Is this a true statement?

[Jarno J Virtanen]

25 Jun 2001 18:54:02 GMT Tim Daneliuk wrote:
> I still do not understand/agree with this line of reasoning entirely.
> As I mentioned in a previous post, one has to define what we mean by
> "do" or "program".  It is a fundamental truth of Computer Science that
> all Turing-Complete languages have *exactly* the same computational
> abilities - i.e., They all handle the exact same set of algorithms -
> in particular, those algorithms which are Turing Computable (which
> excludes things like the Halting Problem).  This *includes* all
> "interactions with the outside world" because such interaction
> is, by definition, algorithmic. 

I think it is still the fundamental _hypothesis_, although it has
strong evidental support. :-)

> (Fine Point:  There is a debatable point here about whether adaptive 
> algorithms like those found in Genetic Programming are really formally 
> "algorithms" at all because they do not behave consistently when faced with
> he same input conditions, but that's way outside the scope of this discussion.)

I remember reading from a book titled "Mathematics: 2001 and beyond" (or
something like that), that in theory a networked group of computers
which all evolve independently is not restricted to "turing-completeness",
but I honestly didn't grasp all the details. ;-)

jarno - i think i shouldn't be nitpicking since i'm not a 
        scientist anyway