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WWII Colossus Codecracker Outdone by a German
superglaze writes "The Colossus codecracker contest was a short-lived ordeal. Not only has it been outdone in a cipher-breaking challenge, but — irony of ironies — it was beaten by a German! From the story: 'The winner was Joachim Schüth, from Bonn, who completed the task using software he wrote himself. "[Schüth] cracked the most difficult code yesterday," said the museum's spokesperson on Friday. "We're absolutely delighted. He used specially written software for the challenge. Colossus is still chugging away, as we got the signals late. Yesterday the atmospheric conditions were such that we couldn't get good signals.'"
Perhaps because they wanted him to "crack" it?
So basically, -1 troll/offtopic is really slashdots way of saying "I hate that you thought of something before me."
"Colossus DRM System" project...
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
I can see this one being a Godwin-magnet
Vee haf vays uf makink you drink more Ovaltine!
It's not irony! :(
Of course the German was able to crack it first. I mean, Colossus was made to crack German codes. Clearly this German guy already knew how to crack it to begin with...
This guy's the limit!
Now I just need a copy of the software on my laptop and a time warping wormhole to 1942.
Just have to remember not to ask for "pepsi, free"...
He posted the source code on his hompeage at http://www.schlaupelz.de/SZ42/SZ42_software.html.
Most of it is written in Ada.
And the trains always run on time... Oh, wait....
None. None at all.
``Climb Mount Niitaka'' is a code. How can a computer break that,
with no contextual clues?*
Now, a cipher may have been broken... or at least, a cipher session key.
* 1941-12-07
I could understand a stereotype tag, even a nationalism tag, but racism? Are the taggers implying that people from German are of different races than the rest of the world?
I RTFA and there is nothing racist in there. Just that a guy from Germany cracked the code using some software written in Ada.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
That's why the rest of us love to hate them. They have superioring engineering, superior art, superior scientists, a clean and safe society, and arguably better pornography. Remember that kid who always wrecked the curve in grade school? That's the Germans, and boy do we love to hate those Nazi kraut-eating bastards.
I KNEW it! Slashdot subscribers are Germans bitter of the defeat of their Aryan plans! /karma....clicks "anonymous"
Please mod the parent up, since he actually knows what the word 'racism' means.
oh wait..
Can't have been that efficient, what with millions of "survivors".
I've read Enigma, also Between Silk and Cyanide. As follow-ups, I've read The White Rabbit (story of Forest Frederick Edward Yeo-Thomas' capture and survival.) Recently I've acquired London Calling North Pole, by Hermann J. Giskes, mastermind of the Game Against England, played out in Holland.
It's remarkable how few resources the Nazis had to throw at code breaking, thanks to party politics and such. Their chief reliance appears to have been ignorance of how the Enigma machine worked was their best security. Their most effective counter measures were 'playing it back', that is capturing agents and setting up a station to behave as if the agent and network were still safe and functioning normally (this was Operation North Pole in Holland.)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Heise security article says, "...British and German secret services initially had reservations about the cipher challenge."
I'd like to know more about what they said. Are they worried it will encourage kids to get interested in crypto? Where do they expect to pick up talented cryptographers anyway?
Das encryptmachine ist nicht fuer gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist easy wrecken der secrets, schnatchendatas und breakensecurity mit grossembrassen. Ist nicht fuer gewerken bei das dumpkopfen.
I am officially gone from
May be, but Hilter wasn't German, he was Austrian, as is the Governator, whose parents were Nazis.
It has been ~70 years now, hasn't it? A couple of generations.. At least keep the outdated references limited to cold war stuff.
Unfortunately, it seems that some people need to be reminded of this on occasion. Sad, I know.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Yesterday the atmospheric conditions were such that we couldn't get good signals.
Somehow it sounds a lot like blaming lag for losing one of the old school Quake 1-on-1 deathmatches
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
I think that's a bad definition for race. It sounds more like a correct definition for ethnicity. "Japanese" and Korean" are nationalities and, more than that, they are ethnicities, but I wouldn't call them "races" any more than I'd say that Italians and Swedes are of different "races." Italians and Swedes are "Caucasian;" Japanese and Koreans are "Asian," (or "East-Asian" if you want to differentiate from "South-Asian.")
Because by the definition you cited, Kurds are a race, as are Armenians, as are... It just gets absurd. At this rate we'd end up with one-"race"-per-family-group!
Race is biological (but socially-constructed*). Ethnicity is (mostly) cultural. I feel like definitions that do not reflect this difference serve to make our language less accurate.
Well, maybe you want to bring the Glock too, just in case the local powers don't feel compelled to treat a traveling salesman with due courtesy and respect...
