Campaign Saves Unique Turing Archive 37
99luftballon writes "A near-complete collection of Alan Turing's offprints have been bought for Bletchley Park following an online campaign and funds from Google and the UK government. They will go on display in the next few months. From the article: 'The collection contains offprints of 15 of Turing's 18 published papers assembled by his friend and colleague Max Newman. It includes Turing's first published paper, as well as his initial plans for computing and artificial intelligence.'"
So.... (Score:2)
This collection is only recursively enumerable?
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All you need to do is evaluate the parent comment.
I guess ... (Score:5, Funny)
I guess this collection is Turing near-complete.
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I guess this collection is Turing near-complete.
I'm still studying for my Turing test.
Good on Google (Score:1, Interesting)
Every once in a while I notice that Google hasn't taken their eye off the ball. They have achieved status as some of the most respected players in the industry. Why? Because they actually care a bit about its history. Most everyone else is solely interested in the last quarter, and whether the shareholders will be pleased. M$ couldn't give the slightest sniff about Turing, same with IBM, HP, Oracle, and most of the rest. I like making money, but not necessarily to the exclusion of all else. I can't s
Re:Good on Google (Score:4, Interesting)
Every once in a while I notice that Google hasn't taken their eye off the ball. They have achieved status as some of the most respected players in the industry. Why? Because they actually care a bit about its history. Most everyone else is solely interested in the last quarter, and whether the shareholders will be pleased. M$ couldn't give the slightest sniff about Turing, same with IBM, HP, Oracle, and most of the rest. I like making money, but not necessarily to the exclusion of all else. I can't say the same about those I've mentioned. The hard-core business types will offer "well, there is nothing without money", and that is what separates the pioneers in any industry, the innovators in any industry, and the captains in any industry, from the outsourced, half-baked, half-cooked, humdrum, rest.
Possibly true - but I'd argue that's because Sergey and Larry still run Google. I strongly suspect that if Bill Hewlett and David Packard were still alive they would probably care, (leisure suit) Larry Ellison might also care although since he hasn't given any money in this case who can say for sure, hell even Bill Gates might care but he's no longer running the show and I'm pretty sure the Ballmer monkey wouldn't care.
In short once Sergey and Larry retire I doubt Google will give a flying monkey's arse either.
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If Gates really cared in that way, would he have stepped aside? And left the shop to "the Ballmer monkey"? Hewlett & Packard I'll grant you since they create a great company that was the favorite place to work of all IT guys, and it took Carly Fiorina to undo their work. But Ellison & Gates? I just can't find it in my heart to extend any benefit of any doubt for those two.
Don't get me wrong... I'm no fan of Gates (quite the opposite) but I'm willing to at least acknowledge that he started off as a geek unlike Ballmer. As for Larry Ellison he occasionally has amusing things to say (eg. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13953_3-10052188-80.html [cnet.com]) and unlike Jobs, Gates, etc. he seems to actually take the time to enjoy his billions (yaht races) which gives him a couple of brownie points in my book (I get the impression that the others just like to sit at home and count the money). OTOH
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https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Endoplasmic_reticulum [wikimedia.org]
Ridiculous : The spell for a Boggart (Celtic creature or HP shape shifter). The endoplasmic reticulum occurs in three shapes and varies with the amount of synthesis.
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Of course if you see it with a mohawk haircut, vicious boots, and a chainsaw, it's endoplasmatic [wikipedia.org] reticulum.
What are they paying for? (Score:1)
I understand that people like to be able to touch history - but I find it a bit ironic that people are willing to pay so much for the physical paper and ink these were written on. The value of the papers is in the ideas, and those can be downloaded for free - thanks to many of the ideas in those papers.
Waste of money based on big misunderstanding (Score:3, Informative)
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It's the same reason the original Mona Lisa painting is so valued, even though you can look at its copies for free anywhere.
Of course, not everyone would be interested in owning the original - everyone has different tastes and preferences.
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Who's accountable for this? £200k of public money for what amounts to a novelty - nothing of value was saved. Crazy indeed.
Quite a coup by the owners of those copies of publicly published papers.
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This is very different.... these are offprints and Turing simply recieved them in the post and handed them out to people he wanted to read them.
Ooh, he touched them! Surely that makes them worth... nope, still nothing.
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I think you wanted to post that in another story.
Notes to von Hacklheber (Score:1)