On Tue, 21 Feb 2006, Ross Vandegrift wrote: > On Tue, Feb 21, 2006 at 07:42:26PM -0600, Jan Depner wrote: > > If you want to compare apples to apples instead of > > apples to colostomy bags how about explaining how software is different > > from your latest song, novel, poem, picture. > > A computer program can be written as a big integer. Moreover, a > computer program has no representation that is not a big integer. A program is a big integer when you store it on a hard drive. There is no doubt of it. You can legally fill your hard drive with big integers. But you cannot say that what you hear or see when running an computer program (say game) is not something "that is not a big integer". > Since there is no difference between some big integer and a computer > program, you must defend a copyright against either use. You can take program with size of one megabyte. There are 8 magabits which means that there are 2^8M different big integers of that size. You can claim that the file containing a copyrighted program is yours because your computer has generated it randomly. Let's hope police will believe your explanation. In particular if your hard drive is full of big integers that are identical with various expensive software packages. Best regards, Hannu ----- Hannu Savolainen (hannu@xxxxxxxxxxxxx) http://www.opensound.com (Open Sound System (OSS)) http://www.compusonic.fi (Finnish OSS pages) OH2GLH QTH: Karkkila, Finland LOC: KP20CM
