Re: Alan Turing's Halting Problem is Incorrect (FINAL PART)

From: Chris Menzel (cmenzel_at_remove-this.tamu.edu)
Date: 07/07/04 

Date: 7 Jul 2004 19:09:04 GMT

On 7 Jul 2004 13:05:04 -0500, Acme Diagnostics <LFinezapthis@partpostmark.net>
said:
> "Peter Olcott" <olcott@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> Hi Peter. I have no interest in the Halting Problem on Turing
> computers, only on real ones.

Larry, the Halting Problem applies to "real" computers as much as Turing
machines, and can be formulated in terms of actual programming
languages. Turing machines simply ignore the limitations on memory and
computation time that real machines are subject to. So any limitations
on what they can compute is obviously inherited by real machines.

> You seem to be the resident expert on that, at least wrt explaining
> same.

I know you are skeptical of pompous academics, which is all well and
good as far as it goes, but I get the impression you are also actually
interested in learning things rather than make them up. Mr Olcott is a
terribly poor source for information on the Halting Problem.
Fortunately, there are many excellent, reader-friendly alternatives on
the web, notably, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on
computability:

  http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/computability

The Wikipedia entry is also quite good, with lots of links to related
concepts:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem

And, of course, there are many fine texts that cover the problem in
detail.

Chris Menzel

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