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posted by Blackmoore on Monday November 17 2014, @09:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the show-me-the-money dept.

The A.M. Turing Award is often called the Nobel Prize of computer science. Now, thanks to Google’s largess, it will be a Nobel-level prize financially: $1 million.

The quadrupling of the prize money, announced on Thursday by the Association for Computing Machinery, the professional organization that administers the award, is intended to elevate the prominence and recognition of computer science. The move can be seen as another sign of the boom times in technology.

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  • (Score: 1, Offtopic) by VLM on Monday November 17 2014, @09:34PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday November 17 2014, @09:34PM (#116953)

    I'm sure there's a systemd joke lurking around in here somewhere...

    • (Score: 2) by novak on Monday November 17 2014, @09:54PM

      by novak (4683) on Monday November 17 2014, @09:54PM (#116959) Homepage

      The prize money isn't the only thing that quadrupled in size last week!

      --
      novak
  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Monday November 17 2014, @09:55PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday November 17 2014, @09:55PM (#116960)

    The move can be seen as another sign of the boom times in technology.

    More likely as a sign of stereotypical income inequality.

    Four prizes of a quarter mil each would do "about four times as much" for the field as giving one guy a four times as much. Don't get me wrong, its very nice of them, but its annoying that a simple administrative change could have vastly superior results. Its very much "rock star CEO pay" kind of thinking.

    The committee that grants the winners could always hack it by only awarding to quartets of people, I guess.

    • (Score: 2) by pnkwarhall on Tuesday November 18 2014, @01:02AM

      by pnkwarhall (4558) on Tuesday November 18 2014, @01:02AM (#117045)
      Technology is a means to an end -- not the end itself.

      Google's† aim w/ the Turing prize is not to benefit humanity by advancing the field of computer science. They don't care about rewarding people for their hard work and sacrifice. They care about **domination**, and they accomplish this by encouraging innovation and making careful use of the results. So the question is: How do you motivate people? Money is a great motivator, and I think the lottery has shown us that the bigger the pot, the more people are interested in taking it.

      Read and remember this, and remember it well: Google's #1 "goal" is to encourage the encroachment of computer technology into every corner of our lives. With that in mind, re-read the first sentence of this post.

      † Read "the powers-that-be at Google and elsewhere"
      --
      Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 18 2014, @01:00PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 18 2014, @01:00PM (#117205)

        I don't know about you, but I think that giving away money to people deemed worthy by their peers is usually a good thing.

        • (Score: 2) by pnkwarhall on Tuesday November 18 2014, @05:40PM

          by pnkwarhall (4558) on Tuesday November 18 2014, @05:40PM (#117315)

          giving away money to people deemed worthy by their peers is usually a good thing.

          Not always.

          Google spent $14.06 million [consumerwatchdog.org] on lobbying in 2013.

          --
          Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
        • (Score: 2) by pnkwarhall on Tuesday November 18 2014, @06:13PM

          by pnkwarhall (4558) on Tuesday November 18 2014, @06:13PM (#117334)

          And according to this link [opensecrets.org], Google was the 12th highest "donor" in 2013.

          --
          Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
  • (Score: 1) by gumpish on Tuesday November 18 2014, @07:47PM

    by gumpish (713) on Tuesday November 18 2014, @07:47PM (#117364)

    I remember being disappointed some years ago when that other site had a headline referring to the Turing award as "the Nobel prize of computer science".

    Apparently SN editors also don't trust their readers to know what the Turing award is to simply say "Google to quadruple Turing award winnings to $1 million".

    =/

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 18 2014, @10:55PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 18 2014, @10:55PM (#117436)

      It's SEO optimization, so that some of Google's "largess" trickles down into more SN page views when people do various kinds of searches.

    • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday November 19 2014, @06:42PM

      by urza9814 (3954) on Wednesday November 19 2014, @06:42PM (#117791) Journal

      Meh, I know I've heard of it before but apparently never gave a crap enough to remember what it was. Probably still won't.

      Nobel is still a good comparison, because that's one you hear about every single day, that everyone know quite well. I'm glad they included that. I'm a recent comp sci graduate and a professional software developer and the only place I can recall ever seeing the Turing award mentioned is here and Slashdot. Shit, in my experience the FIRST Robotics competition probably has better name recognition than the Turing award!