Did her colleagues use to say "My first computer was a ... Betty Webb" ?
Bletchley code breaker Betty Webb dies aged 101
91–100 of 119 posts
Re: Bletchley code breaker Betty Webb dies aged 101
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
I won’t enter into a conversation about inequality and social justice, even though there are indeed points to be raised. I would however like to point out that people are not only victims of society, and that they have a responsibility as a critical member of society and an elector. Historic awareness, understanding of economics, law and geopolitics. To give an example: Mr Trump was not just votes into office, but RE…
Inequality is very different to no prospects, or no hope.
Totally agree. But does that not reinforce my point?
Or are we saying now that 50%+ of the US has “no prospects or no hope”? Really?
Anyone thinking that is sorely mistaken about how good we have it, and I’m afraid is soon to find out. Destroying the apparatus of state and destabilizing international relations is not going to be good, certainly for those “with no prospects or hope”.
And that was not difficult to foresee.
Re: Bletchley code breaker Betty Webb dies aged 101
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's insane how the largest conflict in human history is just now passing out of living memory. Don’t worry, there will be another one along any minute now.
The American Revolution was 240 years ago. The US Civil War was 160 years ago. The Second World War was 80 years ago...
Feels like cherry-picking.
WWII had very little to do with America in the sense that the American involvement was only a reaction to others messing things up.
While the other two are purely American.
Re: Bletchley code breaker Betty Webb dies aged 101
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's insane how the largest conflict in human history is just now passing out of living memory. Don’t worry, there will be another one along any minute now.
The American Revolution was 240 years ago. The US Civil War was 160 years ago. The Second World War was 80 years ago...
What, no WW1?
Re: Bletchley code breaker Betty Webb dies aged 101
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
The American Revolution was 240 years ago. The US Civil War was 160 years ago. The Second World War was 80 years ago...
Feels like cherry-picking. WWII had very little to do with America in the sense that the American involvement was only a reaction to others messing things up. While the other two are purely American.
WWII had little to do with America? Go look up lend/lease and then remember we were bombed by Japan. The US was intrinsically linked to WWII from the beginning, just not with troops on the ground.
Re: Bletchley code breaker Betty Webb dies aged 101
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
From wikipedia: some tasks performed include registering messages on little cards, which Webb believes totaled 10,000 a day in the whole park, and organizing the cards into shoeboxes according to a strict order so they could be retrieved efficiently when called for. I suppose times have changed.
Technology has changed for sure. Is our usage of human capital any better as a whole? Probably not. So many BS jobs out there.
tech has changed, but it's fundamentally doing the exact same job. GCHQ/NSA is still using the techniques pioneered at Bletchley.
Re: Bletchley code breaker Betty Webb dies aged 101
#97Any good book that delves into the detail of the code breaking done at Bletchley park?
If you want a book in the same vein, and contemporary with Bletchley "Turning's Cathedral" by George Dyson is about the Institute for Advanced Study and the Manhattan Project. Needless to say there's a lot of overlap and it really defines the culture of computer engineering at the time.
Re: Bletchley code breaker Betty Webb dies aged 101
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed, it is very easy to forget the struggle when one has sacrificed nothing to achieve it. At least WWII, unlike those preceding it, has a vast well of literature to draw those lessons from. The trouble, however, is not just getting younger people to sit, read and analyze it, but also to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak, with all the propaganda and misinformation to be had these days about the events…
> all the propaganda and misinformation to be had these days about the events of WWII, the Holocaust, Hiroshima/Nagasaki and so many other things I'm curious as to what sort of propaganda or misinformation you're referring to. I'm in Europe and I haven't seen much of it, but maybe it's different in the US.
Sadly go look at the "masculine" channels targeting young men on YouTube (Tate and his compatriots). There's a LOT of holocaust denial, rewriting of Hitler as misunderstood etc. We're both lucky to not be exposed to it regularly, but unfortunately in my work it's a thing I have to be aware of.
Worse, an entire generation of young men especially are being told that WWII wasn't what it really was. You see the results of this in the US but also eastern Germany, Poland, Hungary, across Europe where right wing parties are on the rise substantially supported by these young men.
Re: Bletchley code breaker Betty Webb dies aged 101
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
> all the propaganda and misinformation to be had these days about the events of WWII, the Holocaust, Hiroshima/Nagasaki and so many other things I'm curious as to what sort of propaganda or misinformation you're referring to. I'm in Europe and I haven't seen much of it, but maybe it's different in the US.
it's not different in the US, there is not a market of misinformation about WWII here. There is the the anti-war left alleging that that the allies committed war crimes and their opponents rejecting those arguments, but it's easy to find what happened in Dresden, Holocaust, etc, the disagreement is on interpretation.
Yea, it's not really the left that's the big proponents of this (maybe a few very fringe people). It's the ones literally given Nazi salutes at political rallies.
Re: Bletchley code breaker Betty Webb dies aged 101
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's insane how the largest conflict in human history is just now passing out of living memory. Don’t worry, there will be another one along any minute now.
It seems more than coincidental that global fascism started to rise as soon as the generation that last defeated it had mostly died off.
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