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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.
Enjoy the title while you have it, Sir Tim...
He's the guy whose weapon was the slide rule, right?
(Damn--what's a good Web designer combat weapon?)
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!
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.
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
I don't think he would deny it, in fact I'm sure he wouldn't. I heard him speaking many years ago (must be 10) and he made it very clear then that hypertext certainly wasn't novel and neither was networking,
He said he believed that his main contribution (from my rusty memory) was implementing it in a mark-up language that was so simple that any layman could sling something together quickly (an attribute that has, perhaps been lost over the years) and also providing a simple way for a document on one machine to reference a document on a machine anywhere in the world - again simply.
Of course, Sir Isaac Newton was also knighted for clambering up on tall people.
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 ;)
Maybe he could now invent the verb.
> 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.
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
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).
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.
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?
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?)
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!
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.
Um, he's the one who tried to take credit for it ... (and before you copy/paste, yes, I have read the "full quote").
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.
He has an honorary knighthood, which is bestowed upon non-British citizens.
You are only get the honorific 'Sir' if you have a knighthood.