Sir Tim Berners-Lee Lauded For Web Efforts 147
crem_d_genes writes "The first Millenium Technology Prize to be given by the Finnish Technology Award Foundation has been awarded to Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the 'Father of the Web', for his work in creating the hypertext program that would come to change the way in which scientists, and later the general public would access data over the internet. The rest is history."
Some kind of mistake? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Some kind of mistake? (Score:3, Informative)
Snopes ain't God, buddy ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Your quote is out of context [snopes.com]
This is one reason Snopes sometimes bugs me. It is not an "urban legend" that Gore made a sweeping claim, clearly intended to be interpreted as it was, but carefully crafted to be deniable.
Gore's devotees, however, were clearly quite discomfited by his claim ...
This Snopes article is basically an opinion piece, trying to pass as a skeptical debunking piece.
Re:Snopes ain't God, buddy ... (Score:1)
I'm glad I never tried that crap in college paper....
Re:Gore right, Snopes wrong (Score:1)
It was a quip. What he meant with his "invention" remark was that he pushed forward various initiatives that allowed business use. It was taken out of context, and he's been suffering ever since. Hence the joke.
Or are you claiming that he actually believed that he meant it the way it's been interpreted?
Gore is an amazing guy (Score:1, Funny)
2003-04-01
On March 19, former Vice President Al Gore joined the Board of Directors at Apple Computer. His history of helping advance technology in the areas of education and science is seen as a valuable asset to Apple. While some have acclaimed Gore for his technology initiatives as Vice President, he has also received scorn from others for claiming he "invented the Internet."
When recently asked about his statement, Gore responded, "I don't know why people don't believe me -- it must b
Re:Some kind of mistake? (Score:1)
Re:Some kind of mistake? (Score:2)
-MT.
Re:Some kind of mistake? (Score:3, Funny)
Al Gore did not creat the Internet. He did, however, sleep at a holiday inn express....
Re:Some kind of mistake? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Some kind of mistake? (Score:2)
BT? (Score:3)
And don't forget, British Telecom apparently 'invented' hyperlinking way before Sir Tim did... mind BT is a [sarcasm]much loved[/sarcasm] company here in blighty.
I'm in the process of filing an official complaint for them fecking up my broadband connection for three weeks (even though their "complaints" department might actually be a bin), since they're obviously such "innovators" of technology it takes another company to be able to provide my broadband services... anyway, rant over & just my 0.02
Re:BT? (Score:3, Informative)
I think Berners-Lee would be the daddy of the web. Bush would be the grand daddy.
Re:BT? (Score:2)
He was at AT&T research labs, where the primary means of communication is based on phone culture - they communicate everything using telephones, and use their phone as we use e-mail.
He would say that it got so bad that nobody would check their e-mails for days on end. For people who've been there a long time, its been so well ingrained that they cannot even think of anything else.
And so, you have these b
Re:Some kind of mistake? (Score:1, Informative)
Status: False.
Origins: No,
Al Gore did not claim he "invented" the Internet, nor did he say anything that could reasonably be interpreted that way. The derisive "Al Gore said he 'invented' the Internet" put-downs are misleading distortions of something he said (taken out of context) during an interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN's "Late Edition" program on 9 March 1999. When asked to describe what distinguished him from his challenge
Re:Some kind of mistake? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Some kind of mistake? (Score:1)
Re:Some kind of mistake? (Score:1)
Such as seemed like a good idea to me so I gave them some money to set it up. Which is what I think he was talking about.
The hyper links / the web was a fairly old idea HTML is really a bastard son of STML which only missed out on hyper links because people did not want to add it to there existing code base. TextMarkupLanguages use 'Bracket' tag'endBrac
Re:Some kind of mistake? (Score:1)
Politicians and the Internet (Score:3, Funny)
Albert W Gore: "I created it"
John F Kerry: "I voted for it, and I voted against it"
Pat Buchanan: "If we stop illegal immigration, the spam and pop-up problem will be taken care of".
question (Score:4, Funny)
Re:question (Score:3, Informative)
www.w3.org isn't good enough for you?
http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/ [w3.org]
Re:question (Score:5, Informative)
Yes he does [w3.org]
Re:question (Score:1, Informative)
Email is safe unless it contains programs. (Data and documents are fine, programs are not). If you send me a program, I will not run it, as it could damage my system and could be a virus.
* Note: Documents for Microsoft word, Excel, and possibly other Office programs tend to execute programs (scripts) in what you would expect to be harmless documents. These can expose my machine to viruses, because these pro
The missing step (Score:5, Funny)
almost as rich as a dot.commer (Score:5, Informative)
Re:almost as rich as a dot.commer (Score:2)
It's their money, but these me-too awards always strike me as cheap and pointless.
