Enigma 312
The film closely follows the novel, although it does eliminate a few of the more subtle complexities. It was wildly popular in Britain when it was released there last year, probably because the story is told with gorgeously detailed sets dressed with nostalgia for a time of British patriotism and success. The film's costumes are lavish, the extras are everywhere, and the look is close enough to reality that the best complaint one ex-translator stationed at Bletchley Park could offer was that the canteen in the film was much nicer. Even Mick Jagger, one of the film's producer, couldn't resist the spirit and gave himself a cameo appearance as an officer relaxing in a club.
This film could represent the cultural high point for codeslinging nerds and other Slashdot types. Jagger produced this film with another cultural icon, Saturday Night Live's Lorne Michaels. If you secretly spend your days dreaming of strutting around the stage like Mick Jagger, you can now take some pride in the fact that Mick Jagger spent at least a few days dreaming of playing a code geek. And why not? According to one of the characters, the women go weak in the knees when they get to talk to codebreakers like the protagonist, Tom Jericho (Dougray Scott).
This movie is about sex and mathematics and the crucial satisfaction that comes from understanding the depth of their power. The two main threads of the film track Tom Jericho's search for 1) a missing lover (Saffron Burroughs) and 2) a new way to break the Germans' four rotor, Naval Enigma system known as Shark. His lover may have been mixed up in Germany's sudden decision to abandon the old codes and all of this must be untangled or else the war could be lost. Tom Stoppard, the screenwriter also responsible for Shakespeare In Love, weaves these two threads together with car chases, kissing, train whistles, moonlit nights, illicit file swapping and a few other romantic chords.
It seems like a lot of things happen in four days, but we must remember that this plays out in an era when people weren't couch potatoes taught that ignoring advertising is forbidden. The pacing is the biggest problem with the film because there's too much action packed into 117 minutes, leaving some transitions a bit confusing. The jumps are often too quick and in some places it's hard to know when the flashbacks begin and end.
Despite that, there's much for a geek to love in this movie. Both the Enigma machine and the cryptanalytic attack developed by the British are described in fairly good detail. We learn, perhaps too quickly, that much of the game is finding a crib, a term the codebreakers used to refer to a word or phrase that must be somewhere in the scrambled message. A weather broadcast, for instance, would include the word "rainy" on a wet day and the codebreakers would examine the possible combinations that might produce that word. That was one weakness the folks at Bletchley Park were able to exploit before Jericho's girlfriend disappeared.
Some of the other mathematical details are accurate but not explained in enough detail to be easily understood. Once the crib was identified, the codebreakers relied heavily on the fact that the Enigma machine could not encode one letter into itself. This weakness allowed them to eliminate many of the potential cribs quickly. Then they spent their time looking for potential "loops" in the coding. In a simple case, a loop is formed when the letter A is encoded as an R and a few letters later, an R is encoded as an A. Most of the loops are a chain of several letters strung out in an odd combination. This pencil-and-paper work by the codebreaker is turned over to a big machine that uses the loops to eliminate many of the potential positions of the rotors. The rest are tested quickly with plenty of whirring and clicking. On a good day, and there were many of them, the right settings for the rotors popped out and let the Allies read the encrypted traffic.
You get to see all of this in action, although the film does not describe much of it in the hopes of sparing those unanointed with the knee-weakening, code smashing gene. It's not really fair for me to concentrate on the machines and ignore the actors because most of the movie revolves around the emotional battles for the characters and their conflicting desires. These passions are well-constructed and intelligently arranged. Dougray Scott plays the mathematician with enough dash and sophistication while Kate Winslet fills out the role of the mousey clerk and co-conspirator. The real star is Jeremy Northam, who plays a sophisticated Foreign Office spy with the right amount of oily charm. He, like everyone else in this movie, is fighting a private little war which may or may not fit in with the larger battle between the Allied and Axis forces.
Some of these battles are so crucial to the plot that it's impossible to comment on them without spoiling the ending. For this reason, I'm including several links for you to click after seeing the movie ( first, second, and third.) as well as a sentence encrypted with an Enigma simulator:
FBZ DDE NZA DJN PNI POH YBF NJR QFP DDZ TVP IHN YSJ IXX UAH YXF BZT ZXW BXS GES GYD IFO VXQ KHU LMA SYX YEG MGK
Using Enigma as a digital rights management device is not new-- Harris includes an encrypted dedication in the novel-- but it raises an interesting question: Is the movie and its detailed description of breaking the Enigma in violation of the DMCA? Is the extra detail in the movie just a cookbook for those who want to pirate the sentence I encrypted above? If so, should I be able to shut it down? While some reviewers may dream of writing something so powerful that it closes a movie immediately, I would hate to do it to this one. It's a pretty, nostalgic thriller that makes a good date movie--especially if you happen to be a knee-weakening, codebreaking type.
