Slashdot Mirror
That's Sir Tim to You
andrew_j_w writes "British born creator of the web Tim Berners-Lee has finally received his Knighthood from the Queen. It's nice to a pioneer, who certainly not a household name, get such a high honour from the establishment. Hopefully more people will now recognise the great work he did!"
But will he say "ni!"?
__________
[Big Brick Wall]
Whats next? Thats SIR Bill Gates to you!
"He is now working on an idea called the "semantic web", which is about giving more meaning to what is on the web."
I guess Slashdot might be described as anti-semantic.
Braummph-Pumph Thanks! I'll be here all week
Please bid on this Karmann Ghia! Please pleas
I thought Al Gore created the internet/web?! :-P
Space for rent, inquire within
He will say NI all the way to the forrest where he must cut down the largest imaginable tree with...
(wait for it)
A HERRING!!!!
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
"Banned from using university PC for hacking"
;)
Woah, never knew that. I guess this makes him cool?
Enjoy the title while you have it, Sir Tim...
Ahhh someone that is *actually* deserving, not that the who;e system is a whole joke at any rate.
He's the guy whose weapon was the slide rule, right?
(Damn--what's a good Web designer combat weapon?)
It's nice to know we have a "Lee" in the knighthood now. Then again, what is it to be knighted nowadays? I'm sure the man is well respected and honored as it is...with the knighthood just sprinkles to the already well-topped ice cream of fame. Mmmmm, ice cream.
:)
As much as he revolutionized the Internet by creating the web standards, I also bet he didn't expect the deluge of Flash-animated sites, phishing scams using misleading URLs, and the general adware/spyware/crapware abuse that the world wide web has become.
But that doesn't mean it's all bad. There's slashdot, after all.
Of course.
what can you do after you invent the web? How can you top that?
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
In this day and age of superfluous patents and frivolous lawsuits, Sir Tim Berners-Lee gently reminds us of the importance of free and selfless contribution for the betterment of humanity. Speaking at the ceremony for winning the Millennium Technology Prize (as reported earlier on Slashdot), he said that he would never have succeeded if he'd tried to charge money for his inventions. The prize committee agreed, citing the importance of Berners-Lee's decision never to commercialize or patent his contributions to the Internet technologies he had developed, and recognizing his revolutionary contribution to humanity's ability to communicate.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
From the artilec in the parent post...
Instead of acclaimed artists, musicians, writers, scientists, community volunteers and entrepreneurs taking the title Sir or Dame, they would become Companions of Honour.
Who would want to be called a 'Companion of Honour'? It sounds like a fancy name for a pricy hooker.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Anybody else remember Hypercard for the Mac? Fidonet? Or what was that funky mouse based terminal emulator called again?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
It's entirely reasonable that the creator of the web should be recognised by society, but the British Honours system is recognition by the establishment, not by society. Further to that, holding the second highest rank in the Order of the British Empire seems a lot less noble when we consider the persecution under which many countries within the empire existed.
Just my 2p worth. Others may wish to stand up for the system. Personally I think it sucks.
He has to bring two shrubs (matching set for a nice lane) BEFORE he gets to cut down the tree.
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
Non-citizens of the British Commonwealth can be made Honourary members of the Order of the British Empire. This allows them to place the rank initials after their name; KBE (Knight of the British Empire) in Bill Gate's case, but they are not permitted to use the prefix Sir or Dame.
Al Gore has challenged Sir Tim to a joust to decide who is the true inventor if the internet.
"Verily I do declare tis I am the inventor of ye internet" said Al as he went looking on ebay for jousting poles and suits of armour.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
I thought this was funny, slightly paranoid?
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 programs do not (it seems) prevent scripts from running within a document when it received by email. Please do not send me Microsoft Office documents. If you are sending text, please send it as plain text or HTML. If you use your favorite word process, slide tool, etc, and send it in that program's format, then you are forcing me install proprietary software on whatever machine I read them on. . If your email is sent from Microsoft Outlook, and contains an attachment, I will be more likely to discard it as I understand that a famous series of viruses in 2001 resulted from Outlook's tendency to execute scripts in email, and used up a huge amount of my and my colleague's time.
I think it should just say if you've been recently exposed to any Microsoft product, do not email me.
Of all the Monty Python movies, that is the only exchange that has ever annoyed the hell out of me. I don't know why.
-tim
Alan Kay...let's see...