By the way, did I hallucinate it or is Slashdot now running banner ads fo
Re:almost as rich as a dot.commer (Score:2)
The ads are for a movie about a human cloning service - the movie is called "Godsend" and it has Robert DeNiro, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, and Greg Kinnear in it.
Re:almost as rich as a dot.commer (Score:1)
Re:almost as rich as a dot.commer (Score:2)
Face it, they're at least as believable as the Microsoft ones. Microsoft: they have been weighed, they have been measured and they have been found most wanting.
Stephen
PS This isn't random Microsoft bashing. I have to evaluated their products. Some are good (a few would be excellent if the security holes were fixed), most are very, very p
Re:almost as rich as a dot.commer (Score:1)
Fantastic (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Fantastic (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Fantastic (Score:2)
Americans, however, are barred, not by British law, but by American law.
Re:Fantastic (Score:1)
Re:Fantastic (Score:1)
Re:Fantastic (Score:1, Troll)
Re:Fantastic (Score:2)
Re:Fantastic (Score:2)
As it says later, this is just a policy, and one that is only enforced in rare occasions. The "enforcement" consists of asking the granting party (in this cas Britain) to please reconsider.
If Chretien hadn't intervened because of his personal fued with Black, Black would have been granted his peerage while still a Canadian citizen :-)
Re:Fantastic (Score:2)
Now if you had said "Let's get rid of Governor-General Adrian Clarkson and her spend-happy ways" I'd have agreed with you 100%.
You don't have to be British... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Fantastic (Score:1)
Re:Fantastic (Score:1)
whatever jokes you guys make out of it (Score:5, Insightful)
Praise the guy.
Re:whatever jokes you guys make out of it (Score:5, Insightful)
E-commerce, or even advertising-based commercial sites like Slashdot, don't get any mention at all.
Re:whatever jokes you guys make out of it (Score:5, Funny)
Strip the prize then. He obvisouly doesn't deserve it.
How could this man be so short sited not to have predicted the existance of Slashdot 13 years ago?
I remember when back when I connected to fidonet through the 120baud modem on my apple IIc that I'd finish every newsboard post with "I'm only posting this here because Slashdot doesn't exist yet".
Where's _my_ fucking knighthood?
Re:whatever jokes you guys make out of it (Score:1)
I didn't expect him to make predictions of Slashdot, of course. My point is that the "Web as we know it" today is a lot broader than anything Berners-Lee mentioned in his original proposal. No one person gave us "the World-Wide Web" in the sense that we mean it today: Amazon, Google, blogs, pop-ups, movie trailers, Flash animations,
Re:whatever jokes you guys make out of it (Score:2)
"Strip" the prize indeed! (Score:2)
TBL may have come up with HTML, but pr0n made the web what it is today....
We need a new mod category (Score:5, Funny)
I think we need a new mod category: Incomprehensible.
Re:whatever jokes you guys make out of it (Score:3, Insightful)
Uhh, yeah. Unless he had heard of Gopher/Archie/Veronica, at which point the WWW really becomes only an incremental improvement. Nobody creates something out of a vacuum. TBL was just, as is so often the case, in the right place at the right time.
Re:whatever jokes you guys make out of it (Score:2)
PS: I pasted the parent into a megahal and here is the result: Which makes as much or possibly more sense.
the concept had been thought of (Score:1)
It used postscript, and other propriatry software.
Re:whatever jokes you guys make out of it (Score:5, Funny)
Mosaic made the web browser.
Netscape mucked up the HTML specification.
Microsoft made the security holes.
Yep, they all played their part in making the World Wide Web what it is today.
-MT.
The web is not the internet (Score:1)
ah shit (Score:1)
jj (Score:4, Funny)
No. He doesn't know HTML
Re:jj (Score:1)
He uses a mac....
Re:jj (Score:2)
IRC (Score:5, Funny)
Re:IRC (Score:2, Funny)
Or sid miers for civilization. That game put me in the hospital....
Re:IRC (Score:2)
Re:IRC (Score:2)
NeXTcube (Score:4, Interesting)
It's quite nice to know that like HTML, NeXTstep is still present as OSX.
Re:NeXTcube (Score:3, Informative)
Panther helps the aesthetics somewhat, but NeXT users still miss / are irritated by (well, I know I am):
- monolithic main menu bar w/ wasted blank space between the menu
Re:NeXTcube (Score:1)
Moreover, the OED is _so_ comprehensive that it verges on useless for day-to-day usage 'cause one has to wade through countless entries of archaic minutiae (not that I'm against that sort of thing, but sometimes one must be practicable).
