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Are Spreadsheets Software or Data?
ideveroux asks: "I have started a company which designs Excel Workbooks to duplicate paperwork required for Bingo Halls in Mississippi. In all my years of experience, I have never considered a spreadsheet itself as software, only Excel. However, the Mississippi Gaming Commission has gotten itself into my business and is trying to require me to license my company with them ($10,000.00 and government involvement) because any 'software' sold to bingo's have to be licensed by them. What is your take? Are the workbooks software by themselves? As a startup with no venture capital, I haven't the resources to secure an attorney, nor pay their extortion money. Thanks for your input." Spreadsheets have always existed in this grey area because they mix functionality with data. This issue has grown more tricky over the years as in-spreadsheet macros become more and more complex. I don't think of spreadsheet files as software, because you can't edit or execute a saved spreadsheet without it's associated application. However some can say that anything that implements an algorithm qualifies for term. What are your thoughts on the subject?
It's very possible to change state law, especially where it's obvious nonsense (If you've never talked to your state senator, they love to see constiuents, and it's smart to get to know a couple of them in case you ever need anything...)
/.er (really any citizen) should be comfortable doing, especially since it's so useful and can have a significant impact. Try it.
Talk to the senator in charge of the comission that oversees the gaming comission. Ask him what they are doing. It'll only take a lunch hour or so (unless you live outside the capital.)
This is the type of thing any
You can only complain when you know the system doesn't really work. Until you try it, you have no right to say it's broken.
I'm a concientious
All software is data and all data (if it's in a computing machine) is software. Programmers split them up in order to facilitate talking about them, but when you get down to it your computer is a state machine. It might seem that the 'software' manipulates 'data', but it's just as true that 'data' manipulates 'software'. If you try to separate them for legal reasons, you will only make laws that make no sense (as they seem to have done).
Laws that rely on a distinction between software and data should be challenged as ambiguous and thrown out. Is that VHS tape a bunch of data? You bet it is, but it's also analog software that runs on your VCR to display moving pictures with sound. There was a slashdot article a while back about weather or not DVDs are software. Of course they are! And they are data also. I know that there are bad legal implications of this, but that's because the laws are bad!
We thought that we were bad off when we let legislators write laws, but now that we let media companies write them, things are even worse. Our legislative bodies need large influxes of mathematitions and programmers. Logic seems to be in short supply at the state and federal level - at least in the U.S. (not to mention local, but they're hopeless).