & Hennessy, supra, at 24.

Inventors soon seized on the "programming" principle applied in the Jacquard loom. A defining characteristic of Babbage's Analytical Engine, for example, was the use of punch cards, adopted from the Jacquard loom, to store the programs run by the machine. "Following the introduction of punched cards early in 1836 four functional units familiar in the modern computer could soon be clearly distinguished: input/output system, mill, store, and control." Hyman, supra, at 166. Babbage's close friend, Ada Lovelace (the daughter of Lord Byron), is now recognized as "the first computer programmer" for her work developing software programs for the Analytical Engine. Nell Dale et al., Programming and Problem Solving with C++, 406-407 (1997).

Later in the Nineteenth Century, Herman Hollerith, a U.S. Census Office employee, developed a means of tabulating census results using punch cards and mechanical calculation. His method allowed the country to complete the 1890 census two years sooner and for five million dollars less than manual tabulation. William R. Aul, "Herman Hollerith: Data Processing Pioneer," Think, 22-23 (Nov. 1972). The company he founded became the International Business Machines Corp., and the once-prevalent IBM punch-cards were both the direct descendent of the means used to program a Jacquard loom and the immediate predecessor to today's CDs and other media, which contain digitized instructions for modern computers to open and close millions of switches.

As has been often noted by historians of technological development, our perceptions of innovation and modernity are often misguided -- the roots of technological change are deep, and run farther back in our history than we perceive. See Brian Winston, Media Technology & Society: A History 1 (1998) (arguing that current innovations in communications technology are "hyperbolised as a revolutionary train of events [but] can be seen as a far more evolutionary and less transforming process"). That is certainly true with respect to computer-related inventions.

While the hardware and software implemented by a modern e-mail program may be orders of magnitude more complex than the dot-dash-dot of a telegraph key, the underlying physical activity that makes communication possible -- the sequential operation of switches -- is fundamentally the same.

Are Modern Computer Really Similar to These Industrial Age Device?

No, because none of these devices implements the principle of a universal Turing machine. For example Andrew Hodges, a well-known Alan Turing historian and maintainer of the Alan Turing's home page, describes the difference between Babbage's analytical engine and computers as follows:

So I wouldn't call Charles Babbage's 1840s Analytical Engine the design for a computer. It didn't incorporate the vital idea which is now exploited by the computer in the modern sense, the idea of storing programs in the same form as data and intermediate working. His machine was designed to store programs on cards, while the working was to be done by mechanical cogs and wheels.
The cards storing programs for the Babbage engine were punched cards like those used for the Jacquard loom mentioned in the brief. Martin Davis, in the same book on pages 177-178, also mentions the Jacquard loom:
The Jacquard loom, a machine that could weave cloth with a pattern specified by a stack of punched cards, revolutionized weaving practice first in France and eventually all over the world. With perhaps understandable hyperbole, it is commonly said among professional weavers that this was the first computer. Although it is a wonderful invention, the Jacquard loom was no more of a computer than is a player piano. Like a piano it permits a mechanical device to be controlled automatically by the presence or absence of punched holes in an input medium.
The Microsoft amicus brief did not explain that modern computers are programmed from symbolic information. Likewise it doesn't discuss the difference in nineteenth-century patent law between patenting an Industrial age device that manipulate information and patenting the *information* in the device. Should they have explored this difference they would have found that the hole patterns in Jacquard punched cards and piano rolls are a much closer equivalent to computer software than any Industrial Age physical apparatus.

  


Correcting Microsoft's Bilski Amicus Brief -- How Do Computers Really Work? - Updated 2Xs | 443 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
modern computers are programmed from symbolic information.
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, October 31 2009 @ 09:09 PM EDT
"modern computers are programmed from symbolic information." ...
symbolic information as in text .... which makes it more appropriate to use
copyright instead of patents .... as open source software does ....

[ Reply to This | # ]

    OT - Off Topic thread starts here
    Authored by: Totosplatz on Saturday, October 31 2009 @ 09:26 PM EDT
    Please make links clicky, and thanks to PoIR...

    ---
    Greetings from Zhuhai, Guangdong, China; or Portland, Oregon, USA (location
    varies).

    All the best to one and all.

    [ Reply to This | # ]

    Differentiating software from hardware.
    Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, October 31 2009 @ 09:40 PM EDT
    The key thing to note here is that the loom may well be patentable, but the
    pattern of holes punched in the cards is definitely not, although the pattern of
    holes is definitely copyrightable. In other words, the hardware is patentable,
    but the software is not, but is instead protected by copyright. The same is true
    for computer hardware and software.

    [ Reply to This | # ]

    Differential analyzer???
    Authored by: JamesK on Saturday, October 31 2009 @ 09:48 PM EDT
    IIRC, according to what I've read, ENIAC was closer to a programmable
    calculator. It worked in decimal, with registers, counters, etc.


    ---
    IANALAIDPOOTV

    (I am not a lawyer and I don't play one on TV)

    [ Reply to This | # ]

    Correcting Microsoft's Bilski Amicus Brief -- How Do Computers Really Work?
    Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, October 31 2009 @ 10:05 PM EDT
    While, I definitely agree that programs are more the equivalent of the punched
    cards, I see no relevance to the rest of your argument.

    Modern computers, at least the common ones used by most people are digital
    computers. Modern, digital computers run on VLSI transistor logic. This logic is
    based on gates which are either on or off, all computer programs cause the
    switching on and off of the gates. A gate is equivalent to an on off switch, a
    one or a zero. I see no reason to on to say MS is wrong on this fact. Although
    they have definitely twisted this fact to tell a totally non-sensible argument.
    They are however correct that a PC is just a bunch of switches at the raw
    hardware level, Turing and all aside. Your whole argument is very strange, until
    you got to the punched cards parts.

    [ Reply to This | # ]

    Correcting Microsoft's Bilski Amicus Brief -- How Do Computers Really Work?
    Authored by: gvc on Saturday, October 31 2009 @ 10:16 PM EDT
    The main fallacy in the amicus brief is that software -- even machine language
    -- specifies the physical operation of the computer "at the transistor
    level" as they say. It does not. All programming languages -- even
    machine language -- implement "abstractions" rather than physical
    processes.

    I don't find the discussion of Turing machines at all compelling. The Turing
    machine is an imaginary mathematical notion used to characterize the limits of
    what can be computed by *any* computer.

    A more compelling argument, I think, is that at some point a complex system
    ceases to be simply the sum of its parts. The underlying implementation of a
    modern computer is irrelevant to its operation. What is relevant is the
    abstraction that it implements. Software that harnesses that abstraction to
    perform particular operations cannot reasonably be characterized as a physical
    process.

