On Tue, 2004-04-27 at 12:20, Thiemo Seufer wrote: > Thomas Hood wrote: > > On Mon, 2004-04-26 at 22:31, Thiemo Seufer wrote: > > > Program: Software which is intended for execution on an actually > > > existing interpreter. > > > > > > Data: Software which is not ~. > > > > You probably do have to bring in human intentions for the definition > > to have a chance of being adequate. > > I have to, otherwise any bitstream would be a program because > it segfaults correctly. > > > Your next task is to define > > the term 'execute'. :) > > I use for it as well the establishend meaning in CS. The best definition of 'execute' in computer science is "can be decided by some Turing machine". Any stream of bits can be not only be decided by a Turing machine, but can also be a Turing machine itself. It just depends on what encodings you pick (and, you can write programs to automatically generate appropriate encodings...) I think, anyone who has studied CS (more specifically, the theory of computation) will eventually come to the conclusion that all bit streams are software. -- Joe Wreschnig <piman@debian.org>
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