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Encryption Security

Man Arrested For Enigma Theft 137

Posted by emmett from the her-itinerary's-loaded-up-with-moving-violations dept.
OwenF writes: "Well, the coppers have picked up some 50-year-old for stealing the enigma decoder. He's already out on bail, and they're still looking for a woman seen driving a red car at the museum. Very 'international superthief' type caper, if you ask me. Where's 007 when you need him?" I think it's clear to everyone that the woman in the red car is most likely Carmen Sandiego.
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Man Arrested For Enigma Theft More

Man Arrested For Enigma Theft

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  • Re:Rio! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Moderators: just because you like Unix and C, doesn't mean everyone else does. Be objective. [slashdot.org]

    Just so you know, your sig is uglifying slashdot. I went ahead and followed your link to see how relavant your sig was and frankly, I was disappointed. My first thought was that you might accuse me of trolling myself, but I am really only trying to clean up slashdot, particularly the sigs.

    My biggest complaint is that your sig is fairly unrelated to your UCSSM idea, which is at best lame. (On this subject, I would suggest being able to filter by modifiers - for example, filter out ``Off-topic'' and ''Troll'' posts, but this is another discussion.) My biggest complaint is the length of the link. It is not esthetically pleasing as it looks like an accidentally unfinished link. As you know these are rather tacky and distract from the message you are trying to convey. They even make you look like a newbie HTML coder. [anywhere.nowhere]

    My suggestion would be to just straighten out your sig. Consider the following:

    Moderators: Just because you like Unix and C doesn't mean everyone does. Be objective.
    For more ideas on improving moderation, click here [slashdot.org].

    If you like, feel free to use it. Here's the HTML:
    Moderators: Just because you like Unix and C doesn't mean everyone does. Be objective.<BR>
    For more ideas on improving moderation, <A HREF="http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=Millenni um">click here</A>.


    See? Less intrusive, more professional looking. That may be too long (I haven't counted), but you write well (I read that post), so I am sure you could get your point across in fewer words. Making a change along these lines will make people take your sig a bit more seriously. Right now, it's distracting and confusing at best.

    That said, it's time you got yourself a new sig. Thank you.
  • It was TUBES from After Y2k! ';) www.geekculture.com
  • There's genigma [pages.at]. I haven't tried it myself.
    --
  • My suggestion would be that sig nazis should at least post under a user name known to the Slashdot community from previous posts so we'll have some idea as to their credibility.

    My other suggestion would be that they find something actually worth worrying about.

  • To save bandwidth, refer to my previous post [slashdot.org].
  • "That said, it's time you got yourself a new sig. Thank you."

    We feel the same way about you.

  • Isn't it time you got a user name to post this drivel under? My humble suggestion: sig nazi
  • Do you suppose this could be related to the 3 disappearing government/military laptops?
    Fraternity initiation? Scavenger hunt?
  • As a result of which I'm pretty much trapped into having to leave mine unchanged.
  • I believe that AT&T System V 3.x used a 256-rotor enigma algorithm.
  • enigma (-ngm)n.
    1.One that is puzzling, ambiguous, or inexplicable.
    2.A perplexing speech or text; a riddle.

    [Latin aenigma, from Greek ainigma, from ainissesthai, ainig- to speak in riddles, from ainos, fable.]

    Fable? Does Aesop know about this?

  • Let's Go to the Map!
  • Just a question, but if a statute of limitations has run out and you can no longer be prosecuted, does that necessarily mean that the government can't recover stolen property?

    Can the museum use legal recourse to get the machine back, even if they can't prosecute the thieves?

    I'm guessing that even if a statute of limitations did run out (does England even have a statute of limitations?) there would be a strong social pressure for the item to be returned, similar to the situation we see today with Nazi loot. Of course, the British museum is full of loot that they haven't returned...

    -OT
  • Carmen Sandiego==Carmen Electra?

  • I wonder if they will charge him with simple theft or treason... Fourty years ago, this would have been high treason and he probably would have been shot on sight.