    [ Reply to This | # ]

    Modern Computers Aren't Turing Machines
    Authored by: tpassin on Saturday, October 31 2009 @ 10:29 PM EDT
    It's probably better not to rely on similarities to Turing machines too much.
    Current computers aren't very much like Turing machines. The Turing machine was
    a mental device used to explore the mechanics and limits of computing.

    While it's true that most current computers do function by setting bits to 0 or
    1, that is not inherent to the idea of programmed computing (where the program
    can be seen as data in itself). Given suitable hardware, other number bases
    could work just as well, and in the early days of computers, sometimes were.

    In addition, I/O operations (I mean interrupts) are not necessarily equivalent
    to simply setting switches to 1's or 0's. And even internal operations on
    current computers still depend on strobe and clock signals, which again are more
    complex than simply setting binary values into switches.

    So I agree that the Microsoft explanation of how a computer works is too simple
    and leaves out a lot, but this article doesn't really hit the mark, either, in
    its discussion of Turing machines, etc.

    It's interesting to speculate about the relation of copyright to the various
    steps needed to create a program. For example, a compiler does not produce a
    copy of the source code as its product. Is the compiled program a derivative
    work? How could it be, it's not even human readable? If someone claims
    copyright to the source, how does that give him copyright to the compiled
    program? After all, the compilation is not a creative act, it's mechanical, so
    perhaps the compiled program isn't a work subject to copyright (or shouldn't
    be), since it is not the result of a creative effort.

    Then the compiled program is not the runnable program, anyway - that is the
    result of the linker's activity. So what is the relation between the running
    program and the source code? In the case of interpreted programs, the
    computer's activity is the joint result of the interpreted program, the
    interpreter, and the computer environment. In this case, what is the
    (copyright-wise) relationship between the computer's activity and the
    copyrightable source code?

    Interesting questions to ponder ...

    ---
    Tom Passin

    [ Reply to This | # ]

    special purpose ... when software run ...
    Authored by: nsomos on Saturday, October 31 2009 @ 11:05 PM EDT
    That one phrase jumped out at me .... about

    "computers become special purpose machines when software
    is run on them."

    This is about the same as saying when a car is driving
    to the hospital, it is an ambulance, when it is rushing
    to a fire, it is a fire engine, when it is used to deliver
    a package, it is a UPS truck, when dropping off kids it
    is a school bus, etc etc etc.

    [ Reply to This | # ]

    Are Modern Computer Really Similar to These Industrial Age Device?
    Authored by: jesse on Sunday, November 01 2009 @ 12:03 AM EDT
    So I wouldn't call Charles Babbage's 1840s Analytical Engine the design for a computer. It didn't incorporate the vital idea which is now exploited by the computer in the modern sense, the idea of storing programs in the same form as data and intermediate working. His machine was designed to store programs on cards, while the working was to be done by mechanical cogs and wheels.

    Well... I would because:

  • Most people do not include the punched cards as part of the system, I do because one of the outputs planned was more punched cards.
  • Although Babbage did not consider having his machine write programs, it could IF the output punched cards were then used as a later program input.
  • That is why I personally consider the analytic engine the first computer. Even though it was never completed, the concepts embodied within are directly comparable to the modern computer. Even having the program separate from the mechanical workings, it mirrors some computers that maintain security by marking some memory as execute only. This directly compares to the punched cards as being "read-only".

    But as stated, this is only my opinion.

    [ Reply to This | # ]

    Confusion
    Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, November 01 2009 @ 12:32 AM EDT
    There is a level of confusion in the argument and response that keeps it from
    hitting the point squarely.

    If computers are just switches, on or off, why don't we use a row of LED's for
    output, and use a row of switches for input? There are many layers of
    transformation of abstraction between the input and the output. We are
    confusing simple input with simple output. Using a computer in a human usable
    way is nonsense to the computer itself.

    There are also many processors that connect the many representations of on or
    off in the "computer". Starting with the keyboard processor, the
    serial input port processor, the DMA processor, the buss processor, the CPU, the
    GPU, the monitor processor. When we say computer, we can mean all of that taken
    together, or just the CPU at the heart of the general processing. All the rest
    of the processing functions are transforming abstractions and representations of
    various types of signals to a format suitable for the CPU, and back from the
    CPU. What is meant when we say computer? ENIAC was just the CPU.

    Ones and zeros are just a different representation of data that is abstracted as
    visible light and sound. Humans cannot accept input in any other way. The
    question is: Can we patent a class of human interaction, rather than a specific
    implementation? Software is meaningless without some human interface at some
    point in the system.

    -- Alma

    [ Reply to This | # ]

    News Picks
    Authored by: tyche on Sunday, November 01 2009 @ 12:40 AM EDT
    Please include the title (and maybe the URL) of the news pick, just in case it
    already rolled off the screen.

    Thanks

    Craig
    Tyche

    ---
    "The Truth shall Make Ye Fret"
    "TRUTH", Terry Pratchett

    [ Reply to This | # ]

    Corrections here
    Authored by: SpaceLifeForm on Sunday, November 01 2009 @ 12:42 AM EDT
    s/Po1R's collected/PolR's collected/


    ---

    You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.

    [ Reply to This | # ]

    Morse telegraphy is ternary encoded, not binary
    Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, November 01 2009 @ 01:22 AM EST
    Off
    On for short time
    On for long time
    It differs from the modern internet in that human operators
    must interpret the routing information, and make the connections.
    Although it would be feasible to build a machine to do this,
    such a machine was never AFAIK built.

    [ Reply to This | # ]

    Correcting Microsoft's Bilski Amicus Brief -- How Do Computers Really Work?
    Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, November 01 2009 @ 03:38 AM EST
    It's a fairly sterile debate, and it's coming to the question of "Do you
    want the next generation taught to develop and maintain software, or not".

    If you do, then you had better say "Thanks!" to the teachers (and
    maybe pay them), and not threaten to discipline them commercially for infringing
    intellectual property laws.

    I guess we'll see, but it's my no means clear which way this will fall in the
    USA.

    [ Reply to This | # ]

    What a load of crap.
    Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, November 01 2009 @ 04:32 AM EST
    None of this refutes the basic premise. Software turns switches (usually
    transistors) on and off. This just goes off on some philosophical tangent.

    As far as the "universal machine" goes, as if that would matter...
    Vista can't even be run on machines it was meant for, let alone on a Mac or a
    PDP 11.

    What possible bearing should the theoretical supposition of running slow
    emulators have on whether process need to transform something or be associated
    with a machine in order to be patentable?

    Do try to stay on point people.

    [ Reply to This | # ]

    Testing the Microsoft argument.
    Authored by: Ian Al on Sunday, November 01 2009 @ 05:09 AM EST
    Thanks to PoIR for this analysis. It needs all the little grey cells to
    understand why, but it shows the Microsoft brief to be hollow and lacking in
    merit.