Peter Wayner's latest books are Disappearing Cryptography, an exploration about how to disguise information and Translucent Databases, a practical description of how to use encryption algorithms to protect sensitive information like credit cards and medical records. If they ever get made into a movie, he wants to be played by Keanu Reeves -- the one who played Ted "Theodore" Logan, not the one who played Neo.
Another book on the topic... (Score:5, Informative)
I can't help thinking, though, that as much as many of us love to make the comparison, no court in America would accept that cracking enemy cyphers falls under the DMCA.
Peace,
James Vogel.
Re:Another book on the topic... (Score:5, Informative)
There is also a good chapter or two on the Enigma cracking in The Code Book by Simon Singh.
The review of this movie that I saw said it was good, but not quite what it could have been, considering how incredible the actual story was.
Re:Another book on the topic... (Score:2, Informative)
It is best read in concert with the Enigma chapters in Singh's 'The Code Book', though, as they leave the technical description of Enigma 'till fairly late in the book,
so in some of the early chapters you have _no_ idea what they're talking about until you skip forward a bit.
Re:Another book on the topic... (Score:2)
Re:Another book on the topic... (Score:2)
... but it would probably make more sense if you watched it in about 2 hrs, like the rest of us.
Then again, being a Neal Stephenson work, maybe not...
interesting approach (Score:2, Insightful)
In this case it is an irrelevent rant that needlessly attacks Hollywood studios. I would argue that this editorial content almost certainly does not belong in a movie review (which should be studio-agnostic, IMO), and without doubt should not be representing the review on the main page.
This doesn't even address the fact that comparing Gnutella users to the codebreakers in WW2 is a stretch, at best. Remember, those guys invented the computer in order to defeat Nazis. This is very different from sharing one's collection of Beck songs and downloading Simpsons episodes.
Re:interesting approach (Score:4, Insightful)
Not that I agree with them but a great many Gnutella users think that they're using it to defeat Nazis too. It's just that their definition of Nazis is based on greedy businessmen in Hollywood rather than fascist murderers in wartime Germany.
Oh, and by the way, the code breakers at Bletchley Park didn't invent the computer - Charles Babbage did that a great many years earlier.
Re:interesting approach (Score:3, Funny)
I could define Nazis to mean bran muffins, and fight fascism during breakfast.
Re:interesting approach (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:interesting approach (Score:2, Insightful)
Okay, I understand what you are trying to suggest, but by definition Congress did indeed have everything to do with passing the DMCA.
Still, you are misplacing blame. As a rational, capitalist organization, the $x$yAA will buy legislation as long as it is for sale. Even if you hunted down its members, every other industry group will do the same. Your task will be complete when you have destroyed all industry.
The correct approach is to either force Congress to be "good" (easier said than done), or to remove Congress's power altogether. The federal government is too big to meet the needs of its subjects, and now serves only to extend its own influence.
States and local governments need to pass anti-DMCA laws that nullify the DMCA as permitted by the 10th Amendment. The federal government is seizing power not granted it by the Constitution. Attacking the MPAA and RIAA is a waste of time.
Oh, and even Congress isn't comparable to National Socialism.
;)
Re:interesting approach (Score:4, Informative)
Re:interesting approach (Score:4, Informative)
Dunstan
Re:interesting approach (Score:2, Insightful)
Err, no. The Polish Code breakers invented Bombes long before Blechley Park started really trying to crack the German codes. It was only when the enigma machines got an additional roter that the Poles turned over their designs for the bombes to the British, becuase the Poles didn't have the resources to build the much greater number of bombes that would now be needed.
Also they wanted to get the code breaking ability out of their county before the pending German invasion.
Re:interesting approach (Score:3, Insightful)
Babbage did not invent the computer (Score:2, Informative)
Invention of the Computer (Score:3, Interesting)
As established in court [iastate.edu] the computer was invented before WW II [ameslab.gov] at Iowa State College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts [iastate.edu] in Ames, Iowa [yahoo.com]
Re:interesting approach (Score:2)
Slashdot FUD? (Score:4, Insightful)
So, what's the point of using a purposefully misleading intro paragraph? Slashdot is where I learned of the acronym "FUD" ("Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt," for those who do not know) but it seems like putting a misleading intro like this will help spread it, rather than help stop it.
How many people do you think will only read the main page, and go away thinking it's the truth? Yeah, it's their own fault for not reading the entire story, but everyone is guilty of this from time to time.
Re:Slashdot FUD? (Score:2)
Re:Slashdot FUD? (Score:2)
I bet when they look at the logs for this story, and see how many extra hits it got, a light bulb will pop up in someone's head.
