..but I'm going to have to kill you: "quite unique", "highly unique"? Some crimes are unpardonable.
Anyway - that seems a reasonable explanation of "lose/loose". As for misspellings what about "yacht"? I always have a desire to stick a "gh" in there somewhere.
They used some kind of portscan to determine which machines were infected and then put their connections in a 'walled garden'. All web traffic that went through this 'walled garden' resulted in a page describing what the problem was and included lots of pretty pictures explaining how to fix the problem.
No quite - they looked (and still look) for "excessive" port 135 traffic and put you in the walled garden (i.e. changed your DNS server settings next time your DHCP address updated, which was every eight hours).
There were several problems with this. Firstly the process was indiscrimiate and I am still getting put in the walled garden due to excessive 135 traffic (and no, I don't have any viruses). Not that is has any effect anymore as my DNS is fixed. Secondly you were directed to an http page ending in ntli.com, which claimed to be NTL world, which asked you to download some MS patches for your machine. This has obvious problems - why does this person want me to run executables from this web site when I have no idea who owns the website? This struck me as highly suspicious the first time it happened (and dumb all the other times - why not ntlworld and https?). Anyway I finally got through to someone sensible (after getting a script reader trying to claim "there is not ever legitimate reason what-so-ever that any computer ever would ever use port 135. Ever. At all." at which point he was asked to transfer me to someone who knew what port 135 was used for) I finally got them to agree to send the logs from the walled garden to me next time it happened so I could work out what was causing the problem. (Naturally, it hasn't happened since then).
Interestingly, last time I was on the phone to them (actually trying to find the phone number for their helpdesk) I found NLTworld which appears to be a typo site, but quite what it is doing I'm not sure.
If you've fail to do this, your app is currently giving ulcers to some innocent admin of WinNT-family boxes who now has to manually add extra NTFS permissions for the Everyone group to your app's install folder.
Actually you can get a small measure of protection by giving creator/owner change permissions in the directory (assuming that the file is created by the user one first use). But yup, it's dumb to have ini's in the application folder.
I'd be surprised if you could find half a dozen Americans who know how the British Prime Minister is chosen
I'd be surprised if you could find half a dozen brits who knew how the British Prime Minister is chosen. It is not the obvious answer of "The Leader of the Largest Party after a General Election" but the Prime Minister is chosen by Royal Perogative. This is not some idle theoretical power either - it was used in 1957 to appoint Harold MacMillan Prime Minister when he was not the leader of the Conservative Party (which was the party in power). It was again used in 1963 in similar circumstances.
Oh, it's better than that. Blair has just exceeded the Chewbacca defence. He has been arguing for months that he didn't lie about the 45 minute claim (which was, in the end, what the who brouhaha was about).
Last night in the House Of Commons, in response to a questions, he claimed that he was unaware of the specifics of the claim - that the 45 minutes only applied to battlefield weapons and not to strategic weapons. Tony Blair's defence is now that he couldn't be lying because he didn't know what he was talking about.
"If we attack in ignorance, we must be right." seems to our moral compass.
The former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook basically called him a liar - "I find it difficult to reconcile what I knew and what I am sure the prime minister knew at the time we had the vote in March." - which, in House of Commons terms, is fighting talk.
Then we get the "Mystery Intelligence." There is apparently intelligence about WMDs that the leading expert at the time (Brian Jones) wasn't allowed to see it. It was that secret. Brian Jones was the one that wrote to the Intelligence Chiefs saying the 45minute claim was bollocks. I may be being a little cynical here, but I do find it a little suspicious that there is some secret intelligence that nobody is allowed to see that will miraculously vindicate everyone involved. I found it even more suspicious that the person best placed to assess that intelligence accurately was not allowed to even know of its existance.
Well, actually they were. The wrongness was the claim that the Government knew that this claim was false.
The facts available at the time did not allow them to draw that conclusion. In other words it is perfectly possible that, despite all the evidence to the contrary, the government actually believed at that time that the claim (aka complete load of bollocks) was true.
