[lojban] Re: two concepts I haven't found any helpful translation

[Robin Lee Powell <lojban-out@lojban.org>]

On Tue, Oct 28, 2003 at 12:04:27PM -0500, Invent Yourself wrote:
> On Mon, 27 Oct 2003, Robin Lee Powell wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, Oct 27, 2003 at 10:53:53AM -0500, Invent Yourself wrote:
> > > On Sun, 26 Oct 2003, Robin Lee Powell wrote:
> > >
> > > > On Sun, Oct 26, 2003 at 11:09:48PM +0100, Llu'is Batlle i
> > > > Rossell wrote:
> > > > > They are 'hardware' and 'software'. Any clue?
> > > >
> > > > >From http://www.lojban.org/cgi-bin/dict.pl
> > > >
> > > > samru'e, samselpla and sampla for "program".  Apparently I
> > > > didn't do glosses for software.
> > > >
> > > > For hardware, what's wrong with minji?
> > > >
> > > > mutmi'i, IMO, is ass.
> 
> On the other hand, it occurred to me that software is still
> software even if it's not being run. Is that true of pruce?  

Probably not, but it is of samselpla.

> If a piece of software is never ever executed, what is "process"
> about it?

If a piece of software is *never* executed, what is "software" about
it?

> Either way, it's a metaphor. Strictly, software is nothing but
> software. But we can liken it to a process (when it's excuted), a
> contraption built using code as a building material, or as an
> algorithm or schema, or as a responsive intelligence, or as a work
> of literature, or as a mathematical entity like a theorem, or as a
> single number, or as a human experience.

At least two of those are, to me, so poetic as to be communicatively
useless.

> The machine analogy bears the most fruit from the perspective of
> social relations, usage, and intent. Pieces of software are like
> machines in terms of their design by specialists, their mass
> production and marketing by corporations, their function as
> capital and also as consumer goods. Mechanical logic is
> historically being replaced by digital logic.

That's nice.  The place structure sucks for most sentences talking
about software, IMO.

-Robin

-- 
Me: http://www.digitalkingdom.org/~rlpowell/  ***   I'm a *male* Robin.
"Constant neocortex override is the only thing that stops us all
from running out and eating all the cookies."  -- Eliezer Yudkowsky
http://www.lojban.org/             ***              .i cimo'o prali .ui