Re:Slashdot FUD? (Score:2)
You don't know what a relief it is to hear someone else say that. For the longest time, I thought it was just me who had problems with Timothy.
I wonder though, do others really care or is it simply a case of everyone-is-going-to-bother-someone?
I.e. some folks here seem to like Katz, some don't, and many feel strongly one way or the other. Is Timothy simply my Katz and I should quit complaining? Or is he really a really bad editor? Are there big Timothy fans out there? Are there other people who, like me, would really like to see him move from a Slashdot Editor to a regular member?
-Bill
BTW, Yes, I realize this is off-topic, or can be peceived as a troll, etc. But then again, these are the discussion boards of Slashdot, and sometimes Off-Topic is appropiate. Some of the best threads I remember from the hey-days of Usenet were the ones, that by strictist definition, were "off-topic" ones. Anyway, mod me down I guess, if you feel that strongly that this converstation shouldn't even take place.
Re:Slashdot FUD? (Score:2)
Not FUD at all (Score:2)
Anyway, it wasn't a purposefully misleading paragraph, it was making a very valid, and effective, point. Hats off to all involved.
Re:Not FUD at all (Score:2)
Good journalism is also catching the interest of the reader. This worked for me and I had the exact same reaction than you "heck hollywood releasing something like that? Its probably going to have a twist and a big moral issue with how bad file swapping is and other BS, let's read on"
This I find amusing, compared to april 1st when all the subjects were totally lame. Anyways, obviously when you have 100,000s of readers, you will never get everybody on your side, you'll always do something good, excellent and bad at the same time.
Anyways, I've found that amusing.
Re:Slashdot FUD? (Score:3, Insightful)
Two points about this:
1. It's on
2. It's about a movie. If you go to see it based on a review you didn't read, you deserve to be disappointed.
3. It's a movie about codebreaking, and it's called Enigma. How much of a clue do you need?
4. I meant three points.
But is it better than Cryptonomicon? (Score:2, Interesting)
I just wanted to see who they would cast as America Shaftoe! (and maybe Glory too, except for the leprosy...)
Re:But is it better than Cryptonomicon? (Score:2)
/Brian
Re:But is it better than Cryptonomicon? (Score:2)
Re:[offtopic]Re:But is it better than Cryptonomico (Score:2)
Don't forget -- Doug and Amy Shaftoe are 1/2 and 1/4 Filipino, respectively. The actresses playing them would have to at least be able to look Eurasian.
Doug Shaftoe would be a difficult call -- Keanu Reeves (part Chinese), maybe, if he bulked up a lot and had some aging makeup. (Dean Cain comes to mind as well, but even though he's part Japanese he doesn't look it.) Amy Shaftoe... maybe Sandra Bullock, even though she's not Asian at all. She could definitely pull the part off, though; unlike a lot of other actresses that get the kinds of comedic roles she goes after (Cameron Diaz and the like) she can be gritty enough for the part.
Unfortunately I'd have to reread Cryptonomicon for other ideas; Randy in particular has never really been a character I could picture.
/Brian
Re:[offtopic]Re:But is it better than Cryptonomico (Score:2)
Bobby Shaftoe, yes. Doug Shaftoe is half-Filipino, though, so he would look quite Asian. Jennifer Tilly actually did come to mind, but she's so completely wrong for the part I didn't bother to bring her up myself; Amy comes off as being rather younger, to begin with, and probably a lot tougher-looking -- a few tats, IIRC, for one thing -- whereas Jennifer Tilly is a bit too curvy and bimboish.
/Brian
DMCA violation (Score:5, Funny)
JP
Re:DMCA violation (Score:2)
Not the first time American moviemakers have been worried about Herr Hitler and IP litigation: the song the German soldiers sing before the rousing Marseilleise scene in "Casablanca" (1942)is "Die Wacht am Rhein" (never a Nazi favourite), rather than the far more appropriate "Horst Wessel Lied," because the latter was still in copyright...
Re:DMCA violation (Score:3, Interesting)
All this is not very effective (there's still some copies about in old attics, most are probably 'imported' from outside) and does more to propagate the book by mystifying it than to avoid it's distribution. It would make far more sense to distribute annotated copies to demonstrate what a load of bullshit the book is (there's an artist reading and commenting selected passages from the book, doing just that).
As for the Horst Wessel Lied: it's forbidden in Germany, performing it in public will get you in trouble (and rightly so), ID-soft replaced it in their german version of Wolfenstein, and even films critical of the 3rd reich will probably run into legal troubles in germany if they include it. Also it's apparently covered by some complex copyrights.