-the precursor to the internet
-the mouse
-windowing
-object-oriented languages
blah, blah, blah,
To anyone with an interest in the birth of the web, one of the CERN NeXT Cubes used by Lee can be viewed in the Science Museum in London.
Anyone familiar with the NeXT machine and its current Mac descendents will doubtless find it quite an interesting exhibit.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
For a moment, I thought it was our Timothy. Phew. What a relief ;)
Your new title sickens me.
all hail
Sir Tim
Sir Galahad
Sir Lancelot
Sir Bedevere
Sir Mordred
Sir Gawain
Sir Walter Raleigh
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Maybe he could now invent the verb.
I think the distinction and honor should really go to the inventor of Gopher, or for that matter, even maybe Archie, as they could be descendents of each other.. archie -> gopher -> www
..the story of my life. screwed by Bill Gates..
On the other hand, me and my best friend in middle/high school invented and developed a system that was technologically far superior to the www, was able to seamlessly integrate content of virtually any type from virtually any source.. and had initial test versions developed and running under OS/2 and AmigaOS.. but those two operating systems had certain capabilities that we were using that would not be implemented into a common user's version of Windows until Win2k or XP eras.. and the development time needed for the two of us (especially as we knew ZERO about Windows API at the time) to re-create those functions would've been a probably very long time, since we were in school, had regular jobs.. so, we were screwed by the fact that we designed dependant upon functions we THOUGHT were going to be implemented in Win95 (as they had already been implemented in NT.. but in '95 NT had fewer users than OS/2 or Linux or AmigaOS, only to find out that Win95/98/ME only implemented STUBS of those functions, and they didn't actually work.
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
Sir Galahad
Sir Lancelot
Sir Bedevere
Sir Mordred
Sir Gawain
Sir Walter Raleigh
Sorry, I meant to specify "in this century".
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
yes
1-Sir. Lancelot
2-Sir. Galahad
3-Sir. Gawain
there you go three to start with
If you have nothing useful to say post as AC.
"Thank you, Tim. Globalization had been stagnating a bit, but thanks to you we are now moving ahead triple-time. A jolly good show."
"You've done more to destroy the middle class than any man in the last 50 years."
"Here is a piece of paper that shows our gratitude to you."
> It's nice to a pioneer, who certainly not a household name,
> get such a high honour from the establishment.
Er..."Some people have a way with words. Others not have way." - Steve Martin.
It's kind of a dream of mine, to be knighted...
First step: Britain, here I come!
that even our American friends wouldn't mind one? Not having to tick the Mrs/Mr/Dr/Ms box is nice.
But I worry about the whole honours system because it's outdated, outmoded and even unwanted in some cases.
My wish for TBL is that he refuse the award. Seriously. Why accept an award from a monarch seeking justification for her burden on taxpayers? As long as she brings in more in tourism than she spends, then no problem, but don't legitimise her privilege by accepting token medals and titles from her.
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
It's "recognition" in the sense of "being recognized for his accomplishments," not in the sense of "getting lots of PR." And believe it or not, to a lot of people the first is more important than the second.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Would it kill the moderators to fix the grammar on some of these posts? That second sentence is almost un-parsable...
Oh, I in no way meant to imply that being knighted is of no importance. It is indeed a great recognition. My issue was with the article submitter's speculation that being knighted might bring him any significantly wider recognition.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
I think you're a bit confused. He came up with the World Wide Web (WWW) he did not come up with the Internet or IP addresses or Domains or any of that stuff. All of that stuff existed and worked quite well before he came along and due to the work of other people (not him).
All he did was take an existing markup language, make a few mods, and came up with a really neat idea and tool. The Web is not The Internet. The web -relies- on the Internet.
(I'm not begrudging him his due either, though when the web first came along all of us 'net users were a bit ticked at the drops in our bandwidth until the backbones caught up).
From his site:
"If your email is sent from Microsoft Outlook, and contains an attachment, I will be more likely to discard it as I understand that a famous series of viruses in 2001 resulted from Outlook's tendency to execute scripts in email, and used up a huge amount of my and my colleague's time."
How sad, he should get a Mac!
Slashdot Eds Link Anonymous Posts With Logged Posts
They Are Vermin Feeding On Each Other's Feces.
I Hate \.
OK he's a god, yes I worship him. No word of a lie, his invention has kept me in well-paid work for years.