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
Why irony to describe the result? irony: incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs. Here the expectation, even if misguided, is a historical one, not a nationalistic nor skill-based one. Since irony is based on expectation, it is as much an emotional process as an intellectual one. It is not necessarily a rational response; it CAN be just a sensation one gets. Obviously no one doubts Germans are technically capable of cracking codes, so expectation is not twisted around for that reason. From an earlier article on this: "Colossus was developed at Bletchley Park to decipher German messages during World War II...Two groups of amateur code breakers will be invited to crack transmissions encrypted by one of the original Lorenz cipher machines used by the German High Command during World War II." So I do think most people might find it justifiably ironic that in a blind test a German, who otherwise knows nothing about the original German code, is able to decipher it the fastest in a contest taking place over 60 years after the fact competing with the original machine designed to decipher it in the first place. In a naive post hoc sense, one might think "the result actually makes sense because perhaps there is something 'Germanocentric' about the code." But I seriously doubt this. The historical irony remains intact. However, again only after the initial glow of the ironic sensation fades do we realize our expectation was flawed: we should have guessed that a competent German was participating, so there was a pretty good chance a German would win from the start.
i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
Infamy! They all have it infamy!
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Can you imagine the size of the RAM sticks? And they walk inside the case!!
And you thought TRON was science fiction!
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Italians and Swedes are "Caucasian;"
Eh? Have the Caucasus moved since I was at school?
The atomic bomb. It's easy to forget that it was developed in response to fears that the Germans might develop one first (which makes it ironic that it was the Japanese that it was ultimately used against). It might be easy in retrospect to say that they weren't realistically close to having one during WWII, but this wasn't so clear at the time.
And even if this *had* become known towards the end of the (prolonged) war, the Americans would have had the bomb by then, and- I suspect- little tolerance for letting the Germans prolong the war and giving Stalin a chance to sweep further across Europe (never was the difference between "friend" and "allie" more clear)- even if Germany couldn't win.
If the Nazis had still stood a plausible chance of winning- or even "drawing"- the war by the time the bomb was ready, then it's near-certain that at least one bomb would have been dropped on the country. It's the kind of thing that some people would say is terrible in retrospect. However, given what Nazi Germany *did* do (with the support of most of their people) and what they would have done had they won the war, I'd personally have considered it morally justifiable (and imperative) to use as many atomic bombs as necessary to bring the war to a swift conclusion.
As I said, they were damn lucky.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Well, everyone does seem to be driving around in "volkswagons" and even wearing Lederhosen (at least around Oktoberfest time), so perhaps they won anyway...
Well, lucky are the few with such moral certitude as you. It's not clear at all that the Allies would have ever dropped a bomb over Germany, given the proximity of so many Allied countries. They had no qualms dropping them on Japan because of its geographic isolation. Besides, obliterating Germany that way would have prevented much of the technological looting after the war. The US in particular made out like bandits so to speak, and the war ended up being a net economic gain in the long run, both in terms of technology gained and new markets established.
Colossus according to http://www.hnf.de/Presse/Pressemitteilungen/Pressemitteilungen_Result.asp?Anzeige=Yes&Index1=337 cracked the message in three and a half hour. It was beaten by a modern day computer doing the job in just 46 seconds which thus was less than 300 times faster. 300 times faster is just the speed increase one expects in about 10 years according to http://www.neurophys.wisc.edu/ravi/docs/m122p2.pdf. The specially built for the task Colossus faster than mid 90s general purpose PC. One has to have great respect for the builders of Colossus.
This is a really interesting point, one I'd never considered in quite that way... I remember the Star Trek episode that posited the idea that Edith Keilor could have forestalled the entry of the US into WWII... It never quite made sense to me - somehow she stopped Pearl Harbor? Or that somehow her peace ideas would have made Americans choose NOT to go to war with Japan afterwards... It is unlikely.
Anyway, I remember a sociology class I took in college that showed a survey of Americans right after the end of WWII on what they thought, at that time, should have been done with the bomb. A miniscule percentage said we should not have used the A-bomb on Japan, and the vast majority said we should have. But the interesting point of the survey was that some 8% of Americans believed we should have continued to drop atomic bombs on Japan, even AFTER THEY HAD SURRENDERED... That 1 out of 15 Americans would believe such a thing at that time points out just how pissed off Americans were at that point... WWII touched virtually every home, with either a relative dying or being wounded, or certainly a neighbor who suffered such a fate... It is VERY likely that had one atomic bomb not stopped the war in Europe, we would have continued to drop bombs on them until they did surrender. Remember, the plants that were built to manufacture the uranium and plutonium for the bombs weren't built to build one or two bombs... they were built to build hundreds, if not, THOUSANDS of A-Bombs...
