POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.off-topic : Brain fail : Re: Brain fail Server Time
4 Sep 2024 19:20:08 EDT (-0400)
  Re: Brain fail  
From: Kevin Wampler
Date: 16 Feb 2010 00:16:27
Message: <4b7a2a2b$1@news.povray.org>
Darren New wrote:
> Wolfram constructed a pattern that uses rule 30 to emulate a turing 
> machine

I should note that the proof (for rule 110) wasn't actually done by 
Wolfram.  It was done by Matthew Cook who was interning for Wolfram 
Research at the time.  Here's a snippet which will hopefully explain why 
I think this is worth mentioning:

"The real problem with this result, however, is that it is not 
Wolfram's. He didn't invent cyclic tag systems, and he didn't come up 
with the incredibly intricate construction needed to implement them in 
Rule 110. This was done rather by one Matthew Cook, while working in 
Wolfram's employ under a contract with some truly remarkable provisions 
about intellectual property. In short, Wolfram got to control not only 
when and how the result was made public, but to claim it for himself. In 
fact, his position was that the existence of the result was a trade 
secret. Cook, after a messy falling-out with Wolfram, made the result, 
and the proof, public at a 1998 conference on CAs. (I attended, and was 
lucky enough to read the paper where Cook goes through the construction, 
supplying the details missing from A New Kind of Science.) Wolfram, for 
his part, responded by suing or threatening to sue Cook (now a penniless 
graduate student in neuroscience), the conference organizers, the 
publishers of the proceedings, etc."

 From here: http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/reviews/wolfram/


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