    I'm letting my mind wander, for fun. Because it is such a long ramble, I attach
    it as a comment. Please note that the references are not to expert opinions.
    They are often to Wikipedia. You might find the inspiration to read PoIR's piece
    again in case you missed something.

    ---
    Regards
    Ian Al

    Linux: Viri can't hear you in free space.

    [ Reply to This | # ]

    On computers, software and algorithms
    Authored by: leopardi on Sunday, November 01 2009 @ 05:26 AM EST

    I'll try to keep this brief.

    1. Software consists of one or more computer programs, and possibly includes initial data.
    2. A computer is a machine which automatically executes programs.
    3. The execution of a program transforms input and old stored data into output and new stored data.
    4. A computer program is a collection of instructions which is encoded for execution on a computer.
    5. The instructions in a program are usually structured as a collection of implementations of algorithms.
    6. An algorithm is a collection of instructions which describe how to perform a computation.
    7. A computation is a specific transformation from input+data into output+data.

    I'll respond to this posting with a brief description of Universal Turing Machines and von Neumann machines.

    [ Reply to This | # ]

    A littlle logic :-)
    Authored by: ThrPilgrim on Sunday, November 01 2009 @ 06:39 AM EST
    1) A computer program is patentable because it creates a unique circuit on a
    computer. - from the brief.

    2) A computer is an electronic device concisting of transisters. - from the
    brief.

    3) If the computer program in 1 can be shown to do somthing other than create a
    unique circuit on a computer then point 1 is incorrect and a computer program
    can not be patentable because it creates a unique circuit on the computer.

    4) I can take a copy of the computer program in some symbolic form and give it
    to a group of individules trained to reconise the symbols and perform actions
    depending on the symbols, such as but not limited to stand up, sit sown, wave
    hands in the air.

    5) Depending on the state of an individual's colieges and the individual the
    action taken on any perticular symbol may change.

    6) Output is generated by having an individual record the state of the group at
    descreet intavals and converting the state into characters by using a lookup
    chart.

    7) The individual recording the output has no access to or knolodege of the
    symbols used in encoding the computer program.

    8) Thus the computer program has not created a unique circuit on a computer but
    it has resulted in an output state that can be interpriated.

    9) Therefor point one is incorrect and software is not patentable because of its
    ability to create a unique circuite on a computer.

    Pleas pick holes in, improve this :-)

    ---
    Beware of him who would deny you access to information for in his heart he
    considers himself your master.

    [ Reply to This | # ]

    Focusing in on the wrong piece of the language
    Authored by: Magpie on Sunday, November 01 2009 @ 07:09 AM EST
    I think the argument being made is too obtuse. A more straight forward approach
    to attacking the brief would be to focus on the "rewiring the
    pathways", and the apparent jump from since the since the program is a
    specification of the requiring it is a patentable machine.

    Computers do NOT work by a program rewiring the pathways. The computer itself,
    or more exactly the CPU itself undertakes the task dynamically over time in
    response to BOTH instructions from the program AND from the interaction with it
    and external stimulus.

    [ Reply to This | # ]

    It doesn't matter how computers work
    Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, November 01 2009 @ 09:18 AM EST

    The point is that the description of an algorithm, in C, C++, Perl, BASIC, or whatever - is independent of how computers work.

    One of the best-known of all algorithms - the Sieve of Eratosthenes - was devised more than 2000 years before any computer was invented.

    Any discussion of how Babbage's computer worked, or of how an IBM 360 worked, or of how an Intel chip works, or of how computers in 100 years' time might work, is completely irrelevant to the nature of most computer programs.

    [ Reply to This | # ]

    Correcting Microsoft's Bilski Amicus Brief -- How Do Computers Really Work?
    Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, November 01 2009 @ 09:20 AM EST
    "Is it true, as Microsoft wrote in its brief, that computers are at heart
    just a "collection of tiny on-off switches--usually in the form of
    transistors"? Or that "The role of software is simply to automate the
    reconfiguration of the electronic pathways that was once done manually by the
    human operators of ENIAC"? Are computers just a modern equivalent to the
    telegraph or the Jacquard loom, a series of on-off switches, as the brief
    asserts?"

    Aside from pointing out Microsoft's brief is flawed, what can we accomplish with
    this?

    When an scientist attempts to explain something to a lay person, and then that
    lay person uses that explanation in a legal situation, there is a huge
    opportunity for error.

    Perhaps this is the greatest service of Groklaw, not documenting the SCO case,
    but encouraging those knowledgeable in the computer industry to enter the legal
    field.

    [ Reply to This | # ]

    Correcting Microsoft's Bilski Amicus Brief -- How Do Computers Really Work?
    Authored by: TemporalBeing on Sunday, November 01 2009 @ 09:39 AM EST
    Po1R - very well said, and I very much agree. I'd also like to add the following tidbit.
    These allow control of the transistors on a chip at various levels of specificity, ranging from "machine language," which allows transistor-level control, to "programming languages," which allow operations to be defined through formal syntax and semantics that are more easily understood by humans. Each language pre-packages the mathematical and logical operations that are most useful for the users of that particular language. See Patterson & Hennessy, supra, at 11-13, 20-21, 76-80.

    This is technically inaccurate. To the programmer there is no such thing as transistor level control any more, perhaps never was since the advent of the assembler.[1] Most all processors now implement what is called 'micro-code'; micro-code is the true language of the processor - and assembly language of sorts - and only the processor maker writes any code in micro-code. The purpose of micro-code is to further abstract the processor from upper level languages and enable the procesor maker (e.g. Intel, AMD, Motorola, etc.) to fix some logic bugs (e.g. the Pentium Floating Point bug) that would in previous generations required rewiring the processor and new hardware.

    Processors are exposed to programmers via the processor's Assembly Language, which can be coded either as numeric digits (e.g. octal, hex, binary) or assembly pneumonic (e.g. mov ax, bx). Assembly Language no longer maps to specific transistors; but to the micro-code described earlier. Additionally, each Assembly Language Instruction is more equivalent to using a calculator than to rearranging the use of transistors. Assembly Language is essentially broken into two groups: Mathematical Instructions, and Memory Instructions. The Mathematical Instruction set performs mathematical operations (add, subtract, multiply, and divide) and directly relate to all mathematical principles.

    The Memory Instruction set consists of two operational types: (i) data access, and (ii) instruction access. The Data access operational type basically tells the system where to load and save memory to; sometimes (as in the Intel x86 instruction set) the Data Access is combined into the Mathematic - e.g. the mathematical instructions can operate on memory regions as well as local data storage locations called registers. The Instruction Access tells the system where to find the next instruction. For all intents and purposes Data Storage Devices such as Hard Drives are seen simply as memory storage locations.

