Given that it was an issue with a non-terminating binary representation, what would be the way to handle this, without somehow resetting the clock (restart or otherwise)?
Obviously, you could, in a modern system, have more memory and be able to store more bits of the number, but there would still be a limit that you would run into after some amount of time that would cause similar problems.
I'm just thinking about this. I think I would try to split the clock into a precise part, which (for example) tracks how many milliseconds we are into an hour and a precise part which stores the hours, or the date up to the hours or whatever. Given this, I can reset the part with the degrading accuracy in a duration which maintains enough accuracy in order to maintain enough accuracy overall.
In the real world, taking exponential space implies taking exponential time. The fastest you can transmit information is the speed of light, so it will take exponential time to communicate with the furthest pieces of your exponentially large system.
Depends on the problem and how you distribute data.
e.g., each node can generate its own subset to check, so you only need to distribute the program and input. That can be done using a multicast tree of some kind which brings distribution costs back down by a log.
But if you only have a finite amount of hardware available (which is probably the case), each node's data set grows exponentially with input size.
If your node population increases exponentially with input size, you're still running into the speed-of-light delay problem mentioned above (cube root of exponential is still exponential). If your solution is polynomial time with polynomially many nodes, your space cost is also polynomial.
This could be said about almost all "polynomial time" algorithms though. The bigger the loop, the larger the variables you'll need (in general), and the more time you'll need to communicate between the pieces.
Compare this article to the recent Groklaw article. While my view is closer to Groklaw, both articles seem to offend me. They both worship a leader (Jobs or RMS) and seem to call for hate of their enemies (Google, Microsoft, Mono). But if you snip the objectionable parts from each essay, I think each brings something to the discussion. And I really wasn't expecting an Apple fan to share Groklaw's fantasy of an end to patents.
As the Cosmic AC was not in space, but "in hyperspace and made of something that was neither matter nor energy", there should have been no objections to it taking the role of Maxwell's demon and reversing entropy, powering the universe through its hyperspace computational powers.
Much better than their Flash interface. But completely broken in Firefox 3.0.x (under Red Hat; can't advance past the first page and there are no pictures) and the fonts are too big under Iceweasel 3.5.9 (under Debian). Until they stop requiring a log-in to download the original PDF so I can view the content in a decent viewer, I'm going to continue cursing every time I accidentally follow a link to scribd.
