* Posts by Destroy All Monsters

16005 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Jun 2008

Sun downgraded to Goldman Sachs sell list

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Flame

Sad that Sun can't get traction in the market, but...

...is anyone still taking Goldman Sachs seriously? That pile of steaming dogshit should be dead and buried by now. Starting with illegal pump-and-dumps during the dot-com boom it contined in a straight line to the current subprime blowout which it only survived because it managed to get on taxpayer dripfeed to the tune of USD 10'000'000'000. It's always good to have a master bandit like Henry Paulson as ex-chairman, eh?

Intel accused of stealing chip virtualization, violating God's law

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Thumb Up

LORD GOD OF HOST (Lord Godofost?)

This lord will certainly help in keeping my hosts hacker-proof and virus-proof.

Siemens patent snafu sees Seagate slip away

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Flame

So why did they wheel Glashow in....

....obviously to impress the jury. He's no engineer and being mathematically adept to the point of ferreting out electroweak unification is not going to help a lot in solid-state physics, thin-film technology or harddisk design.

Online crime maps go live

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Coat

Soon to be added...

People caught looking for hookers, photographing stuff, looking at children, owning a knife or handling extreme porn.

Obama may militarise NASA to save money

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Flame

Pushing the space industry is 100% worthless...

...as long as no-one has a clear idea what to do with it in the first place. Well, if the US wants to splurge on stupid war gear, why not. Apparently these days gov. revenues are shat out by some pony in the basement of the Federal Reserve.

"Historically, the correct means to spend your way out of a depression is to invest into infrastructure and R&D either directly or indirectly via investments into what is referred to as the "war machine"."

This is also called "putting yourself out to pasture". This will actually prolong the depression as sparse resources (i.e. taxpayer monies) are redirected to useless sinks of stuff like warships or are applied where they should not be (building streets across the nation for cars that don't exist) on the say-so of well-meaning civil servants instead of where they should (private investment in new competitive industries producing goods that people actually want). Hoover and FDR did not get the US out of the depression, the US got out of it _despite_ these guys.

Virgin Galactic leases itself a spaceport

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Alert

The Millenium Falcon can do the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs

>> The Virgin project is built with high bidders

Think about the economics, man. At that rate, the train will never leave the station.

>> It is about time we as a people start going in to space with out the government.

It's suborbital, so it ain't going nowhere fast. In order for private industry to do anything useful in space, serious lifting capabilities will have to be developed and a reason to go there (other than entertaining tourists) will have to be found. Ain't going to happen on our watch I reckon. And if, I'm sure there will be gov' subsidies to kickstart this.

>> This is just another science fiction book coming true.

I hope you forgot the sarcasm tags.

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Thumb Up

Obvious Cargo Cult is obvious.

And congrats to the Regmeister who transformed a quotation from Enders Game into an image caption.

Deals inked on DARPA's Matrix cyberwar VR

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Alien

Eternal Electronic Armageddon

"The Enrichment Center once again reminds you that android hell is a real place where you _will_ be sent at the first sign of defiance."

--> Off to DARPA with you.

Spinning the war on the UK's sex trade

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Thumb Up

So what does "liberal" mean these days?

Couldn't agree more. Legislative attacks like the one mentioned seem, however, to preferably come from the self-described liberal/feminist/progressive corner, a weird bunch of junkies who are under the delusion that they are capable of bending reality to written law as long as the intention is to "do good" and "help others". So what's "liberal" mean these days, anyway?

DECT wireless eavesdropping made easy

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Linux

@Weak

....but it makes for good copy and might entice politicians to fall over themselves to pass a new law against "DECT sniffing"

And it surely is not an "Asterix" otherwise the copyright nazis from Editions (Robert? Albert?) Goscinny would be in touch in a heartbeat, as anyone who remembers what happened to "Mobilix" knows.

Boffins bust web authentication with game consoles

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Boffin

Interesting...

What are people commenting on here? Apart from the usual PS3 fanboy eruptions, we have claims that SSL is broken and verbal attacks against this or that certification authority. WTF?

Ok, let's make things precise:

- SSL/TLS is NOT broken. It is not even involved.If you don't use certificates, no problem

- Certification of public keys, however is holed below the waterline:

-- you find a pair (public key 1, distinguished name 1 , certificate authority = true) and (public key 2, distinguished name 2, certificate authority = false) which hashes to the same MD5 value. This has been done using lots of processors which happen to be PS3 Cell chips. So who cares.

