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Message: 6072

Author: andrewbroad

Date: 28/02/2007

Subject: Re: Travelling Salesman / 'One-to-two' items / Unread emails / Mond

 

Daniel wrote:

It would be fascinating to see a PERFECT walkthrough of a JSW game,
by which I mean pixel-perfect movement of the player at the
earliest moment when the guardian movements make it possible, plus
the most efficient route possible. I suspect it would be possible
to write a computer program which would achieve just that - play a
JSW game, analysing every possible movement and scenario, until
finding the quickest possible solution. It would not be impossible
with today's processing speed - would it?

I'm afraid it would, because the problem of finding the shortest
route through a JSW game is equivalent to the Travelling Salesman
problem, which is proven to be NP-complete (i.e. the time needed to
solve it increases exponentially with the number of nodes - unless of
course we can prove that P = NP, which is one of the great unsolved
problems of computer-science, generally assumed to be false).

The item-table maps items to positions.
Usually, this mapping is one-to-one.
When you have multiple items at the same position, it's many-to-
one.
When you have an item at different positions, it's one-to-many.

So, I would suggest the term "'one-to-many' item" for an item
which appears in multiple positions, and reserve the terms
"multiple items", "double item", "triple item", &c., for items at
the same position.

Or, since a 'one-to-many' item can only appear in two different
rooms (because J.G. Harston's extension only adds one bit to the
room-number), you may prefer the term 'one-to-two' item.

Even 'many-to-many' items (i.e. 'many-to-two' items) are possible,
no?

I would be strongly opposed to "one-to-many", because it sounds
like "one too many" :-) .

Only in spoken English. I've seen the term "one-to-many" written down
many times in computer-science, and I've never thought "one too many"!

"One-to-two" sounds better to me, but since the origin of the
expression is quite technical, I am not sure whether its meaning
would be obvious to a "lay player".

How about "double-item-location effect" or "doubled-item-location
effect" or something along these lines? Or "doubly-located items",
perhaps?

"doubly-located items" looks okay. I don't like the other two much.

4. A friendly suggestion concerning the update of Andrew's list of
JSW/MM games

Since the number of the unprocessed messages in your inbox seems to
have increased significantly in recent weeks, Andrew, and the
update of your list of JSW/MM games will only take place after you
have 0 unprocessed messages, but at the same time you admit that
JSW/MM-related messages constitute only a small part of your whole
correspondence, wouldn't it be possible for you to sort the
messages by subject, and then go in detail just through the JSW/MM-
related stuff in order to be able to update the list?

At the moment, I'm just trying to up the pace at which I process
unread emails, in order to get through the entire backlog by the end
of March, now that several other distractions are behind me.

I don't want to eat all the cherries first, and be left with a mass
of ploughsome dry sponge!

I might consider your suggestion if I think there's a danger that the
List may not be updated again before the French Open (which starts on
27th May). It's not that urgent yet.

[Re. mondegreens]

So shall we see any new JSW rooms using any of these mondegreens in
the name?

I don't know, but I am mining David Bowie lyrics for this purpose!
(actual lyrics as well as mondegreens).

e.g. "SEND YOUR COLOUR-BLAZING GLASS" ["Some Are"]

"I've sung Bapherlat" ["I Dig Everything"]

"Round and round the room he's flying" ["Uncle Arthur"]

"Mountains of lava are feeling the rain" ["Silly Boy Blue"]

"Used to be land as fine as the rain" ["Please Mr. Gravedigger"]

"The Sikh'll know why neither peers from a holy tent where no one
goes" ["Karma Man"]

"He's trying hard, the pulses do flow" ["Queen Bitch"]

"Underneath, come to sing" ["Sound And Vision"]

"Now I can't stand Reality" ["Up The Hill Backwards"]

"Gone? There's no talk of it!" ["Pallas Athena"]

"Falls the pont de vie" ["The Hearts Filthy Lesson"]

"Mail over and fantasy" ["segue - Algeria Touchshriek"]

"Washing their heads in the toilet-bowl" [Tin Machine, "Under The
God"]

"Like a serpent on a blues-guitar" [Tin Machine, "Prisoner Of Love"]

"How into this mountain?" [Bob Dylan, "Like A Rolling Stone"]
"You don't terrify this school" [ditto]

"Oh Satan, you're so foul" [No Doubt, "You Can Do It"]

--
Dr. Andrew Broad
http://geocities.com/andrewbroad/
http://geocities.com/andrewbroad/spectrum/
http://geocities.com/andrewbroad/spectrum/willy/

P.S. I'm updating my unread-emails count on my website now.

P.P.S. I'm up to Message 5985 of this Group - just over the major
bump of the release of JSE(FE).

 

 

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