Slashdot Mirror
Alan Turing's Enigma Treatise online
uzada writes "Bruce Schneier's CRYPTOGRAM mailing list had a link off to three chapters of Alan Turing's treatise on the Enigma, retyped
from the only known paper copy. It may be a chance to see if Neal Stephenson knew what he was talking about in _Cryptonomicon_... "
It's only three chapters, but I'm looking forward to reading it, as Turing has been referenced in almost every CS class I've taken.
NO ... It's an irc CLIENT
www.bitchx.org
Anyone who is in England, or finds themselves there at some point, might like to take a train up to Bletchley Park and view the Museum of Cryptography there. They have Enigmas, Lorentz machines, materials used by the Poles to figure out the beginnings of an Enigma crack, and one of the most wonderful contraptions I've ever had the privilege of viewing: a working Colossus.
Tony Sale has taken photographs of the old Colossus, together with surviving notes, and built a new one. Colossus was a machine for figuring combinatorics for cracking cyphers generated by the Lorentz cypher machine, a more complex follow-on to the Enigma. Colossus fills a room, and is Britain's entry in the 'first digital computer' race. It's a late entrant because its details were classified until recently...long past any reasonable period for it, given that UNIX v6 used a modified Enigma algorithm for its passwords. (I hear that details of the Japanese Purple machine, however, are still classified in the U.S.)
The Turing paper discussed in this article talks about machines used to help in the decryption process of the Lorentz machine, such as the Bombe. Colossus is the height of such technology.
Colossus is a vacuum tube machine. Its reconstruction was possible only because the original was built with parts scrounged from British Telecom, and BT being what it is, those parts are still available for scrounging today. The machine is built on two six-foot rack assemblies, each about fifteen feet long, and about five or six feet apart. It runs on 400 volts. Input is a hand-built high-speed paper tape assembly. The machine clock comes from the smaller center sprocket holes on the tape. The input tape is an endless loop consisting of the cypher to be analyzed. Output is to a mechanical typewriter fitted with solenoids on the number, space and return mechanisms.
I had the peak experience of standing in the middle of Colossus while Tony turned it on around me. Tubes glowing, decade counters climbing, tape spinning like mad (5000 CPS and the mechanism is six feet high, full of eight-inch-wide tension wheels)...THIS is computing!
Don't miss seeing this thing in action. It'll make your week.
Teach the children well.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Without Turing it is highly unlikely linux users would be able to be able to type ls -l *.txt or windows users can click and point to sort by file name.
Actually, I'd put Stallman, Joy, and at least a few others in there too. After all, linux has little to do with what happens when you type "ls". :)
Good point, however.
"It's overkill, of course. But you can never have too much overkill." - Anonymous Slashdot Coward
Each rotor has 26 contacts and effectively swaps two letters.
That should be: Each rotor has 26 contacts that swaps 13 pairs of letters. (i.e a reversable substitution cipher)
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
his comment to kids about making it into the Hall of Fame...
:(
"Dont gamble, do drugs, just like LT"
(hey, I though off-topic posts were cool today
+&x
All of the above, if true, is incredibly sad. I studied the Turing Machine and Turing Test in college (in fact Brandeis University has built a working model of a Turing Machine - minus the infinitely long paper tape :) One note about the barbaric treatments discussed above- Electroshock therapy is indeed used in US mental hospitals, but in certain circumstances it has a clear therapeutic benefit - for example, in treatment of severe depression. I wouldn't lump it in with the hormone and aversion therapy.
(Off topic)
:)
No, you're just a Unix weenie like the rest of us
"One man can change the world with a bullet in the right place."
- Mick Travis, "If..."
David Kahn's book "Code Breakers" covers the breaking of Enigma quite well (actually, it's considered to be _the_ book on the history of cryptography). IIR it was the Polish that got a machine from the pre-war manufacturer of the device (he had troubles selling it) (???). I don't remember who determined how the wiring of the wheels went (yes, wrong term - I know).
Please note that it has been a _long_ time since I read that chapter and my info could be fault.
"One man can change the world with a bullet in the right place."
- Mick Travis, "If..."
I dunno about everyone else... I got plenty of history in my CS classes. I even had to memorize a specific implementation of how to simulate a Turing machine ON a Turing machine (supposedly a final proof of its computing power). Theoretically, I guess, a Turing machine could emulate a Pentium II and run Windows NT or Linux. Any takers?).
I imagine those who learn computer programming on their own or in technical schools probably don't usually get as much of the theory, discipline, and history as those who get a 4 year degree or go on to a Master's degree. Or maybe I've just had good teachers. In any case, I feel like my understanding and appreciation of computing history is a valuable asset that improves the quality of my work. It is valuable to know what they used to do, so that you can understand why we don't do it that way anymore. It is important to know several languages, so you can understand the strengths of the one you use most often. etc.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
Actually there is still the death penalty in Britian however it's only if you commit High treason
Electrical system by Lucas. Look at their cars to see how their computers would be made.
Plus ca change, plus c'est les memes choses.
Never seen so much off-topic crap. Turing was gay, Goedel and von Neumann were Hungarian Jews. Big deal. If not for all of them, we all might be writing our five year plans in German inside a smoking, radioactive hole in the ground.
