UK PM apologizes to Alan Turing

How often does a politician apologize?

But even more than that, Alan [Turing] deserves recognition for his contribution to humankind. For those of us born after 1945, into a Europe which is united, democratic and at peace, it is hard to imagine that our continent was once the theatre of mankind’s darkest hour. It is difficult to believe that in living memory, people could become so consumed by hate - by anti-Semitism, by homophobia, by xenophobia and other murderous prejudices - that the gas chambers and crematoria became a piece of the European landscape as surely as the galleries and universities and concert halls which had marked out the European civilisation for hundreds of years. It is thanks to men and women who were totally committed to fighting fascism, people like Alan Turing, that the horrors of the Holocaust and of total war are part of Europe’s history and not Europe’s present.

So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work I am very proud to say: we’re sorry, you deserved so much better.

Tip o' the hat to hippybear for the link.

BBC on Unix

While I'm trawling UK history, I was chuffed to see that the BBC published a pair of articles on Unix's 40th anniversary:

40 Years of Unix

The computer world is notorious for its obsession with what is new - largely thanks to the relentless engine of Moore's Law that endlessly presents programmers with more powerful machines.

Given such permanent change, anything that survives for more than one generation of processors deserves a nod.

Think then what the Unix operating system deserves because in August 2009, it celebrates its 40th anniversary. And it has been in use every year of those four decades and today is getting more attention than ever before.

The enlightenment's operating system

In a world that is increasingly shaped by and managed through advanced computer technology, the ideologies built into applications and operating systems matter more and more because they shape the potential of the systems we are developing.

I choose Unix over anything else because I believe that the respect for the system's administrators, programmers and end-users that lies at the core of the Unix philosophy remains our best hope for creating computer systems that will promote and encourage free expression, liberalism and humanism.

Unix is the operating system that most clearly expresses the values of the liberal enlightenment that form the basis of my own personal philosophy, and I will continue to use and support it.