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| Authored by: PolR on Sunday, October 14 2012 @ 01:02 PM EDT |
Read again. You missed the point.
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| Authored by: OpenSourceFTW on Sunday, October 14 2012 @ 02:06 PM EDT |
PoIR specifically rebutted your point about software simply being able to be
expressed by math. It can be, but if that was the only criteria, then anything
that could be described with math would also not be patentable.
PoIR's point is that software IS math, being simply the operation of AND/OR/NOT
gates (i.e. Boolean algebra) upon symbols represented by arbitrary voltages to
produce a particular result.
Every time you run a piece of software, you are DOING math. DOING software =
DOING math.
Here is a basic picture of how it works as far as I understand it.
Take a simple program on a relatively simple processor (but understand that a
more complex processor simple has more of the things I describe):
LDA - Load Accumulator with the number below
7
ADD - Add the below number
2
When I fire up the computer to run this simple program, the program counter
copies its contents (in this case 0) to the memory register. On the next cycle,
the program counter increments, and the contents of the first memory location
are loaded into the data register (LDA). Using Logic gates, a construct called
the instruction decoder determines that this mean it needs to load the next
result into the accumulator, and it therefore makes the correct connection
On the next clock cycle, the program counter copies to the memory register. On
the next cycle, the program counter increments, and the contents of the next
memory location are loaded into the data register (7), and promptly loaded into
the accumulator. On the next cycle, the program counter copies to the memory
register.
On the next cycle, the program counter increments again, and the results of the
third memory location are loaded into the data register (ADD). The instruction
decoder again uses logic gates to determine the correct connection to make, this
time it is to the arithmetic logic unit. On the next cycle, the contents of the
program counter are copied to the memory register.
On the subsequent clock cycle, the program counter increments, and the contents
of the fourth memory location are loaded into the data register (2), and
delivered to the arithmetic logic unit, which adds this number to the one stored
in the accumulator, and saves the result in the accumulator.
Every single one of these steps is a mathematical operation. They are not simply
described by mathematics, they ARE mathematics. Understand that more complex
computers and more complex programs simple do MORE of the above operations,
perhaps with some hardware based optimization, but that changes nothing.
Show me one program that does even a single non-mathematical operation. It
cannot be done, as computers "think" only in two symbols: 1 and 0, and
manipulation of these requires Boolean algebra, which is a form of mathematics.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, October 14 2012 @ 06:20 PM EDT |
You post is very strange. No one said "being able to express an idea in a
language makes it unpatentable".
The statement was "software is math".
If you ask any Computer Science professor they will tell you that statement is a
fact.
That statement is significant because the courts have indisputably ruled that
math is not patentable. The reason for this article explaining "software is
math" is because a significant number of people want or believe software to
be patentable, and they have been making increasingly bizarre denials that
software somehow isn't math to support patentability for software.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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