Those with the NT comments might better spend their time trading warez and porno on AOL, or even better, learning how to read.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
He saved your ass from being a Nazi slave, made indispensable contributions to the invention of the computer, and served his country proudly and without complaint.
What the fuck have you done?
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
I've skimmed the three chapters, and this is some interesting stuff. I'd like to see some intelligent discussion. Unfortunately, we seem to have been invaded by 5 year olds.
If you're going to post trolls, at least make them coherent.
so why would you get banned for using that??
Coke IS the real thing..
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
There is a story of a malicious attack on the kernel mailing list over on Linux Today as well.
URL:
http://linuxtoday.com/stories/8912.html
Jim
I don't know what's more amaizing: 1) These people don't know who Turning was, 2) They don't know what he did, 3) They think it has something to do with modern OS wars, or... 4) They think Turing is some type of application. Seriously. So much of the history of cryptology (and computer developments brought from it) is clouded in secrecy it's a relief for a cipher-geek like myself to get any scraps of knowledge I can. It's a shame the whole paper isn't posted... Anyone know where I can get the whole paper?
"One man can change the world with a bullet in the right place."
- Mick Travis, "If..."
- Ford
- Chrysler (oh sorry that's German now. Maybe they'll start producing real cars)
- Chevrolet
- Oldsmobile
- Buick
- Pontiac
- Lincoln
- etc. etc.
You really have to have lived here (the US) to realise what utterly crap, 1950s engineering the US manufacturers try to pass of as cars. No wonder all the car-owners I know drive Toyota/Honda/VW/Volvo/Saab/BMW/Merc etc...Oh and half of them can't even drive properly - they can only drive automatics like disabled people and little old ladies...
Nick
-- "It's a sad day for American capitalism when a man can't fly a midget on a kite over Central Park" - Jim Moran
In the UK you don't get much legal fairness, for
example a few months back when the bomb in soho destroyed the Admiral something (my memorys gone tonight), one of the partners of one of the dead got no money, whilst if it was a hetrosexual relationship, he would have got £15 grand.
The gay age of consent is 18, whilst the hetro is 16, they've tried to change it twice, but it was stopped in the house of lords because 'it would be bad to the family structure' or some lie like that.
I don't know what's more amaizing:
1) These people don't know who Turning was,
2) They don't know what he did,
3) They think it has something to do with modern OS wars, or...
4) They think Turing is some type of application.
Seriously. So much of the history of cryptology (and computer developments brought from it) is clouded in secrecy it's a relief for a cipher-geek like myself to get any scraps of knowledge I can. It's a shame the whole paper isn't posted... Anyone know where I can get the whole paper?
"One man can change the world with a bullet in the right place."
- Mick Travis, "If..."
I must agree, Microsoft is awesome!
How about modifying the slashdot code so that
you can see what IP address AC's posted from, at least that would encourage some of them not to post junk all over the place. (Ok it's not perfect there are proxies)
But Macs are basically just an inferior version of Windows. So why use a Mac when you can have the real thing. Then again some drink Coke when they could have Pepsi.
sugarman is the reanimated corpse of Alan Turing!!! You heard it here first!!!!! (;
This is a great article to have on slashdot. The Linux Kommunity is often criticized for being composed of mostly young, straight white males.
When we look at the history of computing and combinatorics, a lot of that fades away, since so many contibutions were made by women, and obviously Mr. Turing, a gay man.
With the recent increases in Linux use, I think it is time to reflect on openness and acceptance of all people (animals too? I think Linux is being used in some primate studies)
What better way to honor Alan's gift than to offer a warm "Welcome to Linux!" to everyone, regardless of any superfluous differences.
Maybe donate some time or an old computer to an AIDS hospice or clinic in Alan's name?
As I understand it, the death penalty exists here in the Uk for "high hreason in a time of war", or "arson in the queen's dockyards". Since we haven' had much of a war for a while and the queen's dockyards are fairly well guarded by big, scary navy people, we haven't had an execution for quite a while (and a damn good thing too!)
Chris "Ng" Jones
cmsj@tenshu.net
www.tenshu.net
#include
Go read the article you morons..
Is that the best the M$ anti-linux team can do?? Stop with the fucking FUD.
"treatment of severe depression" means frying mental patients until they are appropriately docile.
Electoshock therapy is one of a regimen of "treatments" (lobotomy, etc.) that brutally destroyed whatever was left of the poor mental inmate/patient. Read "One flew over the cuckoos nest" if you have any questions.
All these "Who cares" or "Who was he" posts are rather sad. CS seems to have less of a sense of its own history than other sciences, and it's our loss. Even the CS degree I'm doing now doesn't have any CS history at all, lecturers assume one picks it up on the way. Perhaps it's because its such a comparatively young field?
MT
From ye olde crypt(1) manpage:
crypt implements a one-rotor machine designed along the
lines of the German Enigma, but with a 256-element rotor.
Methods of attack on such machines are widely known, thus
crypt provides minimal security.
Doh, bad link! this one will work better.
--
Your ignorance is really showing. But it's not showing on anything invented by that college dropout.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
It was a hardware solution because the idea of Software had not been created yet. Enigma predates computers in general, because computers were created to help break the code. Also, one advantage that an actual machine has over a peice of software, is that it cant be copied, and if one is captured, you tend to know.
