Search found 49 matches

by H. V. McIntosh
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...
by H. V. McIntosh
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...
by H. V. McIntosh
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...
by H. V. McIntosh
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...
by H. V. McIntosh
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"...
by H. V. McIntosh
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 ...
by H. V. McIntosh
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...
by H. V. McIntosh
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...
by H. V. McIntosh
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 ...
by H. V. McIntosh
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...
by H. V. McIntosh
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...
by H. V. McIntosh
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 ...
by H. V. McIntosh
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...
by H. V. McIntosh
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...
by H. V. McIntosh
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...
by H. V. McIntosh
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...
by H. V. McIntosh
November 17th, 2009, 9:53 pm
Forum: General Discussion
Topic: Naming Conventions?
Replies: 19
Views: 11584

Re: Common names

methodood wrote: ..... Is there an obscure history that someone could put in the light ?
There are all sorts of alchemical and astrological symbols which some of the polyominoes are thought to resemble.
by H. V. McIntosh
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.
by H. V. McIntosh
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,...
by H. V. McIntosh
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...
by H. V. McIntosh
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. ...
by H. V. McIntosh
October 24th, 2009, 5:04 pm
Forum: General Discussion
Topic: LifeLine Magazine?
Replies: 29
Views: 20345

Re: LifeLine Magazine?

calcyman wrote: ..... To my knowledge, there were 12 issues printed. Which one is missing?
It is pretty certain that that last issue was never finished/mailed and that the actual total is just 11 issues.
by H. V. McIntosh
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...
by H. V. McIntosh
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...
by H. V. McIntosh
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...