    The entirety of the Assembly Language for any computer can be fully mapped to mathematical equations and formula. This is often the basis of the reasoning behind why programming is math.

    Higher Level Programming Languages such as C, C++, Ada, Pascal, and many others simply provide the Assembly Language functionality in useful functions and easier readability. For an Assembly Language to be useful, one has to have a series of function sets; higher level languages provide those function sets with well-known interfaces.

    Some Higher Level Programming Langauges such as Sqeak, and Java provide further abstraction from the hardware level.

    [1]Really, the only time there was transistor level control was with systems like ENIAC where you had to move the cables, etc. between vacuum tubes to program the system; once we entered into the era of recording information into a computer reable form (e.g. punch cards, tape, etc.) to program the computer we left the era of transistor level control.

    [ Reply to This | # ]

    Correcting Microsoft's Bilski Amicus Brief -- How Do Computers Really Work?
    Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, November 01 2009 @ 10:03 AM EST
    Describing a computer as a bunch of switches, even from a strictly
    hardware-oriented reductionist viewpoint, is so severely lacking as to be lying
    by omission. The connections between the switches are as important as the
    existence of the switches.

    I'm talking just of the architecture of the *wiring* here, not of how software
    can be used.

    [ Reply to This | # ]

    Reducto ad absurdum
    Authored by: polymath on Sunday, November 01 2009 @ 11:04 AM EST

    The last extract reveals that Microsoft's brief fails even on its own terms.

    While Morse's telegraph was patentable the sequence of 1's and 0's used to send any given message was not patentable. While Jacquard's loom was patentable the arrangement of holes on the cards that produced cloth was not patentable. While the machines for manipulating Hollerith cards were patentable the arrangement of holes representing the information was not patentable. Even a printing press is patentable subject matter but the arrangement of type to produce a story is not patentable. Likewise computer hardware may be patentable subject matter but the pattern of transistor states that represent programs and data are not patentable.

    All of those patterns are the proper subject matter of copyright law. Neither patents nor copyright protect ideas or knowledge and we are free to create new implementations and/or expressions of those ideas.

    To allow a patent on a program is akin to allowing a patent on thank you messages, floral fabric designs, census information, or vampire stories. It is simply nonsense.

    [ Reply to This | # ]

    Correcting Microsoft's Bilski Amicus Brief -- How Do Computers Really Work?
    Authored by: cjk fossman on Sunday, November 01 2009 @ 03:27 PM EST

    This statement is wrong:

    The fantastic variety in which computers are now found can obscure the remarkable fact that every single one is, at its heart, a collection of tiny on-off switches

    It is wrong because a computer made up only of switches will not work.

    A computer needs a strobe signal, or clock pulse, to tell the processor to fetch the next instruction. A simple switch will not supply these clock pulses.

    The multi-megahertz crystal on your computer's system board is the real heart. The transistors are the lungs, kidneys, liver and stuff like that.

    [ Reply to This | # ]

    The twenty-second version
    Authored by: BitOBear on Sunday, November 01 2009 @ 09:19 PM EST
    The old business machines had wire-board and jumper panels. The act of
    installing wires and moving jumpers effectively _created_ new instructions, all
    based on electrical cascades. That is, by connecting the output of one switch to
    the input of another the programmer could create "add" or
    "add-with-carry" as opposed to "subtract". Programmers would
    often have wire-boards and jumper panels at there desks and then physically
    install them to perform a run.

    In a modern computer, where "modern" starts somewhere in like the
    forties (my detailed memory of timeline events fails me here), all of the
    "instructions" are built into the computer when it is constructed.
    That is, when you check the manual there is a list of data-patterns where one
    pattern is "add" and another is "add-with-carry" and so on.
    There is also a section on where/how the computer picks where to start looking
    for instructions when it is powered on.

    But what goes around comes around, so now days we have the Field Programmable
    Gate Array (FPGA). This is blind 3D array of transistors. When you fill it full
    of data, many of the transistors are disabled. What is left behind is an
    electrical cascade matrix very like the old patch boards. Basically you can fill
    an FPGA (of sufficient base capacity) with the picture of any computer chip you
    want, and it will become that chip. It's still data programming a device but the
    distinctions become obscure. For instance I can go out and buy/license "the
    picture of an 80286 for a FPGA" and then use it to build a PC/AT (circa
    1984) shouls I so desire.

    In all cases however, a compiler is used to make the FPGA image, converting an
    instruction stream into a program that is loaded into the FPGA. Just like any
    other program (barring a massively parallel execution stream for FPGAs) it is
    data causing a machine with known limits to operate wholly within those limits.

    Again, and always, think sewing machine. I can make an infinite number of
    garments, drapes, and whatnot all by operating a "sufficent" sewing
    machine on the proper raw materials. I don't get to patent the "duvet"
    just because I used a particular machine to make it. Just like I didn't get to
    patent making it by hand. Both the standard sewing kit, and the sewing machine,
    had "duvet" as reasonable end product.

    The _real_ problem with Microsoft's brief is that the guys and gals back in the
    patch-panel and wire-board era of computers _didn't_ get to patent their
    separate "programs" for the ENIAC etc. The guy/entity/company that
    invented the patch-panel and the machine that used it got the "first fruit
    of their invention". The "programmers" were all just using the
    patented-or-not tool.

    [ Reply to This | # ]

    Computers are basically an application of chemical engineering
    Authored by: Nivag on Sunday, November 01 2009 @ 10:32 PM EST
    It is clear that computers are nothing but rather sophisticated mechanisms for
    doing chemical reactions. Since all the electronics of the computer are doing,
    is taking electrons from one group of atoms and moving them to another group of
    atoms. A knowledge of chemistry is vital in deciding what elements and
    compounds that can have their electrons moved and those that prevent the
    electrons going to the wrong places.

    It is therefore inappropriate to suggest that it is an automated mechanical
    device, let alone an engine of logic.

    END SARCASM

    [ Reply to This | # ]

    The fundamental problem with Microsoft's brief
    Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, November 02 2009 @ 01:36 AM EST
    Microsoft's argument hinges on the premise that software is analogous to a
    setting of switches that cause the computer to perform a measurable
    transformation.

    Assume the switches specify the program and optionally any data (the program can
    also read data from other sources), which gives a resultant computation (which
    is physically measurable).

    Either:
    * A particular combination of switches is patentable
    * Every combination of switches that produces the result is patentable.

    In the first instance, the patent covers a particular expression of an idea.
    This is what copyright covers anyway. A patent on this isn't very useful because
    there are a practically infinite number of ways the switches could be set to
    produce the same result. Instructions could be reordered, operations could be
    substituted for equivalents (e.g. subtraction replaced by addition of a negative
    value).