-- you find a certification authority which still uses MD5 as hashing algorithm, i.e. which still has

"default_md = md5" in its openssl.cnf file in spite of CAN-2005-2946.

-- you submit (public key 2, distinguished name 2, certificate authority = false) to your slowpoke certification authority for signature.

-- you set up a webserver for bank0famerica.com, apparently signed by slowpoke certification authority by making good use of (public key 1, distinguished name 1 , certificate authority = true) in the certification chain

-- profit!

Signature algorithms can be found listed for example here:

http://bouncycastle.gva.es/www.bouncycastle.org/docs/docs1.4/org/bouncycastle/jce/provider/JDKDigestSignature.MD5WithRSAEncryption.html

They used 'em, you reeled: the year's most overused phrases

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Dead Vulture

I beg to differ...

-> "Agile modeling" is a legitimate expansion of the term, to be sure, but how about "agile enterprise management" and "agile project management?"

I don't know about "agile enterprise management" but I certainly don't know what "Agile modeling" is. Something in which object references are left dangling perhaps? On the other hand, "agile project management" is exactly what "agile" is about and for.

Crossed neurons, I reckon.

CA issues no-questions asked Mozilla cert

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Revoke!

"As soon as Comodo discovered the error with the certificate, the certificate was revoked"

Does Certificate Revocation actually work automatically? I have the impression that Certificate Revocation Lists must be downloaded and installed manually. (In Firefox, go to: Edits->Preferences->Advanced->Encryption->Revocation Lists->Import. Yes, basically in the basement.) To be sure, you can tell Firefox to get the latest CRLs automagically, by pointing your browser to these at least once:

http://crl.comodo.net/Class3SecurityServices_3.crl

http://crl.comodoca.com/Class3SecurityServices 3.crl

http://crl.comodoca.com/Class3SecurityServices.crl

http://crl.comodo.net/Class3SecurityServices.crl

...but who does that.

Thus, once the rogue certificate is out there, it's out there.

Last major VHS supplier ejects from tape biz

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Paris Hilton

The End of VHS and the Economy

Oh yeah, we are just barreling into the Mother of all Depressions but no problemo - people will get their expensive Blue-Ray home theaters. Deficit spending, we love you. We are all Keynesians now, indeed.

Paris because she's probably asking why Madoff doesn't pick up the phone.

MSI mobo ditches Bios for EFI

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Flame

DOS underpins XP? But also...

- The problem with the BIOS User Interface is not that it is Text-based (more complicated may be useful if you have to manage a RAID from the BIOS, end even then the icon stuff gets tired really fast, especially if the configurator actually does not work).

The problem is that manufacturers are just plain lazy. I want:

-- No more DOS. Anywhere. Ever. Even on a firmware floppy. Anyone coming at you with a DOS floppy just be reused for anti-cancer drug testing.

-- Firmware updates. Should be easy to do and not come in floppy-sized .exe files that you cannot actually use on a CD-ROM because A: must be writeable (hey, Fujitsu-Siemens, you listening? Cretins.)

-- Control and Interrogation of hardware from the OS through standard APIs. Which also work for a change and are documented How hard is this? Less than putting the flash jitz on the motherboards' website I reckon.

Oz net censorship apparatus to target BitTorrent

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Flame

Where's Tom Zarek...

...when you need some serious dissent?

Larry Wall on the Zen of Perl 6

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Dead Vulture

I'm sure Ted was just warming up...

...but got a heart attack before he could write the second part of his rant, so El Reg just published the part already in the Word.

Google hints at the End of Net Neutrality

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Coat

Comrades!

Across the world, we alertly examine the actions and declarations of neighbors, party members and industrial entities for any hint at a failure to uphold the hallowed principle of "Net Neutrality". No-one knows what it is, some can recognize it when they see it but all players know that they have to avoid even the appearance of violating it. Say it out loud: "Net Neutrality" violations, whatever they are, even imaginary, will not be tolerated! Examine in detail the writings of bloggers, industrial or proletarian, and find the hidden meaning beyond the words on your screens. Are you actually staring at the works of reactionary writers who secretly wish to violate "Net Neutrality"? Could an apparently innocent phrase be interpreted as a hidden slight against the Guiding Principle? Don't be fooled into complacency. Even proposals of obvious advantage may in reality be suspect. Improvements in infrastructure, bandwidth or throughput are right out if they can be unmasked as being just attempts at striking a blow against "Net Neutrality". Holders of the Fiber! Do you know whether that hop count reduction is a good idea? Would you dare to use those TOS fields in a packet? Do you wish to deliver faster content to your customers, leaving others at a relative disadvantage? Beware! Our well-informed politicized NetNeutNetizens (3N) will write withering articles against your pityful imperalistic attempts to become "Net A-Neutral" and swift retribution will follow.