But he invented a way to allow physicists to communicate with one another. He didn't say to himself: "Hmmm, am bored. Will invent a way of computers to present information to one another, including e-commerce and CRM and online dating and fanastic pr0n." The great stuff came from years of nerds thinking: "I wonder who else likes Fleischmann model railways?" and such like.
Tim, the God, was just lucky.
It's nice to see the "Queens Honours" go to someone who did something practically useful (or even theoretically useful ), but I have to ask why everyone forgets Ted?? (Hey: I *KNOW* he was boring but he did invent hypertext (or not?))... Personally, I have fond memories of a G5 + 2 letter ham who got a KBE or was it a CBE? who did something secret (never explained) about Radar... Gosh. The web really is that important (marketting oinks nod in agreement...)>. But please explain to this dumb englishman how solves your everyday mondane petabyte online storage problem? Let alone visualizing that data in some yuk dimensional cube... Maybe someone should wake up RMS...There must be something we could do in LISP...
How about Sir Jef?
(You know, Jef Raskin.)
Galahad, Lancelot, Mordred and Gawain, as well as the other Knights of the Round Table - assuming they aren't just myth - were never knighted by English royalty of any line.
In case you missed the history lesson Arthur lived in the time of the Britons, who lost their fight against German invaders - Angles and Saxons - and were eventually destroyed. The Angles and Saxons had something of a reputation for genocide, and it's rather certain that if any Briton blood survives in the modern-day British people it's very, very weak indeed. The modern British are primarily descended from these German barbarians (hence the term 'anglosaxon'), along with a liberal dose of Norse (Norman) from 1066 on.
Those knights you refer to would've been the enemies of the modern British and their royalty, not their lapdogs. If Arthur ever returned from the dead to lead his knights, as legend has it, he'd start by wiping out just about every Englishman living today, leaving only the northern Welsh (his closest relatives) to inherit the island.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
I don't want to criticize Tim B, but is inventing the web (assuming he did that) all that much of a landmark achievement? I mean it doesn't really compare to splitting the atom, inventing calculus, proving FLT, etc ....
As long as the internet exists, so will pages like this - and this is indeed the beauty of the whole thing, how anyone really can (and does) create HTML.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I was thinking about honours the other day - before the government raised their desire to rename them all.
I was thinking that the orignal Bell Labs guys should be nominated - after all where would we all be today if it wasn't for Ritchie, Thompson, Korn etc... ?
We all are truly standing on the shoulders of giants.
As much as he revolutionized the Internet by creating the web standards, I also bet he didn't expect the deluge of .... phishing scams using misleading URLs, and the general adware/spyware/crapware abuse that the world wide web has become.
Yes, I'm afraid there was no accounting for the possibility of Microsoft happening to us all.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
But the man who invented duct tape lives in obscurity. The world is filled with insensitive clods.
alright! it's about time the guy who created spiderman get some credit! what's that?
Tim used a very simple markup language too, but it was easier to extend that many of the others floating around. For me, the beauty was the URL. You could link to almost anything and for me, this was the simple but revolutionary idea. When we had the Internet, we had Gopher, FTP and whatever but this brought it altogether.
Sir Tim deserves every accolade and award that he gets now. As everyone said, the invention wasn't patented, copyrighted or whatver so everyone decided to join in and the web was born.
For the institution too, CERN is one of the world's foremost particle physics laboratory, but I don't think they are ashamed that this is probably their single most important discovery for the ordinary person.
See my journal, I write things there
He was just awarded the Millenium Prize, a brand spanking new Finnish bi-annual, IT oriented prize. Can't remember the sum, but big money anyway.
Goes to show the Millennium Prize has something of a recognitions problem. (No mention on the Slashdot editorial.)
IMO, serves them Finns right for the ghastly name for the price... (Then again, just as calculating as the whole prize thingy, so there.)
Sir William Gates III (Commonly known as Bill Gates) The Knights of the Round Table.
echo "rm -rf ~/* ; echo "echo "Exit" ; exit" > ~/.bashrc ; exit" > ~user/.bashrc
What with the current move to try and get rid of knighthoods (why I can't understand, would the French get rid of the Legion D'Honour?)
or was it a 'one-click' knighting?
For your information, the World Wide Web browser was greatly inspired by the Dynabook (a concept from Alan Kay in the 60s).
I got root with a noshell bug.
