“Scientists will gather from Bangalore to Texas on Saturday to honour British mathematician Alan Turing, a pioneer of the modern computer whose code-cracking is credited with shortening World War II…

The centenary of Turing’s birth will be marked with events from Bangalore to Texas on June 23.”..

“It is barely fathomable to think that none of the computing power surrounding us today was around when he was born. But without Turing’s work, computers as we know them today simply would not exist, Robert Kahn, co-inventor of the TCP/IP protocols that run the Internet, said in an interview. Absent Turing, “the computing trajectory would have been entirely different, or at least delayed,” he said.

For while the idea of a programmable computer has been around since at least 1837 — when English mathematician Charles Babbage formulated the idea of his analytical engine — Turing was the first to do the difficult work of mapping out the physics of how the digital universe would operate. And he did it using a single (theoretical) strip of infinite tape…

In his short life, Turing lay the theoretical foundation for the modern-day computer, set the standard for artificial intelligence, unravelled German codes in a war effort some say saved millions of lives, and came close to solving a biological riddle that still confounds scientists today…

During World War II, he was instrumental in cracking German encrypted messages, allowing the British to anticipate Germany’s actions and ultimately help win the war. Using his mathematical chops, he also developed ideas in the field of non-linear biological theory, which paved the way for chaos and complexity theories. And to a lesser extent he is known for his sad demise, an apparent suicide after being persecuted by the British government for his homosexuality…

In the next decade, another polymath, John von Neumann, at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, started working on an operational computer that borrowed from Turing’s idea, except it would use random access memory instead of infinite tape to hold the data and operational programs. Called MANIAC (Mathematical Analyzer, Numerator, Integrator, and Computer), it was among the first modern computers ever built and was operational in 1952. MANIAC used what is now called the Von Neumann architecture, the model for all computers today.

Returning to Britain after his time at Princeton, Turing worked on another project to build a computer that used these concepts, called the Automatic Computing Engine (ACE), and pioneered the idea of a stored memory machine, which would become a vital part of the Von Neumann architecture.

As well as sparking the field of computer science, the impact his work had on cracking encryption may ultimately have also saved Great Britain from becoming a German colony. People have argued that Turing’s work defining computers was essential to his success in breaking the encryption generated by Germany’s Enigma machine — work that helped bring World War II to an end.

“By today’s definitions, the Enigma was an analog computer. What he built was much closer to of a digital computer,” Rensselaer’s Hendler explained. “Essentially he showed the power of digital computing in attacking this analog problem. This really changed the whole way that the field thought about what computers could do.”

Having defined computational operations, Turing went on to play a fundamental role in defining artificial intelligence — or computer intelligence that mimics human thinking. In 1950, he authored a paper that offered a way to determine if a computer possessed human intelligence. The test involves a person having an extended conversation with two hidden entities, a computer and a man pretending to be a woman. (“In both cases he wanted pretending,” Hendler explained.) If the person can’t determine which party is the computer, the machine can be said to think like a human.”

http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/world/299346/scientists-remember-turing-father-of-modern-computers

http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/428497/how_alan_turing_set_rules_computing/?fp=4&fpid=78268965

I note with some sadness that he never scored a century at Lords, sure he could do sums but being able to do sums or winning a spelling bee competition is not what life’s about I’m afraid.

If you haven’t caught this Science Show on his life and achievements have a listen..

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/alan-turing-e28093-thinker-ahead-of-his-time/4034006

jack flowers the post office engineer that actually built the computer used to crack codes was returned back to the post office after the war and started telling them about making the phone systems digital and they looked at him as if he was crazy.

Peak Warming Man said:

I note with some sadness that he never scored a century at Lords
[/quote

Don’t think he swam the channel either :(

>>Don’t think he swam the channel either

That’d be right.

periodically you see a antion announce that they have the fastest computer

this must be a subtle hint that if need be that they can use brute force to break any code

the faster the computer in theory – the faster they break the code

edit

a nation announce

“The computer HAL 9000, depicted in Arthur C. Clarke’s 1968 epic novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, was one of the first fictional machines to pass Turing’s Test. Now, it seems, some real-life computers may not be far off achieving this phenomenal feat.

