The new Alan Turing docudrama is available for streaming | Hacker News Reader

The new Alan Turing docudrama is available for streaming

channel4.com

69 pointsjgrahamc34 comments

Available on torrent: http://torrentz.eu/d92cb0d2e9339e83996b970205d91e350e7c31da

Yeah, I was going to ask about this.

A distributor somewhere is left without his advertising dollars because I'm going to go watch this from torrent without any ads.

I wouldn't mind some ads, but I'm not going to wait until this becomes available in my region. That will probably take years.

Media producers and distributors: start thinking about worldwide zero day distribution now or be prepared to go out of business.

People of the world: be prepared for international copyright police.

to be honest your best off not using the channel 4 web player. It completely crashes my browser at least 50% of the times I visit.

I look forward to watching this - I was lucky enough to see Derek Jacobi playing Turing in the stage version of "Breaking the Code" which was awesome.

There are a few clips of Jacobi playing Turing on YouTube - including this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gV67Sj2jkVg

Happens to also be the simplest and nicest explanation of Gödel's theorem I've ever seen—I was expecting such a thing to come from a mathematician's lips, not an actor's :)

     The document is not available in your area.

Great job.

A familiar sight to those of us outside the US, of course.

Trying to watch this outside of the UK... The irony with this link on HN does not escape me:

http://lists.whatwg.org/htdig.cgi/whatwg-whatwg.org/2011-Nov...

and

http://www.channel4.com/4viewers/faq/name/i-live-in-the-uk-r...

It'd be awesome if there was a plug-in that auto-magically worked around these blocks, using bit-torrent and crowdsourcing.

Features:

If you try to peer into a walled garden, your browser plug-in notices the issue and grabs the content off of a torrent (if available).

If you come across an error "not available in your country" (i.e. it's not yet available on a torrent, or you are the first to report this issue to the plug-in), you press a REPORT button, and the plug-in communicates with others using the software (behind the scenes) to see if others have access to the content.

Your participation in the network could be passive or active. If you are paranoid, then you could set the flag to prompt you before uploading any content. If you are less paranoid, then behind the scenes, your PC would automatically help upload "hidden" content for others to see, without prompting.

There are obvious copyright and legality concerns (be paranoid about kiddie porn for instance), but that would be a cool, valuable tool for some Hacker to crank out.

I watched it and was disappointed not to see them taking a stab at explaining what a Turing Machine does and why it's so important. Instead all we had was stock footage of old computers and some BlinkenLights.

What was the point of showing the paper Turing Machine model thing, without even attempting to describe how it works?

Maybe I was not the target audience, as the director was more interested in the view of that apple tree out of the trick cyclists window.

I watched the programme last night and it was excellent. I've always held Alan Turing as one of my all time hero's of Computer Science. If you can manage to get hold of it I highly recommend watching it.

On a side note I decided to read his paper this morning 'Computing Machinery and Intelligence'. If you have some spare time today give the paper a read. Especially the 'Digital Computers' paragraph. As you're reading it think to yourself he is describing something that does not exist, nobody has ever heard of, and yet he is perfectly describing the computer I am using to type this comment. Phenomenal.

link to paper : http://loebner.net/Prizef/TuringArticle.html

Turing's interests included mathematical modeling of biology too (surprised me a bit):

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_chemical_basis_of_morphogen...

http://www.dna.caltech.edu/courses/cs191/paperscs191/turing....

Can I recommend "Alan Turing: the Enigma" by Andrew Hodges - it really is a splendid book and covers all of Turing's work:

http://www.turing.org.uk/book/

Meh, I watched it last night, and it left me wanting more. It delt more with Turing dealing with homosexuality than exploring his discoveries in depth.

I was disapointed.

It's a TV program. What proportion of the TV viewing public are more interested in the entscheidungsproblem compared to sex and death ?

On the other hand, at least it wasn't BBC. Then it would have somebody on a bike doing zany things (cos science is fun) that fit in a specific section of schools curriculum (so they meet their public service quota)

I agree, and as such my comment served the thread by warning those visiting HN, that unless they were looking for a melodrama, it was probably not worth watching. Just my opinion, but that's (part of) what comments are for.

I just assume TV programs about science/engineering, even British ones, will be disappointing.

Oddly the maths in Derek Jacobi's portrayal is very good - but the human drama doesn't always work. In one scene he is talking to the commanding officer who says all this sex business is just youthfulness and it doesn't really matter when you get older. But a 20something Turing is played by a 50something Jacobi who looks 20years older than the actor playing the C/O!

You've obviously not been watching BBC4 - I really recommend keeping an eye on their schedules.

At what point did it ever say it was about "his discoveries in depth"? The programme was what it was, the fact that it wasn't the programme you wanted to watch meant you should have read the description or switched off earlier.

There's also a documentary made a few years ago about Turing and 4 other brilliant people.

It's free on Google Video and called "Dangerous Knowledge". It's short but super interesting and thought-provoking.

Check it out if you're interested http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5122859998068380459

Short? It's 90 minutes long!

It is also superb, one of my favourite TV documentaries. It deals with Cantor, Boltzmann, Gödel and Turing, and revolves around how their work eventually destroyed them, hence the title.

I love showing it to people: it was made for BBC4 and as such it is understandable by people with little knowledge of maths, but it's always capable of blowing their minds.

Haha, I meant the Turing part is relatively short. But yeah it's really well put together.

Sadly seems to only play in the UK :(

I have asked the producers to see if they can change that. Don't hold your breath though as I suspect the rights issues are very complex.

It does appear to be on Channel 4's YouTube channel here: http://www.youtube.com/show/britainsgreatestcodebreaker Is that viewable from outside the UK?

Not in Estonia. The uploader has not made this video available in your country. Sorry about that.

Not available in Canada, either. And we share the same Queen. :)

No, the Channel 4 YouTube channel is also not viewable outside the UK.

Pity, that.

In Spain, no.

Not in Austria

For the record that YouTube link works fine in Ireland.

For the record, it works in Ireland.

I loved it! Watched it from outside the UK through a proxy.

The entire thing is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lH4hhX_j6pQ

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