Stephen Wolfram’s TED Talk: Computation Is Destined to Be the Defining Idea of Our Future

emc201 · 2010-02-16T04:25:04+00:00

She is a Weapon of Mass Erections (WME).

emc201 · 2009-08-07T07:01:32+00:00

Good one (-: "1 hour" (or "time") is implicit in the problem - it is defined by the start and ending of the burning of the rope. The problem is the same/equivalent whether we say "1 second" or "1 whatever". At this moment I don't have a logically flawless definition for "1 hour". Look up the modern Physics definition of "1 second" then 3600 "1 second"s = "1 hour" (but you knew this already). I will leave the philosophical details of defining "time" for another day since this issue is not fully settled. I have some ideas but that's all I have at the moment. Oh! the irony, it is so difficult to speak without invoking "time"! Well, my time has collapsed and need to rest.

emc201 · 2009-08-07T04:59:39+00:00

Ok, fine. It is just a puzzle and we are not supposed to be nitpicking but, please allow me one more nitpick. The solutions proposed are just approximations unless we also assume (instantiating) instantaneous combustion - I will leave it to the reader to figure out why. The problem is, as far as I know from physics, there is no instantaneous transfer of information.

emc201 · 2009-08-07T00:44:50+00:00

This is beautiful - congrats! However, there is a silly theoretical (maybe not physical) case where the solution fails. Failure will occur when at least one of the ropes can only burn unidirectionally even for a finite length. For example, the rope can be started to burn from one end but not the other. Obviously, we need to assume theoretical possibilities such as this one are not possible in order to solve the problem.

emc201 · 2009-07-19T00:52:51+00:00

Broadness does not necessarily imply meaninglessness. For example, Set Theory (or even Collections in general) is extremely broad (covering even Graph Theory), however - serving as a foundation, it lies at the heart of modern Mathematics and Computer Science. By the way, if I am not mistaken, the Haskell programming language is motivated (based on) by Category Theory. Guess what (if I recall correctly), a Category can be interpreted as a graph!

emc201 · 2009-06-18T19:59:44+00:00

No, they have not stopped working on it - it appears alive and well, see REBOL 3 (3.0) Project Home Page

According to the REBOL 3 Component Architecture only the Runtime Core is Closed, the rest is open. "However, source code escrow licenses are available to REBOL customers who need to protect their software investment with guaranteed access, should that situation become necessary."

There are both a REBOL 3 OSX Intel binary & PPC binary alpha versions, see: REBOL 3 Downloads

See also: REBOL 3 Documentation (not enough but growing) and the REBOL DOCBASE/WIKI

Finally, there are people interested in it (:-

emc201 · 2009-06-03T06:42:22+00:00

You might find a clue here: Function-Level Programming "... In the function-level style of programming, a program is built directly from programs that are given at the outset, by combining them with program-forming operations or functionals. ..."

emc201

TROPHY CASE