On 23 Jun 2012, at 16:11, Daniel Holmes wrote:
Yeah, its a simple Turing machine.
Turing was a fascinating man. He invented the bombe, the machine used to break the enigma code during world war 2, and is considered the father of artificial intelligence with his Turing tests. He was a brilliant mathematician and cryptographer.
Turing machines are a hypothetical computational machine that help to understand the limits of mechanical computational algorithms. Turing tests are tests given to humans that try to have the human distinguish the answers given by a machine as indistinguishable from an humans answers. Basically to see how far we can go with artificial intelligence.
BBC is running a couple of podcasts this week on Turing's life. http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/discovery
I've always wondered what modern computer science would look like if he hadn't committed suicide in his early forties.
And how ironic that having to stay closeted drove him to kill himself in a country that today allows gays to marry. patrick