Wolfram's 2,3 Turing Machine Is Universal!

Rik702 writes "Wolframscience.com have announced that an undergraduate from Birmingham, UK has proved Wolfram's 2,3 Turing Machine is universal." You can read a pdf of the proof as well as some related coverage.

Turing Machines

[ebolaZaireRules]

I hated this subject... If only my lecturer had told me I could win US$25k, it might have been more interesting.

Damn

[3.5 stripes]

That was on my To Do list for next week.

But...

[Hatta]

...does it run Linux?

Re:But...

[Palshife]

It runs everything.

WTF

[Anonymous Coward]

I just finished compiling Wolfram's 2,2 Universal Turing Machine!

Re:Wow

[russ1337]

Fine, he's a math geek. An ubergeek even. $10 says he hasn't, and never will, get laid

The dude has $25K to spend on a very attractive hookers. I'm sure he's doing the math to figure out whether he's better off blowing it all on one, or getting 2,500 ten-dollar hookers.

Yes the 'blowing it' pun was intended...

2,3. 2+3=5

[ettlz]

The Law of Fives is never wrong.

Re:But...

[johnw]

It runs everything.

But it needs a memory upgrade and a new video card to run Vista.

Without even reading the article

[Tibor the Hun]

Without even reading the article, I feel confident to say that, no it does not. All that universal applications allow you to do is run them on both PPC and Intel chips, as opposed to having 2 separate forks for each platform.

(If anyone bothers to take this seriously, and feel they need to correct me, they need to step outside for a while and get some fresh air.)

Re:2,3. 2+3=5

[insertwackynamehere]

The man fnord makes fnord a good fnord point.

Again, really? Yes, really

[arsheive]

I for one now admit that all previously welcomed overlords can be emulated by this 2 state, 3 color overlord.

Re:But...

[sapone]

But it needs a memory upgrade and a new video card to run Vista.

Well, next time you buy a Turing machine, you should go right for the Aleph brand memory tape. Plain old infinity obviously doesn't cut it.

Re:But...

[Anonymous Coward]

But it needs a memory upgrade and a new video card to run Vista.

Huh... I go through the trouble of finding a new card and an infinite tape that's twice as long, and the damn thing still displays the same three colors as before the upgrade.

Re:Wow

[grumpyman]

The dude has $25K to spend on a very attractive hookers. I'm sure he's doing the math to figure out whether he's better off blowing it all on one, or getting 2,500 ten-dollar hookers.

Yes, but that'll take the 2,3 turing machine 37 billion steps before he can get the answer.

Re:A New Kind of Science

[Anonymous Coward]

I fail to see the connection between Wolfram's speculation that there will turn out to be very simple universal Turing machines and your banal statement that some countries in the world will go to war. Ergo, the fact that you're not impressed by the proven truth of the former does not, of itself, make it unimpressive.

That doesn't make his huge book any less tedious, however.

Oblig

[Anonymous Coward]

... in Soviet Russia at least.

Re:Turing Machines

[muellerr1]

N = 1. Solved! I can't believe they weren't able to figure that out.

Re:A New Kind of Science

[SlowMovingTarget]

Well said, Comic Book Guy!

Re:But...

[Lord Bitman]

Infinite tape that's twice as long is logically impossible. Clearly to double the memory you need to make it twice as wide

Needs an infinite tape

[Tim2]

As an undergraduate in 1968, I did an independent study that estimated the size of the universal turing machine described in: Davis, Martin (1958), Computability and Unsolvability, New York NY: McGraw-Hill Book Company. This was tedious but not hard. For any slashdotters ready to rush out and implement a working universal Turing machine, be forwarned that your parts list needs to include an infinitely long tape. Worse, when calculating the output of an arbitrary recursive function on your universal Turing machine, you won't know in advance how long the tape needs to be, in case you were cheap and bought a tape with finite length rather than the more expensive infinite one.

The universal Turing machine itself consists of a large but quite finite set of quadruples. The problem is the longish tape.

Re:WTF

[Bloodoflethe]

.42

I have discovered a truly wonderful proof...

[Anonymous Coward]

of this, but it doesn't pass the /. lameness filter ;^)

Re:Wow

[Jedi_Yo_Jo]

he could retire in mexico with 25K

Re:Without even reading the article

[Anonymous Coward]

(If anyone bothers to take this seriously, and feel they need to correct me, they need to step outside for a while and get some fresh air.)

I work next to a waste treatment plant you insensitive clod!

Re:But...

[Bazman]

Was it Turing or Bill Gates who said that an infinitely long tape ought to be enough for anyone?

Re:But...

[Anonymous Coward]

It always comes down to length versus girth for those people....

Re:Needs an infinite tape

[wiredog]

No problem. I'll use a Moebius strip.

Re:2,3. 2+3=5

[Guppy]

"The man makes a good point." -- how the heck does a simple me-too comment like this get modded up? I find this rather upsetting, somehow.