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Let's count beans


Who cares about computers? Back offices of big companies and the military. Perhaps all of those protests in Europe will cause the U.S. to lay down its arms, so let's talk about database management...

We want to record airline reservations. We have a Turing machine. When a reservation comes in, we write down on the tape the following information: flight number, flight date, passenger name.

Probably works well for airline whose fleet consists of aircraft at right (Diamond Star DA40). If too slow, though, what does the mathematically disinclined computer programmer suggest?
philg@mit.edu