Title: Are Frogs Turing Compatible? Speaker: Don "The Lion" Knuth
ABSTRACT
Several researchers at the University of Louisiana have been studying the computing power of various amphibians, frogs in particular. The problem of frog computability has become a critical issue that ranges across all areas of computer science. It has been shown that anything computable by an amphi- bian community in a fixed-size pond is computable by a frog in the same-size pond -- that is to say, frogs are Pond-space complete. We will show that there is a log-space, polywog-time reduction from any Turing machine program to a frog. We will suggest these represent a proper subset of frog-computable functions.
This is not just a let's-see-how-far-those-frogs-can-jump seminar. This is only for hardcore amphibian-computation people and their colleagues.
Refreshments will be served. Music will be played.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
There was a college student trying to earn some pocket money by going from house to house offering to do odd jobs. He explained this to a man who answered one door.
"How much will you charge to paint my porch?" asked the man.
"Forty dollars."
"Fine" said the man, and gave the student the paint and brushes.
Three hours later the paint-splattered lad knocked on the door again. "All done!", he says, and collects his money. "By the way," the student says, "That's not a Porsche, it's a Ferrari."
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I do hate sums. There is no greater mistake than to call arithmetic an exact science. There are permutations and aberrations discernible to minds entirely noble like mine; subtle variations which ordinary accountants fail to discover; hidden laws of number which it requires a mind like mine to perceive. For instance, if you add a sum from the bottom up, and then again from the top down, the result is always different.
-- Mrs. La Touche
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Fortune suggests uses for YOUR favorite UNIX commands!
Try:
[Where is Jimmy Hoffa? (C shell)
^How did the^sex change operation go? (C shell)
"How would you rate BSD vs. System V?
%blow (C shell)
'thou shalt not mow thy grass at 8am' (C shell)
got a light? (C shell)
!!:Say, what do you think of margarine? (C shell)
PATH=pretending!/usr/ucb/which sense (Bourne shell)
make love
make "the perfect dry martini"
man -kisses dog (anything up to 4.3BSD)
i=Hoffa ; >$i; $i; rm $i; rm $i (Bourne shell)
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I've seen people with new children before, they go from ultra happy to looking like something out of a zombie film in about a week.
-- Alan Cox about Linus after his 2nd daughter
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
"I went to a job interview the other day, the guy asked me if I had any questions , I said yes, just one, if you're in a car traveling at the speed of light and you turn your headlights on, does anything happen?
He said he couldn't answer that, I told him sorry, but I couldn't work for him then.
-- Steven Wright
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I have a hobby. I have the world's largest collection of sea shells. I keep it scattered on beaches all over the world. Maybe you've seen some of it.
-- Steven Wright
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I do not seek the ignorant; the ignorant seek me -- I will instruct them. I ask nothing but sincerity. If they come out of habit, they become tiresome.
-- I Ching
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
A social scientist, studying the culture and traditions of a small North African tribe, found a woman still practicing the ancient art of matchmaking. Locally, she was known as the Moor, the marrier.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
vi is [[13~^[[15~^[[15~^[[19~^[[18~^ a muk[^[[29~^[[34~^[[26~^[[32~^ch better editor than this emacs. I know I^[[14~'ll get flamed for this but the truth has to be said. ^[[D^[[D^[[D^[[D ^[[D^[^[[D^[[D^[[B^ exit ^X^C quit:x:wq dang it:w:w:w:x ^C^C^Z^D
-- Jesper Lauridsen from alt.religion.emacs
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
To understand this important story, you have to understand how the telephone company works. Your telephone is connected to a local computer, which is in turn connected to a regional computer, which is in turn connected to a loudspeaker the size of a garbage truck on the lawn of Edna A. Bargewater of Lawrence, Kan.
Whenever you talk on the phone, your local computer listens in. If it suspects you're going to discuss an intimate topic, it notifies the computer above it, which listens in and decides whether to alert the one above it, until finally, if you really humiliate yourself, maybe break down in tears and tell your closest friend about a sordid incident from your past involving a seedy motel, a neighbor's spouse, an entire religious order, a garden hose and six quarts of tapioca pudding, the top computer feeds your conversation into Edna's loudspeaker, and she and her friends come out on the porch to listen and drink gin and laugh themselves silly.
-- Dave Barry, "Won't It Be Just Great Owning Our Own Phones?"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Destiny is a good thing to accept when it's going your way. When it isn't, don't call it destiny; call it injustice, treachery, or simple bad luck.
-- Joseph Heller, "God Knows"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I'D LIKE TO BE BURIED INDIAN-STYLE, where they put you up on a high rack, above the ground. That way, you could get hit by meteorites and not even feel it.
-- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
A certain monk had a habit of pestering the Grand Tortue (the only one who had ever reached the Enlightenment 'Yond Enlightenment), by asking whether various objects had Buddha-nature or not. To such a question Tortue invariably sat silent. The monk had already asked about a bean, a lake, and a moonlit night. One day he brought to Tortue a piece of string, and asked the same question. In reply, the Grand Tortue grasped the loop between his feet and, with a few simple manipulations, created a complex string which he proferred wordlessly to the monk. At that moment, the monk was enlightened.
From then on, the monk did not bother Tortue. Instead, he made string after string by Tortue's method; and he passed the method on to his own disciples, who passed it on to theirs.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
"We're not talking about the same thing," he said. "For you the world is weird because if you're not bored with it you're at odds with it. For me the world is weird because it is stupendous, awesome, mysterious, unfathomable; my interest has been to convince you that you must accept responsibility for being here, in this marvelous world, in this marvelous desert, in this marvelous time. I wanted to convince you that you must learn to make every act count, since you are going to be here for only a short while, in fact, too short for witnessing all the marvels of it."
-- Don Juan
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
AmigaDOS Beer: The company has gone out of business, but their recipe has been picked up by some weird German company, so now this beer will be an import. This beer never really sold very well because the original manufacturer didn't understand marketing. Like Unix Beer, AmigaDOS Beer fans are an extremely loyal and loud group. It originally came in a 16-oz. can, but now comes in 32-oz. cans too. When this can was originally introduced, it appeared flashy and colorful, but the design hasn't changed much over the years, so it appears dated now. Critics of this beer claim that it is only meant for watching TV anyway.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
... Any resemblance between the above views and those of my employer, my terminal, or the view out my window are purely coincidental. Any resemblance between the above and my own views is non-deterministic. The question of the existence of views in the absence of anyone to hold them is left as an exercise for the reader. The question of the existence of the reader is left as an exercise for the second god coefficient. (A discussion of non-orthogonal, non-integral polytheism is beyond the scope of this article.)
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
This is the first numerical problem I ever did. It demonstrates the power of computers:
Enter lots of data on calorie & nutritive content of foods. Instruct the thing to maximize a function describing nutritive content, with a minimum level of each component, for fixed caloric content. The results are that one should eat each day:
1/2 chicken
1 egg
1 glass of skim milk
27 heads of lettuce.
-- Rev. Adrian Melott
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I went on to test the program in every way I could devise. I strained it to expose its weaknesses. I ran it for high-mass stars and low-mass stars, for stars born exceedingly hot and those born relatively cold. I ran it assuming the superfluid currents beneath the crust to be absent -- not because I wanted to know the answer, but because I had developed an intuitive feel for the answer in this particular case. Finally I got a run in which the computer showed the pulsar's temperature to be less than absolute zero. I had found an error. I chased down the error and fixed it. Now I had improved the program to the point where it would not run at all.
-- George Greenstein, "Frozen Star: Of Pulsars, Black
Holes and the Fate of Stars"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants.
-- Isaac Newton
In the sciences, we are now uniquely priviledged to sit side by side with the giants on whose shoulders we stand.
-- Gerald Holton
If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing on my shoulders.
-- Hal Abelson
Mathematicians stand on each other's shoulders.
-- Gauss
Mathemeticians stand on each other's shoulders while computer scientists stand on each other's toes.
-- Richard Hamming
It has been said that physicists stand on one another's shoulders. If this is the case, then programmers stand on one another's toes, and software engineers dig each other's graves.
-- Unknown
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
A certain monk had a habit of pestering the Grand Tortue (the only one who had ever reached the Enlightenment 'Yond Enlightenment), by asking whether various objects had Buddha-nature or not. To such a question Tortue invariably sat silent. The monk had already asked about a bean, a lake, and a moonlit night. One day he brought to Tortue a piece of string, and asked the same question. In reply, the Grand Tortue grasped the loop between his feet and, with a few simple manipulations, created a complex string which he proferred wordlessly to the monk. At that moment, the monk was enlightened.
From then on, the monk did not bother Tortue. Instead, he made string after string by Tortue's method; and he passed the method on to his own disciples, who passed it on to theirs.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Still a few bugs in the system... Someday I have to tell you about Uncle Nahum from Maine, who spent years trying to cross a jellyfish with a shad so he could breed boneless shad. His experiment backfired too, and he wound up with bony jellyfish... which was hardly worth the trouble. There's very little call for those up there.
-- Allucquere R. "Sandy" Stone
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Slashdot Mirror
SEMINAR ANNOUNCEMENT
Title: Are Frogs Turing Compatible?
Speaker: Don "The Lion" Knuth
ABSTRACT
Several researchers at the University of Louisiana have been studying
the computing power of various amphibians, frogs in particular. The problem
of frog computability has become a critical issue that ranges across all areas
of computer science. It has been shown that anything computable by an amphi-
bian community in a fixed-size pond is computable by a frog in the same-size
pond -- that is to say, frogs are Pond-space complete. We will show that
there is a log-space, polywog-time reduction from any Turing machine program
to a frog. We will suggest these represent a proper subset of frog-computable
functions.
