Tag: Alan Turing
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How I discovered the fundamental theorem of arithmetic by chance
Actually, of course, I rediscovered it. I have been attempting to read, for the third time Douglas Hofstadter‘s celebrated Godel, Escher, Bach: I bought a copy in Washington DC in 2009 and loved it (though didn’t get very far before I put it down for some reason) but I have always struggled to get deeply…
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Stephen Fry is wrong about Alan Turing
Stephen Fry argues that Alan Turing’s “Universal Machine” is the greatest ever British innovation. The case for Turing is, of course, a strong one. Not just because of the computer you are reading this blog on, but because, probably even more importantly, Turing’s concept was at the heart of the British “Station X” codebreaking effort…
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Unreal Tournament at the forefront of AI research (really)
I am not much of a computer games player, but I do have a fondness for Unreal Tournament– a network shoot-em-up game at which I have always been hopeless if enthusiastic (though I’ve not played for a few years now). So I was pleasantly surprised to read that Unreal is now, according to the New…
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The halting problem … in verse
SCOOPING THE LOOP SNOOPER A proof that the Halting Problem is undecidable Geoffrey K. Pullum (School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh) No general procedure for bug checks will do. Now, I won’t just assert that, I’ll prove it to you. I will prove that although you might work till you…
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From The Selfish Gene to Alan Turing: the Enigma
As I spend a lot of time in the gym (honestly) I have decided to use that a little more productively and listen to decent non-fiction audio books – and I have just finished listening to Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene. I quite enjoyed the book (or the recording) in the end – certainly added…
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Leonardo DiCaprio to play Alan Turing?
I hadn’t realised this before (update: err, actually I did – I wrote about this in October 2011 too, oops) but apparently Leonardo DiCaprio is to play Alan Turing in “The Imitation Game“, a biopic. It’s fantastic news, not just because the idea of the film itself is appealing but because DiCaprio is surely one…
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In honour of Alan Turing
There is something great about the fact that the man who arguably did more than anyone else to preserve the freedoms that the reactionary right claim they want to protect was a gay scientist. Which do they hate more, the science or the homosexuality? This was the best article I read bout Turing all week…
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This man killed fascists
Alan Turing, mathematician, computer scientist, cryptanalyst, born 23 June 1912. Humanity will for ever be in his debt.
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A jubilee that matters
Britain, mired in recession, has just been through the first part of a bread-and-circuses summer, a royal jubilee (the second part – Euro 2012 – is on now and the third, the Olympics, is to follow shortly). This is not the place to debate the monarchy, though there is one undisputed fact here – Elizabeth…
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A meme you can believe in
Update: Thanks to Mary Wimbury (@marywimbury) for pointing out that this was, of course, someone making fun of anti-equal marriage protestors – at the Massachusetts constitutional convention. Not even homophobes are likely to complain about beating the Nazis, are they?
cartesian product ... stuff about computing mostly 