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!
They were lucky? Well the guessing at alternate history game is always fun.
Noncrazy Hitler doesn't start a war on several fronts and cleans the allies out of Europe before invading Russian. When he invades he doesn't do it in winter.
Noncrazy Hitler after taking control of as his side of the planet offers peace to the US who is a whole ocean away and agrees.
Noncrazy Hitler also develops nukes which can be delivered by missiles developed by his scientists who, as he didn't lose, were not captured for use by the US for their rocket program.
Noncrazy Hitler slips, falls, and dies in his bathtub while shaving his legs. This saves the US from nuclear annihilation in 1960.
If it weren't for the japs, the usa would not have entered the big one. Nazis would have ruled europe. Attacking russia was a mistake at that point. Should have kept the pact and strung stalen along. Third Reich indeed. The war would have ended much sooner, perhaps as early as '42, if all the resources weren't wasted.
However, Noncrazy Hitler wouldn't have been Hitler as we know him, and history would have had to be very different. By contrast, Germany surrendered just 3 months before the atomic bomb was ready enough to be dropped on Japan.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Well, yeah! Being a German he obviously had a head start on all of this.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The invasion of the Soviet Union began in June, which is hardly winter.
Heh! I know, that's probably an abuse of the language too. You reminded me why I put an asterisk next to "Caucasian;" I was actually going to make a footnote kind of like your comment.
You're right, it's pretty superficial in the end; Caucasian really means, "looking white," whatever that means. And the Caucasus as a region is actually a great example. Midway along the Silk Road, you run into real difficulties with racial classification.
Another example of how we twist language to deal with our discomfort with race: "Native American." Literally, "Aboriginal" is the appropriate adjective, not "native." "Native" only worked to differentiate Algonquin from English up until sometime in the 16-1700s!
Such is life.
Do you want your possessions identified? [ynq] (n)
...
0 kliklik the timetraveller. Killed by an exploding battery.
I suggest read up on your history and Nazi "philosophy". No, Germans nowadays aren't racists in general, but remember Hitler and the Nazis?
I'm german, and I agree with the statement that Germany was lucky to lose the war, but not with the reasoning you provide.
Germany losing the war allowed me to grow up and live in a free and democratic country that is worth living in. For that I am most grateful, and my thanks go to the people who made this possible.
I be he's a distant cousin of Dwight Schrute.
As for WW2 and your proposal; nuking a highly populated area is genocide.
Many variations of the theme, but someone shoulda wrote this first:
"Of course a German cracked it first; he asked his grandfather for a copy of the plaintext"
-BA
Fallout wasn't well understood at the time... the full implications of a nuclear attack were not known. There was an inkling, but there was no concept of "nuclear winter" or anything like the sterilization that happened around Chernobyl. Hell, they tested the bombs in the continental US. I'm not saying that there wouldn't have been second thoughts about dropping it, but I don't think they'd have been able to consider the ramifications from a modern perspective of nuclear issues.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
From http://www.schlaupelz.de/SZ42/SZ42_software.html: :-)
``The PC used was a laptop with 1.4 GHz CPU, using NetBSD as the operating system'' - so much for being dead.
- Hubert
There are up to a million words claiming to have been incorporated into the English lexicon. Are you seriously suggesting that in all the words you don't know, there does not exist one that more precisely specifies the meaning currently occupied by sloppy application of the word "Irony?"
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Broken window fallacy, look it up.
I find it quite implausible to think that the loot from Nazi Germany would even begin to cover the expenses for the war. If you are aware of any calculations done please point me to them.
So he beat Colossus now? But who won the real challenge way back when?
I don't think a modern programmer beating a 60 year old machine can claim much in bragging rights
You're also incorrect that "nuking a highly populated area" is in itself genocide. It would only be genocide if it was part of a concerted effort to entirely annihilate the German people (or whoever).
Such attacks would only need to continue for as long as was necessary to force a surrender and/or destroy the infrastructure or will to fight. Perhaps you think that last one sounds morally dubious, involving (as it would have to) civilians? Well, yes. But if it had been necessary to win the war (preventing a greater evil), you're damn right I think it would be justified.
Yes, I know this is hovering on the edge of being armchair/keyboard moralist wankery. I'm trying to avoid arguments like "they did worse things first" or "they started it" as justification, because they come across as childish and can quickly turn into an immoral revenge fantasy. Actually, this whole thing is a moral can of worms, and this post could have been three or four times as long were I to try to explain my feelings fully without risk of being misunderstood- and it still would have been armchair moralism.