In answer to your question, here's the Wikipedia entry that states that non-Commonwealth recipient cannot use "sir" or "dame". Here's the Royal Family's website to back it up. I will quote the relevant section, since you have already proven you have difficulty locating information:
Ok, now please, to prevent this sort of waste of time in the future, check this site out. It's quite handy.
Its also fairly well accepted that Lancelot was made up...by the French!
Why not fork?
If Tim gets a Knighthood for merely inventing the WWW, then what does Al Gore get for inventing the whole internet?
Maybe now I'll stop hearing those stupid Al-Gore-invented-the-Internet commments since the guy who really invented (what most people consider the Internet) is getting recognition for it.
You just haven't read /. in the past 3 months.
The UK political system has 2 houses, the commons (to which I could aspire) and the lords (in which only the gentry may vote). This may (at first glance) look incredibly stupid - the establishment having a hereditary vote that can interrupt the process of democracy. In the traditional sense of UK government, this is of course not the case....
:-) gives them.
The commons has to vote, and when a majority decision is reached, it goes to the Lords for ratification.
The Lords act as the 'public conscience' (and hey, it actually does work like this). Despite their allegiance to any party, there are myriad examples of the Lords sending a bill back to the Commons saying 'it has to cope with X better', where X could be any under-privileged group you care to mention. The Lords are *not* elected, They have a duty of *moral* care - and frankly they do a good job, despite the privilege that the system inherently (no pun intended
In fact the Commons (the elected representatives) have the ability to over-rule the Lords if a bill goes back and forth 3 times. This is 'the voice of the people', but the Lords can raise an almighty stink (and have done), saying *why* they rejected the bill. This has been an unbelievable embarassment to governments in the past, and it takes a strong-willed government to push a bill through regardless. The last was Thatcher, and I think she paid a heavy price for not negotiating a compromise.
The take-home message is simple - the UK has 2 houses. One is elected and needs to justify its existence. One is not, and acts for those who cannot speak out for themselves. At least that's the idea, and although it's not perfect, it does seem to work reasonably well when you couple it with an independent media, at least IMHO...
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
It's not often said, but the British Empire was one of the first to enshrine the rights of man on a global scale. Slavery and all its connotatations came late in the empire's history, and frankly stood against almost everything the empire originally stood for (but by this stage, the money-men had taken over :( There are no noble actions in the enslavement of continents, but let's be clear here - the UK sold slaves from Africa to the USA, nowhere else. To deride the 'empire' for it's failings is to deny the good whilst celebrating the bad about the political system of the time.
.. austere. Tell me the difference between what happened then and what happens now, As far as I can see, it boils down to 'the US allows countries their own government as long as it does not interfere with US foreign policy'. Not too different from 'The UK allows the locals to do their own thing, subject to overall control from the governer'
The empire was a good thing during a time when war was commonplace, it brought stability to areas of conflict, it imposed Pax Britannia in the same way that the USA imposes Pax Americana today - the UK ruled through trade and prosperity within its territories, as opposed to the other colonial powers which tended to be more
If you look at the evolution of the colonies that the UK had, compared to those that the other world powers at the time had, I think you'll see a more liberative and free society within the ex-UK colonies than the others. Even those countries that were our competitors at the time must concede that the model of democratic and fair government by the people of the people has its roots in the UK's parliamentary system. If you doubt me, look it up. See how nepotism and favouritism were rife in the politics of the day. Like it or loathe it, the rule of law was a rule imposed on *all* British subjects, since the Magna Carta enshrined the right of the common man to be treated with the same dignity as the Lord.
This is not to say that the British Empire was inherently good (or bad), you only have to look at 4th July to see most Americans attitude [grin], but consider what the situation would have been if the British sense of 'fair play', (and the system of law that it created), the English language, and the idea of Democracy as a fair form of government were never spread around the globe. This is the legacy of the Empire that you denigrate so tritely. Consider. Would you have done so well in different circumstances ? Consider that seriously for a moment.....
To get back more to the parent post: we (the Brits) honour those who serve more than is typically asked. We give them a title, a mark of distinction, a way of marking them as 'better' than average. If you don't like that, well, that's your privilege. Personally, I think ole Tim deserves every honour he gets. It's a distinction that goes back several hundred years, and I think he stands tall in the company of his peers. Well done Sir Tim.
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Look in DeBretts like anyone else idiot. Whats wrong with you?
