On Tue, 2006-02-14 at 11:51 +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
Well, that looks to me like programs for some analogue computers would not be programs and some hardware would be software and many other fun consequences. I'm sure it'd not be too long before other absurdities could be revealed.
Completely as an aside, I'm interested to know why you think those are absurdities.
I don't see why it's not possible for something to be both hardware and software, in the same way you could call a postscript file both documentation and program.
I can even think of a few examples - eeproms, fpgas, etc. - where a representation of some software is actually a physical configuration of a piece of silicon.
I don't think it's possible to classify any given 'thing', be it object or file or whatever, into 'hardware', 'program', etc. - but only because I don't think they're mutually exclusive.
Cheers,
Alex.