    InitZero

  • E.Nigma aka The Riddler was found alive and well today after an as yet unknown man and Carmen Sandiago kiddnapped Gotham's most famous quizmaster of crime! Carges will be pressed against the man police are still searching for Carmen. "I wish they kept the bastard!!!" said Police Cominisher Gordon earlier today. Police still have not determined the reasons behind the kiddnapping.
  • Not a correction becouse as far as I know everything you said is correct :)

    "Where in the world" originally was writen for the Apple II due to it's popularity at the time for eductaion. The target market however was homes as most united states schools could not accually afford to buy software (some were but the majority of schools were crying about a lack of funds.. much like today)

    It later made it to PC clones (running [Pc/MS]Dos).
    It has also found it's way to the Mac and Windows. It is currently still being sold as a MsWindows title.
    It also was incarnated as an educational game show on PBS however the statis of this game show is unknown to me.

    The game entered the market AFTER Apple replaced the Commodore PET as the computer of choice by united states schools. The switch from the PET may have been unavoidable as Commodore seemed oblivous to the schools needs.
    The Apple][ computers simply outnumbered the PETs in united states schools. There were never more than a few PET computers and only when it was belived vital. On the other hand there was a flood of Apple][ computers. One for every classroom.

    The "Where in the world" title did make it to the Commodore 64 and other brands of computers however the title focused only on computers populare in the United States.

    During the main run of the software title the UK had it's own computers that were populare. Commodore was sereous about the UK market at that time but I doupt few if any other US computer makers were intrested in compeating in the UK.

    Finnal note.. The UK has long had a Risc based home computer, the Acorn I belive it is named. It originally had a 6502 but the system was upgraded to a Risc. This was a cost cutting move only the Risc was selected for it's low R&D costs not for it's power and based on the speed of the chip selected I would suspect they picked a Risc that did not throw any money into speed.
  • I'm a Yank and found the whole idea a bit out of sorts. Hollywood has it's head so firmly up its butt that it wouldn't know to jump if you pushed a sub in it too. They'll probably put a tag on the movie stating "based on a true story". :-/
  • So I guess that the real question would be "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?" --- come on sing it now
  • Contrary to what the Wired article says, the machine was stolen from Bletchley Park (that's near Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire), not London.
  • Considering that recently a F-101 Voodoo [airwarbirds.com] was auctioned off over E-Bay, I for one wouldn't be incredibly suprised ;)


    What do I do, when it seems I relate to Judas more than You?

  • So that's [carmensandiego.com] who their model [redhat.com] was...
  • She was working for Red Hat!
  • it was a red Peugeot. I don't think Carmen Sandiego would be seen in a Peugeot, even if it was red.
  • So what use is this to steal? Just to say you did it?

    For that matter, why do criminals ever do the things they do?
    But yes, I agree with your point. There is no "logic" in the theft of this artifact because it's something that will be easily spotted wherever it is taken, because I'm going to assume that since it was stolen, the person who stole it knows that it's something very worthwhile to have and will therefore not just take it anywhere and leave it on a street corner when they find out it doesn't "do" much. Therefore, as you/we've speculated, it'll be spotted and - tada! - found. (Well, I certainly hope so.)

    Or, to continue wildly speculating about the topic, the person could've stolen it just to:

    see the reaction

    see how long it would take it to be found

    (in combination with above) test the skills of the Bletchley Park (sorry if it's misspelled) folks as they try to "decrypt" the location of the machine

    because they knew they could (well, they did, didn't they? - and yes, I know this one's already been mentioned)

    incite people like me to make speculations like these

    The thief may, however, have a way to sell the piece if they know someone who's willing to "walk on the wild side" and buy the thing because they've got the money and figure that, as rich as they may/may not be, no one will ever come 'round and find them.

    Then again, I figure I'm just rambling now...

  • My son has CDs for Carmen San Diego for DOS, Windows, and the Mac.

    So ... I'm not quite sure of the relevance of your question as to who Carmen San Diego might be, except to point out that you're a geezer.

    Or you've been using Linux since the Dawn of Time.

  • Because, if they had, it would be returned in broken pieces in garbage bags ...

    [apologies to my friend Steve Jackson]

    [no, not the British one, the Texan]

  • I think, since it's not new, it's on half.com [half.com], not e-bay.

    Look under "Used Crytography Machines" ...