Technically, this argument only works for Governments. If, say, a five year old child, tried it - "Johnny didn't steal my doll, but you were wrong to say that I lied when I claimed he did, because I didn't know that he hadn't" - they would be sent to bed without any supper.
Gasoline is not a secret. It is octane for the most part
Erm, no. Very, very wrong. For starters octane isn't actually a chemical as such, but a group of 18 different isomers with the chemical formula C8H18. The octane that people talk about when talking about gasoline is usually 2,2,4 trimethyl pentane, or iso-octane. This is the thing that has an octane number of 100. n-heptane has an octane number of 0. (Just to add fun to the whole thing there are two commonly used octane numbers - RON and MON for research octane number and motor octane number repectively).
Anyway, back to gasoline. Station gasoline typically has about 300 major fuel components in it, and thousands, if not millions, of minor components. These vary from depending on the time of year (slightly different refinery streams are used for "winter" and "summer" mixes), and from feedstock to feedstock (different crudes will produce different gasolines). This is the stuff that is the rw fuel, and to be specified as gasoline of a particular standard it needs to meet certain tests (octane number, vapor pressure, density, total aromatics, and some others).
When a refinery produces a stream that meets the specification then it generally sells it to all and sundry - this is why you see Exxon fuel trucks in a Shell refinery. Then the oil company adds the additive package - for gasoline this will contain (usually) a detergent, anti-foam additive, wear inhibitors, and a possibly things like anti-hazing, a valve-seat recession inhibitor, surfactants, dyes, and lubricity additive. Also, in some markets, there are anti-couterfeiting additives (which definitely are secret).
Small changes to the mix can cause big effects. For example in the early nineties there was a big drive to reduce the level of sulphur in fuels (from 40ppm to 10ppm). This was no big deal to do chemically, but when low sulphur fuels were first tested there was a problem with wear in fuel pumps. This was eventually traced to the fuel not sticking to the exposed pump surfaces and providing lubrication, and so lubricity additives were invented.
If I had pure octane, and mixed it with ethanol on a 87-13 basis, I'd be able to run my car without a problem.
Highly unlikely - if you had a fuel injector car the nozzles would quickly wear (iso-octane and ethanol have very poor lubricity). You would get coking problems in your engine (probably - a good oil may keep these at bay) due to a lack of detergents. And loads of problem in the long term. Nightmare.
Bing - you lose. All commercial soaps contain various stabilisers, presvatives and (usually) surfactants in secret amounts. It is also surprisingly difficult to get unscented soap (unperfumed is easy, but one with no scents added at all is very tricky).
Also, fuels and lubricants have to be made to conform to published standards. The end is not a secret, even if the means might be.
No - the end is definitely a secret. For example, a 15W-40 oil only has to meet viscocity requirements at two temperatures (basically runny enough when cold, and not too runny when warm), and some compoistion requirements (mainly restrictions on metals, and phosphorous and sulphur and the ilk). Fuels have the same minimal requirements (mainly Octane Number). In addition to these fuels and oils may have one or more additives such as flow improvers, anti-static agents, anti-oxidants, wax anti-settling agents, corrosion inhibitors, ashless detergents, anti-knock agents, ignition improvers, dehazers, re-odorants, pipeline drag reducers, lubricity agents, cetane improvers, spark-aiders, valve-seat protection compounds, synthetic or mineral oil carrier fluids and anti-foaming agents. You are welcome to try and find out what these compounds are in any specific fuel, but the oil company you ask will tell you to get lost.
The reason I know this is that I used to work for an oil company and a reasonable amount of effort was expended in analysing our competitors' products to see what they were using. I've no doubt that they were doing the same to ours.
Now, look about you. Try and count the number of things made from plastic. Probably hundreds. These are all secret recipies. The base plastic - PET, PTTE and so on is known - but the exact process that produces the base polymer is secret. Also secret is the package added, which contains various plasticisers, stabilisers, and other propriatory chemicals.
Now look at anything printed - see those inks that they are printed with. More secret recipies.