    In the other case, any combination of bits that produces the output is
    patentable, but this means the patent covers a process of obtaining a result,
    and processes are not patentable (it says so in Microsoft's brief).

    [ Reply to This | # ]

    SUMMARY SO FAR: computers in general versus stored program computers
    Authored by: halfhuman on Monday, November 02 2009 @ 05:08 AM EST
    It may help to summarise the extensive and at times entertaining contributions.

    1. The point of PoIR's article is that the Microsoft brief attempts to equate a
    modern computer, while running software, to a device that is actually far
    simpler. The brief is therefore deceptive and legally unreliable.

    2. This simpler device would indeed be patentable, if it existed. (As pointed
    out in earlier discussions, the combination would then create patentable
    machines at the rate of billions per second).

    3. However, there is no physical reality to this simpler device. It exists only
    in a symbolic sense. It is only known by symbolic means, that is, through the
    transformation of symbols.

    [Small diversion: We neither know nor care whether the transformation of symbols
    required a unique pattern of transistors, but usually we are sure it did
    not---this post, for instance, can be read using many different CPUs (and even
    using identical CPUs the thread may use different transistors on different CPUs
    or at different times in the same CPU). This is completely irrelevant to almost
    all software. I say almost all, but in fact cannot think of an excpetion.]

    4. The process of transformation of symbols into symbols gives a complete
    description of the software. The material basis (transistors, valves, quantum
    gates, rooms full of people) is irrelevant to the description of software as
    software (though to be sure the choice of software is strongly influenced by the
    device it is to run on).

    5. The correct mathematical framework is the Universal Turing Machine. The
    correct computer science framework is the von Neumann architecture.

    6. (See 4 above) The relevance to the Bilski appeal is that software on von
    Neumann architecture is purely process which relies on the purely non-material
    aspects of symbols. The most succinct summary was (from memory): "On a von
    Neumann machine, programs and data are equivalent. Data is not patentable,
    programs should not be patentable".

    [ Reply to This | # ]

    discovered?
    Authored by: s65_sean on Monday, November 02 2009 @ 07:17 AM EST
    What impact did the discovery of the universal Turing machine have on how computers work, compared to prior special-purpose computers like ENIAC?
    This implies that the universal Turing machine was something that already existed in nature, and man merely stumbled upon it. Is there another definition of discovery that eludes me? None of the definitions of discovery that I can find have anything to do with inventing.

    [ Reply to This | # ]

    fallacies
    Authored by: reiisi on Monday, November 02 2009 @ 11:07 AM EST
    What is the technical name for the logic fallacy of trying to pile a whole bunch
    of bad arguments together to make a
    valid argument?

    I would be ashamed. I mean, submitting this kind of brief should be grounds for
    disbarment. The kind of careful
    grafting together of non-sequiturs, begged questions, red herrings, inverted
    implication (composition), ... .

    Did they miss any at all?

    Well, I'm at a loss for words. Anyway --

    Collection of tiny on-off switches. No, collection of amplifiers being coerced
    as switches. Constrained operation, only
    the binary states at the extremes are used. The amplifiers operate in switching
    mode (gate) and feedback mode
    (oscillators certain kinds of memory cells, logic gates, etc.) and several other
    modes. And even the switches are more
    than just on-off. Without multiplexing, you can't address a cell. And then
    there's flash memory, more of an array of
    capacitors (holes to be filled) than an array of switches, although you do
    select the cell to read or write with a
    multiplexor. (No, no, no, a multiplexor is not just an array of on-off
    switches!)

    The ENIAC. Are they going to suggest that anyone beside the patent owners on the
    ENIAC should be allowed to patent
    configurations of the cables? I mean, there's configuration and there's
    configuration.

    Configuring a series of pulleys, levers into a machine, yeah, there's invention
    there. Implementation.

    But, say you've "configured" a collection of more fundamental parts
    into a programmable combination
    microwave/conventional heating oven. Do we seriously want to suggest that
    further configuration of the (designed to
    be configurable) oven's memory cells (speaking extremely loosely) to
    automatically bake a certain kind of bread is
    somehow original enough to warrant a patent independent of the patent on the
    oven? That could encumber the rights
    of the owners of the patent on the oven?

    Back to the ENIAC. It was designed to be configured. EVERY configuration of the
    patented elements of the ENIAC
    should be considered to be under the patent on the ENIAC, if the ENIAC is
    patented. And, if not, since the
    configurations are made available by the design of the inventor, then every
    configuration should be considered
    obvious.

    Sure, it may not be obvious to attach an ENIAC to a missile. Or, rather, the
    interface might be separately patentable
    due to original invention necessary to connect the calculation outputs to the
    controls. But that's not a configuration of
    the ENIAC itself. It's a configuration of parts that are attached to the ENIAC.


    Uhm, yeah, I'm not thinking of actually launching the original ENIAC. I'm
    thinking of the micro-ENIAC or, if back in
    the days of the original, of maybe radio control or of a device that selects and
    feeds a flight table computed by the
    ENIAC into the missile's controls. There's where you have something patentable.

    CPUs are patentable. But if programs are patentable, we are going to have to
    argue that there is something beyond
    configuration going on in CPUs to argue patentable programs independent of the
    patents on the CPUs. Not the
    processing of symbols, not symbolic processing. Technically, the ENIAC had that.
    Reprogrammability is a feature of
    the function in question.

    In order to argue patentability of software, we have to argue that the software
    imparts a tangible existence to the
    virtual machines being implemented, independent of the hardware the software is
    running on. Microsoft's brief is
    trying to argue that by obfuscation. (Yeah, Microsoft loves the way you can use
    computers to obfuscate things.)

    But even if you can convince a judge or jury of the tangible existence of the
    virtual invention, you still have to show
    that the existence of said invention is more correctly classified as the type of
    invention covered by patent, rather than
    the type of invention covered by copyright.

    Symbolic processing is related to the question, but the real question is
    complexity. (Not coincidental, that.)

    Simple machines can only handle basic levels of complexity. They can't proceed
    to a point, recognize an invalid state,
    back up, and start down another path. (I'm talking about context free. And,
    somewhere in the freedom-loving
    philosophies of the 1960s, context-free existence somehow got valued as greater
    than context-sensitive existence,
    but that is just plain upside down.)

    A machine that can back up and go down another path is at least context
    sensitive. (Yeah, I'm mixing the engineering
    term "machine" with the mathematical terminology of grammars.)

    Humans operate in the range of context sensitive and unrestricted grammars. That
    is, if we analyze our behavior
    mathematically, we can (loosely) describe our behavior similarly to machines
    designed to implement context sensitive
    or unrestricted grammars.

    Useful computer languages are specified as context sensitive grammars to make
    them provable, but they are
    implemented as unrestricted grammars.

