Comic Genesis Forums

Ok so I was going back through the old comics and such. When I came back to the one where they tell Quentyn about the new runes they made. I recognized the rune symbols after I looked at them a little more in depth. They are actually the Schematic views of different Logic Gates, in electronics. From left to right in the pannel that they are shown, Inverter or NOT Gate, Buffer Gate, AND Gate, NAND Gate, OR Gate, NOR Gate, XOR Gate, XNOR Gate. I didn't notice it before because I was taught about Logic gates towards the end of my Electronics 1+2 year. Now that I think about it, they do look kinda runic. Although not the first thing to come to my mind when I think runes. Just an interesting tidbit, I happened to stumble upon, for the crowd.

Heres the link to the comic.
http://npc.comicgenesis.com/d/20050424.html

I'm pretty certain this was dscussed extensively back when that page was first published...

Yeah....I had a headeache for a month. Was totally not following what everyone was talking about.

"Rune" is simply the poetic way of saying "icon", "logo", or "symbol", and perhaps even "alphabetic script".

They are logic gates. And, Or, Xor, Nand, Nor etc.

Yeah, I twigged that one when I was trawling through the archive to catch up. Nearly fell off my chair.

[edit]Oh, yes, and I believe the fractal patterns in the same strip were also used by Michael Crichton in the novel version of Jurassic Park.

Hmmm, the discussion of the Logic gates must have happened durring one of my forum idle times... Oh well

The threads in question (discussing the logic gate type runes in order of relevance)
http://forums.comicgenesis.com/viewtopic.php?t=64918
http://forums.comicgenesis.com/viewtopic.php?t=64953
http://forums.comicgenesis.com/viewtopic.php?t=64827

I made a bunch of different systems using logic gates and they do not need to be made using electricity or silicone chips. Originally they were used in designing systems using relays (switchs controled by an electromagnet) but they are also handy when designing pnumatic or hydrolic controls (signal is sent as pressure or flow of some sort of fluid and "transistors" use bellows and valves or the Venturi principle) or optical signal controls (the "transistors" are various materials that change their optical qualities based on heat or light signals). Now lux-"transistors" would would be needed to make logic gates. There is a slight "step" between a logic circuit and a computer. Generally this "step" involves the presence of memory as well as programming that is used to tell a central processing unit how to change those gates to do arithmatic on binary numbers found in memory. A purely logic circuit only reacts and always reacts the same way with the same input. This leads me to believe that Wildcard has more then just "logic runes" involved but on the "hardware" made with these logic circuits, there must be programming and memory as well.

Actually, a pseudo-random number generator, which we know wildcard contains, cannot be made without memory of some sort. Without the ability to store and alter a seed it would always produce the same output. Since Wildcard posesses a pseudo-random number generator he problem of memory must already have been solved.

Lee M wrote:Oh, yes, and I believe the fractal patterns in the same strip were also used by Michael Crichton in the novel version of Jurassic Park.

You are correct, but to nitpick, it is not a fractal, it is an L-system.