But, let me guess: in addition to making your own soap and toothpaste, you also make your own plastics, ink, and clothes (sorry - didn't I mention the dyeing process for many materials is secret?). Busy Guy.
You may be thinking of Polish Military Intelligence, but they did not "break" Enigma as such. They managed to break an Enigma system - the combination of machine and method of operation - which was to modern eyes fairly weak. Just before the invasion of Poland in 1939 the Germans changed they system and the Poles could not read it anymore (not because they couldn't figure it out, but that the methods used to crack it were too slow - they couldn't build the bombes which were an essential part of the cracking).
The most significant thing they did was to workout the wiring of the Enigma machine itself. There are 26! ways to wire the machine, and one of the Polish mathematicians - Marian Rejewski - in a stroke of genius - managed to work this out.
The British Intelligence built on the work of the Poles at Bletchly Park duing WW2. Turing in particular produced what was called "The Prof's Book" which was a systematic method for breaking Enigma regardless of the system being used with it. Note that the cracking couldn't be done cold - in particular the woring of the rotors in the enigma machines were required (as well as the wiring of the machine itself - although oddly this was never changed).
What both the Poles and the Allies realised was that Enigma had a huge weakness - it could never encipher a character as itself. The German's knew about this, but thought it was just a quirk.
Later on Shark appeared. This was a cypher system similar to Enigma except it worked on teletype messages. To break this Colossus was born, but the same general idea worked. Ironically, although this was the first Turing machine*, Turing actually had very little directly to do with it.
Thus ends the "Miniature Guide to Codebreaking in Europe in WW2"
* Actually, the German Z3 was the first Turing machine, in 1941. This is not the usual case of "to the victor the spoils" as nobody was sure that the Z3 was a Turing machine until about 1990, althought Conrad Zuse, its designer, thought it might be. I've always vaguely wondered if, by using the same tricks, you could get the difference engine to become a Turing machine.
Similarly, there is nothing wrong with "vast minority of the group". Here what we reference is, for example, "the most significant or numerous part of that subgroup constituting the minority".
Well, there is, because it's ambiguous: "The majority of people want A, most of the rest want B, and a vast minority want C" makes perfect sense in that the vast minority is almost nobody. Equally it is easy to frame a sentence where it means "almost half". And it is easy to frame a sentence where nobody is quite sure what is means. In a vast minority of sentences it is unclear what vast minority means. It is left to the reader to determine, in accordance with his or her prejudices, what "vast minority" actually meant in the last sentence.
Oxymorons like these should usually be avoided - if you want to qualify minority then sizable or insignificant are probably better works.
You need a conditional branching instruction to solve the halting problem, and a stop instruction.
However, you're right about the Z3 (and probably the others) - it was Turing complete, but only through chicanery that Zuse wasn't aware of; its input was a paper tape which could be looped - tape the ends together; and the conditional could be provided by using the feature that the machine would stop if given an illegal operation (such as divide by zero). Very cunning - details here. The trick is that multiplication and division have conditional branching embedded in them at the hardware level and this can be "raised up" to allow flow control.
As the Zuse Z3 was completed (and operational) in 1941 (ABC in 1942, possibly) then the Z3 wins the race for the first (Turing complete) computer.
It does raise an interesting philosophical question because the Turing completeness of the Z3 was only realised 1998, 57 years after it machine was built (although Zuse thought it was complete).
Re:Not Turing Machines?
on
Krawtchouk's Mind
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Colossus was a Turing machine, just. It had the (rough) equivalent of "computed goto" where the result of an operation could determine what instruction was executed next, which is enough.
This, its "Turingness", came about almost by accident - in breaking the Lorenz codes it ran a computation step where it worked out some property of captured cipher text against generated enciphering text. This produced a potential deciphered text, which an operater would look at to see if it made sense. The second generation machine was designed to calculate some statistical properties of the text, which could tell resonably well if it had been broken properly. It was when they were building the capability of doing this that the computed goto snuck in (which gave them the ability to do conditional branching), and the equivalent of "if Text looks like German then Stop".
