[OT] Free software versus software idea patents

[geremy condra]

On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 12:22 AM, harrismh777 <harrismh777 at charter.net> wrote:
> geremy condra wrote:
>>
>> Having said that, I have a greater respect for mathematics than I do
>> for my own economic views, and I don't like seeing it become a
>> political football. If you can prove something,*prove it*. If you
>> cannot- no matter how close you might feel you are- don't claim that
>> math says you're right.
>
>    Fair enough.
>
>    http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20091111151305785
>
>
>    With your background, you will have no problem with this text...
> although, and I do apologize, it is a long text... scroll down and begin
> reading at the heading:
>
>    An Explanation of Computation Theory for Lawyers
>
>    By PolR
>
>
>
>    The write-up is excellent, written as well or better than I could write
> it myself, and is very clear and concise... yes, even a lawyer can
> understand it.

This is not a proof. This is an argument. There's a very big difference.

To be clear, this article makes basically the same mistake you do- you
assume that a program is exactly equivalent to its computation, while
the article makes the additional and even more wrong assumption that a
program is perfectly defined by its CPU instructions. It's to your
credit that you avoided advancing this obviously incorrect claim, but
you still haven't addressed my earlier points.

Geremy Condra