Re: Thieves Philosophy 101

[CUTjefbla@bconnex.net (Jeff Blakeney)]

On Mon, 12 Feb 2001 16:18:23 -0600, olcott <olcott@qwest.net> wrote:

>Its just that the semantics are so slippery here...
>
>while(true)    ==   while(true)      ==    Infinity   ==    1/0
>  N++;                    N += 10;
>
>I am impying no such thing, note that these are infinite loops.

The first two are not equivalent.  They are similar in that they are
both infinite loops but they change at different rates so therefore
they cannot be considered equivalent.

And yes, the first two are infinite loops but they are not equivalent
to infinity.  They always have a finite value as a result.  They may
run for an infinite amount of time but that does not make them
equivalent to infinity.  That's like saying:

     while(N<1000)    ==   1 minute
         N++;

Finally, it has already been shown to you that infinity is not
equivalent to 1/0 as any number divided by zero is undefined.  As you
approach division by zero, you approach infinity but you can never
reach it.

At any rate, this is a silly thing to be arguing about as infinity
already has a perfectly good definition.  Besides, this is totally off
topic for this newsgroup and I always feel bad when I post off topic
stuff so I'll stop now.

 Jeff Blakeney - Dean of the Apple II Unversity on A2Central.com