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Knuth Plans 'Earthshaking Announcement' Wednesday
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Donald Knuth is planning to make an 'earthshaking announcement' on Wednesday, at TeX's 32nd Anniversary Celebration, on the final day of the TUG 2010 Conference. Unfortunately, nobody seems to know what it is. So far speculation ranges from proving P!=NP, to a new volume of The Art of Computer Programming, to his retirement. Maybe Duke Nukem Forever has been ported to MMIX?" Let the speculation begin.
Who is Knuth?
Probably that Duke Nukem Forever won't be running any dedicated servers...
Step #2: Solve for N:
So P!=NP,
therefore P!/P=N,
thus the Ps cancel and we are left with N=!.
Step #3: ???
Step #4: Profit!
Tired of my customary (Score:1)
TeX has been adopted by W3 as the new HTML 6 standard.
So it probably TeX related. I don't see Knuth going off topic so much. Of course, the TeX engine is earth in that community, so who knows?
TeX 3.15 will get released. Subsequently, the universe will collapse.
unless of course, your Albert Einstein, Galileo, Marie Curie, Niels Bohr, Ernst Ruska, or any number of other important members of the scientific community throughout the centuries. many of these people did not provide 'breakthroughs until well into there 30's, and most of them continued to provide useful advances in science well into there later years.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
... Knuth migrated to Word 2010.
English is not my first language. Corrections and suggestions are welcome.
I speculate it'll be something as earth shattering as the "it" announcement was, or how every person has a Segway in their home now.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
He has a deal with the mysterious British agency known as the Laundry. He doesn't publish the fourth volume and they don't render him metabolically inactive. Don't any of you pay attention to what Charlie Stross has to say?
Breakthrough proofs tend to be completed by kids in their early to mid 20's, it's when the brain is still plastic enough for truly out of the box thinking but where enough knowledge has been gathered to actually work on the hard problems.
Perhaps also because they actually have the opportunity.
Older people, who may still be plenty capable while having much more experience, seldom have the opportunity (due to mortgage, family, etc.)
Almost all incentives are given to youth (which makes sense). But older people seldom get a break. I think this, more than anything else, is what causes peoples brains to go stale.
That he is a computer simulation fooling all of us for over 50 years...
I think you mean that we're all a computer simulation he has been running for over 50 years...
A proof that P=NP would have much more potential to genuine change things simply because it would disprove a ubiquitous assumption: that P NP. Historically, when universally popular assumptions have been proven wrong, the resulting paradigm shift in the way people think about the matter produces some fascinating changes. P!=NP would give closure to an open problem but would not be so earth-changing because we already operate under the assumption that the premise is true.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
drink a beer, relax, and wait until tomorrow for the announcement. Which is sure to be disappointing now.
I predict he announces that computer programming is best practiced as a semi-automated assembly-line-style set of interchangeable tasks rather than an "art". He'll say that programming as an "art" is anachronistic. inefficient, and impractical, and that the conventional approach and the people who promote it have been holding back progress in software creation because a faster, cheaper, more modern, dumbed-down approach doesn't appeal to them professionally or aesthetically.
And then he'll announce his new software construction method that can be done by ordinary people with a short period of training for 1/5th what computer programmers make. It works great, but it's boring and repetitive and never creative. It delivers software in a predictable amount of time with a predictable budget and reasonable (also predictable) quality. And the development costs less than half of conventional approaches.
That's my prediction.
If the boobs didn't do it, a mathematical proof won't either. :P
He's obviously figured out an algorithm to predict earthquakes, and he's determined that one will happen during or just after his presentation! And, of course, he'll announce it.
You need to think more literally!
My name is Donald Knuth. And if you study with my 8 week program, you will learn a system of self defense that I developed over two seasons of fighting in the octagon! Its called Don Kwan Do!
So far as I know, Knuth has done essentially zero work related to the P/NP question; a lot of algorithmics and tons of fantastic work in combinatorics, but I can't think of a single significant result he's contributed to complexity theory. While it's not impossible that he could have some sort of 'outsider breakthrough', it seems almost infinitesimally unlikely given the mathematical context and techniques that have had to be developed for similar complexity problems. My money would be on either a formal open-sourcing of the TeX codebase or the development of a full HTML5 rendering engine for TeX along the lines of the system that mathoverflow.net uses.
He proves P != NP.
Due to limitations with TeX can't be bothered to fit it into the margins
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Here it is
That age may well be when he had his insight on the speed of light being constant and time being malleable, though the actual work of course only just started.
The insight that the speed of light is constant is somewhat older and goes back to James Clerk Maxwell, whose equations are based on a constant speed of light. The only thing that was not clear was if the speed of light is also constant under cosmic conditions. The series of Michelson's experiments to find variances in the speed of light started in 1881, and in 1892 Hendrik Antoon Lorentz in collaboration with Henri Poincaré published the Lorentz Ether Theory including the basic mathematics of Special Relativity.
Albert Einstein's genius was thus not to postulate the constant speed of light in vacuum, or the time- and distance contractions resulting from there, but the abolishment of the ether as medium for the light.
It's Claude, you insensitive claud.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
around the same level of recognition as Dijkstra, I would say.
Bah. Knuth wrote volumes of books full of algorithms. I can't think of a single algorithm that Dijkstra ever came up with.
Badass Resumes
(posting this from the Sir Francis Drake Hotel)
a successor to TeX which he has been working on for some time
scratch tex78 and tex82
so making up for assumptions which don't fit the internet age
jokes about measuring and math in TeX .4pt == .3999pt
maxdimen too small, 1sp too large
tunnel vision caused by computers of the day
subset of XML uses Unicode automatic everything
all directions and all dimensions
hypertext
text audio video sensors GPScoords accelerometers haptics
midi input to score and back to music
no macros --- menu driven like Word but enhanced
spoken command and gestures
\i \TeX (wrapped on a sphere)
spoken name accompanied by (optional) ringing bell
not programmed directly
1289 bugs in TeX
571 bugs in metafont
Project Marianne
www.projectmarianne.com
Project Biturgical
written in Scheme using all buzzwords
pricing - monthly subscription on cloud
first year one month free
pricing based on internet speed
will change everyday
life is too short to reread anything
will benefit world's economy, user's can sell documents
network of certified consultants
online help
- for dummies
- for wizards
- personalized on-line
symbolic equations
graphics
maps
satellite photos
\i\TeX hyper document
math mode like mathml --- must evaluate
avatars
hyperbolic geometry
videoconferencing
world-class photo retouching
character, face, speech recignition
cognition
output format:
- lasercutters
- embroidering machines
- 3D printers
- plasma cutters
interactive cookbook
life as hypertext document
released next month
pending patent applications
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.