You are referring to the representations of the symbols. What I
meant to express is that the symbols are not their physical representations. I
have explained why it is so in the article.
I'm not sure.
I contend that as instructions are processed any symbols that may be present
which are not an integral part of the computers hardware design are not treated
differently from any other data. Manipulation of these symbols as a result of
the software execution is something only programmer can intentionally
cause.
If you refer to the voltage state of a memory cell, or register
bit being a symbol, then I suppose computers do manipulate those specific
symbols.
During execution symbols are written. The act of
writing doesn't transform math into something
concrete...
Are the voltage values in the memory cells not
real representation of machine state that resulted from this execution, even if
the symbolic aspects that a programmer introduced is merely
coincidental?
... Also, writing doesn't create the meaning.
The knowledge of how symbols should be read belongs to the reader independently
from the act of writing.
BINGO! However the
machine/software characteristics do assist the reader by performing some types
of predetermined operations that assists the reader in associating his knowledge
with the information (perhaps symbols) that have been processed by the software.
The value of this organizational capacity that can be found in software is very
real and provides value to the user.
Is it just me or your
comment is a description of how people interact with devices having contents but
without using the word contents? This kind of explanation gives the impression
that the hardware does everything. But symbols are not hardware. There is such a
thing as contents whether or not the explanation uses the
word.
Interesting point. hmmm. The hardware only follows
the instructions present in the software. For mathematic/algorithm based
patents to be valid they need to be a part of a possibly real machine; they must
transcend from the pure theoretical into the real. So my focus has been on how
software is an extension or customization of the characteristics that the
hardware can exhibit.
My understanding is that contents are likely never
patentable, they may be copyrightable though. Hence my focus has not been in
consideration of content. I don't believe software is to be considered as
content as far as patents should be concerned.
If you refer to the
representation of content onscreen as a result of some software process, I make
a distinction between the software that processes the content to place it's
representation on screen, and the original data that represents that content
before processing.
Read again the part of the article about
how the same boolean gate computes two different boolean functions. Also read
the part about the adder circuit which does two different additions depending on
the syntax used to represent numbers. In both cases one can't tell which meaning
is intended by looking at the circuit alone. Knowledge of what is intended
matters.
Thanks for the invitation. :)
The boolean
gates which perform hardware operations are activated by the machine when the
machine detects the instructions and one or two operands in the instruction
stream (software instructions). The prior is an implementation required to
fulfill the mathematics for such boolean operators.
I would not consider
the operands for such instructions to be a component of materials you may
categorize as contents all the time. It's very possible that these instructions
may be called with operands that have been previously set by software during the
execution of prior instructions. In this case, the operand is merely part of
the existing machine state, and not a part of content.
To apply an
equivalent of your boolean logic gates and boolean operator analogy to the
abacus. Consider the operator first. If presented with the
instructions:
IF (beads in row 1 == 10) THEN
right 10 beads in row
1;
left 1 bead in row 2;
ENDIF
First you load the
instructions (read them in this example). Then execute. In this example the
logic operator does not naturally exist in the abacus. So the user gets tasked
with fulfilling the operation. The user needs to make a determination whether
row 1 contains 10 beads. The equivalent implementation of such an equality
operator in a machine circuit may make a cooresponding determination by
comparing two registers, one set by a previous instruction to the value of 10,
the other containing a previous machine state. So both possible implementation
have an equal representation.
Neither the simplified abacus example or
the automated computer example really give any evidence of any substantial that
is patentable because the representations are intermediary values. And as far
as your original posting, or any viewpoint I may hold, these intermediary
representations don't contain real value to a user until the system as a whole
can process/present enough information for such operations to become useful
tools to the user. They are only elements of an idea. Not a complete
idea.
I am not sure if this conversation will continue to be productive
as far as how either one of us understands the patentability of software
(algorithms). One of the reasons I brought the abacus, the user and the
instructions (on paper) into my first post was to simplify the computing system
and bring things to it's very basics so that what software does exactly may
become more obvious.
I felt that you had complicated the issue, in doing so
you seemed to have overlooked something. By introducing the idea that
everything is mathematics, you seemed to have overlooked how those
representations can be very useful to humanity. It's the mathematicians
responsibility to find a way to make his trade useful to his society after all,
is it not? And he knows that just because something is mathematical it should
not surrender being real; and furthermore, a computer system modified by
specific software seems to be a perfect example of how something with pure
mathematical origins can manifest itself into the real, at least enough to be
considered worth of patents IMO. Whether that statement is really true is
debatable of course and has been the side issue of our topics in this
conversations it seems.
Either way I hope you have enjoyed our
conversations as much as I have. I'd like to thank you for expressing your
views and entertaining my ideas though they may have contradicted some of yours.
I really appreciate the effort you put into your work despite my vigor to
defend my own views.
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