After the war the runners of the machine tried to program it to do base 10 arithmetic, but clock speed was against them, so it never quite worked (not that they spent a lot of time on it as shortly after the war almost all the colossi were scrapped).
It was an odd machine - extremely fast at what it was built to do, with the bonus that it could do anything (given enough vacuum tubes!). Different to the ABC and Zuse machines in that these were non-Turing machines (I think that's true of the Atanasoft-Berry machine too - having looked at the information available it doesn't seem Turing complete, but it is fairly sketchy).
In the UK, I believe there was a case where someone had legitimately bought www.marks-and-spencer.co.uk (Marks & Spencer is a department store chain, for those who don't know). However, Marks & Spencer decided that they wanted the name, filed legal action and got the name.
Almost totally wrong. They - a company called "One in a Million" - did register marksandspencer.co.uk. They also registered buckinghampalace.org, burgerking.co.uk, thetimes.co.uk, mcdonalds.co.uk, and assorted others. They then tried to extort money from these organisations for sell them the names, which is when the scam became illegal. See The BBC website for further details.
Damn. Damn, damn, damn. You've just made me realise that I've bought Time again. Yes, it was terrible, but I'd managed to blot out all memory of it, so when I picked it up in the book shop I just couldn't remember it.
The intelligent squid. I should have remembered the intelligent squid. How could I forget the intelligent squid?
Not his worse book either. There was another one (part of the manifold series I think) about a feudal civilisation in a neutron star. It was even worse than it sounded.
To give him some credit his books about the space program are good.
There is another author who uses intelligent squid (giant squid in this case) in his books - Ken McLeod - only this time they make sense.
Slashdot Mirror
..but I'm going to have to kill you: "quite unique", "highly unique"? Some crimes are unpardonable.
Anyway - that seems a reasonable explanation of "lose/loose". As for misspellings what about "yacht"? I always have a desire to stick a "gh" in there somewhere.
They used some kind of portscan to determine which machines were infected and then put their connections in a 'walled garden'. All web traffic that went through this 'walled garden' resulted in a page describing what the problem was and included lots of pretty pictures explaining how to fix the problem.
No quite - they looked (and still look) for "excessive" port 135 traffic and put you in the walled garden (i.e. changed your DNS server settings next time your DHCP address updated, which was every eight hours).
There were several problems with this. Firstly the process was indiscrimiate and I am still getting put in the walled garden due to excessive 135 traffic (and no, I don't have any viruses). Not that is has any effect anymore as my DNS is fixed. Secondly you were directed to an http page ending in ntli.com, which claimed to be NTL world, which asked you to download some MS patches for your machine. This has obvious problems - why does this person want me to run executables from this web site when I have no idea who owns the website? This struck me as highly suspicious the first time it happened (and dumb all the other times - why not ntlworld and https?). Anyway I finally got through to someone sensible (after getting a script reader trying to claim "there is not ever legitimate reason what-so-ever that any computer ever would ever use port 135. Ever. At all." at which point he was asked to transfer me to someone who knew what port 135 was used for) I finally got them to agree to send the logs from the walled garden to me next time it happened so I could work out what was causing the problem. (Naturally, it hasn't happened since then).
Interestingly, last time I was on the phone to them (actually trying to find the phone number for their helpdesk) I found NLTworld which appears to be a typo site, but quite what it is doing I'm not sure.
Yeah - I know. I think it is some ancient charter, or the Bavarian Illuminati, but a typo is mandatory when making a correction.
Personally I blame the Hip-Hop music.
But he just didn't get some of the jokes or stories because he simply can not read sarcasm or irony.
So, Asperger's is rather like being an American?
Yrs,
A Brit.
It's "losing", not "loosing".
"Losing you mind" is going insane. "Loosing you mind" is pulling you brain out of your skull through your nose with a large rusty hook.
Where did this bizarre confusion come from anyway? I'm sure that these words were not confused with such regularity a year ago.
If you've fail to do this, your app is currently giving ulcers to some innocent admin of WinNT-family boxes who now has to manually add extra NTFS permissions for the Everyone group to your app's install folder.
