So, is Macintosh’s Apple logo bite in commemoration of Turing or not?
I’m a gay woman, you don’t need to educate me about equal rights. But your comment does show your lack of awareness of the conflicts within Tory politics.
I never claimed to have any awareness of Tory politics or British politics in general. I do, however, feel that using the word ‘schtik’ in that context is incorrect.
How would you know, if you aren’t aware of the context, as you aren’t aware of British politics?
Nm
The fact that they could was classified since, the British went and sold or supplied as “aid” enigma machines to third countries. In the early 50’s they sold a few machines to Pakistan and India. Now due to having been part of British India, both countries had leaders who were aware of Enigma, a fact which seems to have be forgotten as India started using it for a while.
When asked if the Apple name/logo was a reference to Turing, Steve Jobs is reported to have said, “No, but we wish it were.”
I’m kind of glad it isn’t because frankly, that’s a bit morbid.
This. If **Little Nemo **is right, Turing himself would be embarrassed to be pardoned while every other person convicted under the anti-gay laws is not. IIRC the Labor government were happy to and did issue a fulsome apology but thought it was wrong in principle to pardon one guy who was convicted under a law we now consider abhorrent, because he is famous, while not pardoning everyone else. Heck you could come with a list like a telephone book of people convicted under all manner of abhorrent laws over the past few centuries. Are they all to be pardoned? In principle I’m not vehemently opposed to the idea but I do wonder how one draws the line under what is too ancient in history to bother. But I’m pretty sure one should not draw that line by saying “we’ll pardon the famous and worthy ones but not everyone else”.
The pardon has finally been granted;
(bolding added by me)
Talk about your cold-blooded reactions. Jayzus H. Christ.
For lots of other people, symbolic actions (which are all that remains at this point, since the establishment hounded the poor man to death) do in fact add quite a bit. Given how many godawful legal precedents are set every day, to harp on this one seems a bit disingenuous, at the very least.
I agree. I think he’s missed the point (at least as far as that quote appears to indicate) - this isn’t about the law - this is an act of public and political mourning (and I don’t mean that to sound like a bad thing).
I don’t know, I kind of agree with Hodges. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy something was done, but to me it sounds a lot like “Alan Turing was cool, because he was a SMART gay, all the other homos who were convicted can still go fuck themselves, though.” Now a posthumous knighthood, or a Grand Royal Apology™ are another thing, but a pardon feels a bit odd.
I want to be clear that I know the intention was benign, and they didn’t mean to malign all the other people affected by the laws, but I think they should have gone some way other than a pardon to make the gesture. What they did is certainly better than nothing.
I have to agree with Hodges also. If the Brits really wants to make amends, they’d pardon/vacate the conviction/whatever EVERY person that was convicted under the law that Turing was convicted under. That they aren’t is vaguely insulting to everyone else.
How would you feel if your uncle was convicted under this law and eventually killed himself over it, and he didn’t get a pardon because all he did during WWII was be a no-name farmer?
And I say this as a computer scientist, that holds Turing in the highest regard.
(on the other hand, at least the Brits are trying to do the right thing, even if they’re making a bit of a blunder of it)
I think it was Hodges himself who noted that Turing could have used his connections to escape punishment at the time, but didn’t do so, because he felt that would have been unfair to people who were guilty of nothing worse than his crime but didn’t win WW2.
And (I’m getting this from elsewhere too) Turing was indeed guilty of the crime of which he was convicted and for which he was punished. The law was unjust, but other than that he was not unfairly convicted of breaking it.
No, Turing was still active in code breaking work aimed at the Soviets. He was a cryptographic Consultant to the government for this. Yhat was one of the things he was forced out of due to his conviction – supposedly he was vulnerable to blackmail – how, when he had already been convicted in open court?
Well, the case was Regina v. Turing and Murray. That Regina is still around, but I don’t think she has a ballsack to kick.
Whilst agreeing that though modern eyes, the law was unjust, horrible, beastly, an affont to enlightened society and so forth, the problem is that granting a pardon to everyone convicted under it creates a precedent with some rather wide ramifications. There would be people wanting (not unreasonably) redress for the hardships they (or more likely their parents/grandparents) suffered and a mass pardon is a bit hard not to view as an unequivocal acknoweldgement by the Government that the law was completely wrong to start with, which could result in a not insignificant financial burden from a series of successful lawsuits - a financial burden that will ultimately become the taxpayer’s problem.
Having said all that, I don’t disagree that when a law is later shown to be as wrong as the one criminalising being gay was, everyone convicted under it should be given a pardon - but I think there’s a lot of wider issues and ramifications accompanying such a course of action that would need to be looked into as well.
Updating this thread, he is going to feature on the new 50 pound bank note:
As one wag on twitter put it