NAZI's and DMCA (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:NAZI's and DMCA (Score:2, Informative)
One of the uses to which this movie can be put is to decode something which the reviewer used to copy-protect his work. (remember, the infringing use does not have to be the primary use of a circumvention device)
With a copy of this movie, I would be able to do something illegal (i.e. read and copy a paragraph of encrypted text) which would not be otherwise possible.
Now, everyone check your browser settings. If it caches any pages, I'm suing you all for copying this post.
Re:NAZI's and DMCA (Score:4, Insightful)
And complete lack of control/ownership of information (and everything else) is a basic principal of any anarchistic state.
Any government requires citizens to give up certain freedoms in order to exist. For example, I am generally prohibited from walking into a busy shopping mall and firing a gun into the air. The goal is to walk the careful balance between too many freedoms (allowing people to randomly shoot people on the street, allowing strangers to wander through your house at 3 am) and too few freedoms (disallowing political dissent, making all property owned by the state).
It's unfair to reject the notion of controlling information simply because it's something that fascists took to the extreme. You're welcome to argue that the current information control in "free" countries is too far towards the fascist side, but that requires a more detailed, relative judgement.
To further make the point, incarceration of law breakers is also a basic principal of any fascist state. And yet that doesn't make our jail system inherently wrong.
All that being said, I do believe that the DMCA does go too far at times. I do not, however, disagree with the underlying motive of reducing copyright infringement.
the DMCA (Score:2)
Re:NAZI's and DMCA (Score:2)
The problem with the DMCA is that it is overly broad: you don't have to be accused of infringing copyright, you don't have to be accused even of thinking about infringing copyright, you can be accused of having the tools that would allow you to infringe copyright. If those tools have another, legal use, well, too bad.
To be precise, the DMCA forbids you to have anything that can be used to break digital rights management. If we accept the idea that someone might use Enigma to encode content to protect their digital rights, then we can argue that a movie which shows how to crack enigma is illegal under the DMCA. This is preposterous, of course, which is why the DMCA itself is preposterous.
I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me that the DMCA does not forbid the Enigma movie now... but if someone were to use Enigma to protect content, then the movie could arguably become contraband under the DMCA. If you really worried about the DMCA, you had better not ever crack any encryption of any sort, or talk about it. Now that's what I call a "chilling effect" on free speech!
By the way, it isn't maybe such a stretch to think that someone might use Enigma to protect content; the laughably weak ROT13 scheme has already been used to "protect" PDF files. Dmitry Skylarov spent some time in prison in the US, and part of the reason was that he presented a lecture on how to crack the ROT13 protection on a PDF file.
steveha
Re:NAZI's and DMCA (Score:2)
The author explicitly uses the Enigma system to protect a sentence! So it's happened.
Re:NAZI's and DMCA (Score:2)
It is impossible to make a free decision on the basis of
controlled information; without freedom of information,
the government is illegitimate.
The US is now a facist oligarchy, in which a seething mass
of media wonks, intelligence hacks, and monied interests
battle for ever increasing shares of the power once reserved
to the electorate. There can be no democracy in the US because
there is no effective dissemination of the crucial pertinent
facts regarding current events, and because the state has
systematically indoctrinated the plebians into a willing
servitude, through the state schools and the allied media.
Re:NAZI's and DMCA (Score:2, Insightful)
The problem with that is that everything becomes contract law. Suddenly, you've offloaded the "protect the IP" burden on to the already hated licensing agreement.
Pro: This would probably require an upfront, formally signed contract rather than the "break the seal to indicate acceptance" bullshit.
Con: The contract would have to be worded such that all damages caused by secondary violators (i.e. people who redistribute the work obtained from the original violator) is recoverable from the primary violator. Since the secondary violators haven't signed the contract, there's nothing to stop them from "legally" redistributing the work.
Con: Weak legal IP protection mechanisms encourage content producers to use elaborate copy protection systems.
Con: Weak overall IP protection discourages commercial interests from entering an IP-based venture. While some people would herald the influx of indie artists working off busking-type systems, there's really nothing to stop such artists from doing that already.
Pro: Artists will focus more on live performances, using freely distributed music as a means of advertising.
Con: Other IP ventures don't have the equivilent of concerts. Books would even lose the hardcopy advantage, since anyone with a printing press could theoretically start churning out cheaper, professionally printed copies, provided they can get their hands on the book without signing the accompanying license agreement.
intro copy (Score:2)
no, actually that place is funnier, if a bit sick.
I think the PBS documentary on Enigma was probably more on the money, but not as viable for Hollywood type profit motives.
Hmmm (Score:2, Insightful)
The fictional encomium to hacking (the Cryptonomicon) tries to draw a parallel, but let's not forget that the codebreakers of WW2 were trying to save their country. They didn't think "information wants to be free"-as a matter of fact, the fact that Enigma was broken was one of the most jealously guarded secrets of the war.
