"Marco d'Itri" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > >>>>If Debian *could* ship it, it's software. >>> This distinction is not clear at all to me. What if I take a dump of the >>> flash EPROM chip? Does this magically makes the firmware a software? >>There's no magic about it. If I build a simulator for some hardware, >>then my simulator's software. > It's also a different thing. Your point being?
It is? Sitting out on some wire, how can you tell them apart? But look at it this way: maybe the device has its firmware implemented as clockwork -- gears and springs. If I open that up and take a picture of it, that picture is software. I could even build a program to execute that picture, by detecting gears and simulating their mechanical interaction. Similarly, I could take a device with firmware in ROM and read off the firmware. It's no different from the picture. So clearly they're both software, and it's perfectly consistent to think of the preimage as hardware. By the way, it's difficult to read your messages without blank lines between the quotation and the body. -Brian -- Brian Sniffen [EMAIL PROTECTED]