William
Or as GNUStep (Score:2)
For those who write OS X software, you are also writing for GNUStep.
Nonsense (Score:3, Informative)
Re:NeXTcube (Score:4, Informative)
Finally, lots of code written for OSX builds on Gnustep and Openstep. For example GNUmail [collaboration-world.com]
So, yes it is correct to say that OSX is the modern version of NextStep just like WinXP is the modern Windows
Re:NeXTcube (Score:2)
Around the same time... (Score:1, Interesting)
If I'd known more about hypertext, I could have been the knighted one!
Excuse me, I'm going to go cry now...
Re:Around the same time... (Score:1)
silly (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:silly (Score:5, Insightful)
TBL points out that he didn't invent the internet (Score:4, Informative)
Re:silly (Score:3, Informative)
If you want precision:
He's not the father of hypertext, that largely goes to Ted Nelson.
He's not the father of the internet, that largely goes to the early ARPANET pioneers and no one name in particular.
He's not the father of open source software, that largely goes to Richard Stallman and GNU.
He is the father of the Web though, which is built upon the ideas of hypertext, but uses the TCP/IP protocol suite on the internet, and a lot of the software that drives the internet is possible because of open sou
Re:Grammar nazi (Score:1)
Touche (Score:1)
Finnish inferiority complex (Score:3, Insightful)
I mean come on. Every two years we ship one million euros of tax-payers money abroad and get what in return? It's just stupid.
I can see only one purpose for it: someone high up in the government/academia has a pretty bad case of inferiority complex and comes up with the idea of the prize to alleviate it. "Let's get more attention to us Finns by giving out money. Oh yeah, a great idea. The Swedes are already doing it with the Nobel prize, so let's start our own knock-off award, complete with all the pomp-and-ceremony."
Re:Finnish inferiority complex (Score:1)
As a fellow Finn, couldn't agree with you more.
This will be a forgotten prize in 2008.
Re:Finnish inferiority complex (Score:1)
It's impossible to predict how respected a prize like this will become, but let's keep in mind that this one has by far the largest prize sum (of all technology awards in the world).
Re:Finnish inferiority complex (Score:5, Informative)
I mean come on. Every two years we ship one million euros of tax-payers money abroad and get what in return? It's just stupid.
Who says it's tax-payer money? From their website:
The Finnish Technology Award Foundation is an independent fund established in 2002 by eight Finnish organisations that support technological development and innovation.
Founding Organizations
The Confederation of Finnish Industry and Employers - TT
The Finnish Academies of Technology - FACTE
The Finnish Academy of Technology - TTA
The Finnish Assosiation of Graduated Engineers - TEK
The Foundation of Technology - TES
Foundation of Finnish Inventions
The Swedish Academy of Engineering in Finland - STV
Walter Ahlström Foundation
The usual idea behind foundations is that you have a body that gathers money from donations from corporations are individuals - then uses the interest and profits from investments to fund charitable causes. I don't really see why they would be directly giving away "tax-payer money" as such.
Re:Finnish inferiority complex (Score:2, Informative)
Will it Change Microsoft? (Score:1, Flamebait)
Re:Will it Change Microsoft? (Score:2)
They already are. Any platform, any browser - from Microsoft.
-MT.
Re:Will it Change Microsoft? (Score:2)
Sadly not. I've seen pages that render fine in IE5 but are screwed up in IE6 and visa versa.
Stephen
"Sir"? (Score:1)
Arise Sir Tim... (Score:1)
Otherwise, TBL could have been "Sir Linkalot"...
Millenium? (Score:2)
it might be the first Millenium Technology Prize, (Score:2)
spell checker - n. An application within most word processing programs that checks for spelling errors in documents.
cLive ;-)
Re:it might be the first Millenium Technology Priz (Score:1)
What, no LISP bragging? (Score:1)
Sir TBL inventor of HTML? I think not! (Score:1)
I have read several posts attributing HTML as an invention of TBL.
This in my opinion is incorrect, the WWW dates back to 1980.
HTML [w3.org] is a derivative of SGML [coverpages.org] which dates back to 1960's and is
a descendant of IBM's GML. [wikipedia.org]
Check this for some more history. [sgmlsource.com]
--
Han Tacoma
Re:I don't give a shit. (Score:1)
Re:It sounds like... (Score:1)
Re:TBL did innovate (Score:2)
I think the RDF Semantics [w3.org] specification was written in a manner illuminated by MT, but the basic design and utility of RDF are not particularly related. They come more from frame systems, semantic nets, and the like; it's a small fragment of first-order logic.
If you'd actually like to engage in productive discussion about RDF or the relev