--David
Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology
From the looks of it I would guess it's one or two people. The derogatory comments are about the same for each flame. Since each thread talking about it gets flamed, they must have to reload their screen each time they make a comment. Looks like they just want to start a flame war on this thread, either that or to get all the moderation points wasted.
Two problems with this statement:
And anonymous posting should remain as we don't all have the time to register.
But you have time to post a couple dozen off-topic rants? Though of course you're not bothering to actually read anything here, so you are saving some time there...
Go home, troll.
Turing died in 1954. It wasn't from AIDS. The coroner concluded suicide.
-Rich
Cryponomicon is full of errors. Maybe they are delierate but if so they seem pointless. Goto Dengo using the pole star to swim to the coast of New Guinea (south of the equator). RSA encryption's strength depends on the difficulty of factoring prime numbers etc.
Interestingly Bill Gates makes the same mistake about factoring prime numbers in his book 'The Road Ahead'. What a legend! (RSA depends on the difficulty of factoring composite numbers).
On a side note, I was shocked when I read Cryptonomicon and learned Turing was gay. I'm wondering how that fact is so often left out when people talk about Turing. He seemed to be quite open about his sexuality, I think it's a shame that future historians put him in the closet.
Of course, when discussing his achievments, his sexuality has nothing to do with it. But I can't help but feel that with homosexuality being still so discriminated against (at least in the USA) it is a shame that the gay community had such a hero and scientific role model kept in shadows.
Or did everyone else already know? Maybe I should take my Gaydar in for a tuneup.
They used to call one of the [president/ceo/grand-pooh-bahs/]s of Lucas the `Prince of Darkness'. Someone might jump in to mention that the Timex Sinclair had something to do with the UK. I can't remember what the relation was.
Spurt that mad, mad jizz all over Turing's fat face. You crazy faggot.
The Poles (Marian Rejewski and others) were the first to crack Enigma. They were assisted by the Polish purchase of a commercial version of the Enigma and by documents provided by the French intelligence service. The Poles read German Enigma traffic between 1933 and 1938. They provided the French and British with the details of their accomplishments in 1939. The British would have had a very difficult time with Enigma if the Poles hadn't given them the results of their efforts.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I wish I knew?
From the sysadmin:
"I classify that as a server" etc etc...
"it's a security hazard" etc etc...
The three Turning chapters are in encryped pdf, darn it. Xpdf doesn't support that format, on purpose, due to a perhaps-misguided attempt to avoid being sued by the US gov for exporting munitions (ie, encryption software). Wonder how Adobe AcroReader avoids that problem? Guess I will have to wait until tonite to read this stuff on my trusty rusty old home PC.
> Almost all his work was stolen from the pre-eminent mathematician of his time, Kurt Goedel Look, Goedel can be accused of getting recursive function theory from Herbrand. The fact that there are similarities between the undecidability of first order logic and the halting problem is no reason to use an ad hominum.
Coke IS the real thing..
yeah... just ask George W. Bush.
I guess I can't speak for all slashdotters, but it's not that if it's not linux it sucks, it's that if it's MS, it probably sucks. I don't like MS, not even secretly, but I still use the latest Win2K beta at home, because it's the best gaming platform out there. I believe in using the best tool for the job, and for gaming and word processing, W2K is the best solution. However, when I want to get some real work down, I'll be damned if I bet my company and reputation on an NT server.- --------------
----------------------------------------
If you need to point-and-click to administer a machine,
He also did a lot of automata theory, among other things proving the existence of a general automata to compute general recursive functions.
Other great work in the same area was made by ??? Tarski and Alonzo Church.
It's not true that most of us think that anything not Linux sucks! BSD is a very good operating system too! Especially OpenBSD! But NT sucks in a big way. Anyone saying the contrary has to be retarded... Not necessarily because it's unsecure, but especially because it is made by a company with the "Objective : control the world" sentence in its business plan! As for the people who say stupid things about Turing, like the one saying homos should be kept out of IT, I'm OK with that, because IT is for people who are too stupid to go in real Computer Science! Alan Turing was one of the greatest of all, inventing the bases of cryptology and the small computer you're working on right now! And I don't see what his sexual orientation has to do with that!
"Code free or die!"
**** The PDF input file uses encryption and cannot be processed.s ec.ps
**** Please get and install the patch available from
**** http://www.ozemail.com.au/~geoffk/pdfencrypt/pdf_
someone must have gotten AOL today. /.
but it wont stop us from enjoying
Apologies for the offtopic post ;)
... I had to laugh at all the Pro-MS posts tonight. The chapters from Turing's Enigma Treatise are hosted on a Linux box at CERN and Adobe's web server is running on Solaris.
What is known nowadays as electroconvulsive therapy, otherwise known as ECT, is not the horrorshow most people envision and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is not an example of what happens with ECT anymore. From what I recall patient's are no longer awake, they are immobilized to prevent the body from convulsing (ie you do not thrash around. iirc this is done through chemical means) and electricity is precisely (down to waveform. I remember seeing the diagrams in a case study) applied to certain areas of the brain. From what I remember, it is used to treat extremely severe depression that does not respond to drug therapy. There may be other illnesses in which ECT is a useful treatment but I'm not sure. Anyway, the facts are ECT is a successful treatment for severe life-threatening depression. This form of treatment is *not* lightly considered or prescribed. There are side effects, most notably with memory. I forget exactly how long ECT provides a cure but it was most certainly not a 'come in every week to get your shock type deal.'
