typodupeerror

• #### glass map of london (Score:2)

someone else already did it, much more simply, in 2002.

http://www.rsc.org/publishing/journals/LC/article. asp?doi=b200589a [rsc.org]
• #### Definition of gedankenexperiment (Score:2)

This is where you read a summary like that one, and you want to gedanken yourself in the head with a hammer afterwards for trying to understand it.
• #### Sounds ridiculous (Score:2)

Um, isn't this as sucky solution, as at each city the reflections are going to jack up the background noise level? Even with a good match, you're unlikely to get less than 10% reflection and crosstalk at each junction. After just a FEW hops the reflection noise is going to mask any desired signal.

Also I don't see (from the abstract) how they're going to extract the desired shortest answer from all the wrong answers and reflections.

• #### First time (Score:2)

To our knowledge it is the first time that a method for the reduction of non-polynomial[sic] time to quadratic time has been proposed.

Let n = number of cities.

1. Cut strings to length of path between cities: O(n^2))
2. Tie together ends of links that meet at same city: O(n^2))
3. Grab start and destination endpoints in each hand, and pull taut: O(1)
4. Mark route along links that have tension in them: O(n)

Overall complexity: O(n^2)

• #### However, it uses exponential resources (Score:3, Insightful)

on Thursday August 09, 2007 @05:28PM (#20175193) Journal
In their setup, each city has a delay line (i.e. optical fibre.) Each new city you add has to have a delay line twice as long as the previous one you added. The required amount of fibre grows exponentially with the number of cities.

#### Related LinksTop of the: day, week, month.

There must be more to life than having everything. -- Maurice Sendak

Working...