    CPUs, on the other hand, implement context free grammars. You have to add lots
    of memory and programs that
    access the memory in certain was to get context sensitive or unrestricted
    grammars.

    Even then, actual computers in operation are technically context free machines
    (sorry) implementing subsets of more
    complex machines. Within the limits of memory, they behave as the more complex
    machines. Very large memories
    allow them to behave, for many practical purposes, as context sensitive or
    unrestricted.

    All patentable machines implement context free grammars. Anything that goes
    beyond context free rightly belongs in
    the class of invention known as literature. There is a somewhat grey area where
    you implement a subset of a context
    sensitive grammar, when a machine can reliably recover from a few simple error
    states with minimal human
    intervention. But when the machine is programmed, that is absolutely a
    linguistic function, a literary function, and
    should fall under copyright instead of patent.

    I've wandered.

    Anyway, Microsoft is trying to pile up as much indirectly related fact as
    possible to hide the fact that they are saying
    that literary works should be patentable, and deliberately trimming off branches
    of the argument that would lead to
    the recognition that programs are literary works, intended to be interpreted as
    literary works by machines that
    emulate intelligent behavior at a primitive level.

    I have to go to bed. Lots of work tomorrow.

    Joel Rees

    [ Reply to This | # ]

    This is an architecture question
    Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, November 02 2009 @ 04:46 PM EST
    You're arguing about architectures - von Neumann vs. Harvard, shared memory vs
    memory segregated between instructions and data.

    I guess the thrust of your argument is something like this:

    - only the former can really implement a universal Turing machine;
    - modern machines follow von Neumann, with shared data/instruction memory;
    - being Turing machines, their software implements mathematics;
    - Mathematics is not patentable subject matter.

    This is a good strategy. But Microsoft lawyers will argue, correctly, that
    modern machines are in fact a mixture of both. At the physical level - the
    transistors they harp on about - there is indeed a combination of data and
    instruction segregation, because that is efficient engineering.

    It's worth pointing out though that the software everyone is worried about does
    not take account of this. Indeed, high-level abstracted languages can't take
    account of it because there are many different engineering shortcuts of the
    Harvard sort. It's the job of a compiler to make a mixed architecture look like
    von Neumann.

    Upshot: for Microsoft to get so low-level as to talk about transistors is to
    argue about the wrong hardware.

    [ Reply to This | # ]

    Some basic points
    Authored by: gvc on Monday, November 02 2009 @ 07:19 PM EST
    PJ,

    Check Wikipedia, and you'll see that Turing machines predate ENIAC by about a
    decade, and that ENIAC was a fully Turing-complete computer. So I think your
    intro presupposes facts not in evidence.

    I'm not sure how you, as a non-technical person, should adjudicate all the noise
    in this thread. That's one of the unresolved issues about "open
    source." If everybody has an opinion, and there's no consensus, how do you
    resolve it?

    Do you appeal to the wisdom of crowds, and if so, how do you measure the
    prevailing opinion when all opinions are from self-selected authors? Or do you
    appeal to authority, and if so, how do you establish the authority of those who
    post?

    Wikipedia has these problems, of course. But I trust you'll agree that
    Wikipedia is more likely than a random opinion here to be correct.

    [ Reply to This | # ]

    Jacquard punched cards ?
    Authored by: /Arthur on Tuesday, November 03 2009 @ 09:24 AM EST
    The Microsoft amicus brief did not explain that modern computers are programmed from symbolic information. Likewise it doesn't discuss the difference in nineteenth-century patent law between patenting an Industrial age device that manipulate information and patenting the *information* in the device. Should they have explored this difference they would have found that the hole patterns in Jacquard punched cards and piano rolls are a much closer equivalent to computer software than any Industrial Age physical apparatus.

    This tell's more on how Microsoft looks at there own programs !

    /Arthur

    [ Reply to This | # ]

    Include schema of on/off switches in application?
    Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, November 03 2009 @ 09:46 AM EST
    If Microsoft is correct and all software does is reconfigure the on/off switches
    in a described manner, wouldn't the same software twice in a row need to produce
    the same device, i.e. with the same configuration of the switches?
    Does starting Abiword ever cause it to be loaded in exactly the same memory
    locations twice? Is it the same special purpose machine?
    For sure the patented machine will never be the same as the machine I am running
    it on.
    I doubt the patent would ever list the configuration of on/off switches needed
    to implement the invention, I doubt the inventor even could.
    If the schema of switches is not supplied doesn't the patent application lack
    specifity?
    If you load the allegedly patented program, there is only a random chance you
    will actually replicate the "invention". How can you enforce a patent
    when you cannot predict if it is actually going to be implemented by running a
    specified program? Because you don't know if the switches will be configured
    exactly in the way you described (if you ever did.)

    [ Reply to This | # ]

    Another bite at the cherry.
    Authored by: Ian Al on Wednesday, November 04 2009 @ 06:02 AM EST
    My thoughts have been all over the place on this one. I share the same problem that most of the rest of you do. You know that computer programs on general purpose computers are carrying out algorithmic processes on symbolic representations of quantities and qualities. We know 'you can't patent algorithms or scientific facts'.

    I think I see Microsoft's approach. They cite expert opinion that programs set and reset switches in computers

    The company he founded became the International Business Machines Corp., and the once-prevalent IBM punch-cards were both the direct descendent of the means used to program a Jacquard loom and the immediate predecessor to today's CDs and other media, which contain digitized instructions
    thus altering paths.
    The role of software is simply to automate the reconfiguration of the electronic pathways that was once done manually by the human operators of ENIAC.
    The Microsoft argument starts much earlier. They start with the Bilski finding that a patent can only be granted on a machine or material transformation of a tangible article or substance. They start with the argument that the machine does not have to be the invention, but what you do with the machine should be patentable subject matter.
    But no particular "machine" is required
    They are really starting by saying that inventions are applied science as opposed to pure science which is not patent subject material. They point out that the inventive application of general machines and processes should not, in itself, preclude patent awards.
    While the popular conception of "software" as something that is functionally distinct from "hardware" can be useful, it tends to obscure our understanding of the physical processes taking place within the computers all around us. This is reflected in the commonly used term "software patent," employed by petitioners. So-called "software patents" generally do not actually describe software at all, but rather the process performed by a programmed computer. It is such a computer-implemented process-- not software itself--that is potentially eligible for patent protection. For this reason, the notion of "software patents" as a category that is distinct from digital hardware patents lacks any coherent technological or legal basis.

    Purporting to analyze the patent-eligibility of software, as opposed to that of hardware, relies on an illusory distinction. The functionality of any digital device is the product of the same transistor activity, and it is the configuration of the pathways between those transistors that dictates their functionality. Like all patent-eligible processes, computer-implemented processes combine physical activity with human-directed logic. Irrespective of whether a particular configuration of transistors is accomplished using a soldering iron or by means of software, the processes conducted by these transistors are ultimately physical processes.