Actually you can get a small measure of protection by giving creator/owner change permissions in the directory (assuming that the file is created by the user one first use). But yup, it's dumb to have ini's in the application folder.
I'd be surprised if you could find half a dozen Americans who know how the British Prime Minister is chosen
I'd be surprised if you could find half a dozen brits who knew how the British Prime Minister is chosen. It is not the obvious answer of "The Leader of the Largest Party after a General Election" but the Prime Minister is chosen by Royal Perogative. This is not some idle theoretical power either - it was used in 1957 to appoint Harold MacMillan Prime Minister when he was not the leader of the Conservative Party (which was the party in power). It was again used in 1963 in similar circumstances.
If you know about Tommy Cooper then you'll fit in, just like that. No, not like that, like that.
Oh, it's better than that. Blair has just exceeded the Chewbacca defence. He has been arguing for months that he didn't lie about the 45 minute claim (which was, in the end, what the who brouhaha was about).
Last night in the House Of Commons, in response to a questions, he claimed that he was unaware of the specifics of the claim - that the 45 minutes only applied to battlefield weapons and not to strategic weapons. Tony Blair's defence is now that he couldn't be lying because he didn't know what he was talking about.
"If we attack in ignorance, we must be right." seems to our moral compass.
The former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook basically called him a liar - "I find it difficult to reconcile what I knew and what I am sure the prime minister knew at the time we had the vote in March." - which, in House of Commons terms, is fighting talk.
Then we get the "Mystery Intelligence." There is apparently intelligence about WMDs that the leading expert at the time (Brian Jones) wasn't allowed to see it. It was that secret. Brian Jones was the one that wrote to the Intelligence Chiefs saying the 45minute claim was bollocks. I may be being a little cynical here, but I do find it a little suspicious that there is some secret intelligence that nobody is allowed to see that will miraculously vindicate everyone involved. I found it even more suspicious that the person best placed to assess that intelligence accurately was not allowed to even know of its existance.
he BBC was not _wrong_ in its report.
Well, actually they were. The wrongness was the claim that the Government knew that this claim was false.
The facts available at the time did not allow them to draw that conclusion. In other words it is perfectly possible that, despite all the evidence to the contrary, the government actually believed at that time that the claim (aka complete load of bollocks) was true.
Technically, this argument only works for Governments. If, say, a five year old child, tried it - "Johnny didn't steal my doll, but you were wrong to say that I lied when I claimed he did, because I didn't know that he hadn't" - they would be sent to bed without any supper.
Yes - you should always adopt a prone position with a sniper rifle.
Gasoline is not a secret. It is octane for the most part
Erm, no. Very, very wrong. For starters octane isn't actually a chemical as such, but a group of 18 different isomers with the chemical formula C8H18. The octane that people talk about when talking about gasoline is usually 2,2,4 trimethyl pentane, or iso-octane. This is the thing that has an octane number of 100. n-heptane has an octane number of 0. (Just to add fun to the whole thing there are two commonly used octane numbers - RON and MON for research octane number and motor octane number repectively).
Anyway, back to gasoline. Station gasoline typically has about 300 major fuel components in it, and thousands, if not millions, of minor components. These vary from depending on the time of year (slightly different refinery streams are used for "winter" and "summer" mixes), and from feedstock to feedstock (different crudes will produce different gasolines). This is the stuff that is the rw fuel, and to be specified as gasoline of a particular standard it needs to meet certain tests (octane number, vapor pressure, density, total aromatics, and some others).
When a refinery produces a stream that meets the specification then it generally sells it to all and sundry - this is why you see Exxon fuel trucks in a Shell refinery. Then the oil company adds the additive package - for gasoline this will contain (usually) a detergent, anti-foam additive, wear inhibitors, and a possibly things like anti-hazing, a valve-seat recession inhibitor, surfactants, dyes, and lubricity additive. Also, in some markets, there are anti-couterfeiting additives (which definitely are secret).
