Knuth Plans 'Earthshaking Announcement' Wednesday 701
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Donald Knuth is planning to make an 'earthshaking announcement' on Wednesday, at TeX's 32nd Anniversary Celebration, on the final day of the TUG 2010 Conference. Unfortunately, nobody seems to know what it is. So far speculation ranges from proving P!=NP, to a new volume of The Art of Computer Programming, to his retirement. Maybe Duke Nukem Forever has been ported to MMIX?" Let the speculation begin.
Who? (Score:4, Funny)
Who is Knuth?
Re:Who? (Score:5, Funny)
Get out.
Re:Who? (Score:5, Funny)
No, seriously - I've been working as a software engineer (...)
Ah, you are forgiven, then. You don't actually need to know anything about programming.
Re:Who? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes it has, actually.
You just aren't equipped to recognize that fact.
Re:Who? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's pathetic that you think nobody else can think for themselves or come up with their own ideas and breakthroughs.
Do you honestly think that you can come up with the kind of breakthroughs that have been done in CS over the past 60 years without reading some of the literature?
Sure, if you write some simple scripts or basic applications, you don't need to know much about algorithms, but once you start messing about with algorithms and datastructures, it pays to at least have heard of Knuth.
Re:Who? (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong.
Yes, there's a lot of giant shoulders he stood on. But he gathered plenty of pebbles on his own -- boulders, in fact. Wrote lots of papers. Invented TeX, Metafont, literate programming, perfect shuffles. Dozens if not hundreds of original papers [google.com] outside of his books.
Do one thing for me. Spend five minutes researching before posting. Or even just one minute THINKING about what an idiot you might appear if your post is wrong.
Re:Who? (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow, what a troll. I guess you're the kind of guy who just "comes up" with 60+ years of rigorous research in computer science. The grandparent is an idiot because of this statement:
I have heard of Knuth, but don't really know anything about him nor do I care to.
You must be the most pretentious asshole programmer in the world. Not only do you think the greatest minds in your discipline have nothing to teach you, but you are actively engaged in trying NOT to learn new things.
Great life you have ahead of you...
Re:Who? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Who? (Score:5, Insightful)
Makes me wonder why anyone would assume everyone on ./ knows who he is, what he's done, or why we should care what he has to announce...
Seriously? To draw a comparison, it's like being a geneticist and not knowing who Gregor Mendel is. Or a physicist/mathematician and drawing a blank when Sir Isaac Newton's name comes up. You could be a philosopher who has never heard of Aristotle or Plato. Or a FLOSS developer who has never heard of Richard Stallman. A game developer who has never heard of John Carmack. I could go on, but I'm not sure I could find a good stopping point and I'm fighting the impulse to just be insulting. Your ignorance is appalling. Please just smash your computer with a sledgehammer and go for a long walk on a short pier.
Re:Who? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Who? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not that surprising. Being capable of sustaining epic levels of cognitive dissonance would be needed to be able to work for Monsanto and sleep at night.
Re:Who? (Score:3, Funny)
he probably has pills to help with sleeping.
Re:Who? (Score:5, Funny)
I talked to a guy in Saint Louis once who was a genetic engineer for Monsanto. He didn't believe in evolution.
Well, duh. You ask a guy who does "intelligent design" for a living whether he believes in evolution. ~
Re:Who? (Score:4, Insightful)
I talked to a guy in Saint Louis once who was a genetic engineer for Monsanto. He didn't believe in evolution.
I don't think it's obvious that he would. I'm sure he believes that traits can be inherited and that by selecting who gets to reproduce, you can steer the new generations into having certain qualities, like breeding dogs to have long ears or whatever you fancy. Believing in evolution, on the other hand, would be to hold the position that the current plants and animals are the result of such a process, where the selection has been carried out by naturally occurring circumstances. Embracing evolution implies embracing genetics, but not the other way around.