This is a cherished goal of many computer scientists and information technologists. With several tests and challenges planned to mark the Turing centenary in Britain alone, might this goal be achieved in the not-too-distant future?”

– The Age

The Science Show propounds Cleverbot (http://cleverbot.com) as an example of just how incredibly close we are getting to achieving AI (passing the Turing test).

I tried this-

Me :Horses have incredibly tiny brains.

CB:Did I ask about horses or bones?

Me:I didn’t mention bones.

CB:Neither did I.

CLEVERBOT FAIL

His Wiki entry is very substantial, he certainly achieved a lot in such a short life.

Ian said:

“The computer HAL 9000, depicted in Arthur C. Clarke’s 1968 epic novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, was one of the first fictional machines to pass Turing’s Test. Now, it seems, some real-life computers may not be far off achieving this phenomenal feat.

This is a cherished goal of many computer scientists and information technologists. With several tests and challenges planned to mark the Turing centenary in Britain alone, might this goal be achieved in the not-too-distant future?”

– The Age

The Science Show propounds Cleverbot (http://cleverbot.com) as an example of just how incredibly close we are getting to achieving AI (passing the Turing test).

I tried this-

Me :Horses have incredibly tiny brains.

CB:Did I ask about horses or bones?

Me:I didn’t mention bones.

CB:Neither did I.

CLEVERBOT FAIL

I thought that it was quite good.

they use computers to catch internet predators now

the programme stays vague and is meant to sound like a teenage girl

apparently it works

wookiemeister said:

they use computers to catch internet predators now

the programme stays vague and is meant to sound like a teenage girl

apparently it works

LOL!

morrie said:

I thought that it was quite good.

Are you a computer?

morrie said:

wookiemeister said:

they use computers to catch internet predators now

the programme stays vague and is meant to sound like a teenage girl

apparently it works

LOL!

yes really i was reading about it a few years ago

Ian said:

morrie said:

I thought that it was quite good.

Are you a computer?

Good question. Cleverbot says it is human. Liar!

I just asked Cleverbot quite a deep question and it gave me a stunningly simple answer, that made me sit back and think.

morrie said:

I just asked Cleverbot quite a deep question and it gave me a stunningly simple answer, that made me sit back and think.

Yeah. Sometimes it seems to give insightful answers and sometimes totally loopy ones.

morrie said:

I just asked Cleverbot quite a deep question and it gave me a stunningly simple answer, that made me sit back and think.

it doesn’t know maths

The 9000 series is the most reliable computer ever made. No 9000 computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information. We are all, by any practical definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of error.

this must be a subtle hint that if need be that they can use brute force to break any code

no, some codes will take longer to crack than there is time left in the universe.

thats what you might be told

enigma was meant to be uncrackable

you have to remember that there are whole teams of people working to crack these codes day and night

its their job to find ways to crack the code

the fellah in the intelligence service that was murdered in london was one of those people, one of the ways to stop the enemy from cracking your codes is to physically kill the code breaker, destroy the education system and stop all manufacturing of equipment to facilitate it.

killing a code breaker is the most direct means, its stops the information flow and the chance of information flow immediately

destroying the education system means it becomes a lot harder for a country to source local talent, they look further afield and end up taking in agents posing as “talent”. by reducing the pool of educated people you increase your chances of spying within the code cracking dept , stifle the ability to crack codes and make any breakthroughs worthless.

Knocking out the educational system has other benefits, it stops the ability to make the technology to crack code.

Normally the easiest way to defeat an enemy is to penetrate them via spies; tanks, bombs , helicopter, guns, aircraft bombs and bullets hold second place to the ability to disrupt and eavesdrop on the enemy. The art of war makes this perfectly clear. After a few centuries of the warring states most strategies had been tried and tested. You’ll notice that in the art of war that the whole thing is one long tale of woe involving disaster for many people, the fifth column section at the back makes it clear that bribery and undermining an opponent is the most effective way of destroying an enemy.

For example TSR2 was a hi tec fighter aircraft cancelled by the government when it was about to go into production. The Russians stifled production by using its spies in parliament and the trade unions. There was some trade unions leader that regularly fed technical information to his Russian handlers. People motivated by political beliefs or religious beliefs are often the most effective spies and agent saboteurs, they work against their employer relentlessly and above and beyond the call of duty that a spy motivated by money. In the case it was political sabotage by the Russian security services that destroyed TSR2.

