e-books and the blind in the United States

[Chuck Hallenbeck]

>From the wikipedia:

British Museum algorithm

The British Museum algorithm is a general approach to find a solution by
checking all possibilities one by one, beginning with the smallest.
The term refers to a conceptual, not a practical,
technique where the number of possibilities are enormous.

For instance, one may, in theory, find the smallest program that solves a
particular problem in the following way:
Generate all possible source codes of length one character.
Check each one to see if it solves the problem. (Note:
the {halting problem} makes this check troublesome.)
If not, generate and check all programs of two characters, three characters, etc.
Conceptually, this finds the smallest program,
but in practice it tends to take an unacceptable amount of time (more than the
lifetime of the universe, in many instances).

Similar arguments can be made to show that optimizations, theorem proving,
language recognition, etc. is possible or impossible.

---- snip ---

I have a vague recollection of mentioning this concept to Jude about a
hundred years ago, but I certainly never recommended "the package".
Interestingly, the origin of the term, not discussed above, is from the
classic "Gulliver's Travels" written by Dean Jonathan Swift many years
ago. In one of the lesser books, Lemuel Gulliver visits other lands
besides the one where he was imprisoned by the Lilliputians. In one of
those lands, he was shown a team of monkeys seated before mechanical
writing machines, pounding away at the keys, to produce strings of text
on paper. An interesting "future glimpse" of what would later be the
typewriter. Gulliver was told that, given enough time and sufficient
resources, these very talented monkeys would eventually produce the
entire contents of every book presently stored in -- guess where? --
"The British Museum." 

The term "British Museum Algorithm" has been used facetiously ever
since the dawn of A.I. to refer disparagingly to a "brute force"
distinctly unintelligent solution method.

If anyone would like a copy of the B.M.A. package, please send a check
in the amount of $100 to me, and if sufficient checks arrive, I will
write one and send it to you.

Chuck

PS: Jude, thanks for the plug -- I'll split the proceeds.



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