Small changes to the mix can cause big effects. For example in the early nineties there was a big drive to reduce the level of sulphur in fuels (from 40ppm to 10ppm). This was no big deal to do chemically, but when low sulphur fuels were first tested there was a problem with wear in fuel pumps. This was eventually traced to the fuel not sticking to the exposed pump surfaces and providing lubrication, and so lubricity additives were invented.
If I had pure octane, and mixed it with ethanol on a 87-13 basis, I'd be able to run my car without a problem.
Highly unlikely - if you had a fuel injector car the nozzles would quickly wear (iso-octane and ethanol have very poor lubricity). You would get coking problems in your engine (probably - a good oil may keep these at bay) due to a lack of detergents. And loads of problem in the long term. Nightmare.
Strictly unscented soap
Bing - you lose. All commercial soaps contain various stabilisers, presvatives and (usually) surfactants in secret amounts. It is also surprisingly difficult to get unscented soap (unperfumed is easy, but one with no scents added at all is very tricky).
Also, fuels and lubricants have to be made to conform to published standards. The end is not a secret, even if the means might be.
No - the end is definitely a secret. For example, a 15W-40 oil only has to meet viscocity requirements at two temperatures (basically runny enough when cold, and not too runny when warm), and some compoistion requirements (mainly restrictions on metals, and phosphorous and sulphur and the ilk). Fuels have the same minimal requirements (mainly Octane Number). In addition to these fuels and oils may have one or more additives such as flow improvers, anti-static agents, anti-oxidants, wax anti-settling agents, corrosion inhibitors, ashless detergents, anti-knock agents, ignition improvers, dehazers, re-odorants, pipeline drag reducers, lubricity agents, cetane improvers, spark-aiders, valve-seat protection compounds, synthetic or mineral oil carrier fluids and anti-foaming agents. You are welcome to try and find out what these compounds are in any specific fuel, but the oil company you ask will tell you to get lost.
The reason I know this is that I used to work for an oil company and a reasonable amount of effort was expended in analysing our competitors' products to see what they were using. I've no doubt that they were doing the same to ours.
Now, look about you. Try and count the number of things made from plastic. Probably hundreds. These are all secret recipies. The base plastic - PET, PTTE and so on is known - but the exact process that produces the base polymer is secret. Also secret is the package added, which contains various plasticisers, stabilisers, and other propriatory chemicals.
Now look at anything printed - see those inks that they are printed with. More secret recipies.
But, let me guess: in addition to making your own soap and toothpaste, you also make your own plastics, ink, and clothes (sorry - didn't I mention the dyeing process for many materials is secret?). Busy Guy.
As a consumer, I will not buy any product that contains any secret from me. I demand full disclosure or no dice.
Sounds very principled. But
1) Do you drink coke? The exact recipe for that is secret.
2) Ever bought perfume, or after-shave, or even scented soap? The exact ingedients that go into scents are secret.
3) What about gas for a car, or oil for its engine? The exact ingredients, and their proportions, that go into those are secret.
4) Have you demanded to source for the engine management software of your car? That is (probably) secret too.
5) Do you clean your teeth? With toothpaste? Whoops.
The world is full of products that are full of secrets. Unilaterally declaring that you're too principled to buy them is naive and pompous.
I consider my driving habits private
Interesting, as driving is done in a public place.
Robert Louis Stevenson:
For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.
You may be thinking of Polish Military Intelligence, but they did not "break" Enigma as such. They managed to break an Enigma system - the combination of machine and method of operation - which was to modern eyes fairly weak. Just before the invasion of Poland in 1939 the Germans changed they system and the Poles could not read it anymore (not because they couldn't figure it out, but that the methods used to crack it were too slow - they couldn't build the bombes which were an essential part of the cracking).
The most significant thing they did was to workout the wiring of the Enigma machine itself. There are 26! ways to wire the machine, and one of the Polish mathematicians - Marian Rejewski - in a stroke of genius - managed to work this out.
The British Intelligence built on the work of the Poles at Bletchly Park duing WW2. Turing in particular produced what was called "The Prof's Book" which was a systematic method for breaking Enigma regardless of the system being used with it. Note that the cracking couldn't be done cold - in particular the woring of the rotors in the enigma machines were required (as well as the wiring of the machine itself - although oddly this was never changed).