Re:Who? (Score:5, Informative)
Pope and the Catholic church has no problem with evolution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_evolution [wikipedia.org]
Re:Who? (Score:5, Funny)
Pope and the Catholic church has no problem with evolution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_evolution [wikipedia.org]
Well they do call him the primate [wikipedia.org].
<--- Flamewar starts here (Score:4, Interesting)
Knuth doesn't stand out amongst his peers in his field as much as those examples you've mentioned. Peers such as Turing, Shannon, Dijkstra, Boole, Babbage, von Neumann, Hopper... (etc.) are all more important
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_computer_scientists [wikipedia.org]
(disclaimer: i knew who Knuth was but i'm just not bothered by those that don't when there are so many prominent computer scientists)
Re:--- Flamewar starts here (Score:4, Informative)
Well yeah, if those are his peers, he does stand out from the rest of that Wikipedia list. And he definitely belongs on that short list, obviously after Turing and Church - and after Euler, Shannon, Boole, etc - around the same level of recognition as Dijkstra, I would say.
Re:--- Flamewar starts here (Score:5, Funny)
around the same level of recognition as Dijkstra, I would say.
Bah. Knuth wrote volumes of books full of algorithms. I can't think of a single algorithm that Dijkstra ever came up with.
Re:--- Flamewar starts here (Score:5, Funny)
It's Claude, you insensitive claud.
Re:Who? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Who? (Score:5, Funny)
Knuth doesn't stand out amongst his peers in his field as much as those examples you've mentioned. Peers such as Siffredi, North, Holmes (etc) are all more important.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornographic_actor [wikipedia.org]
(Disclaimer: I know who Knuth is but I'm just not bothered by those that don't when there's so much porn to watch.)
Re:Who? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Who? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Who? (Score:3, Funny)
Your ignorance is appalling. Please just smash your computer with a sledgehammer and go for a long walk on a short pier.
On slashdot the standard procedure is to have them turn in their nerd card first. Then we smash their computer for them and tell them to buy an apple. In the end, it's better for everyone that way.
Re:Who? (Score:5, Funny)
really? i'm a delivery driver and i know who all the people listed in this post are. i don't think i've heard of donald knuth though.
He invented the "shift" key. You might want to look it up.
Re:John Carmack (Score:4, Interesting)
Works on space projects and still designs game engines.
He also married one of the world's most awesome women, Anna Kang. On their honeymoon, she let a pair of computers be set up in the hotel room so that he could program when the mood struck him. No woman I know would allow such a thing to happen.
Re:John Carmack (Score:4, Funny)
Now I'm working on a IT-department: those type of women would encourage it, but I do not want those women for other reasons.
Re:Who? (Score:5, Funny)
I'd finish half the distance of the previous step with each new step to avoid the end.
Re:Who? (Score:5, Funny)
As long as your initial step takes over half the distance of the pier, we have a deal.
Re:Who? (Score:3, Interesting)
***No, seriously - I've been working as a software engineer doing R&D work on complicated real time systems for years, and I'd never heard of his name***
Sigh -- Let me guess. You've never heard of Richard Hamming either? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Hamming [wikipedia.org]
It has always seemed ironic to me that no one in the business seems to have actually read Numerical Methods for Scientists and Engineers and that The Art of Computer Programming is only half finished. It's no damn wonder that nothing related to software works quite right.
Re:Who? (Score:4, Funny)
Don't tell anyone, but I'm a SALES REP for a consultancy that does mainly web dev, and even I know his name... You should be ashamed of yourself.. Leave your geek card at the door on your way out...
Re:Who? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Who? (Score:5, Funny)
u can't handle the Knuth.
Re:Who? (Score:5, Funny)
> Who is Knuth?
Some polar bear in a german zoo. People already go crazy when he doesn't speak, so yeah...imagine the earth-shakiness when he finally does!
Likely... (Score:3, Funny)
He's discovered Wu Tang and Shaolin are one and the same.
