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World Technology Awards 2001

Posted by michael on from the hair-of-the-dog-that-bit-you dept.

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."

2 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. odd results by cowscows · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  2. Getting RMS mad... by mjh · · Score: 3, Insightful
    COMMERCE

    Winner: Mr Linus Torvalds, Programmer, Transmeta Corp., USA.

    Linus Torvalds was selected for his work on Linux and the Open Source Software Paradigm.

    Linus Torvalds wrote the kernel of Linux and established the Open Source software model

    Not to add fuel to the flames, but this is the kind of thing that really gets under RMS's skin. Technically it's correct. Since RMS does free software, and OSS only got coined as a type of software post-Linux, Linus could very well be given credit for OSS.

    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.

    --
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