Search found 49 matches
- April 16th, 2011, 8:56 pm
- Forum: LifeWiki Discussion
- Topic: strange note on wiki pages
- Replies: 11
- Views: 12052
Re: strange note on wiki pages
Articles with only vandalism: ..... Herparium (dubious) ..... Additionally, we may need to impose some additional requirements for signups on the wiki, such as a signup on the forums, which would also require that users who are not logged in cannot edit pages. Well, I wrote that herpariun article a...
- July 18th, 2010, 7:12 pm
- Forum: Website Discussion
- Topic: Breeders and such like
- Replies: 5
- Views: 8216
Re: Breeders and such like
..... and also, are there any versions played on a 3d grid, Ive tried searching for them but cant seem to find any, is there some intrinsic reason it doesnt work the same on a 3d grid. ..... Probably not, but there would be a huge number of rules to have to search to find out. Likely they would lie...
- May 24th, 2010, 12:16 am
- Forum: General Discussion
- Topic: Martin Gardner
- Replies: 3
- Views: 3240
Re: Martin Gardner
I already knew about his column from general interest, but especially for the articles on flexagons (which apparently started his career), and on Escher's drawings. The Dr. Matrix articles were less interesting to me, but my reaction to Life (apart from the little green trisexual microbes and the ef...
- May 23rd, 2010, 11:57 pm
- Forum: Website Discussion
- Topic: Slowness
- Replies: 6
- Views: 6571
Re: Slowness
Now and then slow, but not uniquely this site. A real nuisance, however, (and also at the LifeWiki) is that it asks for a new login for every activity - page change, preview, submit, and so on. The SQL may be failing, Megacable (our ISP) may be switching addresses continusly, or whatever. But the pr...
- May 21st, 2010, 10:09 pm
- Forum: General Discussion
- Topic: Speed of light is not constant!
- Replies: 14
- Views: 9355
Re: Speed of light is not constant!
It seems to be an everlasting discussion, how to measure the speed of light. Insisting on metric topology, isn't there a whole sequence of l<sup>p's matching the L<sup>p's, the difference being that the former is based on integers, the latter on real numbers? Insisting on literalcy, "speed of light"...
- May 5th, 2010, 2:03 am
- Forum: General Discussion
- Topic: Spaceship speed limits
- Replies: 33
- Views: 111741
Re: Spaceship speed limits
..... 5) are there other force fields? In a manner of speaking, conduits are also force fields; their action is probably not regarded as teleportation because the effects are not instantaneous. But then, neither is what we have been calling teleportation. Quoting from the LifeWiki, A conduit is an ...
- May 3rd, 2010, 3:33 am
- Forum: Patterns
- Topic: Second 2 period oscillator
- Replies: 2
- Views: 2831
Re: Second 2 period oscillator
..... when I was looking through the wiki I noticed it listed only one type of 2 period oscillator, the blinker..... . Are you sure you have the right Wiki? From the main page there is a panel including the option "oscillators." Selecting that, there is a huge array of oscillators, but there is a p...
- April 24th, 2010, 12:19 am
- Forum: General Discussion
- Topic: Spaceship speed limits
- Replies: 33
- Views: 111741
Re: Spaceship speed limits
The illusion part of the fast forward force field sems to be settled, the teleportation's jump being related to the distance between the bow and the stern of the teleportee. Except for the stargate, which employs serial fields, there don't seem to be other instances of teleportation among the Life p...
- April 16th, 2010, 2:25 am
- Forum: General Discussion
- Topic: How to do glider synthesis, anyone?
- Replies: 3
- Views: 3369
Re: How to do glider synthesis, anyone?
Does anybody here know how to engineer glider syntheses, please? A strategy which has not been mentioned is just to watch some of the brute force simulations, in which all the initial patterns in some rectangle or toroid are generated and watched for interesting results. Evidently this is time and ...
- April 7th, 2010, 10:29 pm
- Forum: General Discussion
- Topic: Spaceship speed limits
- Replies: 33
- Views: 111741
Re: Spaceship speed limits
Still, although the velocity of light has not been exceeded, the space ships still seem to be moving along faster that c/2, namely 19/22 nds of c; probably explicable by the bulk of the stargate mechanism. Although a single jump is plausibly an illusion, the criterion of "how long does it take for t...
- April 5th, 2010, 11:57 pm
- Forum: General Discussion
- Topic: Spaceship speed limits
- Replies: 33
- Views: 111741
Re: Spaceship speed limits
..... The stargate is a p60 device, and it accelerates any p60 LWSS stream you feed it, assuming the stream is in synch with the stargate. ..... Yes, this much can be found via Internet, and concretely, in the LifeWiki. However, I wonder if this description is truly worthy of the reference source w...
- April 5th, 2010, 3:04 am
- Forum: General Discussion
- Topic: Spaceship speed limits
- Replies: 33
- Views: 111741
Re: Spaceship speed limits
So, space ships have their speed limits, but extended structures can behave differently, especially with respect to superluminal movement. What if the structure is not extended? A recent example was the reasonable explanation in the LifeWiki that the stargate was an optical illusion, but that leads ...