Hmmm... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Funny)
MMIX link fail! (Score:3, Informative)
Probably meant to link here [wikipedia.org].
What I would do... (Score:5, Funny)
Step #2: Solve for N:
So P!=NP,
therefore P!/P=N,
thus the Ps cancel and we are left with N=!.
Step #3: ???
Step #4: Profit!
I'll bet it's that (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I'll bet it's that (Score:5, Funny)
\begin{awesome}
Awesome!
\end{awesome}
Re:I'll bet it's that (Score:4, Funny)
I believe that should be
\setupawesome[extra awesome]
\startawesome
Awesome!
\stopawesome
Re:I'll bet it's that (Score:4, Insightful)
What about TeX stopping to use this unreadable syntax and moving to xml?
As much as I like this whole "compile your text to different outputs"-thing and the results of TeX layout, the markup language is a PITA!
Re:I'll bet it's that (Score:3, Informative)
If we are moving away from unreadable, I'd suggest JSON or YAML, not xml.
Re:I'll bet it's that (Score:5, Informative)
What about TeX stopping to use this unreadable syntax and moving to xml?
If TeX is unreadable, XML is unwritable and unreadable. At any rate, TeX itself is low-level, and when you use a package like LaTeX it becomes far more user-friendly.
Re:I'll bet it's that (Score:4, Insightful)
I actually like how LaTeX is not WYSIWYG. Concentrating on content and then finally compile it into something ready for a professional Printshop, so I'm nor arguing on that or a general markup system.
It may be a personal thing, but I prefer the clarity of XML. I already gave a few examples of the inconsistencies of TeX markup a few postings down.
<foo> ALWAYS starts a block and </foo> ALWAYS ends one. And there is no other way to start a block, and no such thing as a lone opening tag. (just a way to abbreviate empty blocks)
Special Characters ALWAYS start with & and you know you can read on until the ;
LaTeX has fantastic results, mut the markup has no logic whatsoever!
why is it \begin{document} and \begin{center}, but \section{title} and NOT \begin{section} ? So I not only have to remember the keywords, but also tons of stuff about their usage!
And it is NOT easy to read for humans when half of the quotation marks actually start quotes, but the other half marks umlauts!
Re:I'll bet it's that (Score:3, Funny)
As much as I like this whole "compile your text to different outputs"-thing and the results of TeX layout, the markup language is a PITA!
<paragraph><facepalm>Of course, because XML<superscript>TM</superscript> is <font style="italicized">so</font> much <font color="red" style="boldface">better!</font></facepalm></paragraph>
It's a TeX conference (Score:4, Insightful)
So it probably TeX related. I don't see Knuth going off topic so much. Of course, the TeX engine is earth in that community, so who knows?
Re:It's a TeX conference (Score:3, Insightful)
TeX (Score:5, Funny)
Re:TeX (Score:5, Funny)
In the new universe, trigonometry will be easier, and equations will always look good in print.
Re:TeX (Score:4, Insightful)
No, the Bible says that if one builds a bowl w/ a certain outside diameter and a certain wall thickness, the inside circumference will be such that pi is ~3.14:
http://www.purplemath.com/modules/bibleval.htm [purplemath.com]
Re:TeX (Score:3, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In surprising move ... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not aware of any way. Back when karma was still written as a number, I knew mine, and just kept count after the switch to the unspecific words.
If anyone is interested, the reason they switched was because people complained about the following scenario:
This most likely still happens, but you can't see it any more.
But he has a deal with the Laundry (Score:5, Funny)
That he is... (Score:4, Funny)
That he is a computer simulation fooling all of us for over 50 years...
Re:That he is... (Score:5, Interesting)
That he is a computer simulation fooling all of us for over 50 years...
I think you mean that we're all a computer simulation he has been running for over 50 years...
