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Any theories on what Knuth will announce?
by lenbuster 16y ago
Any theories on what Knuth will announce?
- varjag 16y agoP=NP
- squidsoup 16y agoClearly this would be an exciting announcement, but is Knuth even known to be working on the problem?
- regularfry 16y agoOnly in his sleep.
- faboo 16y agoIsn't every computer scientist supposed to work on P=NP in their sleep? Or maybe it's their lack of sleep. I forget who it was that said it first, but one of my profs relayed it as serious advice: that every computer scientist should dable in P=NP in his early years, then go off and do something useful for a few decades, and come back to it to dable again.
- swombat 16y ago"Pepsi tastes better than Coke"
- sigzero 16y agoThat would be earth shattering because it is so not true.
- twobar 16y agoI guess something TeX related, since it's at the TeX Users Group anniversary.
- daeken 16y agoI'm not sure that's the best guess. While it would be the obvious choice, I don't think much could be said to be "earthshaking" there, and Knuth isn't one to throw out hyperboles. I think it will be something new, almost certainly in a different field, and it will involve looking at an unsolved problem in a way different than it's previously been approached from, much like TeX. I can't wait to see what he announces.
- fhars 16y agoBut then, it is not announced as an earthshaking announcement, but as an "earthshaking announcement." The quotes make it sufficiently vague that it could be anything from "there was a typo in a comment in the metafont source", to "Vol. 4 is off to the printer."
- michael_dorfman 16y agoVol 4 is off to the printer. He's already announced that the first 5 fascicles will be appearing in hardcover later this year.
- ErrantX 16y agoI'm willing to bet that it is not. The words are in quote marks which suggests nothing majority earth shattering (on the wider stage). Probably a big TeX thing, given the context.
- studer 16y agoIt's titled "A Special Announcement!" in the TUG conference proceeding. I'd say the odds are pretty good that it's TeX-related.
- moe 16y agoA solution for the iPhone antenna problem.
- yogsototh 16y agoPerhaps he did found a new bug in TeX and announce a new version? It is rare enough to be called 'Earthshaking' but the probability is really thin.
- Dirt_McGirt 16y agoHe's figured out the optimum way to burn all his pirated mp3s to DVD.
- praptak 16y agoPremature optimization is actually cool.
- WilliamLP 16y agoPeople stress out about random number generators too much.
- narrator 16y agoHe's solved the traveling salesman problem in Log(n) time.