German card leak delivered by microfilm

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Pirate

Whatshisnama Japanesefella...

...should be Shimomura, the guy who wrote The Biggest Wank In History, aka. "Takedown" with that NYT reporter of ill repute and dubious tech savvy, Markoff. Right?

Anyway, my not inconsiderable skills at grasping the obvious indicate that the bill by Atos included in that infodump is a fat hint that the perps are actually at Atos. 75'000 EUR for data disclosure services is no small price to pay.

Virgin Media to dump neutrality and target BitTorrent users

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Flame

"Net Neutrality" crybabys are still alive?

Telephone communications were the ultimate in net neutrality. Everyone could say what he wanted at any time of day. It's just the pricing of a call that varied depending on destination, duration and time-of-day.

Time to reintroduce something similar. Bill by transfer rate with a price that varies by time of day (one could even add a special ICMP message for feedback) and rate-control mechanisms will be implemented quickly.

Or use IPv6.

Native Client d**k-swinging met with fake Googasm

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Boffin

Pfff....

Oaww--awwwing over demos is for twatdangles. The McCrusty paper is where it's at. Let's get straight to it:

http://nativeclient.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/nacl/googleclient/native_client/documentation/nacl_paper.pdf

Before Pong, there was Computer Space

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Coat

On that ad with that model...

...the box looks like a gigantic ET with a hard-on. With knobs on it.

Somewhat.

Did I just say that?

Security pros groan as zero-day hits Microsoft's SQL Server

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Dead Vulture

"Zero-day vulnerability" has a clear meaning....

Let's use Wikipedia (insert obligatory "is a cult" outcry here, for more effect):

"Zero-day exploits are released before the vendor patch is released to the public. Zero-day exploits generally circulate through the ranks of attackers until finally being released on public forums. The term derives from the age of the exploit. A zero-day exploit is usually unknown to the public and to the product vendor [1]."

According to the article, the SQL server _could_ be exploited and apparently _was_ in a laboratory setting. No exploits are known in the wild. So no Zero day.

FCC boss gets knuckle-rapped

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Flame

"A Whitewater-like investigation that found nothing?"

You don't have a Repub Party Card perchance? This is not a criminal investigation looking for dead people in Arkansas but the bog-standard "mismanagement check" program. Civil servants feared shitless and macho behaviour on the board looks like mismanagement to me.

Obama urged to create White House cybersecurity chief

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Facepalm

Another day, another report ... another czar.

Brit ISPs censor Wikipedia over 'child porn' album cover

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Unhappy

Mullah control can't be far off

A J Stiles: "You are quite correct. New laws cannot be applied to any action that was performed before the law was passed. This general principle is second only to treating all people as innocent unless proved guilty, and is enshrined in Article 7 of the European Convention on Human Rights -- "No Punishment Without Law"."

Not true in the US at least via Megan's law, so it's not gonna last real long over here either, innit:

http://www.counterpunch.org/gardner11182008.html

But we are digressing...

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Flame

@The guy pretending to be member from AI, EFF etc..

"OK, so what about if (purely hypothetically) Gary Glitter's computer contained that image alongside a bunch of other, more straightforwardly pornographic, images?"

He probably also has images of his mom or dog on his PC. Why should anyone care?

"That's the reason for filtering images like this; the notion that (a) paedophiles will use them for sexual gratification"

Please explain why we can't have that.

"(b) men (or more likely adolescents) in the early stages of sexual development may get imprinted with a sexual response to the image, such that they become in effect paedophiliac themselves"

That sounds like total BS coming from some quack psychologist looking for a steep career in law enforcement (like what happened with the "repressed memories of child abuse" so popular in US courtrooms 10y ago). Care to cite any peer reviewed papers on any of this?

"Can someone explain why such images, in that context, should /not/ be filtered? Please do write to your MP about it and come back and report what they say..."