But I still maintain that if there had been a plausible danger of the Germans winning WWII, or even of prolonging it, it would have been morally justifiable to use nuclear weapons against Germany. That's not even getting into the risk- as far as *we* knew back then- that Germany might have developed its own nuclear weapon had time gone on.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
You may only return in time as a "fly on the wall", so to speak. Even that might let you find out more than you would want to know. Most likely, you'd be sorry.
As far as returning, and being a part of the time and place, you cannot do that. You would not be the only one, and with all of these people changing everything in the past, it would be a mess. The Present could be changed so much by this that you might not even be able to be born, you would not exist. We are assuming that everyone going back would have high moral standards, and would not "fowl up everything". Not so, most would not have the capacity to handle that. So, it must not, and cannot be done. Time is what keeps everything from happening at once, it has been said. It's sad that we humans have a memory, and keep records also of happenings in the past, movies, etc.
We place ourselves in a dream world where we would "return to the past, and fix that". Without that memory, we would not be bothered. Even animals have memory, examples are everywhere. They just don't have the capacity to "want to return to a point earlier in the day, and stop you from leaving them at home alone, while you go to work."
Your dog or cat gets upset when you leave home, and shows joy when you return.
Would we perhaps have animals and humans returning to the past to fowl things up for the Present?
The changes over time begin with simple chemical reactions. Chemists "wait" for the reaction to run it course, and pretty much stop doing anything more. If that's true, how can humans and animals expect for time to stand still, or for time to allow us to move to a "past-time".
Fun to think about, but not possible. If it were, you would probably not like the overall results.
Same thing goes for "seeing into the future".
The US in particular made out like bandits so to speak, and the war ended up being a net economic gain in the long run, both in terms of technology gained and new markets established.
That's highly debatable. A lot of technology developements were accelerated during WWII, but at the cost of nearly 60 million1 human lives and the destruction of several cities and urban centers. There's no way of telling how many writers, artists, scientists (or anyone who could have made their contribution to mankind) were killed in that period.
another common one is mentally defective TV radio and print "personalities" calling blacks living in places other than America "African Americans"
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
I meant strictly for the US, of course, because the rest of the world and especially Europe certainly lost enormously, especially human lives.
That hardly applies to the US after WWII. While the war certainly cost the US a lot of money, they gained a massive captive market in Europe for several decades that wouldn't have been the same without the war, since Europe had had its own strong industrial competitors to the US. I would consider the US more like the glazier in the parable, since its costs were negligible compared to the benefits, as opposed to those borne by Europe and other parts of the world.
Besides, I wasn't talking about immediate gains from physical goods removed from Germany, which after all the destruction would have been somewhat anemic. I'm talking about intellectual property and patents, which benefited American companies for decades after the war. While it would be hard for various reasons to perform detailed studies of German reparations to the US--not least because most were in hard to calculate IP--some attempts were made. The most prominent one appears to be the book Science Technology and Reparations: Exploitation and Plunder in Postwar Germany by John Gimbel, mentioned in the article I linked to above, which seems to be cited by others as well. I have read the Operation Paperclip book, which talks about rocketry specifically, but similar technology transfers happened in many branches of industry.
Again, I'm not listing any of this as a justification for the war, or a white washing of the war crimes, or anything like that. I still think Germany got away quite lightly in American hands, compared to the destiny that could have befallen it purely in European or Soviet hands. My point was simply that the US benefited enormously from WWII, and some have even suggested that it may very well not have been what it is today without the war.
Sorry, i misunderstood your post :)
Which reminds me of Gungans in Star Wars Episode 1, which reminds me of... NO! MAKE IT STOP!
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
There's no way of telling how many writers, artists, scientists (or anyone who could have made their contribution to mankind) were killed in that period.
There no way of telling if the next Hitler was killed in the War either.
There no way of telling if the next Hitler was killed in the War either.
Yeah. Fuck, kill 'em all. Better safe than sorry!
Missing scenario, noncrazy Hitler doesn't start a war at all?
I will have a sig when the market demands it.
The germans have shot themselves in their own CUNT?
FRA: STFU GTFO
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Hang on there. There was only enough fissionable material for 3 bombs.
The first one was detonated in the US. We already knew what it would do as far as blast.
Those two bombs would have been used on Germany if they had been ready in time. No question there. And look up the firebombing of Dresden if you wonder about the will of the allies to commit to the destruction of an entire city.
Yes, there was a racist component in the atomic bombing of Japan, as it was already known that Japan was likely to surrender soon without an invasion. But there is no question as to the likelihood of the bombs being used against Germany if the European war hadn't already ended.
When those bombs were dropped on Japan, we had used every bomb we had. It would have been at least months before there was enough enriched uranium or plutonium to build another bomb.
Yes, the factories were built to build thousands of bombs (and are still building them today) but the enrichment technologies weren't ready for that kind of production.