Actually, the halting problem is undecidable in the *general* case. There
are plenty of special cases in which it can be decided. If you limit
yourself to only accepting code that falls within these special cases,
you're fine. Sure, you restrict yourself to only a subset of all possible
software, but you gain a rigorous proof that the software will halt (or
not).
Not that this really applies to what was a tongue-in-cheek comment.
--Guy
-----Original Message-----
From: Stefan Reich [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Friday, May 11, 2001 2:34 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [freenet-tech] Ideas for a FreeNet Process
> > Not a problem; just write a function that can scan any arbitrary piece
of
> > code and determine whether it will eventually halt or not.
>
> Right in other words, the freenet could determine cancer nodes and deal
with
> them.
Ahm... I think you missed out on the irony in that statement... it is
IMPOSSIBLE to write an algorithm that decides if a given piece of code will
halt eventually (i think Turing proved that).
I think you still don't understand the problem with the execution of
untrusted code (is it so unobvious?).
-Stefan
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