Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!snorkelwacker!bloom-beacon!TURING.CS.RPI.EDU!hiebeler
From: hiebeler@TURING.CS.RPI.EDU (Dave Hiebeler)
Newsgroups: comp.theory.cell-automata
Subject: Re: Cellular Automata Laboratory
Message-ID: <8912221638.AA25484@turing.cs.rpi.edu>
Date: 22 Dec 89 16:38:20 GMT
Sender: daemon@athena.mit.edu (Mr Background)
Distribution: inet
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 64


  I've used Rucker's CA Lab, but not much.  That's mostly by choice,
as it's not really what I'm looking for.

  I don't know about its PC compatibility, memory requirements, and
don't remember how fast it went (I do know that it seemed awfully
slow, after getting used to CAMs and Connection Machines though :-) ).
I believe it allows you to write rules in Basic, Pascal, and C.

  The program is not really compatible with CAM or Cellsim.  By that,
I mean at the rule-programming level; CA Lab might be able to read in
CAM-6 lookup tables though. (I suspect it can, as it's not hard to
do).  The reason I don't remember any of the details, and can't look
them up, is because I don't own the package; someone I know has a
copy, and I tried it out for a while a couple of months ago.

  The reason I was not impressed with the package is because I was
looking for something with more science.  Rucker's program has lots of
silly/fun demos such as running the Zhabotinski reaction on Timothy
Leary's face, running heat-flow on the starship Enterprise, and so on.
While he does have some worthwhile physical experiments in there as
well, I thought the silliness/physics ratio was a bit too high.  I
do enjoy some silly demos to make life more pleasant, but not that
many.

  I wasn't impressed with the book/documentation that came with the
package either.  Much of the book was Rucker and Walker talking about
"Why cellular automata?"  While I feel such questions are important,
it seemed that there was way too much fluff.  If anyone has read
Dewdney's January 1990 "Computer Recreations" column in Scientific
American, there is a quote by Rucker:
     "I feel that science's greatest task in the late 20th century is to
   build living machines... This is the computer scientist's Great Work
   as surely as the building of the Notre Dame cathedral...was the Great
   Work of the medieval artisan."
Most of what Rucker says in the CA Lab book sounds like this.  Walker
is a little more "down-to-Earth", but I wanted something more along
the lines of the "Cellular Automata Machines" book by Toffoli and
Margolus, that you get when you buy the CAM.  By the way, in Dewdney's
article there is a picture of "Life" being run on an image of the
Enterprise, if you're interested. :-)

  I know this might come across sounding like a bad review, but I
don't want it to be.  I'm sure there are many people who would like
Rucker's program.  This is my own personal opinion, and my reason
for not really liking the program is just that it is not what I'm
looking for.

  I should also add a disclaimer here: I am involved with a new
company (Automatrix, Inc.) that is developing CA hardware and
software.  While we are not currently "competing" with Rucker in this
area, I do plan to write a PC-based CA package in the near future
that is more oriented toward physical modeling, as I've been working
on Cellsim on Sun workstations for about 7 months now, have used CAM-6
for a couple of years, and think I can put together a decent package.

  Hopefully someone else who has used CA Lab can offer some comments,
to paint a more objective picture of the package.

Dave Hiebeler                       hiebeler@turing.cs.rpi.edu
Computer Science Dept               hiebeler@cardinal.lanl.gov
Amos Eaton Bldg.
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Troy, NY 12180-3590