Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Not broken, invalid as a concept. Please describe to me *anything* in 
> software that isn't technically a set of instructions, which, in 
> principle, a human could not reproduce themselves, if they had some 
> means to access the same data, and some means to produce the same 
> results on a computer screen. Can't? Well, then, software patents are 
> not legal at all, since you can't patent such "instruction sets", as 
> defined by the laws set up to define what you *can* patent. The problem 
> is, no one mentions this niggling little detail, or makes sure the 
> people in the court, like the judge, knows that software "is" such a 
> thing. One side argues its not, but never manages to say why, the other 
> side argues it is, and babbles about unique, protecting IP, etc., and 
> the courts go by what they know, which is, "Someone wrote the thing, and 
> its all incomprehensible to me, so sounds like a machine, not 
> instructions."

Isn't *everything* reducible to a "set of instructions"?

--
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.freesitespace.net

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