20 Nov
2003
20 Nov
'03
3:27 p.m.
der Mouse wrote:
["Brian L. Stuart"
<blstuart(a)bellsouth.net>]
Certainly not an oxymoron. I have a real soft spot for analog
computers. The theorist in me wants to hear the term analog
computer as a whole as describing a computing device in a different
class from the sort we've been discussing. A part of me kind
of wishes a different term had been adopted for these machines,
but differential equation engine just doesn't have the same ring.
Now if I had just had a way to rescue the EIA hybrid machine I
used in college. Of course, I'd have no place to put it, but
we can ignore minor details like that...
Brian L. Stuart
Now here I do agree with the desire to define a
computer in terms of
machines that can compute functions that are computable in a
Church-Turing sense.
Hm, so you consider "analog computer" to be an oxymoron?