From: John Clark (jonkc@worldnet.att.net)
Date: Mon Dec 18 2000 - 01:25:24 MST
James Rogers <jamesr@best.com>
> So while I may not know how a finite-state machine will terminate, I can
> always give a relatively precise answer as to what it will do *next*.
A logical absurdity, if you can ALWAYS tell what it would do next then you
can tell if it will terminate before it reaches box X or not. And when you say
you can always tell what its next step will be you can only do so by doing exactly
what the machine itself is doing, looking at the next even number and seeing if it's
the sum of two primes or not. You have no shortcut, no proof, you don't even
have a way to make a fast estimate, so if you and the machine are running on
similar hardware at the same speed then by the time you "predict" what it will do
next it will have already done it.
John K Clark jonkc@att.net
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