On Sun, 23 Apr 2006, sberaud wrote:
Its is nothing more that a giant sophisticated calculator, that does nothing
but add and subtract ones and zeros.
Actually there is a fundamental difference between a calculator and a
computer. In essence a computer is capable of evaluating a conditional
and responding differently based on the outcome of the evaluation.
Turing completeness (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_complete)
provides the definition of a computer as we understand it today. Quantum
computers could throw all of this out the window of course.
The defintion of Turing completeness is deliberately abstract. There is
nothing that requires a computer to be electrical for example. We just
build them that way as it is convenient.
Cheers,
Rob
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