Over the last couple of days a small furore has erupted over allegations a News Corp subsidiary, NDS, has been hacking the pay-TV smartcards of News Corp’s competitors, and even News Corp’s own companies – allegations that NDS vigorously denies.
In last week’s episode of NCIS: Los Angeles on Channel Ten, the program’s protagonists try to locate a stolen electromagnetic bomb before detonation. I know this, because I was the scientific advisor for this episode. While NCIS: LA, and shows like it, are clearly works of fiction, these “E-bombs” are very real and the use of such a device in a major city truly would be devastating.
You may have read the British Government is being petitioned to grant a posthumous pardon to Alan Turing: one of the world’s greatest mathematicians, most successful codebreakers, and the father of computer science. You may also have read that Turing was was convicted of gross indecency in 1952 and died tragically two years later. But who, exactly, was he?
