Posts Tagged turing

A real Turing Machine

Posted by on Saturday, 27 March, 2010

We pay lots of lip service to Turing but has anyone actually seen or thought about what Turing did for computing? Aside from the Turing Test, Alan Turing invented his Machine, a “tape-based” system for digital computing. The machines have always been thought of as a “thought experiment” but on crazy man actually built one.

Although this Turing machine is controlled by a Parallax Propeller microcontroller, its operation while running is based only on a set of state transformations loaded from an SD card and what is written to and read from the tape. While it may seem as if the tape is merely the input and output of the machine, it is not! Nor is the tape just the memory of the machine. In a way the tape is the computer. As the symbols on the tape are manipulated by simple rules, the computing happens. The output is really more of an artifact of the machine using the tape as the computer.
The heart of the turing machine is the read-write head. The read-write head transports the tape and positions cells of the tape appropriately. It can read a cell determining what, if any, symbol is written there. The machine works on, and knows about, only one cell at a time. The tape in my machine is a 1000’ roll of white 35mm film leader. The characters, ones and zeros, are written by the machine with a black dry erase marker.

This thing is so far over my head that it’s in the stratosphere, but it’s an amazing build.



Registry Cleaners for XP

Posted by on Saturday, 3 October, 2009

Is your computer's terrible speed frustrating you? If your turing towards picking up a top registry cleaner? You will learn the exact role of registry cleaners and what to look for when you purchase a registry cleaner right here. There are numerous ways to speed up your old computer, and cleaning out the registry is definitely one of the most beneficial ways. Unfortunately, many people do not understand what exactly the registry files do.

The registry files are the brains of your system. It connects and exchanges information with the operation software as well as the hardware inside your computer. As you use your computer more and more, the policies and all these other things you do on your computer will start stacking up numerous amounts of registry files. Most of the registry files that are built up are useless and are just wasting your time. This is when the best registry cleaners come in useful. The sole purpose of these cleaners is to clean out the registry file as well as keeping them clean. There’s no point in cleaning something if it is going to happen again.

The registry files can be found by opening regedit when you type it in run. If you are inexperienced with these type of stuff, do not think about touching them. These are critical files for your computer, and you could end up causing harm if you decide to mess with these files without having a clue about what you are doing.

When you are looking to purchase a registry cleaner, there are a few things to look for. You want to look for something that says registry optimizers. This ensures that the registry software that you are buying is up to date and not something of the past. For those that have a 64 bit operating system you should download a free trial first to ensure it is compatable with your computer. This alone shows that your registry cleaner is the latest and current one that is out in the market.

You should always check to see if the registry cleaner you are looking at has a money back guarantee. Although most programs are good enough, some of them are just plain wasteful. With a money back guarantee you will be able to get a full refund just in case the cleaner does not satisfy your needs.

You do not want to look for the cheapest one in the market when purchasing. You want bang for buck but ensure the cleaner you get has the options your looking for registry cleaner comparison. If you are lucky, you will be able to easily find a registry cleaner that works beautifully for a very low price. Good luck on cleaning your registry files to boost your computer’s performance!


Petition asks UK to say “I’m Sorry!” to Alan Turing

Posted by on Monday, 31 August, 2009

Alan Turing
Chances are most of you know what the Turing Test is, and therefore have a passable familiarity with Alan Turing, one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Important People of the 20th century. For most people, knowledge of the man stops there. Some might know that he was a fantastic mathematician and cryptanalyst responsible for much of the code-breaking success of the UK’s Bletchley Park during WWII, including much of the work that lead to the breaking of the German Enigma machine codes.

Some might know that he was a homosexual. I’d wager that few knew that he was persecuted by the UK government for that. I didn’t know that he had been chemically castrated as part of his “rehabilitation” for gross indecency. The charge also resulted in revocation of his security clearance, and effectively ended his government work. Two years after his conviction, he was found dead of an apparent suicide.

Now a petition is underway to get the British government to formally apologize for its treatment of Turing. Organized by computer scientist John Graham-Cumming, more than 5,000 signatures have been collected, including writer Ian McEwan and scientist Richard Dawkins.

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to apologize for the prosecution of Alan Turing that led to his untimely death.

Alan Turing was the greatest computer scientist ever born in Britain. He laid the foundations of computing, helped break the Nazi Enigma code and told us how to tell whether a machine could think.

He was also gay. He was prosecuted for being gay, chemically castrated as a ‘cure’, and took his own life, aged 41.

The British Government should apologize to Alan Turing for his treatment and recognize that his work created much of the world we live in and saved us from Nazi Germany. And an apology would recognize the tragic consequences of prejudice that ended this man’s life and career.

Via the BBC.