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There's a big difference between "locking out support" and "not doing extra work to support a feature we don't need." Should I blame Microsoft for not supplyin

There's a big difference between "locking out support" and "not doing extra work to support a feature we don't need." Should I blame Microsoft for not supplying all software ever written with Windows? After all, my PC is just a Turing machine, so by not providing me with all the software ever written, they're locking out functionality the underlying hardware supports.

noblethrasher 11y ago
The actual big thing about Turing Machines is that they can simulate “nicer” Turing Machines. So, a better analogy would be a company that doesn't support (or even expressly forbids) running certain kinds of Turing Machines on the Turing Machine that they sold you. Consider that an Operating System is just a simulation of a nicer Turing Machine than the hard-wired Turing Machine on which it runs. Similarly, an “interpreter” is just a nicer Turing Machine that is being simulated on top of an OS. So, for a complete analogy, we’d need a company that either restricts what kind of OS that you can run on the hardware that they sold you, or that restricts what kind of interpreters you can run on the OS that they licensed you.