Re:That he is... (Score:3, Funny)
or perhaps WE are a computer simulation fooling him for over 50 years, but he finally figured it out...
or just (Score:5, Interesting)
drink a beer, relax, and wait until tomorrow for the announcement. Which is sure to be disappointing now.
I predict he announces that computer programming is best practiced as a semi-automated assembly-line-style set of interchangeable tasks rather than an "art". He'll say that programming as an "art" is anachronistic. inefficient, and impractical, and that the conventional approach and the people who promote it have been holding back progress in software creation because a faster, cheaper, more modern, dumbed-down approach doesn't appeal to them professionally or aesthetically.
And then he'll announce his new software construction method that can be done by ordinary people with a short period of training for 1/5th what computer programmers make. It works great, but it's boring and repetitive and never creative. It delivers software in a predictable amount of time with a predictable budget and reasonable (also predictable) quality. And the development costs less than half of conventional approaches.
That's my prediction.
Re:or just (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:or just (Score:3, Insightful)
Miscrosoft has been in the camp to try to simplify programming for years to make it more accessible. They have been failing miserably, getting stuck in often dead ends and each "developer congress" they announce their new approaches, idea's, trends, ... and each year I think "yes, I can see where this need was and why the implemented this approach or feature", yet when you try to use much of it, it's like all other software.
They have been doing this for years, still fail (while making progress) and maybe cashing in on the "education/certification industry" around it (see, people need to know as well how to do all these nifte tricks someone thought up and implemented, and how they were implemented), trickle feeding that as well, ok.
But my point being; Microsoft has a incredible batch of programmers and theorists working for them (you cannot disregard those geeks) and they are focussed on "making development easier" (because it means more tie-in for endusers, right?) but they cannot do it in the way described above, while throwing resources and cash at it pretty high priority.
So will this one guy tackle all those problems piles of bright people have applied themselves to? no.
Earthshaking? (Score:5, Funny)
If the boobs didn't do it, a mathematical proof won't either. :P
MMIX? MMX? (Score:3, Interesting)
I get the sense that this is a tongue-in-cheek announcement? It's 2010, so maybe it'll be the MMX machine?
Let's see. Wednesday: July 7, 2010 = 7-7-7DA. 20th anniversary of TeX. Hmm. I can't figure it out, but I'd put my money on an elegant technical curiosity which doubles as elaborate pun and extended joke, kind of like MMIX [stanford.edu].
No, no, no . . . (Score:5, Funny)
He's obviously figured out an algorithm to predict earthquakes, and he's determined that one will happen during or just after his presentation! And, of course, he'll announce it.
You need to think more literally!
The announcement (Score:5, Funny)
It's highly unlikely to be P!=NP... (Score:5, Insightful)
So far as I know, Knuth has done essentially zero work related to the P/NP question; a lot of algorithmics and tons of fantastic work in combinatorics, but I can't think of a single significant result he's contributed to complexity theory. While it's not impossible that he could have some sort of 'outsider breakthrough', it seems almost infinitesimally unlikely given the mathematical context and techniques that have had to be developed for similar complexity problems. My money would be on either a formal open-sourcing of the TeX codebase or the development of a full HTML5 rendering engine for TeX along the lines of the system that mathoverflow.net uses.
Re:It's highly unlikely to be P!=NP... (Score:4, Funny)
Ok, what about P=NP, then?
The irony will be... (Score:5, Funny)
He proves P != NP.
Due to limitations with TeX can't be bothered to fit it into the margins
Keeping up with times! (Score:3, Funny)
A new edition of TAoCP will be announced, with all code snippets rewritten in JavaScript.
