Talk:Two Generals' Problem

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Could a search for "two army problem", which seems to be a common name for the same thing, be redirected here?

Is already done. Mathmo Talk 09:00, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Categories

Why is thes in the TOC category? What about something related to networks? -Weedrat 06:43, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proof section

I fixed the proof to cover this more general case. Obviously, since real-world protocols can be nondeterministic and variable length, the more general proof is needed — I find it surprising that most of the references you see about this problem don't mention this at all. --DavidHopwood 16:15, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

I feel that the second half of the [deterministic, fixed-length] proof section is not a very good explanation. -- isionous 09:16, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Any concrete suggestion for how to improve it? --DavidHopwood 04:26, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] fireworks?

Maybe it isn't in the spirit of the problem, but why not just incorporate the use fireworks? Only the first message needs to be hidden. The enemy can see the confirmation message because they don't know what the confirmation means. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.203.36.250 (talk) 21:52, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

for the same reason that you can't just call in an artillery strike, because that isn't the point. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.46.148.92 (talk) 23:05, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Null syncronization

Depending on the precise nature of the problem, it may be possible to coordinate the attack by sending no messages. There is rumor that the Germans used a similar coordination system where enemy locations & hotspots were transmitted but nothing else. There was a standard "canned" protocol for attack times, etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.117.131.10 (talk) 15:18, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

That requires an already agreed-upon time. If you complicate the problem so that the generals need to exchange information that wasn't available beforehand, such as they discover that the town has four gates, and they need to coordinate which gates to attack, you're back to the same problem. As a military problem, this is mostly just a story (but not always -- it comes up in small scale during the confusion of a battle, the wrong message might be acknowledged, etc). In the real world problems for which this problem is a metaphor, there's always a piece missing that wasn't known beforehand, such as transaction data that needs to be committed. 67.98.226.13 20:59, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Apostrophe

The name of this page and problem, to my mind, should have no apostrophe. Yes the problem certainly is a problem for the Generals and it's their problem, but the name of the problem they are having is the "Two Generals Problem".

Does anyone have a citation which can settle this? Quirkie (talk) 18:45, 24 April 2008 (UTC)