Today's hackers (or "crackers" if you prefer) are mostly motivated by challenge and ego. Although there is a mythological character called "the good hacker," he coincides with reality about as much as the "honorable thief."
Re:Hmmm (Score:2)
Have you ever met a matematician?
Because the sentence above seems to be a pretty accurate description of most I met...
...and I am sure that goes for the chums at Bletchley Park too.
Saving their country was probably just a perk to them.
(Albeit a really nice one.)
Society Only Appreciates Scientists In Movies (Score:5, Insightful)
This movie may dramatize the codebreakers as sex symbols and symbols of power but this was certainly not the case in real life. Consider the case of brilliant Alan Turing. He essentially led the effort to break the Engima code. How did society repay him? He was an outcast for being an "out" homosexual. He was harrassed throughout his life (read more [lambda.net]). The British government let the professional and personal attacks on him continue because they didn't want to reveal his role in helping to crack the code, even years after the war was over. Unable to accept the fact that the same government he did an incredible service for now actively attacked him, he committed suicide. The "we need to keep his role secret" excuse is rediculous. No one raised a stink when Churchil published his memoroirs, which were filled with sensitive material.
I don't suppose the true story of Turing made it into this film at all.
GMD
Re:Society Only Appreciates Scientists In Movies (Score:2)
According to IMDB [imdb.com], there's no character named "Turing" at all, so unless they all have fictionalized names, he doesn't even play a part.
It would be sad, though, if he was left out completely, and there wasn't a least a character who "represented" him.
Re:Society Only Appreciates Scientists In Movies (Score:4, Insightful)
In the Nova special "Breaking the Code", they speculated that Turing's work probably cut WW2 down by about 2 years. My father was born in 1945, and my Grandfather fought at the Battle of Casino in Italy in 1944.
Without Turing, my Dad might not have even been born (spare me quantum causality arguments about butterfly wings or Churchill sneezing.
Turing deserves praise for his work and recognition for how he was abandoned by the UK govt, even if it's posthomously and 50 years after his death.
Re:Society Only Appreciates Scientists In Movies (Score:3, Interesting)
Is this a nobler excuse than the "we don't want to bother helping a homo" excuse? Not really, but it might put a different perspective on Turing's tragic life.
Re:Society Only Appreciates Scientists In Movies (Score:2)
And yet, with all of that, no mention was made of Enigma, which should have equal or greater prominience to those projects.
So I do think there really was something to the claim that the Brits did't want to reveal too much about Enigma and that's why they kept silent about Turing's involvement.
Re:Society Only Appreciates Scientists In Movies (Score:2)
for the record:
"You can't let gays near children; since they can't reproduce, they recruit. And they are all pedophiles.
Statistics show that the vast majority of sexual abuse is committed by men against women, usually within the heterosexual family structure. Pedophiles are criminals who derive illicit pleasure from sexual abuse of children, and whose adult sexual attractions are almost always to members of the opposite sex. Most sexual abuse of children occurs at the hands of parents or relatives. Lies perpetuate stereotypes that are then used to deny gay people our rights. It is wrong to deny rights based on these myths. "
From http://www.ifas.org/fw/9408/rhetoric.html
(empha
and another thing: gays do not recruit. The only people who forced me to go against my sexual orientation were straight people, who actively bash gays.
Re:Society Only Appreciates Scientists In Movies (Score:2, Offtopic)
Re:Society Only Appreciates Scientists In Movies (Score:3, Insightful)
OK, explain to me why homosexuality intrinsicly has to do with "sex" more than hetrosexuality does? It's not like society tries to ban "Titanic" for being a hetrosexual love story, and I'm sure parents took their kids to that movie...
People committing suicide becuase they're ostracized becuase of their orientation is very MUCH something relevant to kids. Hell, gay teens need good role models in movies and on TV.
I don't think anyone's suggesting that we make "Turing Porn" here... it's very easy to portray a character as out without involving "sex".
If you raise kids in a bubble, without teaching them ABOUT sex, drugs, cars, wars, what are they going to do about it when they are confronted with it? They need to be given the time and knowledge to come to an understanding on their own.
Re:Society Only Appreciates Scientists In Movies (Score:2)
i hope you realize though i was talking about something else (see the parent post to which i was actually responding) and not about exposing children to homosexuality (any more so than they are overexposed to heterosexuality right now).
hell, if i had known about gays like Turing, life would probably have been much simpler for me. If I had known that
Turing
Nash (although he denies it, he's obviously at least bi )
Newton
Tchaikovsky
good grief, if anyone can think of anymore, please follow-up to this?
were all gay, I probably would not have had such a major problem accepting my sexuality for such a long time. Gay teens have it incredibly tough (their suicide rate is 4 times higher than straight teens) and having gay role models like those above is definately necessary. So when Hollywood goes out of its way to take away those roll models, they are doing everyone a disservice.