What both the Poles and the Allies realised was that Enigma had a huge weakness - it could never encipher a character as itself. The German's knew about this, but thought it was just a quirk.
Later on Shark appeared. This was a cypher system similar to Enigma except it worked on teletype messages. To break this Colossus was born, but the same general idea worked. Ironically, although this was the first Turing machine*, Turing actually had very little directly to do with it.
Thus ends the "Miniature Guide to Codebreaking in Europe in WW2"
* Actually, the German Z3 was the first Turing machine, in 1941. This is not the usual case of "to the victor the spoils" as nobody was sure that the Z3 was a Turing machine until about 1990, althought Conrad Zuse, its designer, thought it might be. I've always vaguely wondered if, by using the same tricks, you could get the difference engine to become a Turing machine.
Well, there is, because it's ambiguous: "The majority of people want A, most of the rest want B, and a vast minority want C" makes perfect sense in that the vast minority is almost nobody. Equally it is easy to frame a sentence where it means "almost half". And it is easy to frame a sentence where nobody is quite sure what is means. In a vast minority of sentences it is unclear what vast minority means. It is left to the reader to determine, in accordance with his or her prejudices, what "vast minority" actually meant in the last sentence.
Oxymorons like these should usually be avoided - if you want to qualify minority then sizable or insignificant are probably better works.
However, you're right about the Z3 (and probably the others) - it was Turing complete, but only through chicanery that Zuse wasn't aware of; its input was a paper tape which could be looped - tape the ends together; and the conditional could be provided by using the feature that the machine would stop if given an illegal operation (such as divide by zero). Very cunning - details here. The trick is that multiplication and division have conditional branching embedded in them at the hardware level and this can be "raised up" to allow flow control.
As the Zuse Z3 was completed (and operational) in 1941 (ABC in 1942, possibly) then the Z3 wins the race for the first (Turing complete) computer.
It does raise an interesting philosophical question because the Turing completeness of the Z3 was only realised 1998, 57 years after it machine was built (although Zuse thought it was complete).
This, its "Turingness", came about almost by accident - in breaking the Lorenz codes it ran a computation step where it worked out some property of captured cipher text against generated enciphering text. This produced a potential deciphered text, which an operater would look at to see if it made sense. The second generation machine was designed to calculate some statistical properties of the text, which could tell resonably well if it had been broken properly. It was when they were building the capability of doing this that the computed goto snuck in (which gave them the ability to do conditional branching), and the equivalent of "if Text looks like German then Stop".
After the war the runners of the machine tried to program it to do base 10 arithmetic, but clock speed was against them, so it never quite worked (not that they spent a lot of time on it as shortly after the war almost all the colossi were scrapped).
It was an odd machine - extremely fast at what it was built to do, with the bonus that it could do anything (given enough vacuum tubes!). Different to the ABC and Zuse machines in that these were non-Turing machines (I think that's true of the Atanasoft-Berry machine too - having looked at the information available it doesn't seem Turing complete, but it is fairly sketchy).
He's got long arms
Chapter 11
That's "fonetikalee".
In the UK, I believe there was a case where someone had legitimately bought www.marks-and-spencer.co.uk (Marks & Spencer is a department store chain, for those who don't know). However, Marks & Spencer decided that they wanted the name, filed legal action and got the name.
Almost totally wrong. They - a company called "One in a Million" - did register marksandspencer.co.uk. They also registered buckinghampalace.org, burgerking.co.uk, thetimes.co.uk, mcdonalds.co.uk, and assorted others. They then tried to extort money from these organisations for sell them the names, which is when the scam became illegal. See The BBC website for further details.
The intelligent squid. I should have remembered the intelligent squid. How could I forget the intelligent squid?
Not his worse book either. There was another one (part of the manifold series I think) about a feudal civilisation in a neutron star. It was even worse than it sounded.
To give him some credit his books about the space program are good.
There is another author who uses intelligent squid (giant squid in this case) in his books - Ken McLeod - only this time they make sense.