Re: A non- destructive brain scan for Uploading?

Mark Grant (mark@unicorn.com)
Thu, 20 Mar 1997 01:06:08 +0000


On Tue, 18 Mar 1997, John K Clark wrote:

> Is my copy of Windows NT not the same as the "original" at Microsoft
> headquarters? If I have not convinced you that I am correct it's because the
> post you're looking at is not as good as the "original" on my computer.

A better example might be to question whether your copy of Windows NT is
the same as one run on a PC emulator like SoftPC. In most respects it is;
you're running the same code. However, the underlying 'substrate' of the
emulator is different to a real PC. The hardware emulation doesn't exactly
match the behaviour of a real computer; for example interrupt timings are
different and the time taken to execute instructions is different. In most
cases these effects will be invisible (except for the performance loss
inherent to software emulation), but in a few instances you'll see different
behaviour on a PC and SoftPC because hardware events will happen at a
different time or in a different order.

So a copy could be identical to the original, but an emulated copy
may not be quite the same.

Mark

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