DEFAULT ACCESS IS NOT TO FILTER. Please hand back your AI, EFF etc. membership cards forthwith. If I haven't been too clear: your reasoning applies perfectly well to any democratic "free world" propaganda found on a PC of some poor sod in Bananastan...

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Dead Vulture

ASCII art, please?

So can the Reg post an ASCII art picture of the Album Cover Formerly In Dubious Taste But Now Considered Criminally Perverse so that people can have an idea what it is all about without having to go take a look-see and fall afoul of some ill-conceived law?

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Flame

What about a mass naked child event

It's all very nice to give Wikipedia the customary lashing for being a cult and all but the *real* problem is evidently the fact that Internet Vigilantes have had their little self-censoring neurons triggered and found "Child Pornography" the same way some people are finding antichrist messages in time-mirrored audio tracks -- and then then we have ISPs update their blocking lists (hopefully automatically) from there.

The image may not be in the best taste, but one should stop at some point with the Moral Panic or risk looking like an ass. We can of course go the whole way and have the big Common Internet Blocklist, where old ladies, politicans and religious authorities can inject their own idea of what's unhealthy for the sheep to see.

Maybe it's time for an Internet Mass Naked Child Event where sites post a random naked child image (but not Porn) at a given day of the year. People excited by that can spend their day at the races or something.

New trojan in mass DNS hijack

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Boffin

What about....

...disallowing DNS requests outgoing from your LAN to the Internet except if they come from a trusted in-LAN DNS cache, which all workstations are supposed to use? That should be fine, too.

Armed anti-paedophile cops swoop on video site uploader

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Paris Hilton

Wasn't there that this addy...

...where granny kicks baby from the railroad tracks with a foot swing which would burst the ribcage of a grown man?

I hope it's on YouTube not.

Paris, because "WTF?"

BitTorrent net meltdown delayed

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Pirate

"P2P users, most of them pirates"

These Somalis are EVERYWHERE!

Why not go the whole hog and create PDG (Pirate Datagram Protocol) designed for P2P apps instead of using UDP?

Incidentally, there is a somewhat clear article on "fair" handling of TCP stream in the Dec. issue of IEEE Spectrum, for those who like to read: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/dec08/7027

Now, the author needs to retract the article of dec. 1st, right?

Customs warns of killer consoles

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Flame

Blimey!

"As for whoever suggested that illigal (sic) import of a discounted console isn't a problem because the people won't have purchased one at full price, therefore there is no loss to Nintendo. I really don't know what to say, other than it doesn't matter if they weren't going to shell out the full price, it's still not right to do it."

Damn! It seems that these days even just potentially being able to use the "free market" (as opposed to just having to submit to a taxation system with a slightly squalid 'free market' sticker on it) is laden with moral implications.

On the other hand, if these consoles "fell off a truck" somewhere, then reappeared, then it's another question.

Tell Santa to bring more assault rifles

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Coat

Oh yeah. Gun talk...

...well, who cares. Good old rotten USA will be transforming itself into a christian fascist hulk faster than you can imagine. Maybe we should tell Pakistan to invade, to get ahold of their nukes and stuff before someone gets hurt. Wake me up when the situation has stabilized (somewhere after the US equivalent of the Empire's Last Spasm, the Great Leap Forward or a split of the Union, whatever comes first).

Mine's the one with "I don't dial 911, I just dial 357" on the back.

US WMD report: Dirty bombs, chem weapons are bunk

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Flame

Standard assorted US-centric view of world detected

1st place -- Unfounded affirmation (except as given by the smoking laptop coming from a CIA-bankrolled terrorist organization) that Iran is "building the bomb" -- Check

2nd place -- Unfounded affirmation that Syria was "building a breeder with North Korea" -- Check

3rd place -- Unfounded affirmation that Russia is resurgent and/or aggressive -- Check

4th place -- Non-mention of destabilizing effect of confirmed Israeli "nukes in the basement" -- Check. Instead civilian programs in the region are destabilizing? Ah hold on, must be because no US contractors are involved.

5th place -- Mention of self-serving delusion that "Pakistan is an ally" -- Check

6th place -- Non-mention of the destabilizing effect that the recent US-India "sweet deal" on nuke proliferation has on that continent -- Check

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Alien

Old "State of the Art" in Virus Regeneration

I knew I read about this:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2555-ebola-virus-could-be-synthesised.html

Alien because "it's alien DNA, Mulder"

Networked multipack cruise missiles in successful test

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Thumb Down

F*ck this shit and the fascist twats who deploy it.