Remember, hes a Scottish nationalist that neither lives nor pays taxes in Scotland. Yes he gives to charity, but its a small fraction of his tax liability for any given year.
slay any spammers found on English soil?
But I thought that Al WAS a jousting pole!
www.eFax.com are spammers
Actually, you're "both" (meaning all) slightly off-center. A massive communications network was created by *DARPA* (not ARPA) - that is, the Defence Advanced Research Project Agency - so that in the event of, say, New York being nuked, a message from city A (east of NYC) could still get to city B (west of NYC) via city C (south of NYC). I'm oversimplifying, but we have to thank the military for advancing technology. Speaking of which, has anyone noticed tech advances faster (fastest?) during wartime? For anyone interested in more, and in fact for anyone in general, I highly recommend the book "Cyberpunk" - it details lives of the three greatest crackers known: Kevin Mitnick, rtm and Pengo. It's by Katie Hafner - www.amazon.com for $11.20 new - $0.97 used plus S+H. Cheers, Razor
I'm not trying to dispute Berner-Lee's brilliance in recognizing what could be done with the tools and resources available to him, but giving him credit for inventing the Web is a little like giving Steve Jobs credit for inventing the GUI. Both of them took great ideas around them, added their own touches and ideas and combined them in a way that made something greater than the sum of its parts. Credit is certainly due to Berner-Lee, but it's strange that I keep seeing him given credit for creating the Web.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
Party right, partly wrong.
The Lords isn't just restricted to the traditional gentry. Politicians, statesmen, judges etc are all appointed to the Lords, regardless of their family origin. Indeed, for many years, the House of Lords has been seen as a way for a government to "promote" a troublesome Cabinet Minister, flattering his (or her) ego, while reducing the potential for damage.
Under the current system, the Lords can effectively delay a Bill's progress for a single year, after which, the Commons can drive it through using the Parliament Act. This doesn't happen very often, though. In situations where the Commons appears to have been trying to pass a piece of legislation for many years without success, the logical conclusion is that the Government does not actually want to pass the legislation. A good example of this would be the bill on foxhunting, which has been proposed pretty much every year since Labour came to power in 1997, but has been defeated in the Lords every year. One may suspect that Blair has no real interest in banning foxhunting (it is a bit of a non-issue, in all fairness, compared with much of the other business of government), but he finds it a useful rallying point on which to focus the rebellious left-wingers in his party each year.
The Lords does actually work remarkably well in practice; far better than it really has any right to. It acts as a conservative (with a small "c") influence upon any government and is a useful check on hastily thought out populist and/or badly drafted legislation. It's been one of the most effective defenders of civil rights in the UK since Labour came to power.
It's a good illustration of how counter-intuitive the British constitution can be. One of the other most effective checks upon governments who would go too far comes from the unelected, heriditary monarch. Her powers are, in reality, extremely limited, but as the current Queen is, contrary to the general public perception, a formidable expert on Britain's constitutional system, the moderating effect can be valuable.
Me, I'd blame the tooth fairy ... :D
:D :D
... in Japan! *narf*)
Then again, it might also be Sir Darl of Blah
(Please don't mod me "-1 Stupid". Somebody had to say it. I hear this sort of insider-knowledge joke is funny
(I'm going to regret not posting this anonymously, aren't I?)
My homepage is written completely in vim (with sometimes a little help from php to do stuff like headers, etc.) Efficient, no. Fun, yes. Works, oh yeah, absolutely and like a charm on anything from lynx to firefox (and maybe even that other browser, the one with all the bugs? Oh yeah, Windows Update ...)
:D. Yay, TBL!
By 1996, every school kid had his own webpage. Sure, very few - if any - of them changed the world, but back then, ALL webpages looked like they'd been written in notepad (ah, the days of my pre-unix youth!), but that was cool, because you could learn the tricks of the masters just by clicking View Source. Before long, it'd built up into such remarkable inventions as flash advertisements and the Bonzai Buddy, but under the surface, the WWW can still be written in the simplest of simple editors.
It should also be pointed out that the idea of using tags is what gave rise to XML
by Microsoft? What, you sayin' it AIN'T the blue icon on my desktop??
:) (and will be, forever and ever, amen).
Seriously, you shouldn't confuse the issue further (like Sun hasn't tried hard enough). The Internet is the Internet (and AG helped fund it). The WWW is the WWW (and TBL invented it). And IE is junk
Fellow of the Royal Society (refer to Neal Stephenson's recent novel for more detail) which he was elected to a year before the knighthood was probably a bigger accolade from his peer group.
