11:03:07lisbethsI am dealing with an abstract machine
11:04:42lisbeths3:59 AM <pjb> lisbeths: only if your machine is a universal turing machine, and only if your problem size grows to the infinity! -- as computers double in feature count each 2 years they approach infinity
11:05:52pjbIf your problem can be held in the computer memory, and can be solved before you shut down the computer, then it's all O(1).
11:06:35lisbethswhat about a server that is critical and must never shut down like the simulator that runs my skyrim game
11:06:51pjbit still has to complete transactions in a finite bounded time.
11:07:10pjbserver programs are not algorithms, since they don't terminate.
11:07:15lisbethswhat if I want to run algorithms that require an incomplete computer
11:08:28pjbYes. Say otherwise, our computers are not turing machines, they're DFAs. Very big ones, but still.
11:09:13jackdanielI have a turing machine, infinite tape and all
11:09:30pjbAlso, said otherwise, if you assume infinite stack or infinite memory in your programs, you have bugs (critical security bugs even!). You must take into account those finitude, and handle the errors.