This is not just a let's-see-how-far-those-frogs-can-jump seminar.
This is only for hardcore amphibian-computation people and their colleagues.
Refreshments will be served. Music will be played.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
There was a college student trying to earn some pocket money by
going from house to house offering to do odd jobs. He explained this to
a man who answered one door.
"How much will you charge to paint my porch?" asked the man.
"Forty dollars."
"Fine" said the man, and gave the student the paint and brushes.
Three hours later the paint-splattered lad knocked on the door again.
"All done!", he says, and collects his money. "By the way," the student says,
"That's not a Porsche, it's a Ferrari."
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I do hate sums. There is no greater mistake than to call arithmetic an
exact science. There are permutations and aberrations discernible to minds
entirely noble like mine; subtle variations which ordinary accountants fail
to discover; hidden laws of number which it requires a mind like mine to
perceive. For instance, if you add a sum from the bottom up, and then again
from the top down, the result is always different.
-- Mrs. La Touche
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students
that have had prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are
mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
(1) A sheet of paper is an ink-lined plane.
(2) An inclined plane is a slope up.
(3) A slow pup is a lazy dog.
QED: A sheet of paper is a lazy dog.
-- Willard Espy, "An Almanac of Words at Play"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Fortune suggests uses for YOUR favorite UNIX commands!
/usr/ucb/which sense (Bourne shell)
Try:
[Where is Jimmy Hoffa? (C shell)
^How did the^sex change operation go? (C shell)
"How would you rate BSD vs. System V?
%blow (C shell)
'thou shalt not mow thy grass at 8am' (C shell)
got a light? (C shell)
!!:Say, what do you think of margarine? (C shell)
PATH=pretending!
make love
make "the perfect dry martini"
man -kisses dog (anything up to 4.3BSD)
i=Hoffa ; >$i; $i; rm $i; rm $i (Bourne shell)
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
You can not get anything worthwhile done without raising a sweat.
-- The First Law Of Thermodynamics
What ever you want is going to cost a little more than it is worth.
-- The Second Law Of Thermodynamics
You can not win the game, and you are not allowed to stop playing.
-- The Third Law Of Thermodynamics
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I've seen people with new children before, they go from ultra happy to
looking like something out of a zombie film in about a week.
-- Alan Cox about Linus after his 2nd daughter
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
"I went to a job interview the other day, the guy asked me if I had any
questions , I said yes, just one, if you're in a car traveling at the
speed of light and you turn your headlights on, does anything happen?
He said he couldn't answer that, I told him sorry, but I couldn't work
for him then.
-- Steven Wright
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I have a hobby. I have the world's largest collection of sea shells. I keep
it scattered on beaches all over the world. Maybe you've seen some of it.
-- Steven Wright
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I do not seek the ignorant; the ignorant seek me -- I will instruct them.
I ask nothing but sincerity. If they come out of habit, they become tiresome.
-- I Ching
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
A social scientist, studying the culture and traditions of a small North
African tribe, found a woman still practicing the ancient art of matchmaking.
Locally, she was known as the Moor, the marrier.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
vi is [[13~^[[15~^[[15~^[[19~^[[18~^ a :x :wq dang it :w:w:w :x ^C^C^Z^D
muk[^[[29~^[[34~^[[26~^[[32~^ch better editor than this emacs. I know
I^[[14~'ll get flamed for this but the truth has to be
said. ^[[D^[[D^[[D^[[D ^[[D^[^[[D^[[D^[[B^
exit ^X^C quit
-- Jesper Lauridsen from alt.religion.emacs
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
To understand this important story, you have to understand how the telephone
company works. Your telephone is connected to a local computer, which is in
turn connected to a regional computer, which is in turn connected to a
loudspeaker the size of a garbage truck on the lawn of Edna A. Bargewater of
Lawrence, Kan.
Whenever you talk on the phone, your local computer listens in. If it
suspects you're going to discuss an intimate topic, it notifies the computer
above it, which listens in and decides whether to alert the one above it,
until finally, if you really humiliate yourself, maybe break down in tears
and tell your closest friend about a sordid incident from your past
involving a seedy motel, a neighbor's spouse, an entire religious order, a
garden hose and six quarts of tapioca pudding, the top computer feeds your
conversation into Edna's loudspeaker, and she and her friends come out on
the porch to listen and drink gin and laugh themselves silly.
-- Dave Barry, "Won't It Be Just Great Owning Our Own Phones?"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Destiny is a good thing to accept when it's going your way. When it isn't,
don't call it destiny; call it injustice, treachery, or simple bad luck.