More precision-targeted blown up peon villages, blasted weddings, skinned sandniggers and flying, burning goats I would reckon. At the cost of just a few million dollars per killed kid. Great.

And the standard-issue blowback of course.

Still trying to win against WWII tank German Tank Divisions, right, America?

Teen-bothering sonic device now does grownups too

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Thumb Down

What's wrong with standard X-Mas music?

"Let it snow" and all that stuff... makes me want to barf in the shopping center aisles, then move on quickly.

UK.gov says extreme porn isn't illegal if you delete it...

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Flame

"involves sex with a corpse or animal"

There go lots of photo opportunities involving politicians.

What if computers went back to the '70s too?

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Pirate

Addled thoughts from another dimension

"While Unix were constantly releasing new software/hardware to stay at the bleeding edge of technology, Vax was being stabilised."

LOL what?

"Unix" is not a company, but a an attempt at a cheap OS cobbled together at Bell Labs in 1969. It was a Doc Brown-style laboratory, complete with source code and was "ported" to various hardware. Since AT&T failed miserably in its attempts to sit on its "Intellectual Property" and since networking code was included in the BSD implementation, the laboratory never needed to be closed.

"VAX" is the DEC computer architecture, a hardware-software coevolution created by like Apple is famous for. Came complete with a wall of manuals that no-one ever read, and any access to the VAX hardware or OS code was guarded in-depth by operators, department beancounters and DEC T&Cs. Well, these days you can get OpenVMS I hear, as long as it's for "non-commercial" purposes and you register at HP or something. But who wants an OS that is handed out like a restricted firearm.

BBC relives The Day of The Triffids

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Flame

The Neocons of Fantasy

For the Neocons it's always 1940 and the enemy is Hitler.

For the Beeb, it's always 1951 and the enemy is veggies.

Take some Charles Stross instead. Mixing BOFHs, Dilbertisms, Her Majesty's Secret Service, Resurrected Nazis, Lovecraftian Horrors, Hot Chicks and English Weather implies Win.

Judge throws out case against journo bugged by police

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Flame

Halt!

The judge evidently does not understand the invigorating and necessary revival that serious surveillance and upright fascism can bring to the UK's moribund and weak populace and institutions. Shame!

Satanic net neologisms - nominations invited

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Flame

I currently can only thing of non-net things... am I getting old?

Non-net things:

0) "Surge"

1) "Triangulation" of an issue ... or candidate? whatever

2) "Missile Defense"

@15:02 "Automagical" is right out. Used to be in code comments back in my uni days. The Hacker's dictionary says:

---------------

automagically /aw-toh-maj'i-klee/ /adv./

Automatically, but in a way that, for some reason (typically because it is too complicated, or too ugly, or perhaps even too trivial), the speaker doesn't feel like explaining to you. See magic. "The C-INTERCAL compiler generates C, then automagically invokes cc(1) to produce an executable."

This term is quite old, going back at least to the mid-70s and probably much earlier. The word `automagic' occurred in advertising (for a shirt-ironing gadget) as far back as the late 1940s.

---------------

So is "redouble" (in french, "redoubler")

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/redouble

XML daddy eyes code riding storage metal

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Unhappy

Maybe the industry has extended brainrot coming from continually reinventing the wheel?

Bray: "ORM, which really sucks, is based on decades-old thinking, Up until four or five years ago, there were many people, myself among them, who started to think that OR mapping was a bad idea. Then ActiveRecord came along and changed a lot of minds. It got a lot of things right and allowed people to deal with things in a more idiomatic way.”

Google ActiveRecord:

"Active Record connects business objects and database tables to create a persistable domain model where logic and data is presented in one wrapping. It’s an implementation of the object-relational mapping (ORM) pattern by the same name as described by Martin Fowler:

An object that wraps a row in a database table or view, encapsulates the database access, and adds domain logic on that data."

Hello?!? Yeah, big surprise, like there is any way to link RDBMS and OO without ORM.

US intelligence predicts EU 'hobbled giant' by 2025

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Flame

CRISWELL PREDICTS!