  • Because he heard about the new British law requiring people to hand over their private keys for all software cryptography encoding, and figured hardware was exempt from that law.

    Yes, I'm serious ...

  • I've also seen "Reunite Gondwanaland!"
  • . . . was my first exposure to computers on an Apple ][e. Anyone else? (kind of shows my age (22))

  • yup,
    an lc for me...
    played hours and hours of it...

    i always found her...

    hmm...got me thinking hmm...dig out that old lc again...
  • its not the monetary value,

    its being able to say to your self "i have an engima machine"..
    thats it

    hmm, wonder if he would accept old socks for it?
    or a new car..

  • Good one... but the Enigma code was broken several years before that and the war with Germany was in it's last stages by May of '45 (if not finished by that point).
  • What value does this have? You couldn't sell it to a musuem. They would know what it is and where it came from (being that there are only two of them in known existence). You couldn't really display it around your place as decoration unless you're a real idiot. You might be able to sell it to a private collector but then the collector could never really be able to display it. Using it for crypto would be worthless since it was cracked almost sixty years ago.

    So what use is this to steal? Just to say you did it? I could understand if the thief had turned out to be a teenager or something but the guy was fifty! This is on the emotional level with stealing hood ornaments and such. A way to say "Look what I have!" but never really having any practical use for it.

  • I had this great idea for a sequel that would explore the literature of Milton and Dante:

    Where in Hell is Carmen Sandiego?

    Our secret is gamma-irradiated cow manure
    Mitsubishi ad
  • They should just go pick up Catherine Zeta Jones now. Even if it wasn't really her, they should arrest her for bad acting.
  • I seem to recall that one of the 1980s Unix versions used a variant of Enigma to encrypt the password file. I want to say it was BSD, but it may have Bell Labs; any old Unix hands out there to confirm this?
  • This is way off topic (moderators, please look the other way), but this guy is KILLING ME. I havn't seen an AC go around and be so seriously funny in a while. I'm sure that it will get old, as do most of the AC trolls (even though they aren't trolls), but for the time being I am enjoying this guy, keep up the good work.
    ------------------------------------------- -
  • No it wasn't - the Enigma code was changed once a month, and a group of anit-Hitler German Generals - including Rommel (after he lost North Africa, he becamed disillusioned with the Nazi party, as many other generals already had) - were sending the codes up to MI6 whenever they were changed.
  • Quick Robin, to the Batcave!
  • Absolutely, and it came with an actual copy of Fodor's guide to the world...not on CD-ROM or disk, but the actualy book. Yeah, I remember spending may a night trying to beat the bitch Carmen at her on game...I need to find that game again and play it in an Apple II emu...yes Carmen, I will finally have my revenege...MUUUWAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...

    erm...yes, anyway, it was a cool game...
  • Hmmm... if they took it outside the US they could be breaking crypto export regulations...
  • A friend of mine has a T-shift with that on it in big, bold letters (Not the "help", just "STOP PLATE TECTONICS!"

    He got it as a present and has no idea where it was purchased. Anyone know?
    ---
  • Maybe whoever stole it has a couple of laptops recently lost in London to decrypt.

    Hmmm - Thinks........
  • Alright, I admit it. I wsa the one driving the red car. You see, I have this compulsive disorder where I have to dress in drag and help middle aged men steal historical artifacts.

    The only problem is that I can never find a dress to bring out the color of my eyes.
  • The article mentions that there are only two Enigma encoders left in the world? What is that? I'm certain they were widely used by germans in WWII. Does anyone know why there are so few? My own speculation was that they were destroyed -- that even 50 years ago governments had problems with the possiblity of strong encryption falling into whichever they deemed to be in the wrong hands.

    I wonder if the other enigma machine was in a museum in Germany. If so, then the only use for the machines would be for Germany to communicate with England, which is the opposite of what they were invented for! =)
  • "Score:5, Funny"

    I guess some people can tell 'em and some people can't. [slashdot.org]
    --

  • The Riddler!

    Holy puzzles-wrapped-in-an-enigma-surrounded-by-mystery BATMAN!
  • Here we go again...we had to steal one to crack the code...blah blah blah.

