Comment What is so complicated about that? (Score 2) 387
Sometimes questions are so easy to answer that you wonder how the hell someone asks them.
That stream of data would crash your computer in seconds if you try to use it as instructions (side-question: would that make Windows sort of a movie?) Software on a DVD doesn't transform the movie into software for exactly the same reason that staying in a garage doesn't make you a car.
What is software? Its information. What is a film on a CD? Information again. This confuses people.
What sort of information is software? It consists of two essential properties: instructions and data. The instructions tell a computer what to do with the data.
A movie, quite in contrast, consists only of data. Where are the computer-understandable instructions in that stream of data that is on a DVD?
That stream of data would crash your computer in seconds if you try to use it as instructions (side-question: would that make Windows sort of a movie?) Software on a DVD doesn't transform the movie into software for exactly the same reason that staying in a garage doesn't make you a car.