While I find it extremely sad and abhorrent to know of what Turing and others endured I felt it was needed to clarify what ECT has evolved into. Back in the late 80s I worked for a psychiatrist in a hospital's geropsych ward. At first it creeped me out to learn he was doing research in ECT but my supervisor was good enough to take the time and frankly discuss the issue with me.
Btw, homosexuality is *not* a mental illness and has not been classified as one since DSM-III, maybe even DSM-II. DSM-III did have a listed disorder for people who had homosexual urges and who specifically did not desire them. It been a long time since I've studied clinical psych. I'm pretty sure DSM-IV is out by now and it is possible even that disorder has been scrapped. Little Johnny's parents may be motivated to get him commited because he is gay but the doctor who is doing the paper work is not listing that as the reason for committal. I personally find this to be of little comfort.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
In a way I find the whole Troll posting thing amusing. They are all childishly-obvious in their attempts at provocation. If these people truly held these beliefs (instead of just finding the whole issue of homophobia as some kind of joke) would they post AC?
I would argue that the majority of these posts are from hormonal adolescents (or hormonal adolescents in the bodies of grown-ups) who think they are being funny. Take it from me, real homophobes are more public and use less swearing.
If you could see what machine it came from, it wouldn't be an AC...
"I wish we could just see what the names and home addresses of those ACs were"
English yes, ( from my home town ) , a genius very probably and worked in all sorts of areas from number theory through to crypto ( actually developed a secure audio scrambler ), morphogenic theory, natural geometry, AI , computer design, wrote a candidate for the first programming language, astronomy etc. An archetypal eccentric English dilettante academic.
Much of what he did in his career is still shrouded by goverment classifications, probably the main reason for his relative obscurity. In his day ( b4 the war ) he was a very respected up and coming mathematician / philosopher.
The main reason for there being doubts over his cause of death are due to the fact that although he did die of cyanide poisoning whilst eating an apple, he was notoriously absent minded , and sloppy of habit and it is possible he may have merely forgotton to wash his hands. He was working with cyanide at the time , due to a lifelong love of amateur chemistry, probably his first scientific interest. I believe the coroner posted an open verdict. Hence rumours.
-- Oh Well
Let's hear it for anarchy!!!
Yeah, seriously. I mean while writing my stuff in StarOffice and reading this in Netscape while playing music with xmms, and probably working on web sites with GIMP (how much did you pay for photoshop, again?) later, I can't really see any applications at all. And that win95 source code disc on my desk, that comes in handy when stuff goes wrong. And what's wrong with porn?
Dude, you're in school to learn, not jerk off on IRC all day. And don't even try to tell me that you were doing something useful on IRC, IRC's the biggest wasteland around. It's the summer, turn the computer off and go hang out with some real, in-the-flesh people and learn some good ol' fashioned human interaction. Ten years down the road, you'll thank the sysadmin for it.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
I hate to tell you this, but Linux weenie posts go up, and Windows weenie posts go down, as it should be. (I use FreeBSD. Does that make me a BSD weenie?)
I have to be honest: I'm having a hard understanding Turing's paper. Maybe it's because I have no encryption background and have never read Stephenson's new novel. Anyway, I was wondering if someone would be willing to explain it in layman's terms on this forum. Thanks.
PS Those who don't know who Turing was is in danger of being a CS laborer rather than a CS expert. He's extremely important (you may remember him from AI - the Turing machine? c'mon!)
PSS If spammers bother you, use moderation options to turn 'em off (or put them in the bottom of the heap)
-----------------
The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone else when we're uncool. -Crowe
I can't believe how many people here have never heard of Alan Turing! Please, people, do some research on his life. Especially, take a look at the Turing Test, which is required reading for any even remotely interested in Artificial Intelligence- and luckily, for a non-CS person like me, it's written in straightforward English and is interesting stuff.
More info. on Turing, especially as it regards the homosexuality issue... Turing, in addition to providing the key to the decipering Nazi communications that gave the Allies the advantage in World War II, was openly gay. You'd think the British government wouldn't care, especially since he was the genius who saved so many people's lives.
But bigotry runs deep and is incredibly stupid.
After WWII was over and the Cold War started up, the British government implemented policies whereby homosexuals, open or not, weren't allowed to be civil servants- they were seen as being possible targets of blackmail by the communists. Turing was no such target, as he was openly gay and therefore could hardly be blackmailed into confessing something everyone knew anyway. And if helping your country win WWII doesn't make you a patriot, then what does?
In 1952, at the height of his studies, Turing was arrested for being gay and had his security clearance stripped. He was forced to undergo "treatment" to "cure" him of being gay. One of the most brilliant minds of the twentieth century was repeatedly subjected to court-ordered electroshock. They gave him nausea-inducing drugs and forced him to watch gay porn so that his body would associate being sick with homosexuality. ("Clockwork Orange", anybody?) They injected him with female hormones to try to control his libido (?!) for a whole year to the point where he started developing a chest. They did this kind of stuff and more to "cure" him. It was that, or go to prison, and he wanted to keep working.
He didn't work for too much longer, however; the "treatment" was so damaging to Turing's body, mind, and spirit that he killed himself (via cyanide) in 1954. Homophobia, triumphant.
