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| Authored by: stegu on Monday, May 27 2013 @ 07:08 PM EDT |
I notice a lot of people confusing "making a computer useful" with
"putting a computer to good use". To a layman, the act of programming
a computer seems to fall at least somewhere between those two, but to anyone
more educated in the matter, the intended purpose of a computer is to accept
programs and run them, said programs not being restricted to what was available
when the computer was designed. The usefulness of the computer is inherent in
its design.
A hammer is not "made more useful" because you decide to smash it
against a nail instead of keeping it in a drawer. It was made useful by its
manufacturer, fully expecting that it would be used to hit nails. Your hitting a
nail with it is merely putting it to use in the manner its designers intended.
A computer is just a tool for information processing, where a more concrete
definition of "information" and "processing" is left to the
software, but software does not make it a different machine. Programming it is
the intended use, not an act of inventing a new machine, not any more than an
existing hammer would become a different, new and patentable tool by hitting a
different kind of nail, or hitting nails in many small blows or a few strong
blows.
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, May 28 2013 @ 01:08 PM EDT |
"I have not improved the Raspberry Pi general purpose computer by plugging
in an SD card with software files saved in it."
Of course you have (assuming the software files are compatible with the pi and
cause it to perform some useful function). You have improved it by converting
it from an expensive paper weight to a paper weight/tool.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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