SEMINAR ANNOUNCEMENT

Title:          Are Frogs Turing Compatible?
Speaker:        Don "The Lion" Knuth

                                ABSTRACT
        Several researchers at the University of Louisiana have been
studying the computing power of various amphibians, frogs in particular.
The problem of frog computability has become a critical issue that ranges
across all areas of computer science. It has been shown that anything
computable by an amphibian community in a fixed-size pond is computable by
a frog in the same-size pond; that is to say, frogs are Pond-space
complete. We will show that there is a log-space, polywog-time reduction
from any Turing machine program to a frog. We will suggest these
represent a proper subset of frog-computable functions.
        This is not just a let's-see-how-far-those-frogs-can-jump seminar.
This is only for hardcore amphibian-computation people and their
colleagues.
        Refreshments will be served.  Music will be played.

***
        One of the questions that comes up all the time is: How
enthusiastic is our support for UNIX?
        Unix was written on our machines and for our machines many years
ago.  Today, much of UNIX being done is done on our machines. Ten percent 
of our VAXs are going for UNIX use.  UNIX is a simple language, easy to
understand, easy to get started with. It's great for students, great for
somewhat casual users, and it's great for interchanging programs between 
different machines. And so, because of its popularity in these markets, we 
support it.  We have good UNIX on VAX and good UNIX on PDP-11s.
        It is our belief, however, that serious professional users will
run out of things they can do with UNIX. They'll want a real system and will
end up doing VMS when they get to be serious about programming.
        With UNIX, if you're looking for something, you can easily and
quickly check that small manual and find out that it's not there.  With VMS, 
no matter what you look for -- it's literally a five-foot shelf of 
documentation -- if you look long enough it's there.  That's the difference 
-- the beauty of UNIX is it's simple; and the beauty of VMS is that it's all 
there.
          -- Ken Olsen, president of DEC, DECWORLD Vol. 8 No. 5, 1984 

[It's been argued that the beauty of UNIX is the same as the beauty of Ken
Olsen's brain.  Ed.]

There is is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home.
                -- Ken Olsen (President of Digital Equipment Corporation),
                   Convention of the World Future Society, in Boston, 1977     

***  Now back to our regular programming...