Ironically, Turing's love for computers may have been at least partially a *result* of his homosexuality ("gayness leads to computer genius, film at 11"). When he was 18, his best friend (and probable first love) Christopher Morcom died. Turing became obsessed about whether it was possible that Morcom's intelligence and personality could have survived, somehow, and began to ponder whether a machine could not someday have intelligence...
FYI, even today many, many countries still not only criminalize homosexuality, but impose the death sentence. The "treatments" given to Alan Turing -- electroshock, association of porn with nausea, hormones, etc. -- are still in use in many mental hospotals today *in the US*! If you're under 18 and your parents find out you're gay, legally they can send you to a mental clinic that specializes in this kind of "aversion therapy", because so-called reparative therapies, though proven to NOT work, are still legal in the US...and almost all other countries.
Somewhere out there, there's another Alan Turing that the world's never going to know about because he or she will have been too scarred by homophobia, in all its forms, to let his/her genius shine.
Hey kid, here's a quarter.
Go buy yourself a real computer.
r@m
So did I. I looked it up. Most sources in my home town library either ignored the circumstances of his death or said he had dies mysteriously. Britannica had most of the information and from there i had enough to look up the rest. There is a play about his life too. I have not had the chance to see it.
It really makes me wonder what he would have done if he had been able to live a long peacful life and not been harrassed. Despite what others here have said, his contributions were significant. He did his best to help his country during the war and to repay him they made his life hell. I for one am glad to see these chapters available.
--- If you don't want to know the answer, don't ask the question.
As you say he was not normal. He was extraordinary.
1. He is commonaly called the fathr of computer science. He is to computer science what Newton is to physics.
2. He help break the german enigma code. This is one even saved houndreds of thousands of American, British, Canadian, and Russian lives. Between the decodes and radar the German submarine woldfpacks where destroyed.
In other words he was a man of great accomplishments. I suggest that you think about what you owe this man.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Here we all are (in your words) jerking off on slashdot as well.
Give the kid a break. I'm sure he's a good fellow. I too am at school to learn, but atleast irc often is an attempt to increase knowledge. He could be playing quake... or solitaire.. or undressing the office 97 paperclip guy with his eyes.
I try to play a good four hours+ of starcraft a day and you'll be proud - it interrupts my sleep and not my study/classes.
Ok, I haven't made it through the chapters yet, but it does seem pretty intersting..glad they're making this available.
I seem to remember seeing a TLC show about Enigma, and how we were able to retrieve a working machine from a captured german submarine before they blew it up. From what I remember, the show alluded that the device seriously helped the cracking of Enigma. Anyone know anymore about this? Did Turing crack it with the help of this captured device?
Stop fighting it, buddy. Accept your gayness and you will be much happier.
Not certain?? What details have you found?
--- If you don't want to know the answer, don't ask the question.
What does the last part of your .sig mean ?
--Windows developer.
The #debian channel on openprojects.net got seriously trolled about a week ago. It got so mad that the chanops appeared out of nowhere (they almost never are in +o mode) and put the channel in +m mode (moderated, you need +v to speak anything) after realizing that +b wasn't working. There were lots of people from different places, and looked like a coordinated attack. The same thing might be happening here now.
[RANT]
Those l4m3rz need to get a life! Can't they find anything _funnier_ than trolling? I'd get bored after a few minutes!
[/RANT]
PDF:
Portable Document Format
It is tough to soar with the eagles when you are among the turkies.
"Horizon"'s accuracy is often questionable, but they don't usually indulge in conspiracy theories. That the producer regarded the question as open is, in itself, very interesting.
Whilst that, in itself, hardly makes a convincing case, it does make me believe that the cause of Turing's death isn't as certain as the textbooks would have you believe.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Hey, buddy - some of us just like to antagonize anal retentive folk like yourself.
Is it working?
Oh..more homosexuality. hide before they get you... please. if you need suggestions on hiding places, I still know a few rocks for you to crawl under.
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Regarding the claim that Turin saved England from the enemy singlehandedly, or just about, is a bit suspect as a claim. In The Starship and the Canoe by Kenneth Brower (1984) the history of our planetary disintergration is followed assiduously in the continuing use of Munitions in particular the "bomb" and other maniac uses of our natural resources. The thrust of what I wish to point out is that Freeman Dyson (the Physicist who is the subject of the above mentioned book) also claims to have been (at least he says he did) soley responsible for creating the firestorms which annihilated a lot of German cities (Dresden etc.)and that the only difference between his actions and that of other perpetrators of WWII, especially Eichmann and other war-criminals tried at the postwar tribunals in Germany, was his being on the winning side. I say this because there is a certain perspective that creates a context and I feel that the responsibility for saving England was not only Turin's decyphering machines. He did contribute though significantly. The book by the way is a great read and worth sifting through for its intelligent appraisal of Black Holes and the building of three man canoes. Very balanced and very thought provoking (if I might say so). Also some other significant writing on complex moral issues, such as the non-indispensible characteristics of any one single human being in the past or (dare I say it) the future. Kenneth Brower is a great story teller too.
You Make a Living by Getting but Get a Life by Giving
READ BLACK INNOCENCE
If you're interested, get Alan Turing: The Enigma, by Andrew Hodges. Unfortunately, you'll have to work a bit---Amazon sez it's out of print, which sounds right; I remember being shocked that it could to go out of print when I heard the news years ago.
