UK To Create Alan Turing Institute 62
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."
Re:Alan Turing was all kinds of awesome! (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Alan Turing was all kinds of awesome! (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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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
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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 reli
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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.
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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
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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.
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'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'.
name? (Score:2)
The Alan Turing Institute For Automated General Spying, nice acronym too.
Cheap shot I know, except that the real name will be more hypocritical.
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Cheap, effective, but maybe incorrect. Seems more like a bullshit proposal from a politician spewing buzzwords he can't understand:
We will found the Alan Turing Institute to ensure Britain leads the way again in the use of big data and algorithm research.
"I am determined that our country is going to out-compete, out-smart and out-do the rest of the world."
The government said that big data "can allow businesses to enhance their manufacturing processes, target their marketing better, and provide more efficient services".
Let's hope some good research can come of this, it's not like basic science research is included in the budget of any corporation. Of course, it's unlikely that any of it will directly help UK, with maybe the sole exception of keeping talented researchers in the country.
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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
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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.
Its fine as long as .. (Score:1)
I'm fucking offended. (Score:3)
Great, naming an institute doing something intellectually repulsive after him. How little things change.
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Great idea, although... (Score:2)
"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.
Good Luck (Score:1)
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Pardon?! (Score:1)
Re:Pardon?! (Score:4, Informative)
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Strictly speaking, all a pardon does in UK law is remove the burden of the sentence.
In Turing's case, there'd also been an official apology previously, and so there was no official reason to issue an apology along with the pardon. (There won't be a declaration of innocence because he admitted committing what was a crime at the time. The myriad problems with the case weren't with the law as such, so much as everything else around it.)
It's a good thing that the law in this area was changed, even if it was changed later than some might have wished for.
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It's a good thing that the law in this area was changed, even if it was changed later than some might have wished for.
It's a pity the law was made in the first place...
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At the time he did it, what he did was a crime. Now, you may argue that it shouldn't have been (and I would agree with you), but the fact that it has become legal now does not mean that he did not break the law as it stood at the time.
In the same way, I'm fairly sure that alcohol smugglers imprisoned under Prohibition weren't all released from jail when it was overturned.
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The government issued an apology several years ago.
And yes, he did something wrong according to the law at the time, regardless of whether the law has since changed or societies feelings toward such a law has changed - are we to go through every single conviction back to the dawn of time to pardon and apologise to every single person in the same situation every time a law changes?
Alan Turing isn't special, he's just famous. And he gets an apology and a pardon because of it.
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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/ [wikipedia.org]].
about time (Score:2)
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This new institute for spying tech is not the first research institute named after Alan Turing.
The Turing Institute [wikipedia.org] was a laboratory for Artificial Intelligence in Glasgow, founded in 1983 and closed down in 1994.