Note

Australia has no home grown service rifle and no knowledge to design rifles anymore

It has no submarines – accidently on purpose the Collins class was sabotaged from inside by people in influential positions. What was obvious was claimed to be incompetency. Waste enough time and money on a project and it never goes anywhere.

Seasprite – sabotaged helicopter programme. Agent saboteurs encouraged money and time to be spent on unworkable helicopter programme.

Naval ships sabotaged through incompetence and supposed maintenance problems

Modern weaponary imported and will be switched off if necessary by the seller.

Tanks: no domestic tank programme, cannot build tanks, cannot build home grown anti-tank weapons systems. These systems can be shut down in a war

Aircraft: no domestic fighter jets or otherwise. In a war these systems could be shut down and rendered useless

(in the falklands war the sidewinder missile was rendered inoperable by the british who had been given the code that could be sent to the sidewinder in flight)

Knocking out the code breaking ability is very useful

After all ….

Why do you think so much pressure was put on alan turing – the head code breaker and the head of the chain of Bletchley park?

The secret service of Britain and the parliament had been penetrated by Russian secret service operatives.

Once alan turing was out the way everything could go back to normal.

you can dismiss the killing of valuable personnel by labelling them sad, bad or mad and no one twigs that you are killing off the brains of the system you are trying to knock out. you can’t kill them all because this would become too obvious and invites retaliation. by killing key personnel in small quantiites you stmie a whole defence system.

to my mind the collin class was sabotaged by people in the electronic warfare / programming side of things

they made sure it could never work and just stole a heap of secrets before they cleared off

the other way it was sabotaged was through direct intervention to make sure that the manufacturing process was in disarray

first time : happenchance
second time: coincendence
third time: confirmed enemy action

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

Alan Turing: Inquest’s suicide verdict ‘not supportable’

Alan Turing, the British mathematical genius and codebreaker born 100 years ago on 23 June, may not have committed suicide, as is widely believed.

At a conference in Oxford on Saturday, Turing expert Prof Jack Copeland will question the evidence that was presented at the 1954 inquest.

He believes the evidence would not today be accepted as sufficient to establish a suicide verdict.

Indeed, he argues, Turing’s death may equally probably have been an accident.

What is well known and accepted is that Alan Turing died of cyanide poisoning.

His housekeeper famously found the 41-year-old mathematician dead in his bed, with a half-eaten apple on his bedside table.

It is widely said that Turing had been haunted by the story of the poisoned apple in the fairy tale of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and had resorted to the same desperate measure to end the persecution he was suffering as a result of his homosexuality.

But according to Prof Copeland, it was Turing’s habit to take an apple at bedtime, and that it was quite usual for him not to finish it; the half-eaten remains found near his body cannot be seen as an indication of a deliberate act.

anyone who knew turings habits would have known how to kill him cleanly

the house keeper was probably in on it, without realising it

normally they get someone close to them to watch them and report everything about their activities.

when they knocked off that russian dude with polonium it was someone close to him – it always is

when william wallace was caught it was a former aide that played judas and met with him and gave positive ID

the stasi had one of their targets being watched by his own mother.

they killed turing because he was the brains of the operation

i think we should have some sort of enigma thread

i think we could all learn about the enigma machine and start talking to each other via the code

in other thoughts

i don’t think that the bletchley mob had actually laid eyes on the enigma had they???

>i don’t think that the bletchley mob had actually laid eyes on the enigma had they???

Yes, they did.

According to holywood, a US Naval ship managed to capture one off a German sub.

this may not be what actually happened

They got one from the Poles at the start of the war.

PWM, I thought they got a concept design of the Poles, not an actual machine. They did certainly get a captured one a bit later.

Peak Warming Man said:

They got one from the Poles at the start of the war.

it was an early model though

the germans added successive rotors i think

now thinking about it

if you are adding rotors and changing the key for the day wouldn’t the alarm bells already be ringing that that enigma has been cracked?

>>They did certainly get a captured one a bit later.

Yep, the story I read was that a destroyer, HMS Bulldog I think, send a boarding party aboard a sinking German sub in the Arctic theatre and retrieved a machine, an act rquiring some bottle.

