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Those "physical changes" are like electrical flashes in the brain | 756 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
You answered your own question before you asked it
Authored by: Imaginos1892 on Friday, July 20 2012 @ 06:01 PM EDT
They're not STRUCTURAL. The arrangement of atoms that make
up the computer has not changed.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Those "physical changes" are like electrical flashes in the brain
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, July 20 2012 @ 06:20 PM EDT
And it's well-settled that you can't patent changes of MENTAL STATE -- although
the infamous "business method" patents tried to do exactly that.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

You answered your own question before you asked it
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, July 20 2012 @ 06:29 PM EDT
The problem is, installation is a completely dispensable step. No change of any
kind, at all, need be made to enable a computer to run any program. So long as
the individual mathematical operations that make up the program can be accessed,
one at a time--the program can run.

Computers ran programs long before there WERE hard disks--sometimes using sound
signals in a tank of mercury as the only "memory".

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

You answered your own question before you asked it
Authored by: Wol on Monday, July 23 2012 @ 03:52 PM EDT
If they aren't physical, what are they?

Logical!

Because from the point of view of the program, they've put 0s and 1s on the hard
drive.

From the point of view of the hard drive, they've changed the magnetism.

The thing is, there is NO OBVIOUS CONNECTION between the 0s and 1s, and the
magnetism. The link between the two is ABSTRACT.

As soon as you get an abstraction layer (where the meaning and representation
meet) this is a bright line that patents cannot (legally) cross. The fact that
some patents do cross this line simply means the law has been abused.

Cheers,
Wol

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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