Re:Society Only Appreciates Scientists In Movies (Score:2)
Of course, you never stopped to consider how much heterosexual sexual innuendo is around us 24/7 from things on TV to subliminal shapes on boxes of Ritz crackers...
The standard suggestion applies here: go TALK to your non-heterosexual family members, neighbors, co-workers, friends, and acquaintences. They'll help you get over all of these issues.
Re:wont someone think of the children? (Score:2)
while that may be true, i think it's safe to say the vast majority of children have not yet developed both mentally and physically enought to be ready for sexual encounters. And by sexual encounters I don't mean being taught about sexuality in school, I mean actual physical encounters. "majority rules" is appropriate in this case - the simple fact is that most children are not ready for sex, they can't make the decision for themselves, so it should not be permitted.
Society is protecting the children in this case, and although in some cases the children don't need protecting, in most cases they do.
p.s. all this is coming from a queer. (that oughta keep the moderators at bay.
Re:Society Only Appreciates Scientists In Movies (Score:2)
People, please read all the posts not just the ones that are modded up.
Re:lashing out at gays (Score:2)
I don't know, do you?
It's a normal survival instinct to fear/hate/fight what is alien.
a survival instinct? I could see how it might be normal to fear spiders or tigers or bears, but your average homosexual is not exactly life threatening. Humans are sentient animals and must use not just their emotions, but their thoughts, to see realize whether their fears are grounded in survival instincts, or for other reasons. People of different races/skin color might seem alien, is it normal to feat/hate/fight them? No, it's racist.
I feel absolutely no sexual attraction to any man.
It's interesting how often this pops up when conversing with someone about this, specifically with someone who is homophobic. They make it a point to point out that they are not attracted to men. Who are you trying to prove this to? Me? Or yourself? Did I ask?
I thought the theory was bullshit myself. Turns out my own life is a perfect example of the theory, though. In fact ask a bunch of gay men, and you'll see a lot of them initially "coped" with being gay by forcefully denying it, and by acting out against others. "The best defence is a good offence" does apply, I'm living proof.
I do wonder where you get your "average heterosexual man is sure of his own heterosexuality." Ever hear of Kinsley? His studies indicate that this ISN'T the case, that most people could be categorizied as bisexual, but with a heavier tendency towards one particular sex.
Your last paragraph is interesting and shows that you aren't the typical gay-basher. But I want you to realize one thing - my orientation isn't a "sexual habit". It's not something I saw in a magazine and thought I would do for fun in my spare time. It is something I fought with for many years. It is something I hid from myself, and from others. It is something that led me to contemplate suicide (although obviously I chose to not take that path, thankfully). It is something that made me very unhappy for the most part of my life, until I chose to accept who I am, and that I couldn't change that for the rest of the world. It is part of me, and one others go out of their way to bash homosexuality, they are bashing me.
Re:Society Only Appreciates Scientists In Movies (Score:3, Insightful)
National Cryptologic Museum has an Enigma (Score:3, Informative)
Re:National Cryptologic Museum has an Enigma (Score:2)
I caught part of a guided tour last time I was there. The tour guide said that next year the Korean War section would be much more interesting...because stuff from that era would finally be declassified (!)
It's on 295 (Baltimore-Washington Parkway), right next to the NSA.
-1, Troll (Score:2, Flamebait)
Ambitious Subject (Score:2, Funny)
Sex and mathematics?
The Real Story (Score:5, Insightful)
Its really amazing some of the details that people never hear about breaking the Enigma code. One quick fact/story that I remember (obviously paraphrased and correct me if I make any errors, its been a bit since I last saw it): One of the first versions of the Enigma code that the British were able to crack, was the Luftwaffe code. How? To set up the machine to decode the enigma code, you needed to base the rotors off a three letter unencrypted sequence and another three letters that were encrypted. Unfortunately for the Germans, the operators got lazy all too often. If the first three letters were HIL, any guess what the next three encrypted were? Yup, TER, spelling out "Hitler." Other operators would use their names or their girlfriend's. It wasn't that the code was flawed, it took the German operators, inadvertently of course, to help the British break their own enigma.
Its in many ways analogous to the great majority of system problems now, open ports, unpatched software, etc. Any system can be nearly perfect, until you add a human to run it.
Re:The Real Story (Score:2)
If the first three letters were HIL, any guess what the next three encrypted were, Yup, TER, spelling out "Hitler."
Now, most of us would think that spells HILTER, but we're not brilliant mathemeticians like Alan Turnig!
Lazy AND dyslesic (Score:2)
Alan Turing (Score:5, Informative)
He was also a leading figure at Bletchely Park and it is highly doubtful that Enigma would have been broken without him. If you were to single out one figure as the key to breaking the code it has to be Turing.