The play was called (surprise!) The Enigma. I saw it in NYC with my wife more than a decade ago, and it was an outstanding condensation of the book. My wife's not at all into computers, codes, or anything related, and was as entranced as I was by the performance. The writer and director did a great job of showing the man and his work for a non-technical audience, while keeping it accurate enough to keep the nerds from wincing.
IIRC from the book, Turing died by eating an apple which had arsenic on it. Hodges speculates that it may have been suicide thinly disguised by Turing so his mother (still living) could tell herself it was an accident. He'd been doing some experiments involving arsenic, and maybe he just forgot and put the apple down in the wrong place before he ate it.... I can believe he'd want to commit suicide after reading of his treatment (in both senses of the word) at the hands of the authorities. It was an obscene wastes of human creativity at the hands of intolerance.
I refuse to believe corporations are people until Texas executes one. -- desert rain on http://www.dailykos.com/user/
That's the play's title: Breaking the Code. As I said, it's been over a decade....
I refuse to believe corporations are people until Texas executes one. -- desert rain on http://www.dailykos.com/user/
This is a late response, that I'm sure nobody will read. But I had to respond.. I read the Turing Treatise, and enjoyed it thoroughly, and is well worth bookmarking, to check when the later chapters are transcribed. I went through the combinatory math explanations, descriptions of setting the wheels, and while surfing around, I found a link to a Tunney emulator, a Windows app that emulates the reverse-engineered Enigma machine. Ah, I'm on a Mac, so fire up SoftWindows98, download the app, I'm in math heaven, spinning dials on a simulation of Turing's device. I'm thinking about Turing and the higher math he used to decode the unknown machine on the other end of the radio intercepts. Hey, wait a minute. I have to stop and think what I am doing. I'm running a digital simulation (complete with spinning wheels) of an Enigma machine. I'm running a Tunney Emulator. I'm running a Tunney emulator under an emulator running Windows98, on my Mac. How odd. I think Turing would have approved. Anyway, thanks for the link. I live for little moments of deeper nesting, like that.
Umm, I'd say most of the trolls today are from one person. Note the similar misspellings (for instance: always your, never you're or you are or yr or ur) and "tone". Take a look at the sentence structure. Observe the kinds of posts Mr. Troll is responding to. There's a very distinct pattern. Not an influx of lusers, just one guy with no life -- one guy who can't think of anything more creative to do with his anonymity than flame software and talk about being gay.
Hey, what's the deal with all the Captain OKs in the corral today?
No wonder they don't know who or what the article was about. There wasn't an OK button to click on so they are lost.
Some people's kids...
r@m
Let's not fight amongst friends. Linux is the enemy here.
Oh, and by the way, I really doubt all the "NT rulez" posts are part of a Microsoft anti-Linux FUD campaign. I strongly suspect Microsoft requires its employees to be able to read. Though I admit the sheer volume of anti-Linux posts is susprising. (What's next? Linus Torvalds gets a pie in the face?)
Anyway, on to more important issues. There was an "Ask Slashdot" not long ago that asked about the stereotypes of geeks, including openmindedness. From reading the trolls upon trolls upon trolls, it is obvious that certain readers of Slashdot are just as narrow-minded and bigoted as anyone else. I mean, lines like "gays ripping off other peoples' work"? Insinuations that gay people are somehow subhuman? This is the kind of talk you don't hear on even the most rabid of conservative talk-radio stations. Face it: that kind of hate is just not acceptable anymore. I realize some of you would have been perfectly at home in Germany or Italy during the 1930's, but this is the 90's, folks. Have a little tolerance.
I think this would be an interesting topic for discussion: Why, in a community supposedly filled with educated people, is the rabid homophobia we see in this discussion still present? Or has Slashdot simply been hit by a bunch of 31337 script kiddies with a penchant for neandrathal politics?
Sorry for the length. But that had to be said.
- Erik
"Don't touch the bunny!"
Very true. It's still not certain whether he took his own life, or was "assisted", but the price he payed ended up being the highest possible.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Short version:
He was gay. The British government found out and forced him to take hormone injections to treat his condition. He finally was overwhelmed with the humiliation of it and killed himself by eating a poisoned apple. He even brewed the poision himself.
--- If you don't want to know the answer, don't ask the question.
The inventor of the Digital Computer, at Cambridge University
The inventor of the Stored Program Digital Computer, at Manchester University
The inventor of the cypher-breaking computer "Colossus"
The breaker of the Enigma cypher
The inventor of the science of Artificial Intelligence (hence the "Turing Test", which he devised)
An expert in mathematics
An expert in biology
A pioneer in software design theory (eg: the "halting" problem)
A pioneer in "computable" problems (eg: the Turing Machine)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Thank you, I was wondering about that
--David
Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology
I didn't invent the first consumer operating system. That goes to Microsoft. If they never invented MS-DOS PC's wouldn't be so popular.
Your funny :)
Civ CTP is awesome! Thanks Loki!
Romans 10:9-10
In his case, AIDS
Segfault is written by a queer too. Avoid that site
Ahh so it's basically just a ripped off application, well we don't need any of those for Windows as we have all those inovative applications therefore you're welcome to your rip off's in Linux. But as I haven't heard of this before I bet you're joking and this is innovative. If so I'm looking forward to using it on NT you Linux loosers.