-- Joseph Heller, "God Knows"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I'D LIKE TO BE BURIED INDIAN-STYLE, where they put you up on a high rack,
above the ground. That way, you could get hit by meteorites and not even
feel it.
-- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
A certain monk had a habit of pestering the Grand Tortue (the only one who
had ever reached the Enlightenment 'Yond Enlightenment), by asking whether
various objects had Buddha-nature or not. To such a question Tortue
invariably sat silent. The monk had already asked about a bean, a lake,
and a moonlit night. One day he brought to Tortue a piece of string, and
asked the same question. In reply, the Grand Tortue grasped the loop
between his feet and, with a few simple manipulations, created a complex
string which he proferred wordlessly to the monk. At that moment, the monk
was enlightened.
From then on, the monk did not bother Tortue. Instead, he made string after
string by Tortue's method; and he passed the method on to his own disciples,
who passed it on to theirs.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
"We're not talking about the same thing," he said. "For you the world is
weird because if you're not bored with it you're at odds with it. For me
the world is weird because it is stupendous, awesome, mysterious,
unfathomable; my interest has been to convince you that you must accept
responsibility for being here, in this marvelous world, in this marvelous
desert, in this marvelous time. I wanted to convince you that you must
learn to make every act count, since you are going to be here for only a
short while, in fact, too short for witnessing all the marvels of it."
-- Don Juan
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
AmigaDOS Beer: The company has gone out of business, but their recipe has
been picked up by some weird German company, so now this beer will be an
import. This beer never really sold very well because the original
manufacturer didn't understand marketing. Like Unix Beer, AmigaDOS Beer
fans are an extremely loyal and loud group. It originally came in a
16-oz. can, but now comes in 32-oz. cans too. When this can was
originally introduced, it appeared flashy and colorful, but the design
hasn't changed much over the years, so it appears dated now. Critics of
this beer claim that it is only meant for watching TV anyway.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
... Any resemblance between the above views and those of my employer,
my terminal, or the view out my window are purely coincidental. Any
resemblance between the above and my own views is non-deterministic. The
question of the existence of views in the absence of anyone to hold them
is left as an exercise for the reader. The question of the existence of
the reader is left as an exercise for the second god coefficient. (A
discussion of non-orthogonal, non-integral polytheism is beyond the scope
of this article.)
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
This is the first numerical problem I ever did. It demonstrates the
power of computers:
Enter lots of data on calorie & nutritive content of foods. Instruct
the thing to maximize a function describing nutritive content, with a
minimum level of each component, for fixed caloric content. The
results are that one should eat each day:
1/2 chicken
1 egg
1 glass of skim milk
27 heads of lettuce.
-- Rev. Adrian Melott
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
I went on to test the program in every way I could devise. I strained
it to expose its weaknesses. I ran it for high-mass stars and low-mass
stars, for stars born exceedingly hot and those born relatively cold.
I ran it assuming the superfluid currents beneath the crust to be
absent -- not because I wanted to know the answer, but because I had
developed an intuitive feel for the answer in this particular case.
Finally I got a run in which the computer showed the pulsar's
temperature to be less than absolute zero. I had found an error. I
chased down the error and fixed it. Now I had improved the program to
the point where it would not run at all.
-- George Greenstein, "Frozen Star: Of Pulsars, Black
Holes and the Fate of Stars"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the
shoulders of giants.
-- Isaac Newton
In the sciences, we are now uniquely priviledged to sit side by side with
the giants on whose shoulders we stand.
-- Gerald Holton
If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing on
my shoulders.
-- Hal Abelson
Mathematicians stand on each other's shoulders.
-- Gauss
Mathemeticians stand on each other's shoulders while computer scientists
stand on each other's toes.
-- Richard Hamming
It has been said that physicists stand on one another's shoulders. If
this is the case, then programmers stand on one another's toes, and
software engineers dig each other's graves.
-- Unknown
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
A certain monk had a habit of pestering the Grand Tortue (the only one who
had ever reached the Enlightenment 'Yond Enlightenment), by asking whether
various objects had Buddha-nature or not. To such a question Tortue
invariably sat silent. The monk had already asked about a bean, a lake,
and a moonlit night. One day he brought to Tortue a piece of string, and
asked the same question. In reply, the Grand Tortue grasped the loop
between his feet and, with a few simple manipulations, created a complex
string which he proferred wordlessly to the monk. At that moment, the monk
was enlightened.
From then on, the monk did not bother Tortue. Instead, he made string after
string by Tortue's method; and he passed the method on to his own disciples,
who passed it on to theirs.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Still a few bugs in the system... Someday I have to tell you about Uncle
Nahum from Maine, who spent years trying to cross a jellyfish with a shad
so he could breed boneless shad. His experiment backfired too, and he
wound up with bony jellyfish... which was hardly worth the trouble. There's
very little call for those up there.
-- Allucquere R. "Sandy" Stone
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...