So its worrying that a film of this critical moment in world history seems to muddy [cryptographic.co.uk] the role of Turing. Andrew Hodges who wrote the review I link to, wrote an excellent biography [amazon.com] of Turing that should be required reading for anyone who considers themselves even remotely a geek. Turing achieved more in his sadly shortened life than most of us could dream of. The fact that the story of Bletchley Park has been turned into a film that excludes Turing is truly sad.
Re:Alan Turing (Score:2, Insightful)
I agree; and the fact that he way gay probably had somthing to do with that. I think thats a shame, romance and gay still don't mix in Hollywood's minds.
There was a play on Turing though.BREAKING THE CODE [turing.org.uk] I allways wanted to see it. Derek Jacobi rocks!
BTW I own a first addition American of the Hodges book.
Re:Alan Turing (Score:2)
I agree - the film makers were looking for a way to turn the story of the Bletchley Park codebreakers into a romance, so "obviously" the leading man had to go after the girl. It is a shame.
There was a play on Turing though.BREAKING THE CODE [turing.org.uk] I allways wanted to see it. Derek Jacobi rocks!
I was lucky enough to see Jacobi in Breaking the Code when I lived in the UK. He was, indeed, excellent as AMT. I was also lucky enough to meet Robin Gandy [turing.org.uk] who was one of Turning's students and a major mathematician in his own right. Its a crime that Turing was harried into an early suicide; we can only wonder what he might have achieved if he had lived.
Re:Alan Turing (Score:2)
Hey--most of us are heterosexual. Guys don't want to see two guys falling in love; gals don't want to see two gals falling in love. Why waste money on such a thing? I want to see some a guy and a girl fall in love. And so do the vast majority of men and women.
Now, turning it into a romance in the first place is the bit I find dubious. Why bother? Why must every movie have a love interest?
Re:Alan Turing (Score:2)
Re:Alan Turing (Score:2)
I don't think so. The mathematical analysis to break the code was largely a joint effort of which Turning was a part. But the important part was the ability to reproduce the crack in a mechanical way, given that the code rotated every 24 hours and effectively had to be rebroken each time. Even once you know the algorithm to break a code, it couldn't in practice be done in anywhere near real time without a computer. So Turing effectively built a computer to very quickly do the math and break a code.
Without the machine, codes would have taken months to break, making the unencoded information essentially useless. I think Turing's achievement, which also laid the foundation for most of modern computation, was indeed essential to the war effort. Without it the breaking of the Enigma code would have been an interesting academic exercise only.
Re:Alan Turing (Score:2)
For the most part, once the mechanics of Enigma were established (for the early Enigma codes, mostly the work of the Poles), cracking German codes was done by brute force.
Re:Alan Turing (Score:4, Interesting)
A few minor changes (Score:5, Insightful)
Writer: I know! We'll fictionalize it, then we can have a nice straight protagonist, the audience will like it, and we'll still get to tell a cool story!
Someone way down on the totem pole: But isn't that kind of dishonoring the memory of the genius who actually did the work?
Producer: (Hands over ears) LA LA LA LA I can't hear you...
Re:A few minor changes (Score:2)
it's like looking at the million man marche, sheesh why do they always have to bring up that martin luther king guy? Weren't tehre like a million other people? MAybe, but he played a key role, dontcha think?
Re:A few minor changes (Score:2)
Thanks again
Role of the Poles (Score:5, Interesting)
[minor spoiler alert] The point he was making was that not only did the Poles find the machine in the first place, but if they hadn't kept quiet about it for the duration of the war then Hitler would have abandoned Enigma much sooner, or at least have had an inkling that his communications were being intercepted. But the secrecy surrounding the codebreaking operation was so good from *all* parties that Rommel went to his grave cursing the spy who was giving away information from his signals back to Germany.
There was an excellent series on Channel 4 about the operation about three years ago, and I would assume that it has been aired on PBS (though maybe not because it isn't exactly complimentery towards our American allies). Enigma makes the whole subject into a story, but the subject also bears telling in a documentary style.
Dunstan
Origin of Polack Jokes (Score:2)
Re:Origin of Polack Jokes (Score:2)
Shifting battlegrounds (Score:2, Interesting)
I know that I keep bringing this up but perhaps the best history of military cryptoanalysis in print is The Codebreakers by David Kahn. It devotes about four novel length chapters to World War II cryptography alone and also describes the first cryptographic war for the airwaves during World War I.
it also points out that one of the big revolutions in military cryptography was the coordination of code making and code breaking. The only way to make a good code is to try to break it. Knowledge of practical code breaking was never intended to be distributed outside of military circles, even to the point where the National Security Agency attempted to block publication of The Codebreakers for even revealing obsolete historical details of World War II cryptoanalysis. As a result the comparison between military cryptoanalysts and copyright crackers is a bit overdrawn. Many of the codebreakers were also involved and creating and testing military codes to hide information from the public.
