Re: Transactions: good or bad?

"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
assertion
> > 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.

I seem to recall the rule is actually a little more complex than that. Many games repeat positions without anyone insisting on a draw. There are other halting rules in chess as well: for instance, there are limits on the number of moves allowed to achieve checkmate once one player has only a king before the game is a draw, but a player with only a king has an incentive to seek a draw (it's the best possible outcome for that player.)

I concede that, given sufficient memory of past states, one can always establish an arbitrary rule to halt a finite state machine--including an automated theorem prover--but that just makes a bigger finite state machine in some class of finite state machines that have a halting proof. I don't see how that makes the halting problem go away for human brains as Costin implied in his pissing match with Alfredo. Nor do I see how it invalidates the novel proofs discovered by automated means that Alfredo referenced in the observation that goaded Costin to embark on a pissing match in the first place. Received on Thu Jun 19 2003 - 00:17:32 CEST