softalk-pc-1982-12-reduced

and changes for 1,103 turns. It leaves behind eight blocks, sixgliders, four blinkers, four beehives, a boat, and ship, and a loaf.Seeds••• •R-pentomino• • •• •• • Pi-heptominoThe pi-heptomino is not so long-lived. After a mere 173 turns ithas swollen and decayed into six blocks, five blinkers, and twoponds. The pattern is of interest because in the fourth generation itseems to mimic a blastula, or an embryo in its earliest form. Aboutthirty turns later, the ' pattern tries to create another blastula tensquares from the first. Unfortunately, no one has found a way tosave the second embryo from the trauma of birth; it is destroyed bythe debris of its mother.Life enthusiasts have discovered many other seeds, some ofwhich grow and change for thousands of generations.Back to the Garden. The greatest unsolved Life problem is calledthe Garden of Eden. A Garden of Eden pattern must be created artificially;it is impossible to grow one from another pattern. Theorysays there must be a Garden of Eden pattern for Life, but finding oneis not so easy. It has been shown that such a pattern can exist withina square ten billion units on a side, but it could be much smaller.One could, perhaps, prove that a given shape is the Garden of Edenby eliminating all possible parents, but that would be a tedious task,even for a computer.What Does It All Mean? It should be apparent by now that Lifeis not going to beat out VisiCalc as a practical, easy-to-use applicationprogram. Its patterns, like chess problems, are engaging inthemselves but are at most analogies for real-world conditions.Nevertheless, followers of the game resist the notion that it is merelyan abstract pastime with no relation to daily life.The name Life implies a tie to biology. Words like cell and virusreinforce it. The creators of the Life program Microcosm (reviewedthis issue) bill it as "a simulation of birth, life, migration, and deathamong populations of cellular organisms." For a fact, it is possibleto see the forms of diatoms in the still lifes, or the cells of livingtissue in an agar. But you could spend your whole life bent over amicroscope without seeing anything that resembled a blinker or afuse. If Life simulates life, it is no form native to Earth.Another analogy is between the orderly, repetitious patterns ofLife and a computer. The game has been used to simulate a Turingmachine, or universal calculator. Also, in a paper presented to the1974 Winter Simulation Conference, Robert Wainwright sketched amethod for simulating a digital computer. By using glider guns totrace the patterns of circuitry, it is possible to create extremely complicatedpatterns that behave like an electronic device. However, it ishard to see the utility of a computer that takes another computer torun it. ' ·Finally, there is the fascinating theory that the universe itself,with every star and galaxy and dust cloud, is a vast board for a gameof Life whose rules can only be imagined. As Martin Gardner put itin Scientific American, "There is even the possibility that space-timeitself is granular, composed of discrete units, and that the universe,as Fredkin and others have suggested, is a cellular automaton run byan enormous computer. If so, what we call motion may be onlysimulated motion. A moving spaceship, on the ultimate microlevel,may be essentially the same as one of Conway's spaceships, appearingto move on the macrolevel whereas actually there is only analteration of states of basic space-time cells in obedience to transitionrules that have not yet been discovered.".A.NF SYSTEMS LTD. PRESENTS:FileMaster ,.a high performance, low costfile management system• Up to 32 files/disk, 32,767 records/file, 18 fields/record,65 characters/alpha field - 16/numeric field• Add, Change, Delete, Append records• Change field names, reorganize the file (Add, Change,Delete fields & reclaim space)• Query the fileSelect records using up to eight fields with:Less than, Less than or equal to, Equal to, Greaterthan, Greater than or equal to, Not equal to, Contains· Find records - using the above criteria· View specific records• DIF (VisiCalc®) file interchange• Create Reports using the above criteriaFile Master can be used for a wide range of applications. Ease of use featuresinclude uncrowded screens and single character commands. FileMaster'ssimplicity and functio~ add up to performance and productivity for youMinimum System - 64K, 80 Column CRT, 1 Diskette DriveRegistered Trademark of Data Base DecisionsOnly $99.95aEJ•NF SYSTEMS, LTD.P.O. Box 76363Atlanta, GA 30358Catalog AvailableCall collect to order - 404-252-3302Add $2.00 for postage and handlin9- - ---Personal ComputerNF SYSTEMS LTD. PRESENTS:HOSTCOMMby JANADONThe Personal Host CommunicationsSystem*Features:•The first Host communications system for the I BM Personal Computer• Run programs from a remote site with a terminal or another computer• Use as a personal communications system or electronic mailbox• Full Upload/Download facility for ASCII files• Easy set-up, installation, and especially easy to use• Full system operator support• Three level password protection• Unattended operation* Minimum Systems Requirements:• 96KB System Unit• 320KB Diskette storage (1 or 2 drives)•PC-DOS 1.0 or 1.1•Video Display (40 or 80 characters)•Printer• Asynchronous Communications Adapter• Hayes Stack N SmartmodemList PriceNF SYSTEMS, LTD.P.O. Box 76363Atlanta, GA 30358Catalog AvailableCall collect to order - 404-252-3302Add $2.50 for postage and handling$139.95------- - - -=--=---~=II==-=- .=11------- - - ---·----·-Personal Computerfor the IBM Personal Computer December 198235