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UK To Create Alan Turing Institute
kc123 writes "The UK government has announced plans to create the Alan Turing Institute intended to tackle problems in Big Data. The government will provide £42m over five years for the project. Turing was a pivotal figure in mathematics and computing. His codebreaking work led to the cracking of the German 'Enigma' codes. In December 2013, after a series of public campaigns, Turing received a posthumous royal pardon, for a conviction of homosexual activity in 1952."
The Alan Turing Institute For Automated General Spying, nice acronym too.
Cheap shot I know, except that the real name will be more hypocritical.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
They don't do research on chemical castration.. I say They'd rather give his name for an institute dealing with individual privacy and the fundamental right "to be" ..
Great, naming an institute doing something intellectually repulsive after him. How little things change.
Too late, UK or The Queen have no moral rights to use Turing's name!
It would have been better if it had been an institute to research cures for gayness, which Turing would have dearly loved to have
"I am determined that our country is going to out-compete, out-smart and out-do the rest of the world."
I dunno, for a Britisch chancellor to say that in 2014... I dunno.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Too late, UK or The Queen have no moral rights to use Turing's name!
It would have been better if it had been an institute to research cures for gayness, which Turing would have dearly loved to have
This comment makes me feel very sad because he would have loved to be able to stop being gay. Societies judgments on him let to the self-loathing that eventually led to his suicide. What he needed (but probably didn't even consider possible) was a society that did not stigmatise or judge him.
Actually, some people are completely straight, some people are completely gay, and then there are people in the middle, shades of gray, for whom it is a choice of lifestyle.
So you sound as ignorant as your parent.
Alas, you are confusing choice of action with choice of existence.
For someone that is, to use your term, a "shade of gay", there is only the choice of acting upon this desire. There is no choice in having these partial homosexual tendencies.
To dumb it down, you may choose to never sexually interact with a man for your entire life. This is your choice. You cannot however, choose to not be attracted to other men if you are fully or partially homosexual.
I hope that those data will be use in good outcome.
You can't overturn a 1952 conviction for something that was against the law in 1952. That would make the legal system a complete nonsense, with people's convictions for past illegal acts being overturned as the law changed.
Isn't a "pardon" implying he did something wrong? I'm not British, but I feel the word "pardon" means someone did something bad and was forgiven... Shouldn't it read "Turing received a posthumous royal Apology"? Ah, but royalty is "never wrong", right? ;o)
Being homosexual is not a life choice any more than skin colour is.
This... doesn't matter either way. It's strange that this is emphasised so often. That homophobia is wrong doesn't depend on homosexuality not being a choice.
The existence of a 'straight pill' would not make homophobia ok.
Don't be an asshole to people just for being different from you strikes me as a much better rule than Don't be an asshole to people just for being different from you, unless those differences are through choice.
You're not in charge of what you find attractive. My own tastes have been skewed toward mostly ladies from the discount section who were, to varying degrees, damaged goods. I need to be needed... ye olde false knight syndrome.
That said, we will finally pass beyond base tribal discrimination into enlightened society when an article such as this is discussed with no mention of Turing's sexual preference.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
It's emphasised because many of the most vocal homophobes seem to think that homosexuality is a choice. Of course there are homophones who don't think that, like the Daily Mail that believes gay foetuses should be aborted on the womb.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
For that matter, your right to have sex with your own gender shouldn't need to rely on being born that way as legal justification.
"Poor is the man whose pleasures depend on the permission of another." -- a wise person
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
By design, the Enigma had an extra encryption permutation wheel which was always set to 0. Had that been used, the difficulty in cracking the codes would have been far more difficult by 1943 standards. The Nazi's were too arrogant and did not want to deal with the extra logistics involved with having to communicate this extra setting. Shows you what happens when bureaucrats instead of engineers make decisions.
'poof' or 'poofter' are the words that you grasp after, not a composite of the two.
Right, I'm just off to a brothel to visit your mom where, even there, I believe they refer to her as 'Admiral Ackbar'.
Those damn Natzi's must have distracted her...
It's about time the Brits recognized Alan Turing. Without his Enigma and other crypto accomplishments, you might be speaking German.
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
If we were not allowed to discriminate against people based on their choices it would get ridiculous. "Sorry, you can't send me to jail for stealing, that's discrimination."
Firstly, I never mentioned 'allowed'. I was discussing right and wrong.
Secondly, your comparison is preposterous. Not all matters of choice are equivalent. You can't see the difference between being gay and stealing someone's stuff? Good lord, do I really have to spell it out!?
Here goes: not all choices are fair game for discrimination. Choosing to steal my stuff harms me. Choosing to marry someone else of the same sex does not. Clear about the difference now?
Religious discrimination is unfair, despite religion being a choice, correct? (At least, much more a matter of choice than sexuality. One can choose to stop going to a place of worship, even if one can't choose to simply not believe something any more. The analogy to sexuality and sex is certainly there, but it remains that people can and do adopt/convert between/abandon religions.)
it also wouldn't make homosexuality a choice. The only choice introduced would be whether or not to get rid of one's homosexuality, which is not the same thing at all.
I don't see that the difference is significant. We can compare with a disease for which there is an effective, safe, and let's say completely free, cure: refusing treatment and continuing to suffer from the disease certainly can be called a choice, even though getting the disease in the first place was not.
You're just falling for the whole bullshit package of It's only unfair to discriminate on these grounds if these grounds are involuntary.
From what I undertsand, the enigma machine was very well designed (it was made by the Germans) and should have been impossible to crack if it wasn't for Mr Turning and his amazing brain.
Not to take anything away from Turing's brilliant work, but his Enigma accomplishments were based on the work of Polish cryptologists Rejewski, Rozycki, and Zygalski, who were breaking Enigma messages in 1932 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_machine/].
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
For that matter, your right to have sex with your own gender shouldn't need to rely on being born that way as legal justification.
Good point.
No, no, turns out I wasn't born that way. I was just curious. doesn't make discrimination ok.