    It follows naturally from this understanding that the innovation that employs a computer to do new and useful things is not necessarily encompassed by the innovations of the transistor (or computer) itself--that is, a new way to use an existing computer may itself be patent-eligible. ("The term 'process' ... includes a new use of a known process, machine, manufacture, composition of matter, or material"). Although the court dismissed this statutory text as "unhelpful" it confirms that, among other things, each new application of computer technology (at heart, each new use of transistors) which permits computers to perform a useful function is the product of human innovation, the application of principles to the functions of human needs.

    In this respect, modern computer-related inventions are no different from other patent-eligible innovations that have produced a new and useful result by employing physical structures and phenomena to record, manipulate, or disseminate information.

    If we can show that the programmer does not know what switches are set and what paths are made then the setting of the switches and paths (if any) is not part of the invention and is a moot argument. The inventive subject matter must be what the inventor has created and, with no link to the workings of the computer, that only leaves the form of the program itself to be protected.

    Many folk point out that, for general purpose computers, programs do not set or change paths. They can only set or change memory locations. Any other switch changes are a function of the computer wiring and components. However, by using assembler language mnemonics and compiling the resultant assembly language program the contents of registers and the order of the processor's algorithmic steps can be controlled by the programmer. This might be claimed as a descendant of changing the patches on the patch panel of ENIAC. However, folk have commented that the different patch patterns are no more patentable than the Jacquard loom patterns on the punched cards. TemporalBeing, whilst firmly being in the 'can't patent algorithms' camp points out that some programming, as in the case of embedded controllers, is done in assembly language which is a direct representation of the binary machine code instructions used by the processor, the data that will be processed and the input and output to the real world that will do useful things. The programmer is not setting pathways, but is directly setting switches rather than using a higher level language which conceals that from the programmer. He went on to comment that this is usually done to create an embedded component in a larger machine and so we have to accept that such components may be of a patentable nature. I have argued in previous articles that they still fail the algorithm test and that only particular interconnections of electronic components might qualify for patents. The pathways of embedded controllers are not changed by the program.

    Although I generated fierce opposing comment when I asserted this, if assembly language code is run on a computer controlled by an operating system and that code does not limit itself to the OS APIs and other published software interfaces then it will interfere, probably terminally, with the operating system. Folk point out that the processor knows no difference between the machine code instructions from an assembler program and those from a higher level language program, but I maintain that ignoring the OS will result in a machine hang or a BSOD. The reason for this is that the program will be changing memory states and peripheral configurations without the OS being aware of it. The moment the OS does something on the basis of those altered states then there will be a major operationsl failure. Machine code programs used correctly with a modern OS software interfaces is only replacing the algorithmic steps of a higher level language and is not using an in-depth knowledge of the hardware architecture.

    In previous articles I mentioned Field Programmable Gate Arrays whereby the pathways are changed by the program to create the specific circuit. The program is stored in memory on the circuit board and the FPGA loads the program and creates the circuit when the board is powered up. In this case, a very high language (the development tool) is used and the programmer is only aware of a block diagram representation of what the FPGA will do and is not aware of the detailed circuit design.

    Vic pointed out that 'the management of the memory space is an OS-level feature (except when the OS does not have memory management, in which case it must be "handled" elsewhere); the application will be handled some memory in which to operate. The exact location of that memory is usually unknown to that application (and irrelevant as well). It gets a memory space; a sibling instance will also get a memory space, and the two will probably look identical from the application's perspective. But they are different memory spaces'. So the programmer programming for a modern operating system (as opposed to a DOS) has no control over the setting of any switches and there is no equivalence with the early computers and programmed machines that Microsoft cite.

    In summary, Microsoft maintain that programs, once turned into binary blobs and loaded into a general purpose computer, are no different to rewiring the computer with a soldering iron to do a new and useful job. I hope I have shown that it is different because, with a computer using a modern OS, like a smart phone, the programmer has no knowledge of the detailed working of the hardware and is prevented by the OS of knowing what detailed effect the program will have on the hardware. Further, the programmer does not know which switches are switched by the program unlike the programmers of the ENIAC. Programs do not change paths on a computer with a modern OS and so the comparison with changing pathways with a soldering iron or patching the ENIAC with patch cords is a false one. And, finally, back to the starting point. The direct patching of the ENIAC does require an understanding of what the hardware does. However, as PoIR points out in the article, the ENIAC was a digital device, the first electronic machine able to deal with the same kind of mathematical problems as differential analyzers. Programming it with a mathematical problem is not patent subject matter. Then general purpose computers were devised based on the concepts pioneered by Turing and von Neumann's realisation of the importance of the stored-program concept for electronic computing. They broke the conceptual link between inventions that used programming in previous times and the inventions that are in widespread use, today.

    ---
    Regards
    Ian Al

    Linux: Viri can't hear you in free space.

    [ Reply to This | # ]

    Correcting Microsoft's Bilski Amicus Brief -- How Do Computers Really Work? - Updated 2Xs
    Authored by: Imaginos1892 on Wednesday, November 04 2009 @ 12:32 PM EST
    A modern digital computer - excluding the power supply, chassis, cables and other parts that are
    not relevant to its ability to be programmed - consists of several integrated circuits containing
    many billions of transistors, diodes, resistors and capacitors which are interconnected to form
    logic circuits, registers, memory, instruction decoders, sequencers and many other things. All of
    those connections are permanently defined when the chips are manufactured and the circuit boards
    are assembled, and can never be changed thereafter. Anything MS has put in their paper to imply
    otherwise is either a lie, or the result of a fundamental misunderstanding of how computers work.
    Which might explain some of the problems with their software.

    After the computer has been constructed, the only changes possible are the voltages and currents
    within the circuits. The computer engineers have chosen to have certain voltage values at certain
    nodes represent binary bits set to 1 or 0 depending on the voltage present, allowing the computer
    to act as a binary finite state machine containing several billion bits. From any possible state,
    there are a number of defined transitions to other states, and all possible states, transitions,
    and state sequences are already designed into the hardware. It is not possible to "invent" a new
    state that has not already been anticipated by the designers. Some people will try to claim that
    programming an EEPROM modifies the circuit but that's not true either - it just places persistent
    stored charges in some parts of the circuits specifically designed to hold them, which alters
    current flow through adjacent parts of the circuit.

    A computer program is a list of state transitions. One of the integrated circuit devices - the CPU
    chip - reads the list in from memory, interprets it as a sequence of instructions and operands,
    performs the specified state transitions, and hopefully performs some useful function. No part of
    the computer's circuits is modified in any way; only the voltages and currents present in its
    components change, in ways that the circuits are specifically designed to support. And when a
    user clicks on "Quit" or switches the computer off, the program and whatever behavior or effects
    it bestows are gone without a trace.

