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Comment by sounds | Hacker News Reader

tl;dr: "We should legislate that developing, distributing, or running a program on generally used computing hardware does not constitute patent infringement."

He goes on to say "generally used computing hardware" is the opposite of "special-purpose hardware" but I think that definition needs to be really explicit.

Of course then, would anyone in Congress actually pass such a bill?

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Only one thing is certain: if Congress passes a law like this, they will absolutely fuck up the definition in ways that will create billions of dollars of unforeseen consequences.

Figuring out how to apply fuzzy concepts like "generally used computing hardware" to a messy world is a big part of what courts are for. I don't see any reason to believe that Congress would do a better job of it.

Are you gonna wait for congress to know dick about anything?

Is a GPU "special-purpose hardware" when used for graphics, but general purpose when used for GPGPU functions?

I think that a scientific/mathematical definition would work in this case - if you can simulate a turing machine on that particular machine, then it is considered a general purpose machine. Otherwise, its a special purpose machine.

But you can't actually simulate a TM on any machine with a fixed amount of memory. And any "special purpose" computing hardware would have at least a little memory. So I don't think that distinction works. Unless it only applies to machines with expandable memory? Technically, if it were hot swappable, the memory would be unbounded. But nowadays, the SD slot on phones is often under the battery, if it exists at all.

I mean, you can't simulate the weather exactly, but that doesn't stop us from writing "good" approximate simulations. It's not hard to simulate a TM, even if we can't build a real TM (unbound memory).

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