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World Technology Awards 2001
struanr writes: "Nature has published the winners and finalists of the World Technology Awards, which are run by the World Technology Network. "These are about those individuals whose work today will, in our opinion, create the greatest "ripple effects" in the future... in both expected and unexpected ways." There are some big names chosen here, and some glaring omissions."
You have to be kidding me. Shawn Fanning wins in TWO seperate categories? All the little fuck did in 2000 was sell out and spend the rest of the year in court. Seriously, there are a thousand people more deserving of both of his wins here. What's next, Bill Gates for "Innovative Government Payouts"?
That's why it is evolutionary. It isn't anything remarkably different from many Unices. It is in fact, very much a clone of the best pieces of many popular Unix varieties. Having the GPL license gives it the boggest improvement over previous Unices; it can become whatever people need it to be.
Slackware forever
I agree. 8.0 is da bomb
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
I note that the award is the 2001 version, after which it speaks of recognizing "recent" accomplishments.
Now, I admire Bob Metcalfe as much as anyone, but the creation of Ethernet is hardly recent. The recognition of Torvalds, Gordon Moore, and Michael Dell (a finalist) likewise begs the question: Hasn't anyone done anything in technology lately?
I would suppose that this award is like the Nobel, in that it is given once time has proved that the nominee's accomplishments are not a flash-in-the-pan.
---Any philosophy that can be put "in a nutshell" belongs there.---
I just think some of the results are odd. Also, some of them on that page did not have explanations, which is strange as well.
Shawn Fanning of Napster for Entrepreneurship? Napster was nice and all, but did Fanning really make a business? It seems to me that he had an excellent idea for a piece of software, it got big, and someone threw money at it. It sort of road the coat-tails of a technology boom. And look at them now. You can't really make a sucessful company by following their business plan. They hardly have one, and it hasn't been particularly profitable. The entertainment category award makes much more sense to me.
And I'm all for Bob Metcalf, but the blurb on him didn't really say anything about what he's done lately. Yeah, ethernet is great and all, but these are the 2001 awards. Ethernet is not new.
Same with Gordon Moore. His little writeup is all about stuff he did back in the day. And yeah, a lot of it is still relevant, but surely 2001 had some hardware development that's more interesting than a 'law' everyone has been quoting for years.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
But! It's really misleading. It makes it sound like the idea of giving away your code was invented by Linus and it wasn't. It wasn't invented by RMS either, but RMS would claim that he's the guy who's done the most for it. Heck, RMS doesn't even get a token "GNU/Linux" in these awards.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
After looking it over, there aren't many pioneers in there.
In the area of computer technology, I'd say that only Gordon Moore deserves this level of recognition. Gordon almost single-handedly created the microprocessor industry as well as provided essential direction on mp design. Say what you will about the purity of Intel's mp designs, the fact remains that designing for manufacturability is as critical as designing for pure performance.
As has been said elsewhere, Linus did something evolutionary, but they give him far more credit that is fair (he didn't create the OSS...he DID popularize it).
Bob Metcalf is a pioneer with twenty years to rest on his laurels and other networking technologies are fundamentally better, just not as popular. Bob is the next most legit candidate.
Shawn has contributed to some of the most important dialog on intellectual property and copyright laws by the actions of a curious kid, but he did this without attempting to do anything more interesting than share ripped music, so he can hardly be called cerebral or a major contributor.
"... but you can love completely without complete understanding." - Norman Maclean, "A River Runs Through It"