Re: Transactions: good or bad?

Bob Badour wrote:
> "Mikito Harakiri" <mikharakiri_at_ywho.com> wrote in message
> news:_K4Ia.18$t13.158_at_news.oracle.com...
>

>>"Bob Badour" <bbadour_at_golden.net> wrote in message
>>news:Li5Ia.137$vn2.18732148_at_mantis.golden.net...
>> > Where is your proof that all chess games halt? After all, your

>>>that chess games are finite depends on just such a proof.
>>
>>I beleve there is a chess rule that if position is repeated, then the game
>>is draw. It is quite obvious that the chess game is finite, then.

Your mixing together of totally unrelated concepts is more than enough proof for your incompetence on the subject.

Why the hell do you comment on subject that you're incompetent on ?

What do you mean a halting proof for a finite state machine ? That's complete non-sense. Go back and read on the Theory of Computation.

Let me explain this to you more gently:

Halting problem: the problem to decide whether a particular program (Turing Machine for theoretical purposes) will be able to complete (not go into an infinite computation, diverge) on a given input.

This is a general problem: how to write an algorithm that will relaibly decide about any particularly given program on any particularly given input. Halting theorem: there's no such program.

Finite state automata (aka finite state machines): they have no bearing wehatsoever and no relation with the halting problem, chess programs and what we discuss here. They have a finite set of states, and they perform transition from one state to another. They are given a finite input string, they perform the transitions corresponding to the letters and if they land on a terminal state when they finnished the input that means they "recognized" the string as part of the language they define. They always halt, and it makes no sense to debate the halting problem for FSA, nor it makes any sense to bring FSA into this discussion. You're confusing things.

A chess program has to decide what is the next best move and play it. In order to do that all chess programs perform a variation of the min max aklgorithms. My valuation of the position after my move is the minimum of the opponent's valuations on all his possible move, and I get to9 choose the move that maximizes my valuation. That's min. - max. for you.

As you might see if you're not busy trolling the valuation function is a recursively defined function over the space of all positions, with some well defined positions where it's valued win or drawn by rules of chess (mate, stalemate, insufficient material, etc). Also when you meet a previously analyzed position that hasn't been assigned a value yety, you value the branch as a draw for the purpose of min. or max. step.

Since the domain of the min. max. algorithm is finite, the algorithm cannot suffer from the halting problem unless it is written by an incompetent or a troll like you.

How min.-max., game theory and halting problem relates to chess is left for you as an exercise in reading. Why this whole discussion about chess ensued, was because at some point somebody exemplified chess as a proof of computer's "intelligence".

That's crass ignorance Received on Thu Jun 19 2003 - 19:34:08 CEST