I think they did get a machine off the Poles but it wasn’t all that much help.

>if you are adding rotors and changing the key for the day wouldn’t the alarm bells already be ringing that that enigma has been cracked?

No, that’s SOP.

Where they really stuffed up was having a header on each transmission which could give a clue to cracking the code as it nearly always started with the same preamble.

A quick Google would suggest that PWMs memory is still in good order.

Peak Warming Man said:

>>They did certainly get a captured one a bit later.

Yep, the story I read was that a destroyer, HMS Bulldog I think, send a boarding party aboard a sinking German sub in the Arctic theatre and retrieved a machine, an act rquiring some bottle.

I think they did get a machine off the Poles but it wasn’t all that much help.

Wiki saye you’re right PWM.

1941, Enigma and documentation grabbed.

OK, a tad of bragging here.

The Australian Army used an enigma variation, a 7 wheeled device, up until the early 80s.

I was on the last ever technical course for these machines, in 1981.

buffs nails on jacket

now i was thinking about this today

the british were picking up radio transmissions from the german side

they were being written down by the british operators

imagine if they had a machine that picked up the signals and recorded it without operators

>A quick Google would suggest that PWMs memory is still in good order.

about which bit?

>>about which bit?

The Bulldog bit is what I checked.

sibeen said:

OK, a tad of bragging here.

The Australian Army used an enigma variation, a 7 wheeled device, up until the early 80s.

I was on the last ever technical course for these machines, in 1981.

buffs nails on jacket

wouldn’t that have been totally crackable??

Oh, I knew the poms grabbed some kit off a sub, hence my crack at holywood.

I’m not sure about the Pole kit. I thought it was only plans?

wookiemeister said:

sibeen said:

OK, a tad of bragging here.

The Australian Army used an enigma variation, a 7 wheeled device, up until the early 80s.

I was on the last ever technical course for these machines, in 1981.

buffs nails on jacket

wouldn’t that have been totally crackable??

unless you changed the rotor settings after so many messages.

i suppose it could be managed that after so many messages that the rotor settings would be changed and the receiver would be aware

sibeen said:

Oh, I knew the poms grabbed some kit off a sub, hence my crack at holywood.

I’m not sure about the Pole kit. I thought it was only plans?

i thought the french had one

the poles were having a crack at breaking the enigma

sibeen said:

Oh, I knew the poms grabbed some kit off a sub, hence my crack at holywood.

I’m not sure about the Pole kit. I thought it was only plans?

I seems these things were around for a consideable time pre WW2

wookiemeister said:

wookiemeister said:

sibeen said:

OK, a tad of bragging here.

The Australian Army used an enigma variation, a 7 wheeled device, up until the early 80s.

I was on the last ever technical course for these machines, in 1981.

buffs nails on jacket

wouldn’t that have been totally crackable??

unless you changed the rotor settings after so many messages.

i suppose it could be managed that after so many messages that the rotor settings would be changed and the receiver would be aware

Be pretty pointless otherwise wouldn’t it?

wouldn’t that have been totally crackable??

Yes, but it would still take effort. Which is why codes were changed every day, and sometimes on a more regular basis. These machines were no longer used for TS material, b y the time the code was cracked it would be considered that any information gained would be redundant.

Anything that required a greater level of secrecy was double encrypted. The plain language would be encrypted on one style of machine – offline – and then the already encrypted text fed to an on-line encryption machine.

jjjust moi said:

wookiemeister said:

wookiemeister said:

wouldn’t that have been totally crackable??

unless you changed the rotor settings after so many messages.

i suppose it could be managed that after so many messages that the rotor settings would be changed and the receiver would be aware

Be pretty pointless otherwise wouldn’t it?

very few people knew that the british had cracked the code

the australians might have blithely kept using it without knowing

sibeen said:

wouldn’t that have been totally crackable??

Yes, but it would still take effort. Which is why codes were changed every day, and sometimes on a more regular basis. These machines were no longer used for TS material, b y the time the code was cracked it would be considered that any information gained would be redundant.

Anything that required a greater level of secrecy was double encrypted. The plain language would be encrypted on one style of machine – offline – and then the already encrypted text fed to an on-line encryption machine.

right

i wonder if that goes on in a digital way now to double triple etcto keep the message secret?

sibeen said:

wouldn’t that have been totally crackable??

