Re: Question About GNU General Public License

[telford]

Rui Miguel Seabra <rms@1407.org> wrote:

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> On Thu, 2004-07-22 at 00:02 +0000, wrote:
>> Rui Miguel Seabra <rms@1407.org> wrote:
>>=20
>> > One thing is duplication. In the digital world, you achieve 100%
>> > duplication WITHTOUT any loss of the original. Like ideas, because it's
>> > just as immaterial.
>>=20
>> OK, lets focus on duplication, bacteria duplicate without information los=
> s.

> But you didn't talk about the self duplication of cells, but of
> contagion, which is normally the loss of some amount of the agent on the
> host that is enough to infect the new host.

OK, lets focus on transmission. As I mentioned before, when computers send
data, the packets that you transmit via ethernet, wavelan or whatever are
lost to the sender. All through the transmission process, temporary copies
are being made and destroyed so a great deal of data is lost during all
the intermediate stages of sending a message (inside routers, gateways, etc).
Each and every leg of the journey requires radiating data packets into a medium
and being unable to recover that radiation from the medium.

> You're still talking about different things.

Your original definition of an experiment to classify hardware and software
was not precise about whether you base your classification around duplication
or transmission but it doesn't matter because the duplication process always
consumes energy and the transmission process always destroys some of the
duplicate copies you have made. There is no pure abstract realm where either
event happens without loss.

>> > To duplicate you may have to spend some energy, but you have not done s=
> o
>> > at the cost of the original.
>>=20
>> Yup, bacteria require input energy to be able to reproduce. After reprodu=
> ction
>> the resulting bacteria are fully functional and undamaged.
>>=20
>> > The original is 100% intact.
>>=20
>> Completely true of bacteria as well.

> Not true. It breaks a basic law of physics, all is energy, nothing is
> created nothing is lost.

When I say that "energy is spent" of course I mean that energy available
to do work is no longer available. The energy itself does not vanish from
existence, it dissipates into background thermal energy. I think I should
give up trying to explain to you how these things work because you obviously
aren't interested. There are plenty of books and web pages around if you
ever get the urge to actually learn something.

        - Tel