Bob versus Bob – Good Guy/Bad Guy

Abstract

I would like to speak about a number of minor matters that occurred over the past few days that I suggest that you pay more attention to or worry about more or define better.

One is that yesterday morning I several times heard what amount to restatements of the Halting Problem,where people said, hey, we’re working on the Halting Problem. It is not necessarily an impossibility to solve this problem but I suggest to you that in many cases it is difficult,time consuming and expensive. For example,saying that a computer program, one which you’ve probably never seen,enforces a particular policy, may just be a restatement of the Halting Problem. Beware of that kind of thing because there may be a good deal of work down the line in getting things to where you want them to be.