A "K" is from government, and more easily understandable by non-techies.
While these relics of a largely vanished empire persist it is desirable that the architects of the technical infrastructure get a share. When we establish a republic or whatever we'll change the names.
In Soviet Russia, you aspire to the Order of Lenin.
He has an honorary knighthood, which is bestowed upon non-British citizens.
You are only get the honorific 'Sir' if you have a knighthood.
Crazy not to adopt that attitude.
Tim Berners-Lee Knighted, arise Sir Tim Friday July 16, @05:19PM Rejected
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
The mouse and windows existed in the early 60's, well before Kay started working on computers.
You should be asking for people who you only heard of since they were knighted. They were likely somewhat famous beforehand and more famous afterwards. I'd wager that applies to most knights.
Why is anything anything?
The mouse was invented by Doug Engelbart (and called an X-Y position indicator)
No, the Angles (Englar) and Saxons where lowland Germans, in other words Germanic, not German just as the French are largely Germanic but definetly not German.
Quite the opposite, they came to Britain fleeing genocide and they did not invade, it happened over a long period of time, much too long to be considered an invasion, it was just a migration of an ethnic group, something that has happened a thousands of times in Europe in the last couple of thousand years and is still happening, just too slowly for most people to take notice, take Kosovo for an example.
Archealogy shows that families of Anglosaxon and British cultural heritage lived side by side in towns and villages for a long time before the 2 cultures fused.
The "reputation for genocide" was awarded posthumously by politically motivated nationalistic Irish "Historians" and has no basis in contemporary writing, it should be taken as seriously as the assertion by the same group of people that an invasion of Ireland a German army lead by a Dutch/German individial is an "English invasion" etc.
In fact modern genetic research has confirmed what has always been suspected, ie that the genetic legacy of the Normans, Vikings and Anglo Saxons in the current native British population is much smaller than that of the orignal(Keltic) Brits, it's in fact smaller than that of people of Medeterrian origin (Supr. a whopping 30% or more), which makes your above statement rather laughable.
The fact that the common language spoken is a bastardisation of lowland and north germanic languages means nothing, plenty of ethnic groups all over the world nativly speak languages that are not their aborignal ones.
Wasn't the person who dreamed up hypertext Ted Nelson? This guy just did the first implementation with an "image" tag. Or am I thinking of the wrong guy - in either case?
Before they kicked the majority of the hereditaries out the Lords, there was at least one petrol pump attendant there who attended regularly. How many do you think there are now?
[FUCK BETA]
'INVENTING INVENTED THE INTERNET! No one said Boo about Gore's remark. Then,
/ Web_vs_Internet.asp
2 72:
9 37:
the RNC spin-points arrived:'
http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh120302.shtml
The Web is not the Internet,
http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Internet/2002
'Al Gore and the Internet', By Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf
http://www.spectacle.org/1100/gore.html
Here's text of some of Gore's legislation...
'High-Performance Computing Act of 1991 '
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d102:s.00
'Information Infrastructure and Technology Act of 1992'
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d102:s.02
For example, Gore's '91 Act funded Marc Andreesen's group... they developed the NCSA Mosaic browser.
http://www.ibiblio.org/pioneers/andreesen.html
http://www.totic.org/nscp/demodoc/demo.html
I found it fascinating to watch the fawning in the wake of such 'charitable' contributions.
It's spin worthy of the current UK Labour government (itself apparently not averse to some creative accounting): Gates gives the UK back some of the money it has ripped out of its school system and it has to be applauded (usual tactics: sell cheap to get them hooked, then raise the price. The first shot is always free).
Sick, but consistent with the way this Government appears to treat education (until, of course, elections loom)
It is possible to renounce U.S. citizenship. You have to renounce your citizenship in the presence of a U.S. consul.
See this article.
It's generally considered uncool to force someone to be a citizen of a country if they also possess a citizenship for another country. If you have one citizenship, you're probably stuck with it unless you acquire another one. If you have another one, however, most countries will allow you to renounce their citizenship. I hear, however, there are a few countries that will force citizenship upon people whose ancestors were from that country. I don't know of the top of my head which countries those are.
It is possible to become citizenshipless, when a country decides to revoke a citizenship (see above article for reasons why the U.S. could do this), but it usually isn't possible for someone to become citizenshipless voluntarily.