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Bletchley Park Finds a Saviour In Google
hypnosec noted that Google has stepped up to try to help fundraising for Bletchley Park. From TFA: "The point is that all of us have heroes. At Google our heroes are Alan Turing and the people who worked on breaking the codes at Bletchley Park. It was probably the most inspiring and uplifting achievement in scientific technology over the last hundred years. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that without Alan Turing, Google as we know it wouldn't exist."
They did donate $100K.
FTA: Google already played a crucial role at Bletchley - the company contributed an hefty amount of some $100,000, which was used to assist in securing the papers of Alan Turing- a leading seminal computer scientist and code breaker who worked at the venue.
The British Army should never be referred to as the "Royal Army" - it's the only one of the three armed forces in the UK *not* to have "royal in its title.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/British_Army (5th paragraph)
Would that be the internet search behemoth, whose best days are behind it? http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/08/08/1415203/Are-Googles-Best-Days-Behind-It
Pity it went to such a pointless use, though.
It was just a set of offprints -- meaning it's not the manuscript or an unique copy of something.
I'd much rather they used the money to maintain the buildings and recreate the hardware.
Then there's the weirdness of obsessing so much about a bunch of papers left by somebody who pioneered the digital computer. I think he'd be much better honored with high resolution, digital files.
There are legitimate questions to be asked about how many resources we should spend commemorating/preserving the past, vs. letting the past be past and spending forward; but to the degree that comemmoration/celebration/recognition of the past is a worthwhile enterprise, Bletchley park has always seemed mysteriously neglected.
The work done there was extraordinarily vital in terms of signals intelligence and cryptography, and not having that done would have hampered the Allied war effort significantly. The fact that that work also included some groundbreaking CS and early computing machine work is just icing on the cake. There are other WWII sites with many more casualties; but the only other WWII R&D developments that can even fall in the same order of magnitude are the Manhattan Project, Penicillin mass-production, and possibly Radar(The cavity magnetron: defeated Hitler and produces delicious popcorn in minutes!).
Letting the past keep to itself is a self-consistent position, albeit not one I endorse; but any sort of historical preservation of WWII stuff that doesn't have Bletchley park well up there seems downright ill-formed...
Bletchley Park is getting more attention in recent years. I've been there, but before the restored Colossus or replica bombe was working. All we saw were static exhibits, plus a working Enigma, something I'd seen before. There were few visitors.
Now they have funding from the UK national lottery, "Family Fun Wednesdays", a conference center, a giant chessboard, a model railway (with a "Thomas the Tank Engine layout), a mini cinema, an auto museum, model boats, and swans in the lake.
That is great. What I feel sad about is that the US didn't perserve the most important ship of WWII which was the USS Enterprise. We kept of bunch of old battleships from that time like the Texas and Alabama but we scrapped the Enterprise.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Beltchy? What a horrible name for a park.
Those aren't necessarily incompatible. For example, lots of people think Microsoft's best days are behind it, but it still has loads of cash and publicity, so "Microsoft supports charity X" can be useful for charity X.
But probably true that the other story is a bit overplaying it.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Why is this comment moderated -1?
sorry, I'm new here
Probably due to the attitude coming from an Anonymous Coward. Calling $100K "fucking peanuts" is pretty ridiculous -- it's looking a gift horse in the mouth and it's insulting. Google has donate $100K more than any other company with big pockets and they're trying to make a grass roots effort to have the area sustainably supported. Knocking their efforts as "not enough" when as a private company they have ZERO OBLIGATION to do anything at all is displaying a remarkable disrespect for the nature of charity.
There's a bit of difference though. As far as I can tell, Microsoft mainly "donates" to charity when it's their software and training that is being given to help further their brand. I may be incorrect in this, but Google isn't donating time and mandating/installing Chrome/ChromeOS on all the PCs in the place or training people how to search efficiently.
IE:
Microsoft Donates $344 Million in Software To Worldwide Initiative to Train 400,000 Teachers (...to train their students in Microsoft software)
Microsoft donates cash, software to help military vets get IT skills (... to use their software to encourage businesses to buy more)
Microsoft Donates $250,000 of Software to Create IT Jobs for Youth in Kenya (... again, for Microsoft's overall benefit)
Heck, software is still a cheap donation. They can put any self-assessed value on it and print off a new copy for a dime a dozen to inflate their charitable donation amount.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
So, what percentage of your yearly revenue did you donate?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Station X at Bletchley Park is an important part of our shared history... It marks the beginning of the all electronic digital computing and also of distributed computing (they had up to 10 Collosus working across different locations, by the end of the war). Much groundwork theory was built in that era by people working at that place, including the ideas behind of packet switched data networks and routed networks.
I visited back in 2005 and I hope to go again someday (when I am in the UK).
No sig. Move along - nothing to see here.
gee I hope when I donate less that a microprecent of my income to charity some preacher will be standing behind me touting how I had zero obligation to do anything and how you pissants should be greatful.
the AC does have a point, its like dropping a quarter and a dime in the thing at Mc Donalds
"peanuts" is relative to what is needed, and what the donor can give, as well as the actual value of the contribution.
For instance, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation intend to create social change. $100K to say, 200 schools would indeed be peanuts because it wouldn't change much of anything.
With Microsoft it's mostly that they can donate any amount they like. After all, they set the price on their software, and it's what they donate. Plus that kind of donation is mostly an investment. I've never heard of MS donating on anything that didn't imply more usage of MS tech.
As far as Bletchley Park is concerned: I've been there. It looks pretty good, and most of the restoration work seems complete and have been in a large part done by volunteers. So the main costs are that of maintenance, and for that $100K is a pretty good amount.
Microsoft has a matching program for employee donation. It matches dollar by dollar and even donates $17 per hour if you do volunteer work. Microsoft also have the Giving Campaign (October in the US). Here different groups compete about raising the most donations (cash). There are fund raising events like breakfast with your Senior VP being your server, or auctions (dinner at home with Bill Gates is typical a top draw ~$50,000). In 2009 the Giving Campaign raised $70 million (cash) in the US. That is $35 millions from employees (about $500 per employee) and $35 millions from MS.
The obligation of a publicly traded company like Google is to create value for its shareholders. If it is able to do some of that by contributing to philanthropic efforts, thats's great, but they should not be spending any significant amount to do that.
The Google billionaires, on the other hand, have the means and (arguably) the moral obligation to do philanthropic work. THEY should be the ones opening their wallets, not the corporation.
Read Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon for some fun fictional Turing action.
yeah, but he is right, from the perspective of google's accountants, it's barely a drop out of the petty cash. It depends on how you look at it. However, Benchley Park is awesome, especially in the world of cryptography.
You me just deduct it from the those on the board of directors yearly salary?
I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that without Alan Turing, Europe as we know it might not exist.
Ftfy.
Cracking the Enigma code was a huge deal, and may have made the difference between the outcome seen in history (a terrible war, but one that Nazis eventually lost) and a horrific alternative with a crippling invasion of England and failure of many of the Allied powers' anti-Nazi offensives. Even a delay in the cracking could have been disastrous. It's possible that the Bletchley team would have cracked Enigma without Turing, but that delay might well have lost the war. Huzzah! Geeks save the world! (And then, in Turing's case, are hounded to chemical castration and suicide for being gay. Thanks, man!)
A much higher percentage than Google, I'm fairly certain of that. And I have far more need for my money than they do.
What are you basing that supposition on?
Sand's overrated... it's just tiny little rocks.
So if Google isn't going to make a large donation they shouldn't do anything at all? That thing at McDonald's raised twenty-five million dollars in quarters and dimes last year to room and board sick children, just FYI.