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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, June 11 2012 @ 05:57 PM EDT |
| "Replacing the software on a computer" is as a "matter of fact" the act
of turning on and off certain switches (i.e. memory cells). Nothing is
physically added or removed from the device. Nothing changes other than the
state (on or off) of those switches. The computer always had and continues to
have the possibility to do anything any program on the computer can do. You
just have the flip the switches the right way to make it do what you
want.(*)
Back to the analogy, the car always had headlights, it is just a
question of whether we found the combination of switches that turns them
on.
(The dip-switch analogy wasn't stretching very far as analogy. Some
computers are still programmed by physically setting dip-switches, and older
mainframes used big physical knobs to set the program.)
(*) This idea is
codified in the concept of a Universal Turing machine and the idea of the Von
Neumann architecture. These concept are the foundation of all modern computing.
I hope you are already familiar with these concepts, but if you are not, then
you should look them up. Any scholarly discussion of the programmability of
computers must take into account these ideas.
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| Authored by: PolR on Monday, June 11 2012 @ 06:51 PM EDT |
I'm not saying that the button to turn off the cell phone creates
something new - I'm saying that replacing the software to hide that
functionality altogether might create something new as a practical
matter.
I wish you explain why this something new is actually a
machine. We computer professionals are telling you that it is not and in
response you are discounting the causal link between machine structure and its
capabilities. I now have no idea of what it is that you call a machine.
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, June 12 2012 @ 09:42 AM EDT |
"No - programming the ability to flip the lights or not is the new
machine."
But that's saying that software isn't patentable.
Software doesn't change the ability for the hardware to do anything, it just
flips the switches.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: mipmip on Tuesday, June 12 2012 @ 12:49 PM EDT |
"I'm saying that replacing the software to hide that functionality
altogether might create something new as a practical matter."
Well, disabling the software from running would *practically* hide that
functionality to the user as well. Is this a new machine then too?
If yes, we would have the headlight switch analogy again.
If no, where is the *practical* difference? A user could not differentiate
between the replaced and the disabled software.
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| Authored by: rcsteiner on Tuesday, June 12 2012 @ 04:36 PM EDT |
Interesting.
A. CD players play music. That is their function.
I. You stick a rock CD in the machine, and it will play rock music. The machine
stays the same.
II. You stick a different CD in the machine, and it might play piano concertos.
Again, the machine stays the same.
B. Computers play software. That is their function.
I. You stick a Windows PE boot CD in the machine, and it will boot into Windows
PE and run Windows programs. The machine stays the same.
II. You stick a different CD in the machine, and it might boot into Linux and
run Linux programs. Again, the machine stays the same.
Are you somehow disagreeing with the above?
How are those two (A and B) different?
Are you suggesting that a CD player is a different (and potentially patentable)
machine if you play a different CD? Or is there some sort of subtle difference
between the data bits recorded on a software CD that a music CD doesn't share?
Both machines perform actions based solely on the data that is resident on the
CDs in question.
---
-Rich Steiner >>>---> Mableton, GA USA
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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