Happy Birthday Mr. Turing

[Guest thaiworthy]

One hundred years ago this Saturday, Alan Turing was born. He was generally considered the father of computer science and was gay. His logic engines were the precursor of modern computers. From 1936 to 1948 his essays outlined how CPUs would work. Whether you are a PC user or a Mac fan, this is the kind of role model gay people have always needed. I believe he was also credited with breaking the Enigma code which saved countless lives during WWII. Unfortunately, in 1954, he committed suicide because of discrimination against his homosexuality.

 

He ate part of an apple (no relation to the computer company) that was laced with cyanide. It had been suggested that he was re-acting a scene from the 1937 film Snow White, his favorite fairy tale, pointing out that he took "an especially keen pleasure" in the scene where the evil Queen immerses her apple in the poisonous brew.

 

Wikipedia erroneously refers to the Queen as the Wicked Witch, which I believe is a character in The Wizard of Oz. Nevertheless, it is both ironic and tragic to note that only a century ago a man was born that subsequently gave mankind one of its greatest achievements.

 

Today, there are many evil Queens, and wicked witches too, who perpetuate a hatred in spite of the social and political advances gay people have made since this great man's death.

 

Rest in peace, Alan Turing, and thank you for your enormous contributions to humanity.

 

http://en.wikipedia....iki/Alan_Turing

[Guest fountainhall]

Happy Birthday, indeed! There was a thread a few months ago which went into more detail about Turigng's homosexuality and how he endured chemical castration rather than go to prison. He committed suicide soon after.

 

http://www.gaythailand.com/forums/topic/7698-to-pardon-or-not-to-pardon/page__hl__turing

[Rogie]

Good Google 'cartoon' simulation today (Sat 23rd) - too complicated for me to follow even though it comprises just zeroes and ones, and the solution is supplied in the link below showing how to solve the Alan Turing Google doodle!

 

 

Alan Turing would have celebrated his 100th birthday today. Google honors the life and work of a man whose accomplishments were many; a brilliant academic and codebreaker, Turing is also known amongst computer scientists as the father of artificial intelligence.

 

Little known in life, his work and its significance for computer science has only become notorious in recent decades. Today’s Google Doodle is an interactive HTML5 codebreaking game that simulates the Turing Machine.

 

At first, the Google logo appears in grayscale. Solving a series of codes turns each letter in the logo to its proper color, with the last code the most difficult to break.

 

"We thought the most fitting way of paying tribute to Turing’s incredible life and work would be to simulate the theoretical ‘Turing machine’ he proposed in a mathematical paper,” according to a Google blog post. “Visit the homepage today— we invite you to try your hand at programming it. If you get it the first time, try again... it gets harder!"

 

http://searchenginew...omputer-Science

[Guest colinr]

There's doubt about the alleged suicide: see

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18561092

[Guest fountainhall]

Whether or not the coroner was correct in determining death by suicide, one other supposed fact has just emerged related to the Turing story. That Turing helped decode the Enigma machine is indisputable. How the Brits obtained their machine has been the subject of countless war movies with all sorts of stories, plays and movies about the heroism involved.

 

Not true, says Iain Lobban, the Head of the British secret Intelligence Agency, GCHQ.

 

"You have probably all seen the Hollywood version of the Enigma story," he said. "The films showing heroic sailors leaping onto sinking German submarines to recover their Enigma machines. The truth around the initial acquisition is a little more prosaic. In 1926, Edward Travis, who later became director of GCHQ, went to Berlin and obtained an Enigma machine by the simple expedient of going to the manufacturing company and buying one."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/oct/04/alan-turing-uk-cybercrime

 

Simplicity itself. Yet, no doubt just a deliberate clouding of the waters! The B, C and D models of Enigma commercially available in the 1920s were purchased by many countries. By 1930 the German army was using the much more sophisticated Enigma I version, subsequently adopted by the Navy in 1934.

 

For a message to be correctly encrypted and decrypted, both sender and receiver had to set up their Enigma in the same way; the rotor selection and order, the starting position and the plugboard connections must be identical. All these settings (together the key in modern terms) must have been established beforehand, and were distributed in codebooks . . .

 

The major difference between Enigma I and commercial Enigma models was the addition of a plugboard to swap pairs of letters, greatly increasing the cryptographic strength of the machine. Other differences included the use of a fixed reflector, and the relocation of the stepping notches from the rotor body to the movable letter rings . . . In December 1938, the Army issued two extra rotors so that the three rotors were chosen from a set of five. In 1938, the Navy added two more rotors, and then another in 1939 to allow a choice of three rotors from a set of eight. In August 1935, the Air Force also introduced the Wehrmacht Enigma for their communications

 

http://en.wikipedia..../Enigma_machine

 

At least Lobban spoke with regret about the treatment meted out to Turing, saying he "was a national asset whose death robbed the country of one of our greatest minds".