From sfurlong@acmenet.net Sat Sep 02 17:18:39 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 25198 invoked from network); 3 Sep 2000 00:18:38 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by m2.onelist.org with QMQP; 3 Sep 2000 00:18:38 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO shell.acmenet.net) (206.152.182.1) by mta2 with SMTP; 3 Sep 2000 00:18:38 -0000 Received: from acmenet.net ([208.171.236.26]) by shell.acmenet.net (8.10.1/8.10.1) with ESMTP id e830Ibk29134 for ; Sat, 2 Sep 2000 20:18:37 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <39B198C8.1DC69837@acmenet.net> Date: Sat, 02 Sep 2000 20:18:16 -0400 X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.6 [en] (Win95; I) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lojban@egroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] samselpla vs. samjva References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Steven Furlong X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 4218 Taral wrote: <> > I dunno... I think that the concept of "computer" needs to be in there > somewhere. Otherwise, the words for "computer" and "computer program" are > not at all related. Somehow that strikes me as wrong. Well, a computer program need not be executed on a computer. For example, it could be walked through by hand. In general, a computer program is a means of transforming some input into some output. Mathematical algorithms were often executed by hand before the common availability of the computer. Of course, many programs wouldn't make sense outside of the computer context; a shoot-em-up game might not have quite the excitement without a processor and video screen. Possibly we should have a word for "algorithmic recipe", which is more specific than . This would include the concept of what we normally call computer programs, but would not be identical to it. We could throw a in if needed. -- Steve Furlong, Computer Condottiere Have GNU, will travel 518-374-4720 sfurlong@acmenet.net