Hardware is physical elecronics: PCBs, ICs, etc.

Software is, when all is said and done, machine code, 1s and 0s.

To get a basic understanding of firmware, read up on EPROMs and EEPROMs. Nowadays "firmware" can be any number of things e.g. the OS of a printer, TV or network adapter flashed on to some kind of EPROM, but really it's still software. The "firmware image" which is flashed to the chip is a binary and thus software.

Historically, firmware was very simple code, often written in assember, to run with limited resources for a very specific taske - nowadays the Intel Management Engine OS for example, which was found to be based on MINIX 3.0 and a typical UEFI are very large and complex.

• Firmware

• @FPGA.

What do you get when you force a hardcoded binary onto a floppy disk?
Software that turns into vaporware, and hardware that turns into a brick.

cool @alphalpha ..

I've twisted my mind for a while on that . It has a kind of cyber-coolness. I like it  I like the transformational aura it carries with it and how a dull-software could make a hardware more hard ? :-) Or a dull-software transfuses its dullness to every hardware it touches ? wow.. lets add a mythical touch .@ ..the midas touch.
It's like a dull virus ? And so dullness is ethereal and you (a cyber entity) could catch it ? As we catch a cold?.

Also it's interesting now that i read it again.. how the dullness trait you attributed to the software that turned it  into a 'vaporware' is a hardcoded binary. So in another ironical twist of that cyber-haiku riddle of yours the software that turned the hardware into a brick it was the one that first catch a 'hardware-ness' trait? Maybe hanging out too much with hardware and catch it?  :-)

I wonder if your riddle is used in a hacker initiation ..  Well if it was multiple choice i could have a chance althought the vaporware as term is little misleading to me.

I believe that if my semantic investigation of these terms unfolds even more cool cyber @haiku-riddles could be made.

Software as the 'program' you send to a dead silicon engraved with metal patterns ? Or software as a part of matter that exhibits a 'smart' behavior , a smart matter (like possesing a 'mind') ?

Interstingly if we see software as program then by it self is not smart. It's just data. The reaction of a machine to a program (running it) seems closer to an intelligent entity.

Why a part of matter that is 'soft' not rigid would be more close to the 'intelligence' axis ? Soft means more amenable to our efforts to 'shape' it , to 'contol it' make it align with our goals ? See how we value in social life flexibility as soft . In greece we say a stuborn man a 'ξερο(dry)+κέφαλος(head)' comparing her/his behavior to a hard wood that lost it's humidity . So being mentaly more ready to aling with other people wishes makes you more -soft- thus maybe more intelligent ?