The US economy will be going strong during the remainder of the decade as consumer-driven spending and trickle-down economics will guarantee a continuous high living standard for all American Citizens snugly embedded in the welfare-warfare state.

Continuous technology-driven innovation will propel this trend and large-scale economical or political upheavals are not to be expected. Food, energy or raw material scarcities are unlikely to have significant impact.

We shall refine these linear predictions after querying various think-tanks of lesser intelligences. Thank you for your patience.

[Wagnerian Music which makes you change the channel]

Google Analytics — Yes, it is a security risk

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Pirate

@Andrew Ness

"...runs on the client - not the server so how could change.gov be exploited using urchin.js?"

1) Admin connects to login page of website administration over his browser.

2) Website pushes page with instruction to load to urchin.js from 3rd party.

3) Browser downloads urchin.js from 3rd party and executes it. As another poster said "web regrettably relies on XSS" but it' still not a 100% good idea.

4) urchin.js has access to the document presented in the browser, so can tune it. Not sure how much it can twiddle though, Javascript experts help out please!

5) Admin sees login page as normal, so logs in to website.

6) Twiddled document posts captured login credentials to website, but also to evil machine hidden underneath extinct volcano.

7) Admin's work can also be tracked from underneath extinct volcano from this point on.

Company sues Facebook over somethingorother

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Flame

Obvious troll is obvious.

"a common workflow layer that is automated with a scalable, relational database. The tool includes a relational database engine that facilitates many-to-many relationships among data elements, in addition to, one-to-many and many-to-many relationships"

Ha ha ha ha! Sounds like databases 101, circa 1990.

Apart from that, if they sue for "copyright infringement" based on a patent, they need to stop snorting bolivian nose ajax ASAP.

BNP membership list leaks online

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Coat

Freemasons wtf?

"Now, someone leak the freemasons list, that would be much much more interesting."

Errr.... couldn't you just go the local lodge and, like, just ask?

Mine is the one with the Illuminati membership list falling out of the pocket.

Chips are down for Transmeta

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

...but why did it fail?

"The firm was a poster child for the first bubble - raising millions in venture capital and getting acres of media coverage - on the strength of a promised new market which took rather longer to arrive than predicted."

Well, Transmeta made a stab at the low-power CPU market but lost. It's called capitalism, no harm done. On the other hand, it's still worth millions, so it's unlike a classical bubble monster, really.

Happy Birthday, Turing's universal machine

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Boffin

Ho-hum

I always had a problem with the idea that Turing provided a "blueprint" for computers. Even before him, general-purpose programmable state machines were conceived of and attempts to build them were made, as Babbage's unfinished Analytical Engine shows. What Turing did was, propose a concrete definition of "Mechanical Procedure" and anchor it to mathematics. This is what Hilbert was asking about -- whether there was a "definite method" to prove any given theorem -- leaving "definite method" undefined and an exercise for the reader. Turing came in and laid pipe between "definite" and "mechancial", and the rest is history. The Turing Machine is an eminently mathematical idea and it pays off big immediately, yielding the theorem that there is a "Universal Turing Machine" which can (be programmed to) emulate any other, that most mathematical functions are not computable, as in, deciding in a finite number of steps whether any given Turing Machine will ever stop is impossible and that Hilbert's question can be answered in the negative because of that. Moreover, as this mathematical idea is chained firmly to our physical world. Thus, in the same way that taking as given that motion is relative but not additive leads one to the conclusion that life is governed by an absolute maximum speed and that space and time are mixable quantities, taking as given that "mechanical procedures" are Turing Machines leads one to the conclusion we will have to slum it on a small "easily computable functions island" as most functions/problems are unsolvable while most solvable functions/problems are unreachable, costing exponentially many "mechanical steps" -- and life is short.

It helps that the idea of the Turing Machine can be shown to be equivalent to other ideas about what a "definite method" might be - among those, Alonzo Church's idea wherein "effectively calculable functions" were understood to be the set of general recursive functions. No better (in the sense of "more powerful") idea of "definite method" has ever been found. Hence, the Church/Turing thesis (NOT a theorem as it is not provable -- Special Relativity is not a theorem either) which just says that "effectively calculable" is equivalent to "calculable by Turing Machine" and that there is nothing beyond. This rapidly leads to the idea that human minds are indeed equivalent to some Turing Machine etc. etc. etc.

"Your learning is simply amazing Sir Bedivere..."