Re: New Editors Draft of the httpRange-14 Finding

Xiaoshu Wang wrote:

> I think Alan has mixed the machine consistency to reality.  A machine 
> can only assert the consistency among statements, it cannot verify if a 
> statement is valid in reality.  The latter is done by a social process.  

Perhaps it depends on what you mean by "machine". A Turing machine 
cannot, but a generic machine most certainly can. For example, a machine 
could well verify that the temperature at a certain location is between 
20C and 23C at the current time. Given sufficient sensors and 
technology, there are many factual statements which are fully machine 
verifiable.

-- 
Elliotte Rusty Harold  elharo@metalab.unc.edu
Java I/O 2nd Edition Just Published!
http://www.cafeaulait.org/books/javaio2/
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0596527500/ref=nosim/cafeaulaitA/

Received on Saturday, 22 September 2007 10:57:12 UTC