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Sir Tim Berners-Lee Lauded For Web Efforts

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."

13 of 147 comments (clear)

  1. Re:question by NekoXP · · Score: 3, Informative

    www.w3.org isn't good enough for you?

    http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/

  2. almost as rich as a dot.commer by peter303 · · Score: 4, Informative

    MIT prof Berners-Lee could have cashed in long ago as a web startup and gotten rich, but decided to develop his his dream without commercial taint. This $1.2 million prize, along with a few others he has won, helps compensate this sacrifice.

  3. Re:question by Mwongozi · · Score: 4, Informative
    Does Tim Berners-Lee have his own website?

    Yes he does

  4. Re:Some kind of mistake? by Mwongozi · · Score: 2, Informative

    Your quote is out of context

  5. Re:BT? by somethinghollow · · Score: 2, Informative

    And Vannevar Bush really did invent hyperlinking way before British Telecom with the writing / publication of "As We May Think" circa 1945.

    I think Berners-Lee would be the daddy of the web. Bush would be the grand daddy.

  6. Nonsense by Fished · · Score: 2, Informative

    OSX *is* NextSTEP for all intents and purposes. It is not even a total rewrite of NextSTEP - it is just an evolution of NeXT with new eye-candy and a MacOS 9 compatibility layer bundled. Go read some 'man' pages - half of the weird little commands in OSX (such as 'open') were first created in NeXT.

    --
    "He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
  7. You don't have to be British... by blorg · · Score: 2, Informative

    ...to receive a knighthood, only to use the title 'Sir'. Gates is being knighted (this was covered so widely I suspect you may be a troll) along with many other Americans including Rudy Giuliani, Steven Spielberg, Bob Hope, Billy Graham, George Mitchell, Norman Schwarzkopf and George Bush senior. Note the inclusion of politicians and that the 1810 consitutional amendment banning American citizens from accepting foreign honours was never ratified (ref: quoted BBC article above).

  8. TBL points out that he didn't invent the internet by blorg · · Score: 3, Informative

    ...but rather the WWW, right here. It's in his 'Kid's Questions' section - you might want to check it out.

  9. Re:NeXTcube by minus_273 · · Score: 4, Informative

    dude OSX uses an Openstep implematation as its API. have you written any code on OSX? All the objects derive from NSobject and they all have the prefix NS. NS obviously standing for NextStep. Oh yeah and we still use Objective-C. The Next iterfacebuilder that Lee liked so much? Yes it is called interface builder and saves files as .Nib (next step interface builder). If you look at early versions of OSX like Raphsody you see it is nearly identical to Next.
    Finally, lots of code written for OSX builds on Gnustep and Openstep. For example GNUmail

    So, yes it is correct to say that OSX is the modern version of NextStep just like WinXP is the modern Windows

    --
    The war with islam is a war on the beast
    The war on terror is a war for peace
  10. Re:Finnish inferiority complex by azaris · · Score: 4, 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.

  11. Re:NeXTcube by WillAdams · · Score: 2, Informative

    NeXTstep was not merely an austere aesthetic experience, w/ minimal distractions and a flexible, customizable UI which allowed one to reduce screen clutter to just a single tile (the NeXT logo), and a pixel or two (dragged off main menu and / or the cursor), but synergistic whole the likes of which sadly are not likely to be seen again.

    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 menus and the (optional) information / settings menus for Airport &c.

    - verbose Mac-style shortcut descriptions w/ arcane symbols instead of concise NeXT-style shortcuts (in NeXTstep, Save is indicated by ``s'' and Save as by ``S'', no Command symbol (it's assumed---Control only as a modifier is reserved for personal shortcuts / Unix-use), Shift by case)

    - Print, Hide, Services and Quit are no longer top-level menus where they made more sense and were quicker to get at.

    - scroll bars on wrong side (this can't be fixed by theming 'cause Carbon apps are responsible for deciding where scroll bars are placed :( having them on the left means a window is more useful when partially dragged off-screen and results in less-frequent need to resize a window

    - no Webster.app, Digital Librarian / Shakespeare or Oxford's Book of Quotations --- in NeXTstep this meant one was guaranteed to have Command = _not_ used in an app so it'd be available for looking things up in Websters. Sure you can d/l OmniGroups dict.org client &c., but it's not the same (esp. if you're on dial-up)

    - Pantone colour library --- used to be this was licensed w/ the system, now each graphic app which needs it has to pay a license, and one _doesn't_ get them in one's office apps (major negative for adhering to corporate identity programs where such is specced) until such time as Office apps are written in Cocoa or support the nsColor API/object/whatever.

    - vertical menu

    - pop-up main menu --- this is wonderfully fast / efficient / elegant. For me, ``Punch'' in Altsys Virtuoso is pretty much a gesture, right-click, down a bit, then straight over and release

    - repositionable sub-menus --- no need for inscrutable button bars, and one can make a given command easy to get to as needed (when doing lots of envelopes I tear of the poste.app Services menu, put it in the bottom left corner, then an envelope is merely a selection, mouse move to bottom left, click, shift right to the print menu (also aligned on the bottom edge for this) click away. (takes longer to say / type than to do)

    William
    (who really should save all that and put it on a web page, but this time cribbed from my post to MacSlash ;) --- check my rants at http://groups.google.com in comp.sys.next.advocacy to see if I forgot anything...)

    --
    Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
  12. Re:silly by sir_cello · · Score: 2, 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 source _and_ open standards, and as much as possible WWW embodies the idea (alongside the IETF) of openness and accessibility.

    In each of these cases you can find examples of prior technology (e.g. you mention Gopher, but in fact WAIS was closer to WWW than anything else - and WAIS came out of Thinking Machines Corp. of who some of the people are now with the web archive), and related pioneers (e.g. Linux - rather than Linus - have helped drive acceptance of open source; or Andersaan and Netscape who helped turn the WWW into a practical reality with browser technology). However, the names mentioned are the key figureheads.

    Be careful to distinguish the layers:
    - the internet (i.e. the transport)
    - the web (i.e. the content)
    - open source (i.e. the social philosophy)

  13. Re:Finnish inferiority complex by Jansku · · Score: 2, Informative

    Hei, come on guys! As a fellow finn I can say IT'S YOU that have the inferiority complex - not the people who put up the award. So obvious. What the heck does it matter anyway, so to speak, if we have this award? You complain, you have the complex!