He's going to grow a beard like everyone else! (Score:3, Funny)
http://www.codethinked.com/image.axd?picture=WindowsLiveWriter/TheProgrammerDressCode_10D17/knuth_don_2f874343-5a7b-4b33-823a-b18a84849447.jpg [codethinked.com]
Now compare him with everyone else - they've all got face hair: ...),
Alan Kay (oop),
Bjarne Stroustrup (c++),
Brian Kernighan (unix, c), Dennis Ritchie (c),
Ken Thompson (unix),
John McCarthy (lisp),
Richard Stallman (gnu),
Steve Wozniak (apple),
Larry Wall (perl),
Alan Cox (linux kernel),
James Gosling (java),
Grady Booch (uml),
"Maddog" Jon Hall (linux intl),
Manuel Blum (cryptography),
Robin Milner (ml),
Philip Wadler (haskell, xquery),
Jaron Lanier (virtual reality),
Niklaus Wirth (Euler, Algol W, Pascal, Modula, Modula-2, Oberon),
C.A.R. Hoare (quicksort),
Robert Tarjan (splay trees),
Dan Bricklin (visicalc),
Phil Katz (pkzip),
Jon Postel (rfc),
Larry Ellson (oracle).
http://www.codethinked.com/post/2007/12/06/The-Programmer-Dress-Code.aspx [codethinked.com] Edsger Dijkstra (come on
Hold on... (Score:3, Funny)
It's a new book (Score:5, Funny)
Here it is [ibiblio.org]
The earth-shaking announcement is... (Score:5, Informative)
(posting this from the Sir Francis Drake Hotel)
a successor to TeX which he has been working on for some time
scratch tex78 and tex82
so making up for assumptions which don't fit the internet age
jokes about measuring and math in TeX .4pt == .3999pt
maxdimen too small, 1sp too large
tunnel vision caused by computers of the day
subset of XML uses Unicode automatic everything
all directions and all dimensions
hypertext
text audio video sensors GPScoords accelerometers haptics
midi input to score and back to music
no macros --- menu driven like Word but enhanced
spoken command and gestures
\i \TeX (wrapped on a sphere)
spoken name accompanied by (optional) ringing bell
not programmed directly
1289 bugs in TeX
571 bugs in metafont
Project Marianne
www.projectmarianne.com
Project Biturgical
written in Scheme using all buzzwords
pricing - monthly subscription on cloud
first year one month free
pricing based on internet speed
will change everyday
life is too short to reread anything
will benefit world's economy, user's can sell documents
network of certified consultants
online help
- for dummies
- for wizards
- personalized on-line
symbolic equations
graphics
maps
satellite photos
\i\TeX hyper document
math mode like mathml --- must evaluate
avatars
hyperbolic geometry
videoconferencing
world-class photo retouching
character, face, speech recignition
cognition
output format:
- lasercutters
- embroidering machines
- 3D printers
- plasma cutters
interactive cookbook
life as hypertext document
released next month
pending patent applications
Re:P!=NP (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:P!=NP (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:P!=NP (Score:3, Informative)
Except that one of Einstein's most lasting and relevant contribution to modern Physics is in fact general relativity, in the form of the Einstein field equations. Which he published (correctly) in November 1915, when he was 36. [wikipedia.org]
Re:P!=NP (Score:3, Informative)
1905 was special rel, Brownian motion, and the photoelectric effect. Three papers any one of which was a massive advance: that's why it's referred to as his miracle year.
Re:P!=NP (Score:5, Insightful)
That age may well be when he had his insight on the speed of light being constant and time being malleable, though the actual work of course only just started.
The insight that the speed of light is constant is somewhat older and goes back to James Clerk Maxwell, whose equations are based on a constant speed of light. The only thing that was not clear was if the speed of light is also constant under cosmic conditions. The series of Michelson's experiments to find variances in the speed of light started in 1881, and in 1892 Hendrik Antoon Lorentz in collaboration with Henri Poincaré published the Lorentz Ether Theory including the basic mathematics of Special Relativity.
Albert Einstein's genius was thus not to postulate the constant speed of light in vacuum, or the time- and distance contractions resulting from there, but the abolishment of the ether as medium for the light.
Re:P!=NP (Score:4, Informative)
Einstein didn't develop quantum mechanics, he was actually an opponent of it (his famous "god does not play dice" quote is a direct criticism of QM in fact).
