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Read more carefully please | 756 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Read more carefully please
Authored by: PolR on Tuesday, July 24 2012 @ 05:33 PM EDT
You are misstating the argument from the article. For example the article says this:
The contents of the memory of a computer is constantly modified as the CPU executes instructions, because memory is where all kinds of data resides, not just programs. The CPU carries out computations by constantly writing and overwriting data in memory. This may happen as often as billions of times per second on the current generation of computers. If your desktop clock changes from 11:59 AM to 12:00 PM, memory has changed (not to mention the counters that are changing constantly just to know that time has passed). Displaying new results from a search engine is changing the memory contents. Moving the mouse, typing on the keyboard are all operations that change the memory contents. And every computation a program carries out similarly changes the memory contents.

All contents of memory may be modified including the program which is being executed. While it is usually considered bad practice to change a program during execution, this is technically possible and there are circumstances where this actually happens. For example the patent number RE38,104 which was litigated in the recent Oracle v. Google case is claiming such a programing technique. How do we distinguish a memory change which make a new machine from one which doesn't? There is no objective test because there is no basis *in technology* to make such a distinction.

This is a clear reference to physical changes done to the computer. So you clearly misstate the article contents. In particular you err when you says:
--No new machine structure is made when a computer is programmed-- is an assertion that there is no physical change, is it not?
No it is an assertion that the changes are not changes to the machine structure. You can have physical changes without them being changes to the machine structure.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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