    Stealing the machine is the equivalent of being told the encryption algorithm. Like any secure system, the security does not rest in keeping the algorithm secret, but in keeping the keys secret. Look at modern encryption methods, the algorithms are widely published, but they are still very hard to break. Enigma is the same. The team that broke it were geniuses.

  • Mortyr development team announces crappy sequel, causes Jesus to cry. Film at 11.
  • ...Monks Still Unlocated


    Online gaming for motivated, sportsmanlike players: www.steelmaelstrom.org [steelmaelstrom.org].

  • Ahh yes....but that information was secret.
    How do you expect Mark Smith to have known about
    it before he went off in his time machine and got
    a machine?
  • that's stupid. it is impossible to get any useful information that way.

    or should I say:

    tha's upid.mpoblegnyflrw

    hI:

  • We gotta catch Carmen. I saw the Chief for the tv show last night as the Judge on "Law and Order". But I don't think I trust her since she was the DJ in "The Warriors" that kept informing all the bad gangs where the poor white "good gang" was in the City. I ask you, would you trust the Chief?
  • Yeah, the naval version used 4 wheels, but it was more difficult to crack back then. Now, it's all the same. It's the same technology, but the the number of iterations after which a sequence would repeat is larger (26x25x25x25) instead of 26x25x25 for three wheels.
  • I just saw this one today on a bumper sticker! It was on a car parked near the geological sciences department at my uni. so that probably explains it.
  • There are many Enigmas left. There were only 3 of this *particular* type left. I think they were naval ones. Some collector in California has 22 Enigmas (different type) as someone mentioned in a previous article about this.
  • I completely agree. I was pissed about this too and was gonna post about it, but moderators don't like it (negative score, etc). This story was on CNN like 2 days ago. There are other stories that show up on Slashdot a week after I see them on CNN. Well, I guess we just have to live with it... since we have no control over Slashdot.
  • Hey has anyone else read the book called "Enigma" by Robert Harris? In it he mentions the Germans had a special Enigma machine that was more difficult to crack than the ordinary ones because it used four wheels for the encryption rather than only three. It was called "shark" and was only used by the U-Boats. Could this be one of the ones that was stolen?
  • In any case they had *lots* and *lots* of enigma machines to puzzle over. The difficulty was not figuring out how they worked, but figuring out how to crack them. It is similar to the problem of cracking RC5 these days. The algorithm is well known, but that doesn't make it any easier to crack.
    I guess this goes to show that there is no security through obscurity...
  • This is on the emotional level with stealing hood ornaments and such. A way to say "Look what I have!" but never really having any practical use for it.

    Sounds more like stealing the Mona Lisa to me. You just don't understand the mind of a collecter. The joy is not in the showing off, or even in any use. Its just knowing that you possess this thing of value. The Hope diamond is objectively useless unless you cut it up to fence, but the kind of person who would steal the Hope diamond would never do that. They would just put it somewhere secure and know that they owned it. Its just that kind of person's way.

    -Kahuna Burger

  • Everybody sing (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Well she sneaks around the world from Kiev to Carolina
    She's a sticky-fingered filcher from Berlin down to Belize
    She'll take you for a ride on a slow boat to China
    Tell me, where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?

    Steal their Seoul in South Korea, make Antarctica cry "Uncle,"
    From the Red Sea to Greenland they'll be singing the blues
    Well, they never Arkansas her steal the Mekong from the jungle
    Tell me, where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?

    She go from Nashville to Norway, Bonaire to Zimbabwe
    Chicago to Czechoslovakia and back!

    Well she'll ransack Pakistan and run a scam in Scandinavia
    Then she'll stick 'em up Down Under and go pick-pocket Perth
    She put the Miss in misdemeanor when she stole the beans from Lima
    Tell me, where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?

    Oh, tell me, where in the world is...tell me, where can she be?
    Botswana to Thailand, Milan via Amsterdam, Mali to Bali, Ohio, Oahu!

    Well she glides around the globe, and she'll flim-flam every nation
    She's a double-dealing diva with a taste for thievery
    Her itinerary's loaded up with moving violations
    Tell me, where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?

  • I know where it is... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Has anyone looked on e-bay yet?
  • In part of the game Jigsaw [ifarchive.org] You have to break an enigma code, and can play with an enigma machine.