Never heard of him in my acs classes. Then again, I don't take any in depth programming classes, so I never would have been exposed to encryption methodology.
Actually, Could we beowulf those things?
;)
A huge array of them would just look cool fomr the sounds of it...
/* as with the previous poster, I am joking, thank you*/
good idea
Does anyone else note the irony of this?
The first statement on the web-page is a blatant declaration of the copyright.
Come on guys, let's have a little respect here.
This mirros just pathetic.
Dr. Turing was a genius of integrity. He was more responsible than any other single person for saving England during the war. This fact could have gotten him out of jail and stopped the barbaric treatment of his homosexuality. Instead he honored his promise to keep secret things secret and paid a high personal price.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
I uhh *cough*, don't know how these files showed up in my directory, but they're here. There's only the index page and the 3 chapters there, nothing else. Please only access it if the main site borks under the slashdot effect...
lastly, what's going on with all the "nt rulez" stuff? Is somebody trying to suck moderator points?
--
Maybe Gates and Ballmer have the day off today?
why do all geniuses have to die so early? Makes me worried!
Without Turing it is highly unlikely linux users would be able to be able to type ls -l *.txt or windows users can click and point to sort by file name.
Okay I am over stating things, but regular expressions and sorting is a dervitive of Turing's contribution to computer science, how else do you think the messy german encoded information was unencoded via a machine.
Regular Expressions
How do you think you computer searches and replaces text in you word processing programs
Regular Expressions
I am not saying that Turing was the inventor of the regular expression, or even the first to implement them, I am saying that he was one of the great contributers to those regular expressions.
If you are in computer science and have never heard of Turing, or perhaps even heard about regular expressions, then I don't want you writing any software for me to use. I would like to see your magical methods of parsing, and searching and replacing irregular strings.
On to the NT flaming, and Linux flaming. This is highly off topic for an article on Turing, but I must add a few words, whether you have an NT system or Linux box or are running Mac OS, I betcha your computer implements Regular Expressions, and I am glad my operating system is not in German, I can thank Turing for that too.
Next subject that is off topic, about those pdf files, didn't Adobe, the ones who created that format get their start writing software for Macs? I may not be old enough to remember clearly, but for some reason, I remember quite a few companies that made graphic and vector graphic programs all were originally making software only for Macs.
And how do you think compilers work so that all of our programs wheather wrote for Linux, Macs, or a Windows varients all turn into bit streams that the computer understands so we can look at that pdf file?
Regular Expressions!
So in honor of Turing I think I will search the internet, and list the files in my home directory, maybe I'll even get around to writing some code.
Stupid faggot, dicks are for chicks. Good for him, drink that poisin! Jesus loves you!
I also notice that while you're perfectly willing to spout off anonymously, you don't seem willing to assume responsibility for your opinions by giving us your name, or even a handle.
My email address is mrgleep@hotmail.com, by the way. If you disagree with me, feel free to tell me. At least I can assume some responsibility for what I write.
- Erik
"Don't touch the bunny!"
Don't forget that he did all that while working as a part-time substitute for the Holy Trinity as well.
What's that stench? Smells like british nationalism.
...but can we port Linux to it? :)
/* This is humor. I'm making fun of posters who always ask if Linux can be ported to xxx. Please don't respond with reasons why or why not. If you do, I'll ask you if we can make a beowulf cluster of these machines. */
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
..or at least the Germans thought so.
:P
In the 10th grade I made a little zbasic program on for my school's IIgs's. It simulated 3 or 4 wheel enigma machines of 26 or 128 characters.
Enigma is not that difficult to decode with brute force and a computer. But in 1941 it was a whole different can of beans. Being hardware-based is a Good Thing when you've got to make 100s of enigma machines in a short time, with limited resources. The enigma codes were complex enough to stump the allies for quite awhile.
But ENIGMA sure was a fun time-waster in computer class back in the day. Taking the simplest configuration (3 wheels of 26) there's only 17576 unique starting positions. How long will that take to brute force? I'll leave it as an excercise
Hehe ;o) :o) :o) Mayhap . . .
