Software issues

The year started with this topic in the news. It will continue to be important (as in, 'code as truth' - but, not exactly).

Recent articles in the ACM Communications are of interest.

• Certified software -- Zhong Shao -- Essentially, some things, including software, that can be proved, hold up through time. One might say that robustness of products, which are realizations (in essence, a physical manifestation), results from clever use of this fact. The trouble? Ah, so many things that we will cover, in time.
• QIP = PSPACE Breakthrough -- Scott Aaronson -- what is truth and how do we maintain it (computationally)? Well, as we've said before, it's a PTIME issue. Too, looks as if our cleverness will continue to be the main factor. In other words, we can solve the job problem with the proper perspective.

Best wishes for the New Year.

Remarks:

01/23/2015 -- Software? Well, we are talking more than apps (latest craze). We are dealing with fundamental questions which, then, gives rise to normative issues in mathematics (and, by extension, to the computational).

05/28/2011 -- Uses for 'avatar' in our discussion? Ought we count the ways?

04/04/2011 -- Need to look at some background.

01/01/2011 -- We have four last posts of December under our belt.

01/01/2011 -- Notice in the QIP article, the use of entanglement. In a sense, we have a whole lot of faith in random processes that are applied against independent objects. Perhaps, too much and applied with wrong stress. We worry about biases and other correlations that might lurk, true. Yet, it's deeper than that. In truth, fat cats would worry about their excessive accumulations were they to know the reality. Could it be that quantum computing may help us find a basis for the proper modeling, even if issues of NP (and trust) are still there?

Modified 01/23/2015