How many of you like HP41C calculators?

From: ben franchuk <bfranchuk_at_jetnet.ab.ca>
Date: Thu Nov 20 03:40:16 2003

Brian L. Stuart wrote:
>
> If you've stayed with me this long, you have my condolances.
> However, there's one more interesting point that comes out
> here. This sub-thread was sparked by the question of whether
> the potential of self-modifying code was necessary in order
> to be a computer. Notice that with the definition above,
> any computer can implement a universal Turing machine and
> unless you engage in some unnatural limitations, such a
> machine can modify it's own programming. (Remember that
> a universal Turing machine interprets instructions read
> from the tape.) A more prosaic way of looking at this same
> point is that I don't need a von Neumann architecture to
> implement an interpreter which interprets self-modifying
> code. And if computing theory teaches us anything, adding
> or removing levels of abstraction doesn't affect the basic
> power of the model.

But is not LIFE on the molecular level some thing like a bunch
computing machines that computes structure rather than logic.
That is a practical turning machine in my books, that made
Von Neymann, not the other way around. :)
Received on Thu Nov 20 2003 - 03:40:16 GMT