    You need a Z-code interpreter to play it - I suggest frotz [ifarchive.org]
  • Indeed. Check out http://www.uboat.net/technical/enigma.htm [uboat.net] and http://www.uboat.net/boats/u110.htm [uboat.net] for more information.

    --

  • As a .WAV [rockapella.com]. Just a snippet.
  • Just so you know, your sig is pretty useless. I already know that you, Waldo, posted your post. I know your e-mail address is waldo@waldo.net and that your homepage is at http://www.waldo.net. I know that you're a ``21-year-old geek. Owner of Munk & Phyber, lover of Macs and Linux, resident of Charlottesville.'' Basically, my point is that your sig is telling me nothing I don't know. Tagging your posts with -Waldo is a waste of everybody's bandwidth. For every post of yours I read, I have to download an additional 14 bytes (the HTML is <BR>-Waldo<BR> = 14 bytes) that are pretty superfluous and less informative than the info /. already gives me. If everybody trimmed their sigs of the useless crap, /. could be a bit faster. Granted, not much, but every little bit helps.

    You repeated yourself several times in this post. The text of your message was 839 bytes. I've written "-Waldo" at the end of perhaps 10 messages. (It's not a .sig.) That means that I've wasted 140 bytes. You just wasted about 400. (Though some might say that you wasted 839 bytes.)

    I write my signature at the bottom of my snail-mail, but it's on the envelope. I write my name at the end of my e-mail, but it's in the header. The world is full of redundancy. The world is full of redudancy. (Doh! That's 31 bytes!)

    You must have the page for The Bandwidth Conservation Society [paxar.bc.ca] as your home page, eh? :)

    -Waldo
  • I always wanted a copy of "Where in hell is Carmen Sandiego".

    Based on Dante of course...

  • Rio! (Score:2)

    by jutus ( 14595 )
    After examining the clues and interviewing several people at the museum, I suspect that she is in Rio De Janiero.

    She *always* ends up there!

    :)

    I'll just need the general consensus of the /. forum in order to take action and take a flight there.
  • One version of the Enigma code was broken before the war. I thought the Polish had actually deciphered it at gave it to the English shortly after Poland was invaded. There were several different versions to the Enigma machine, the navy had one, other forces had others. The SS eventually developed an Enigma with ~12 dials (I think the original at the start of the war had 5 or 6).

    Please don't trust what I've written as my memory is a bit shaky (I try to remember the important things and vaguely remember the rest).
  • *looks out the window*

    Let's see... Copacabana Beach, check. The Christ statue, check. The Bread Loaf, check. Nope, not here.

    It worked, Carmen. You're safe now. Those fools' will never suspect a thing... now let's just erase this paragraph and click Subm--
  • I can say that being the cryotpgeek that I am, if I was going to be a thief and take something I'd want to take an Enigma machine. It would be a bad ass piece to have in my study. My hat is off to the gent for ripping it off. At least he didn't take something useless like a painting or some jewel laced golden artifact, he stole something that was calssified for years.
  • I imagine that many Poles feel the same way about the hundreds of books and articles that say that the British cracked the Enigma.
  • The password file was encrypted with a mutant version of DES. The crypt(1) program used a one-rotor version of Enigma.
  • they could be breaking crypto export regulations

    Not if they took a large hammer and squashed it flat, pressed it into sheets, and put a cover on it. Then it would be a book, and protected free speech ...

  • LOL.

    Well, I know she visited the Mechanic Shop and I know she was at the Football Stadium in Florida but I have to keep looking.

  • I know the Enigma algorithm is known, but has anybody actually implemented it in C or anything? That'd be fun to play with.
  • Hey moderator? How about a clue. If I mark it OT in the subject line, you don't have to moderate it OT! GEez.
    ---
  • I was investigating at the Library today -- someone dropped a teal and purple flower pot from a window and almost hit me on the head. Everyone knows that, when that happens, the villian is hiding out in town somewhere.

    I still have to investigate the tourist center and sports arena, but I've already used the crime computer to generate an arrest warrant.

    After this, I'm only two cases away from my next promotion!

    Take care,

    Steve


    ========
    Stephen C. VanDahm
  • Is it possibly some kind of really, really lame movie promotion for the new Bill Paxton movie?