Cat got my tongue (Score:3, Funny)
Unfortunately, while codebreaking and Miss Winslet are present, neither is revealed in enough depth to be interesting.
The only thing that saved the film for me was the period detail.
graspee
Ummm... wait a sec... (Score:3, Funny)
I thought Dante and Randal were in New Jersey...
Maybe I'm wrong.
Interview with Jack Good (Score:2)
Wildly popular in Britain (Score:2, Interesting)
Tom Stoppard, playwright (Score:3, Informative)
I found a decent page about his various works. A Tom Stoppard Bibliography [geocities.com]
Wrong URL for the movie website (Score:2, Informative)
The link here incorrectly points to:
http://www.enigmathemovie.com/
The correct link is:
http://www.enigma-themovie.com/ [enigma-themovie.com]
Thanks Google! [google.com]
DMCA/Enigma (Score:3, Interesting)
Your lame, forced comparison cheapens the achievement of the Bletchley Park codebreakers and the Allied troops who risked their lives to capture Enigma material.
It also makes you look like a whining tosser who thinks his right to download an MP3 is as important as the rights and freedoms won in WWII.
I think the DMCA is bad too, but for fuck's sake, don't do this kind of thing again.
Read Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson (Score:4, Interesting)
It isn't a factual account of Turing's experiences, nor of WW2 in general, but it's a well-written book set during WW2 (not entirely), with a heavy focus on cryptography. The reason I bring it up is tat it is so bent on cryptography (who'd have guessed?), and Enigma has a cameo.
Cryptonomicon is engaging, I had great difficulty putting it down, though the instructional detail used to describe various technical feats compelled me to set it aside for a minute to give them a go myself. Stephenson has a solid grasp on many technical concepts, even if he doesn't get all of them 100% correct (you'll get no spoilers from me!).
All of that, and he even observes Turing's professed sexual preference in a much more honest (read: less inverted) manner.
the real story (Score:2, Informative)
The British then set up the team to extend the work and deal with the increasing complexity of the Enigma machines. Yes, they made awesome breakthroughs, but the Polish did the basic work much earlier.
The Problem WIth The Intro (Score:2)
Seriously though, look for something like this in the makings. Except that the file swappers and reverse engineerers will, of course, be the 50 year old villains who much be stopped by a group of pre-teen children.
A good thing no US studio bought the rights (Score:2, Funny)
Re:WTF? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:WTF? (Score:2)
Kudos.
Regards,
Anomaly
Re:Gosh, I'm glad this is about WWII... (Score:5, Funny)
"While I am sure that this serves as a terrific attention-getting device, in the future try not to have such blatantly BS and non-factual headlines. Its deception for the purpose of getting hits, something I didn't think slashdot would stoop to. And its "Bait and Switch," kinda, in that you come expecting something, see the add, then actually read something else."
(shakes head) Funny... I actually found the intro paragraph *humorous*. Sure, it's bound to increase clickthroughs and pageviews (and bandwidth used by millions of
Was the humor factor really lost on that many people? Maybe this is just Monday Syndrome.
Re:Gosh, I'm glad this is about WWII... (Score:2, Insightful)
I think the movie sounds a lot more exciting with that type of description. It was very poignant but still true to the plot.
Wish There Was An Alan Turing Film (Score:3, Insightful)
The true story of Alan Turing (see my post below) is a fascinating, albeit disturbing story. Y'know, it's too bad that Hollywood would never make a movie about him and the battles that he faced. I mean, Hollywood is notorious for copying successful movies. When Star Wars came out, everyone was making space films and TV shows. Now that Spider-man is a big hit, there's going to be a slew of comic book movies. I wish that the success of "A Beautiful Mind" would convince Hollywood that there are some fascinating stories about brilliant scientists and the incredible challenges they faced. There are a lot of fascinating stories out there.
GMD
Re:Wish There Was An Alan Turing Film (Score:2)
How is that any measure of success, when the game is to get the most asses in seats in the shortest period of time? Sure, Beautiful stayed in the top ten far longer than, say, Harry Potter, but it's easy to see that Harry has so far earned more than twice as much. [imdb.com] Meanwhile, Beautiful is about to get caught by "Ice Age," which is a mindless cartoon.
People don't see movies because they want to think. Hollywood has recognized this, and tailors their production accordingly.
Re:Wow. (Score:2)
Re:English, know it much? (Score:2)
graspee
woah? (Score:2)
^_^
-Kasreyn