That characterizes part of what the article was about, but not all of it. I've been looking but I'm not sure I'm going to be able to find it. I seem to recall something about quantum computing being involved, and the question of whether the universe is finite or not.
Just checked my saved sites on Reddit, which doesn't have it. This makes the probability of my finding it extremely low, I'm afraid. Dan On 11/6/06, Levi Pearson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Actually, after re-reading things, I don't think that's what he was thinking of at all. Let me take a crack at it, and we'll see if Daniel thinks I've characterized the article well. When programming in C, C++, or Java (among others), standard numeric variables have a fixed size and roll over when they overflow. Therefore, an algorithm that relies on one of these variables to work will invariably fail when the capacity of that variable is exhausted and it rolls over. So a naive algorithm that would work on a Turing machine breaks down in the real world not due to exhausting the memory on the machine, but simply exhausting the bits available in a variable.
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