>>7679253
Consider changing majors. CS has become shit because of the likes of you.

A Turing machine is a thing that can do anything (that can be expressed as logical algebra).

>>7679253
It's a beep boop robotable.

>>7679253

A finite set of states including a "reject" and "accept" end states
A infinite tape (can be bidirectional or multiple tapes)
A finite set of symbols to write on said tape
A finite set of rules specifying on a given state and given tape symbol what to do next

>>7679261

CS has always been shit. All the contributions have always been from mathematicians, engineers and real scientists.

>>7679261
This

>>7679253
Its you

>>7679253
http://www.google.com/doodles/alan-turings-100th-birthday

>>7679253
The best visualization/deconstruction I can think of is this:

A Turing machine is a limited little robot that moves on a "tape" of cell instructions. it reads the instruction that it currently occupies, then performs that operation.

This little machine model can be used to model/calculate many things in computer sciences.

>>7680291
Also, go read the Wikipedia page at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_machine

It does have a simple break down, as well as some detailed bits. Maybe it will help you understand the basics of Turing machines.

>>7679317
For a working example of this see brainfuck. You can do anything in brainfuck!

>>7679317
so youre saying karp, tarjan, papadimitriou, and their likes never contributed anything worthwhile?

a machine with a rule book for changing symbols into other symbols, rules to recognize when it's done computing and whether the input symbols it got were "valid", and as much space to write down its computations as needed.