It is of course a lot more complicated than that. He objected to some aspects of QM[*], but he also was the one who proposed the very first basics of what was to become QM, and he did quite a lot of work on it.
[*] The philosophical implications of the uncertainty and randomness, especially. He didn't deny the results, but he assumed there was some deterministic layer below it that would someday be discovered.
Re:P!=NP (Score:3, Insightful)
Acting as an advocate for these people with your spelling, grammar and punctuation skills takes irony to epic levels.
Re:P!=NP (Score:4, Insightful)
We can make trends all we want but the fact is, every human is different, trends only help somewhat but there are more people who break the trend that do extraordinary work than those who follow it.
Re:P!=NP (Score:4, Insightful)
Breakthrough proofs tend to be completed by kids in their early to mid 20's, it's when the brain is still plastic enough for truly out of the box thinking but where enough knowledge has been gathered to actually work on the hard problems.
Perhaps also because they actually have the opportunity.
Older people, who may still be plenty capable while having much more experience, seldom have the opportunity (due to mortgage, family, etc.)
Almost all incentives are given to youth (which makes sense). But older people seldom get a break. I think this, more than anything else, is what causes peoples brains to go stale.
Re:P!=NP (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:P!=NP (Score:4, Interesting)
one potential worry today tho is the lack of "downtime". That is, there are so many ways for us to not be bored that we basically have no real time to sit down and form grand mental models.
Re:P!=NP (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:P!=NP (Score:3, Insightful)
That's a big gamble in science. Imagine you're prepping something to be unveiled for your 50th birthday, only to hear on your 48th that someone else published it.
Re:P!=NP (Score:3, Insightful)
More to the point, Knuth is foremost an algorithmist. I don't think he cares very much about P $\neq$ NP as an ends in itself since it is probably going to be (and certainly is expected to be) a very abstract math result without much insight into algorithms per se. It's just not his style to spend much energy on it.
Some may laugh at this, but Knuth is a very practically-minded guy who also loves, and is quite capable of, playing with and generalizing these practical ideas and tools into theory. The "serious" attacks on P/NP are just the opposite. I'd guess he's probably taken a few cracks at it for fun and to test out new ideas, but one of them working would really be a longshot. Knuth has a LOT of ideas, but his being the _very first_ one to have the purely algorithmic insight to solve P/NP are quite slim.
Re:P!=NP (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:P!=NP (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I speculate... (Score:5, Funny)
I speculate it'll be something as earth shattering as the "it" announcement was, or how every person has a Segway in their home now.
Re:I speculate... (Score:4, Insightful)
Remember when we were all agog about Linus working for some breakthrough company that was going to change everything forever, and in fact, was just TransMeta?
Re:I speculate... (Score:3, Interesting)
Given that Knuth doesn't have an email account [stanford.edu], I'm betting it's one of these:
- Knuth now has his secretary sending tweets for him.
- Knuth got a Facebook account. It's literally a book of faces.
- Knuth has convinced his secretary to view the most popular YouTube videos on a daily basis, and then act them out. (Her kitten impressions are awesome.)
But seriously, I'm hoping that he's releasing his works under creative commons. Bibles are free in hotels, but if you want the bible of programming and algorithms, you have to pay $70 per volume!
Re:I speculate... (Score:3, Funny)
TeX to ship with iPhone.
Re:Final TeX (Score:3, Funny)
so ... you're saying Knuth finished calculating every digit of Pi?
Re:Earthshaking at TUG 2010? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I don't think proving P!=NP is earthshaking (Score:5, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Somebody found a bug in TeX? (Score:3, Interesting)
He has announced it, and he has paid. Many times. For some reason people rarely cached his checks but stuck them in frames instead. Since pictures of these ended up on the web, Knuth had to stop sending out checks. These days you can get a check from the Bank of San Seriffe instead [stanford.edu].