    Computer programming is not a constructive or inventive process, it is a process of selection and
    exclusion - of paring down the vast number of possible successor states at each point in the program
    to the one that leads most efficiently toward the required solution, or end state. At each line of
    an assembly program I select one of the machine instructions defined for the microcontroller I am
    working with and append one of the possible operands to get to the next state. Did I hear "But
    nobody uses assembly any more"? Not true. Some operations are much more efficient in assembly,
    and some can't be done at all in C, like clearing all memory below the stack. C does not have a
    syntax for accessing the stack pointer register to make the comparison. On my current project,
    about 5% of the code is in assembly, and it's an important 5%.

    High-level languages, standard libraries, system calls and other such constructs simply represent
    greater and greater degrees of aggregation, reducing the programmer's choices to ever longer canned
    state sequences in which all the decisions have already been made. These constructs actually limit
    the programmer's flexibility, eliminating many approaches that would be more efficient in terms of
    code size and/or speed in order to make programs easier to write and maintain. They are levels of
    abstraction that allow a programmer to operate at a coarser degree of granularity, but it does not
    matter to the computer. The CPU does not know whether you have linked a pre-written library function
    or pasted the instructions together yourself, nor does it care.

    The end result of running any computer program is the conversion or translation of a bunch of bits
    into a different bunch of bits. That is all a microprocessor can ever do! The programmer and user
    may choose to agree that those bunches of bits represent some sort of object or concept in the real
    world, but that is irrelevant to the computer and to the program. We are all able to communicate here
    because we choose to agree that certain patterns of bits in the video RAM of our computers represent
    characters, spaces, punctuation, words, etc. when processed and converted into patterns of light on
    our screens. None of that matters to our computers, or to ibiblio or any the internet gateways and
    servers in between.

    Composing this post has been a lot like writing a computer program. I started with an empty screen
    that had the potential to hold any possible combination of letters, numbers and symbols. For each
    location I selected one of those symbols which I hoped would lead efficiently toward my goal of
    communicating certain ideas and concepts. My choices at each point were constrained by the conventions
    of English spelling, grammar and syntax, at least to the degree that I desired it to make sense to
    a reader using those conventions.

    (ibiblio and PJ have imposed additional constraints; some sequences of symbols are not welcome here)

    Some of you have mentioned programmable gate arrays but have also missed a similar point - the
    unprogrammed FPGA does nothing because it has ALL possible connections "made". Programming it
    involves removing or blocking the undesired connections to leave only the necessary ones. How can
    you patent the result of a process of selective exclusion? Don't get me wrong, it's a lot of work;
    but so is writing a novel. Both deserve the same kind of protection: copyright.

    A phonograph is patentable. The specific pattern of wiggly grooves on "Secret Treaties" is not.
    A movie projector is patentable. The sequence of sounds and images comprising "V For Vendetta" is not.
    A pipe organ is patentable. Playing "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor" on it is not.
    A computer is patentable. The collection of bits making up "DOOM" is not.
    ---------------------------------
    SCO's horse is dead, the race is over, the prizes have been awarded, the bets are paid off, the spectators
    have gone home, it's dark, and the crickets are chirping, but out on the deserted racetrack that fool jockey
    Darl is still convinced that if he just keeps flogging the dead horse long enough it's gonna win.

    [ Reply to This | # ]

    Another way to put the argument without mentioning transistors
    Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, November 04 2009 @ 03:22 PM EST
    A purely mechanical device made of iron or steel (such as a real world paper
    clip) is something that can be patented (and has been in the past). So is a
    general purpose metal-working machine such as might be found in a "machine
    shop". So is a variant of that machine which can be configured or
    programmed to perform a series of manufacturing steps again and again while the
    factory worker is elsewhere occupied.

    Walking up to a general purpose metal-working machine and manually operating it
    to make the patented paper clip is not patentable, but is restricted by the
    paper clip patent. Configuring the automated metal-working machine to make
    thousands of patented paper-clips is not patentable but is still restricted by
    the patent on the paper clip. A ready-to-use punched card or other template to
    make this happen is not traditionally patentable, but remains restricted by the
    paper clip patent (this is explicit in the legislation).

    Computer programs are a lot like such ready to use templates, they should not be
    patentable per se, but may be templates for making something that may or may not
    be patentable independently of the involvement of a program.

    A computer program which makes a common household computer behave like a common
    household Television receiver might reasonably be covered by a patent on
    Television receivers in general, but replacing the non-computerized Television
    receiver by a suitably programmed computer should not be considered a new
    non-trivial invention, just as changing the wooden box around the TV screen to
    one made of plastic is not a patentable invention in its own right.

    [ Reply to This | # ]

    Another court ruling to consider when looking at the Bilsky issues
    Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, November 04 2009 @ 03:34 PM EST
    I seem to recall another important historic court ruling to compare to: The
    frequently cited old ruling (sorry, I don't have the precise name or number of
    that case handy) that the copyright on a book introducing a certain accounting
    method did not imply a monopoly on products implementing that method, only a
    patent (which had not been applied for in time) would have done that.

    Could anyone add any details (like the precise citation and quote)?

    [ Reply to This | # ]

    Clarifying the Turing argument
    Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 05 2009 @ 05:03 AM EST
    In an understandable manner, one could argue that

    -it is generally known that computers can execute multiple programs at the same
    time
    -this is because a stored program computer remains a stored program computer
    even if a program is loaded

    The fact that a programmed computer remains a computer contradicts the 'special
    purpose machine' doctrine, because a 'special purpose machine' is not a computer
    and as such incapable of executing a second program.

    We could make this theory more accurate by considering resource contention.
    If two programs share a computers, there is resource contention: there is only
    one disk/memory/cpu and it should be shared. (Like people sharing a road.)
    Programs must have a protocol amongst themselves to do so in an orderly fashion.
    (Like the traffic code.) Usually the operation system defines and enforces this
    protocol. (Like the government.) The sharing is however not a property of the
    operating system, but of the computer, in the same way a road can inherently be
    shared and the government is only required as a facilitator.


    (the argument is rather crude, but I think it is essentially correct)


    [ Reply to This | # ]

    Programming is not Reductionism
    Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, November 06 2009 @ 04:05 AM EST
    The biggest problem I have with Microsoft's account is this line, "Computer
    programming is an exercise in reductionism, as every feature, decision, and
    analysis must be broken down to the level of the rudimentary operations captured
    by transistors turning on and off."

    Computer programming is the opposite of reductionism, the reason why high level
    languages were invented was to allow the programmer to ignore the concept of
    logic gates and switches and focus on a much higher level.

    [ Reply to This | # ]

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