Yes, but it would still take effort. Which is why codes were changed every day, and sometimes on a more regular basis. These machines were no longer used for TS material, b y the time the code was cracked it would be considered that any information gained would be redundant.

Anything that required a greater level of secrecy was double encrypted. The plain language would be encrypted on one style of machine – offline – and then the already encrypted text fed to an on-line encryption machine.

i suppose if you were just using this for field messages that would become redundant very quickly eg move to grid ref XXXXXXXX by XXXX time. by the time the code might have been picked up decoded the message would be redundant, the enemy would already know you were there.

now imagine this

imagine that you had something that picked up messages via the net, radio transmissions 24 hours a day

imagine if you then had a machine that collected these messages and then had a go at decoding them

in a non war situation it would mean you could crack them at your leisure BUT this machine could learn what types of coding was being used, THEN when it was needed the machine could cross reference these harder codes with already cracked codes automatically

that is you are already prepared for war by continually breaking random codes that you find

you could attack codes by using a SETI approach that is by using the down time of an entire computer network whilst the staff are having coffee or at home

>you could attack codes by using a SETI approach that is by using the down time of an entire computer network whilst the staff are having coffee or at home

And your chances of cracking any decent code are about the same of you finding evidence of an alien lifeform via a SETI.

sibeen said:

>you could attack codes by using a SETI approach that is by using the down time of an entire computer network whilst the staff are having coffee or at home

And your chances of cracking any decent code are about the same of you finding evidence of an alien lifeform via a SETI.

with a 10,000 computers that are only ancillary machines to the main machines?

wookiemeister said:

sibeen said:

>you could attack codes by using a SETI approach that is by using the down time of an entire computer network whilst the staff are having coffee or at home

And your chances of cracking any decent code are about the same of you finding evidence of an alien lifeform via a SETI.

with a 10,000 computers that are only ancillary machines to the main machines?

and this computer cross references known codes it has come across before

i suppose with digital tech the code can vary immensely BUT it makes me wonder if the principle of codes are limited

wookiemeister said:

wookiemeister said:

sibeen said:

>you could attack codes by using a SETI approach that is by using the down time of an entire computer network whilst the staff are having coffee or at home

And your chances of cracking any decent code are about the same of you finding evidence of an alien lifeform via a SETI.

with a 10,000 computers that are only ancillary machines to the main machines?

and this computer cross references known codes it has come across before

i suppose with digital tech the code can vary immensely BUT it makes me wonder if the principle of codes are limited

This from Wiki:

AES permits the use of 256-bit keys. Breaking a symmetric 256-bit key by brute force requires 2128 times more computational power than a 128-bit key. A device that could check a billion billion (1018) AES keys per second (if such a device could ever be made – as of 2012, supercomputers have computing capacities of 20 Peta-FLOPS, see Titan. So 50 supercomputers would be required to process (1018) operations per second) would in theory require about 3×1051 years to exhaust the 256-bit key space.

>>require about 3×1051 years<<

That calculates to 3153 years, which I am guessing is not what the article meant. Is that correct?

Kingy said:

>>require about 3×1051 years<<

That calculates to 3153 years, which I am guessing is not what the article meant. Is that correct?

3×10e51 years it was in the original article Kingy.

I’ll have to get c&p lessons from BC, but he’s orf having a Hula:)

Kingy, 3×10^51 years.

Which happens to be quite a long time.

Yep, that’s even longer than you wait in the queue on the phone to Telstras complaints department.

Which happens to be quite a long time.

which is what i said way up ^ there.

a lot of the enigma information that was cracked was basic matériel movements, logistic stuff. unimportant looking but from which troop build-ups etc could be determined.

also one of the luicky breaks that the code breakers got was operators retransmitting the same message. differences in the two transmissions greatly helped to crack the code.

one time pads are regarded as uncrackable.

Boris said:

also one of the luicky breaks that the code breakers got was operators retransmitting the same message. differences in the two transmissions greatly helped to crack the code.

one time pads are regarded as uncrackable.

They also all identified each sender.. which gave the top brass a good idea of who was what .. where.

They also all identified each sender..

by their “fist”. the allies used this to identify when their agents had been taken and the germans were using their gear to send erroneous messages.