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Colossus has been Rebuilt
Max Driver writes "In celebration of D-Day, "Colossus", one of the earliest electronic code-breaking machines, has been rebuilt after ten years of effort by computer conservationists. Colossus was used to break the Lorenz cipher. This story is being reported by the BBC. Remarkably, the use of parallel processing (five tape channels) and short gate delay time (1.2 microseconds) allows the Colossus to match the speed of a modern PC."
Phew. For a moment, I thought they were talking about this Colossus.
An artificially intelligent supercomputer is developed and activated, only to reveal that it has a sinister agenda of its own
When I read the headline I thought it was about the Colossus of Rhodes!
:)
This is cool too
OLPC Australia
... and the IRS still uses it to this day.
It only matches the speed of a modern PC at the single task it was designed for.
Yeah, they're still trying to figure out how to make it crash as often.
A beowulf cluster of these things!
(sorry. No. Really. Sorry!)
They had to wait for Bill and Paul to "develop the first programming language" before that was even possible.
OLPC Australia
Oh great, a load of Slashdotters turning up. I can just imagine the poor guides when they ask the obligatory "Does anyone have any questions?".
Also they had better rope off the area properly or for some reason the machine will print out "Visit my 1337 site goatse" or "First Post" constantly.
Philip
Signatures are broken
But look at the popularity of the ideas we exported; why, in central London a pub has a sign outside saying it was where the Communist Manifesto was launched, and offering themed lunches (borscht etc.) (oddly I can't remember a similar sign outside the hofbrauhaus in Munich). Who would have thought that would take off?
I really put that down to two things:
1) Most people in England still only have 486 computers
2) He's talking about deciphering stuff off a paper tape, something a modern PC can't do at any speed
3) An old guy bragging about life's accomplishments (which is okay).
At least we can count.
Fatal error on tape0 - unknown error, paper exploded?
503 Sig Unavailable
The Signature could not be accessed. Please try again later or contact the administrator
Clearly he was using American units. Remember, US 2 = ~3 standard units. NASA has problems with this all the time, I hear.
Well, yes, GCHQ have almost certainly logged this communication - as will Google in the not too distant future, so that's not so cloak-and-dagger... But I doubt the great man will actually turn up. More likely some large men will be coming around to explain to you why, if you're going to make fun of people's names, it's perhaps wise to pick people who aren't highly placed members of large international espionage organisations...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Either way we would have ended up with a continent of people with one muscular arm.
Wait, I'm confused. You'd end up with a continent of Slashdot readers?
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Colossus has been Rebuilt
:-)
Great! In time for the next X-Men movie too
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. -- Hunter S. Thompson
What else is uniquely British that we'd want to entice the Americans into 'stealing' in a sort of 'You touched it last! It's your's now!' way?
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors - Plato
I'm waiting for 'Colossus' the movie, starring a daring team of americans at Bletchley who single-handedly invent Colossus, run Ultra and crack the codes just in time
;-)
One vital detail missing there, the bit where handsome Texan stud Alan Turing gets the girl at the end