From: Daniel Radetsky (daniel@radray.us)
Date: Sat Aug 28 2004 - 02:26:53 MDT
On Fri, 27 Aug 2004 11:09:05 -0700
"J. Andrew Rogers" <andrew@ceruleansystems.com> wrote:
> John K Clark wrote:
> > A computer running a simple little program that will search though the
> > even numbers and stop at the first one that is not the sum of 2 primes
> > greater than two; Tell me the probability, even approximately, it will
> > eventually stop.
>
>
> It will stop when there is insufficient memory to represent the numbers
> in question. Stopping and finding a correct answer (or any answer) are
> only loosely related.
>
>
> j. andrew rogers
It is true that a halt does not necessarily have to do with finding a correct
answer (indeed, a computer program has no idea what an "answer" is). However, if
we are talking about the computability of functions, I don't think running out
of memory can be considered a halt. A computable function is one that *could* be
computed by a Turing Machine, and Turing machines don't run out of memory.
Daniel Radetsky
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