Proposals

[btanksley@hifn.com]

From: Lynn H. Maxson [mailto:lmaxson@pacbell.net]

>This method comes directly from Abrash's "The Zen 
>of Assembly" which is on my bookshelf along with 
>the "Tao of Objects" and the "The Art of the 
>Metaobject Protocol".  Fortunately Abrash hadn't 
>heard of Rice's Theorem

Abrash is well-educated.  I'm sure he's heard of it, and used it to help him
design his profiler.

I don't think there's any hope, and I'm not going to even try to help you
anymore.  To be fair, I do think that your program has a hope; you might be
able to get it working.  Go for it, and I wish you the best of luck.  I'm
just not willing to open myself to any more taunts and barbs from you.  I
didn't mind the work it took to figure out what you were talking about (I
certainly make other people work hard enough), but teaching is hard work,
and teaching someone who's not willing to learn is far too hard.

Should you find yourself willing to learn in the future, consider doing a
Google search for Rice's Theorem and the Halting Problem.  The sooner you do
this, and therefore understand the exact limitations of computation, the
easier your work will be.  (Interestingly, one good discussion to this is on
the "Synopsis of Joy" pages; that's a language I've been learning a lot from
in other areas.)

Sorry I couldn't respond to the rest of your post.  You did have some good,
clear points, as well as some much more clearly phrased wrong points (you
also nailed at least one mistake I made, when I falsely claimed that
optimization is a process).

You, of course, are welcome to the last word; I'll read and consider what
you write.

-Billy