- January 24th, 2010, 11:21 pm
- Forum: General Discussion
- Topic: How random is life
- Replies: 5
- Views: 4205
Re: How random is life
..... Every pattern can be characterized with the nine percentages for on-cells. ..... This is true, and forms the basis for statistical analysis of the evolution of automata. It is easy enough to write the rules of evolution of the automaton as probabilities, giving the return map for that automat...
- January 18th, 2010, 9:44 pm
- Forum: General Discussion
- Topic: How random is life
- Replies: 5
- Views: 4205
Re: How random is life
..... I'm sure there are statistical tests for measuring the distance to white noise. Did anyone do that for life? ..... The noise is not at all white (37.7 % vs. 50%), but I thought we discussed this years ago on the LifeCA newsgroup. The reference Nathaniel offers shows the results of a recent ex...
- January 12th, 2010, 1:26 am
- Forum: General Discussion
- Topic: Spaceship speed limits
- Replies: 33
- Views: 111741
Re: Spaceship speed limits
Reductio ad absurdum. So it seems that the oscillator part is essential, otherwise we never return to that first cell. Actually, it seems that I misread or misunderstood the whole definition, since I expected an immediate reaction. Which one has, when the period is 2. However the connected string d...
- January 7th, 2010, 9:30 pm
- Forum: General Discussion
- Topic: Spaceship speed limits
- Replies: 33
- Views: 111741
Re: Spaceship speed limits
If the proof that spaceships can't go faster than c/2 on the net somewhere? I can't find it. By now, that's been answered, both here and via Google. However, I have a related question, for which searching doesn't reveal much of anything: In the Wiki "Rotor" entry we find Under the standard Conway r...
- November 17th, 2009, 9:53 pm
- Forum: General Discussion
- Topic: Naming Conventions?
- Replies: 19
- Views: 11584
Re: Common names
There are all sorts of alchemical and astrological symbols which some of the polyominoes are thought to resemble.methodood wrote: ..... Is there an obscure history that someone could put in the light ?
- November 6th, 2009, 1:14 am
- Forum: Patterns
- Topic: Stickman.. with the most important extremities
- Replies: 7
- Views: 20341
Re: Stickman.. with the most important extremities
It is a little boy's game, to write new words they have just learned on the outhouse walls.
- November 2nd, 2009, 3:56 pm
- Forum: General Discussion
- Topic: Naming Conventions?
- Replies: 19
- Views: 11584
Re: Naming Conventions?
... Carpenters refer to such objects as a carpenter's square, a set square, or simply a square. ... I've known that for a long time, since my father had one in his shop. The trouble is that its arms are much too long for comparison with the preblock, and saying "square" sounds too much like "block,...
- November 1st, 2009, 4:28 pm
- Forum: General Discussion
- Topic: indestructible pattern
- Replies: 31
- Views: 19130
Re: indestructible pattern
With one-dimensional automata, there are rules with macrocells and membranes - Rule 110 is one of them - whose membranes can be penetrated, but only under relatively uncommon conditions. Rule 110's left membrane is the sequence x10, which is the vertical edge of a large evolutionary triangle, and i...
- November 1st, 2009, 3:41 pm
- Forum: General Discussion
- Topic: Naming Conventions?
- Replies: 19
- Views: 11584
Re: Naming Conventions?
How are official names decided? By a sort of osmosis, it would seem. The instigator of Life apparently loved puns. Anyway it was a great opportunity to give fanciful names to interesting artifacts. Some of them carried over to Martin Gardner's reportage, which also announced the Lifelines project. ...
- October 24th, 2009, 5:04 pm
- Forum: General Discussion
- Topic: LifeLine Magazine?
- Replies: 29
- Views: 20345
Re: LifeLine Magazine?
It is pretty certain that that last issue was never finished/mailed and that the actual total is just 11 issues.calcyman wrote: ..... To my knowledge, there were 12 issues printed. Which one is missing?
- October 13th, 2009, 1:17 am
- Forum: Website Discussion
- Topic: Some suggestions
- Replies: 37
- Views: 32785
Re: Some suggestions
..... but it is not even clear how to get one classified in the first place. Something like mentioning a name within double braces? ..... So I get to answer my own question. It's done just like that, using that pattern template. Or even just putting those markers at the bottom of the page. Apparent...
- October 11th, 2009, 8:33 pm
- Forum: Website Discussion
- Topic: Some suggestions
- Replies: 37
- Views: 32785
Re: Some suggestions
Although this thread seems mostly about running Life programs, I am still trying to figure out the LifeWiki, with the following observation. There seem to be numerous subindices, but I wonder how items make their way into them. In particular, there are various stretchers - wickstretchers, tubstretch...
- October 9th, 2009, 2:12 am
- Forum: General Discussion
- Topic: indestructible pattern
- Replies: 31
- Views: 19130
Re: indestructible pattern
What I am interested in is an impenetrable wall, one in which you could enclose complete chaos. ...(snip)... It's easy to build a chaos wall in other rules, but I doubt it is possible in life. What would such a wall be like? Presumably it would be a recognizable structure which would retain its cha...