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.
MMIX link fail! (Score:3, Informative)
Probably meant to link here [wikipedia.org].
Re:P!=NP (Score:1, Informative)
The miracle year was 1905. He was 26.
Re:Who? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:P!=NP (Score:1, Informative)
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:P!=NP (Score:1, Informative)
Although what you're mentioning is true, it's not always true:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Perelman
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:--- 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:TeX (Score:2, Informative)
Re:P!=NP (Score:1, Informative)
In 1905, Einstein's "miracle year", he was 26.
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: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: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.
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:P!=NP (Score:1, Informative)
P!=NP?
P most definitely =NP when N=1.
Sheesh!
MOD PARENT UP (Score:3, Informative)
Sums up the whole thread. This is also the main argument against constructivist teaching, on which, for example, the failing modern Spanish education system is built upon.
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:1, Informative)
He will Tavel 1m/s as he approches 0 but he will never arive at 0
Ergo, motion is an illusion, and our senses are not to be trusted. We shall henceforth call you Zeno.
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
Didn't feel the earth shake (Score:3, Informative)