    U-571 [u-571.com]

    Isn't it about a bunch of US Marines who end up dying after stealing an enigma machine off a German U-boat and thus help the allies win world war II?

    Remember when "Armaggedon" came out and suddenly NASA decided an asteroid was going to crash into the earth in 2025.. then released that they're was a million to chance that an asteroid was going to kill us all... lame, lame, lame.

    I wanted to see U-571 anyway, they didn't have to go and stage this lameness...
  • I've noticed a few comments now about how cracking the 3-rotor Enigma can't have been hard because we stole one to play with. All having an Enigma tells you is the algorithm, it doesn't tell you keys. Like most good encryption methods, Enigma's security doesn't rest in the algorithm, but in the keys. For example, everybody knows the Blowfish or RSA algorithms (or can look then up on the net), but that doesn't mean they are insecure because deciphering a message is still a very hard problem.

    The Station-X guys were geniuses because they found ways to discover the keys used for messages by examining ciphertext, and hence recover the plaintext.

    Of course, that didn't stop my government hounding Alan Turing after the war for being a homosexual, quite probably leading to his eventual suicide.

  • THe Enigma code was cracked by the Brits long before 1945.
  • There are (relatively) many Enigma machines, but there are only two -other- machines exactly like the missing one.
  • I think that was the Lorentz - a teletype based machine. An absolutely remarkable achievememnt when you consider that they hadn't even SEEN one of these machines.

    Enigma was cracked because a letter could not be encoded to itself. Therefore if you knew the clear text, you could match it with the appropriate position on the cyphertext (No matching letters), and dramatically reduce the number of matching configurations. There were a few other tricks they learned too, such as a repeated letter sometimes matched onto the same code letter as the previous time.
  • international superthief' type caper
    Sounds more like the bank robber who shows real identification when asked. Or the bank robber who was caught while waiting at the bus stop.

    Is 007 the IQ?

  • May 14, 1945, Washington D.C. In a breaking story, noted adventurer and time traveler Mark Smith returned from a secret mission yesterday, carrying a mysterious contraption. Rumors suggest that this enigmatic object may be the secret to cracking secret Axis information packages, but the president has thus far refused to respond to reporters' questions.

    More information to follow as the story breaks.
  • Now i'm going to have to stop using the Winigma(tm) crypto program I just bought...
  • Wrong! Next month's code was sometimes passed around encoded with the current code to the operators. It was cracked when a long message had to be retyped by a disgruntled operator, who made one typing error in the message. From this, the girls at Bletchley Park (The UK's code-cracking center during the war and where Alan Turing worked, and eventually designed and built Colossus, the first programmable computer...) were able to work out the shifting of the wheels within Enigma.

    Or something.
    awx

  • Re:Movie Promotion? (Score:3)

    by nstrug ( 1741 ) on Thursday April 06, 2000 @10:53AM (#1147444) Homepage
    U-571 is based on a true story - the capture of the first Enigma from U-110. However in the interests of selling the film to a nationalistic US public, the fact that the Engima was captured by British sailors on HMS Bulldog has been conveniently forgotten, and all the Brits are replaced with Americans in the film.

    Oddly enough, some Brits find this a bit cheeky.

    No doubt, Americans would be similarly amused if a film were to be released portraying Guadalcanal being liberated by British forces with nary an American in sight...

    Nick

  • Enigma vs. MPIA^H^HAA :-/ (Score:3)

    by Ricochet ( 16874 ) on Thursday April 06, 2000 @10:30AM (#1147445) Homepage
    Strange how the the Enigma save the planet (exagerated) and shortened the war (true). The people who cracked it were brilliant heroes (true). But the guy who wrote DeCSS is a criminal and a hacker (oh my god he's one of THEM!).

    In todays society the people who cracked the enigma would be locked up, sued, and branded criminals. Ironic, it's all a matter of timing.

  • Coders and computers (Score:3)

    by stephen_e_nelson ( 125736 ) on Thursday April 06, 2000 @12:47PM (#1147446)
    Interesting to note that it referred to the machine as a "coder." As I remember from the Neal Stephenson book, in 1945 the word "computer" referred to a person who did math.