Idiot. Turing extended Godel's work in non-obvious ways. Almost all of mathematics is an extension of someone else's work. After Godel's Incompleteness Theory was published, there was hope that mathematics could at least prove all of the provable theories i.e. that decidability could replace completeness. Turing's very original work demonstrated that decidability was as elusive as incompleteness. To prove this he came up with the very original idea of a state machine that performed calculations, i.e. a Turing Machine. He proved that decidability was equivalent to proving that a given TM program stopped and then proved that you can not prove that a given TM program will stop.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
I can't believe how many people here have never heard of Alan Turing! Please, people, do some research on his life. Especially, take a look at the Turing Test, which is required reading for any even remotely interested in Artificial Intelligence- and luckily, for a non-CS person like me, it's written in straightforward English and is interesting stuff. More info. on Turing, especially as it regards the homosexuality issue... Turing, in addition to providing the key to the decipering Nazi communications that gave the Allies the advantage in World War II, was openly gay. You'd think the British government wouldn't care, especially since he was the genius who saved so many people's lives. But bigotry runs deep and is incredibly stupid. After WWII was over and the Cold War started up, the British government implemented policies whereby homosexuals, open or not, weren't allowed to be civil servants- they were seen as being possible targets of blackmail by the communists. Turing was no such target, as he was openly gay and therefore could hardly be blackmailed into confessing something everyone knew anyway. And if helping your country win WWII doesn't make you a patriot, then what does? In 1952, at the height of his studies, Turing was arrested for being gay and had his security clearance stripped. He was forced to undergo "treatment" to "cure" him of being gay. One of the most brilliant minds of the twentieth century was repeatedly subjected to court-ordered electroshock. They gave him nausea-inducing drugs and forced him to watch gay porn so that his body would associate being sick with homosexuality. ("Clockwork Orange", anybody?) They injected him with female hormones to try to control his libido (?!) for a whole year to the point where he started developing a chest. They did this kind of stuff and more to "cure" him. It was that, or go to prison, and he wanted to keep working. He didn't work for too much longer, however; the "treatment" was so damaging to Turing's body, mind, and spirit that he killed himself (via cyanide) in 1954. Homophobia, triumphant. Ironically, Turing's love for computers may have been at least partially a *result* of his homosexuality ("gayness leads to computer genius, film at 11"). When he was 18, his best friend (and probable first love) Christopher Morcom died. Turing became obsessed about whether it was possible that Morcom's intelligence and personality could have survived, somehow, and began to ponder whether a machine could not someday have intelligence... FYI, even today many, many countries still not only criminalize homosexuality, but impose the death sentence. The "treatments" given to Alan Turing -- electroshock, association of porn with nausea, hormones, etc. -- are still in use in many mental hospotals today *in the US*! If you're under 18 and your parents find out you're gay, legally they can send you to a mental clinic that specializes in this kind of "aversion therapy", because so-called reparative therapies, though proven to NOT work, are still legal in the US...and almost all other countries. Somewhere out there, there's another Alan Turing that the world's never going to know about because he or she will have been too scarred by homophobia, in all its forms, to let his/her genius shine.
Ain't it a kind of treasure? Like previosuly /.'ed prime C compiler sources. Thanks to /.
Well.... If anyone out there has pics or links to pics of Enigma, please let me know. You see, I'm not a native speaker and reading this without figures is pretty hard. Also if any kind soul speaking German could spend some time translating terms like Eintrittwalze or Umkehrwalze, I believe, this will help us more than childish flames.
TIA
KuroiNeko
Idiot. Read the story. It's a bunch of .pdf files. There are .pdf viewers for almost EVERY operating system including Linux.
I've had a look and can't see anything that you describe. NT users are responsible computer users and don't resort to spelling things with a z or being 3l337 as you'd probably call it. We use NT becasue it's the best and defend it on it's merits.
.pdf are Adobe Acrobat files aren't they. Adobe acrobat is a Windows program. Good luck trying to view them in Linux.
I cant tell if you ACs are being Serious, or Silly, so i'l respond. Enigma was a Encryption system used by Germany in WWII. It was a "Hardware Solution" in that it had spinning wheels, and places to patch cables, and physical buttons. It was suposed to be imposible to crack, but Turing and others in Bletchley Park, managed to do it, without the German millitary knowing.
So, no. it wont run on Linux. Neither will it run on NT. Its a code that has been broken, so even if there was a software implimentation, my home computer could break it in roughly 30 seconds.
--David
Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology
i think i speak for everyone here, when i say: "What the fuck are you people talking about?" it's a collection of .pdf files that can be viewed with a viewer on just about any os. has nothing to do with an application. -luqin
1-> VERY interesting read. Although I'm having trouble concentrating.
2-> Is someone trying to change my mind about anonymous posting?
-nme!
But seriously, if he had lived and continued his work he'd probably be using whatever the NSA gets when they buy one and take their change in Crays.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
But then, AC's can afford to attack, insult and abuse others for recognising a person's achievements, if it threatens those they idolise. Problem with idols is that they are rarely as idylic as the worshiper would like to believe.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Because they couldn't figure out a way to make it leak oil.
* whitworth bolts
* side draft `carburettors'
* automotive parts made from wood, felt, whalebone, etc.
* `positive earth'
sounds like NT to me
I was bored today so I downloaded the perl version of the algorithm to discover that it did not work as advertised. After a couple of fixes later, it's now a cgi. http://www.carumba.com/pontifex/pontif ex.cgi
The spelling and diction remind me of "Gerald Holmes" The difference, of couse, being that the author of "Gerald Holmes" is not a trolling fool. Have a nice day.
Which is why any secure system uses Kerberos, or MD5 hashes. The existance of shadowed password files speaks greatly about the security of crypt.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
This was a reply to a troll it wasn't ment to be in the main thread..
.. I lost my university acount today because I was using BitchX on their server ... BitchX ???? come on fuck!
Yes I'm in a bad mood
BitchX, that's the program that downloads porn automaticaly isn't it? No wonder they banned you.
That it took until #16 to get an on-topic post, and one that was promptly flamed. Did the r.s.p-w trolls finally decide to stop invading newsgroups and start hitting Web-boards?
--sugarman--
I'm sure that a software version of Enigma could be( and probably has been) written. It would have no trouble running on Linux, or any other modern system. The reason it was a hardware solution was that the technology was not advanced enough at the time to create a software solution.
Of course, just because it can be written, dosn't mean it would be secure.