    So, in 1945, a coder was a machine, and a computer was a person...

  • Well its about time. (Score:3)

    by BiggestPOS ( 139071 ) on Thursday April 06, 2000 @10:06AM (#1147447) Homepage
    This is the same guy who stole my garden gnome last week. And I suspect that he stole my bird bath 2 years ago. This man is a menace and I'm glad he was finally caught so he can pay for his debt to society. And my birds.

  • *LOL* Yes but... (Score:4)

    by SgtPepper ( 5548 ) on Thursday April 06, 2000 @09:53AM (#1147448)
    I think it's clear to everyone that the woman in the red car is most likely Carmen Sandiego.

    Where in the world is she?

    Breaks out into acapella song

  • Re:Everybody sing (Score:4)

    by Windigo The Feral (N ( 6107 ) on Thursday April 06, 2000 @11:16AM (#1147449)

    Some anonymous coward dun wrote:

    Who is Carmen San Dieago? I have been following this, and I just have no idea what you are talking about.

    I would stand in shock, but I remember that not everyone on Slashdot is from the States or even from countries where the main computer in schools was either an Apple II or an 8086 (at least to my knowledge, a version of "Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego" was never put out for the Speccy--pretty much the main computer, along with old BBC boxen, in the rest of the world outside of North America :).

    Anyhoos..."Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego" was a game put out years back for the Apple II and for older PCs (I think there may have been a Macintosh version too, but my memory may well be addled there) that was ostenably to teach kids about geography and which featured this lady in a red coat named Carmen Sandiego and a large gang of henchmen who stole various and sundry historical artifacts/features/etc. Your goal, of course, was to find out just where the hell Carmen Sandiego and her henchmen were (and it subtly taught you geography and map-reading skills along the way). Definitely one of the better "educational" games that ever came out...

    There were some sequels, if memory serves, such as "Where In Time Is Carmen Sandiego" (where she was even going back in TIME to steal historically important stuff, the evil wench), but the original is still IMHO the best of the series...

    And as for the little song folks have been posting, well...that's from the TV spinoff of the game (which was shown on PBS, our public broadcast/educational TV network here in the States--I'm not sure what the equivalent would be in other countries, other than the "cultural" channels) which was in a game-show format where kids had to (surprise, surprise) track down Carmen Sandiego and at the end take a bunch of markers and identify as many countries on a continent as they could in sixty seconds...great fun if you were a kid, and even educational for us grownups :) The song itself was done by a group called Rockapella that did (surprise, surprise) acapella songs, and they did all the music for the series (which ran for some two or three years at least).

    Which is probably more than you ever wanted to know about Carmen Sandiego ;)

  • Re:Movie Promotion? (Score:4)

    by MrCreosote ( 34188 ) on Thursday April 06, 2000 @01:38PM (#1147450)
    IIRC, what the *British* navy were ordered to do was to get a hold of the code book (not the actual machine) used by the German Navy which gave the settings to be used for each day. The German Navy were a little more strict in this respect than the Wehrmacht, which allowed the operators to come up with their own settings.
    The Code Books were made using special paper (rice paper?) and special ink (rose water?) and the enigma operators were under orders to throw the book into the water if they were ever captured. The water would make the book unreadable. However in this case, the captain just told the operator to abandon the sub, and he did not have time to destroy the code books.

  • The MPAA is behind this... (Score:4)

    by pmodz ( 123700 ) on Thursday April 06, 2000 @10:00AM (#1147451)
    After the cracking of CSS, they must be looking for a replacement technology. The article said this was one of two Enigma machines in the world...I wouldn't be surprised if the other one goes missing as well.

  • Don't Steal It; Download It (Score:5)

    by waldoj ( 8229 ) <waldo@@@jaquith...org> on Thursday April 06, 2000 @10:20AM (#1147452) Homepage Journal
    Try out genigma [pages.at]. Runs on X, released under the GPL. Way easier than getting arrested.

    -Waldo

  • So They Found the Suspect . . . (Score:5)

    by llywrch ( 9023 ) on Thursday April 06, 2000 @09:54AM (#1147453) Homepage Journal
    Does this mean they'll stop questioning Kevin Mitnick about this latest computer crime?

    Geoff

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